Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost : September 18, 2005

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Psalm 145:1-8

Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

First Reading

Let's call the theme here "grumbling over mercy for another." Matthew, in a parable unique to this Gospel, talks money. According to Josephus, after Herod's death representatives of the Jewish aristocracy went to Rome to plead for the country, as it had been bled dry by taxes. Herod was a great builder and a great taxer. These taxes put great pressure on the peasants already living at subsistence. Debt was the solution for many.

These laborers in the marketplace may be the displaced or those barely hanging on to their land looking for extra cash. As the parable indicates, many more were looking for work than jobs available. This displacement from the land also helps to explain the 5,000-plus in chapter 14 and the 4,000 men plus women and children in chapter 15 that Jesus feeds. They have been with Jesus for 3 days and have nothing to eat (15:33).

This parable may be given to further answer Peter's question in 19:27, "What then will we have?" Jesus promises in 19:29: "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life."

To put it in terms from the American Depression, people are looking for a "new deal." Yet Jesus' solution still strikes those hired early as unfair. We may look to our own society as we discuss what is fair in regard to taxes, Social Security, and benefits from government. The church is not free from the discussions about money and a fair wage. What we pay clergy is a matter that can generate plenty of tension. Perhaps the issue laid before us in the parable is more about money than spirituality, or maybe it really gets to the heart of our faith. After all, what the landowner pays is the "usual daily wage." Assuming that this is a subsistence wage, all the landowner is doing is providing a day's life to those hired later in the day. This is mercy, not justice.

Jonah, son of Amittai from Gath-hepher (2 Kgs 14:25) was a prophet during the reign of the Northern Kingdom's King Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.E.). We might call Jonah an historical tale or parable. The first word is vayehi, which can be translated "And it happened" or, as in the King James, "Now it came to pass" (James Limburg, Interpretation: Hosea-Micah (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988), 137). But what is the author getting at? Is Nineveh chosen because it is the worst city imaginable? and Jonah a prophet conveniently of the period before the destruction of the North? If so, isn't the destruction of the North (722 B.C.E.) a contradiction of the tale? Or is Nineveh spared so it can pummel Israel?

Likewise, Jonah is confused. Jonah prays fervently blaming God for being slow to anger and gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love. But hasn't Israel always held these up as God's virtues? Merciful to me, yes! Merciful to them, no!

Nineveh is no theoretical city, and this is no idle tale. God's mercy led to the destruction of our cousins and the pillaging of our nation, Israel. God loves not just the other but the enemy, too.

Jonah's grumbles are our grumbles. In Matthew's parable we groused over pennies. Here we question God's right to love us and our tormentors. Jonah prefers death to living in such a world. Like Jonah, some might cite the lives of the notorious still living as proof that there is no God--or no God worth caring about.

Pastoral Reflection

"We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves," remarked George Eliot in Adam Bede (New York: Penguin Putnam, [1859] 1985, 427).

The book of Jonah is not widely known even among churched adults. All anybody remembers is the whale or big fish. So the book itself can be the sermon. Likewise, Matthew's parable is a narrative sermon.

Veggie Tales chose Jonah for its first full-length motion picture. It is the humor in the original and in the more intentionally humorous movie that allows us to hear the whole book. Both Jonah and Nineveh are caricatured. Nineveh's residents, after all, do not know their right hand from their left (4:11).

Matthew begins his parable, "For the kingdom of heaven is like...." So also the book of Jonah is a story about the kingdom of heaven. Here is God's dream for us and the world. The landowner starts the process by hiring laborers early in the morning and at 9:00, noon, 3:00, and 5:00. We can see this as at infant baptism, Luther League, campus ministry, first child, death of a loved one--points when the kingdom becomes real in our lives. God's call may be constant, but we often fail to hear it. There are moments when we respond to the dream that God has dreamed. That dream includes those people who are our neighbors and, surprisingly, our enemies.

It strikes me how often some individual has told me that his or her grasp of the Christian life is better than mine. If these supremely confident evangelists knew me, that would be one thing. But they do not. Instead they are convinced that everyone should be like them. But is it God's dream they speak or merely their own dream?