Sermon 20th September 2020
Text: Matthew 20:1-16 – A generous
God.
Have you ever had that stumper of a
question put to you? How can a loving God send people to Hell? How can a loving
God send people to Hell? What I find interesting in today’s readings – especially
our Old Testament and Gospel reading is a different question. The question –
how can a loving God NOT send people to Hell?
Our Old Testament reading tells a
bizarre account of a prophet named Jonah. He was sent by God to an evil country
called Nineveh. His message to them from
God was that in 40 days God was going to destroy them because of their evil. Jonah
didn’t want to go there and jumps on a ship going in the opposite direction to
Tarshish. But God, instead of finding someone else, sticks with Jonah to teach
him a valuable lesson.
God sends a storm to cause the ship
to almost sink. Jonah, realising that he is at fault offers to be thrown
overboard. The crew do so and he is
swallowed by a giant fish for 3 days and then spat up onto the shore.
He goes and delivers the message and
as a result Nineveh repents and God changes his mind about destroying it.
Now we have in our reading a sulking
Jonah. And why is he sulking? From Jonah’s own mouth: O Lord! Is not this what
I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at
the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. Jonah
wasn’t afraid of the Ninevites and what they might do to him. He was afraid of
God’s love and mercy and that he would not follow up the threat if Nineveh
became aware of their destruction and asked for God’s mercy. That’s why Jonah
didn’t want to go – he wasn’t afraid of what Nineveh would do to him; He was
afraid what God would actually do to Nineveh- forgive them.
We have a similar situation in the
Gospel reading where Jesus tells a parable about workers in a vineyard. There are the lucky ones who were given a full
day’s employment with full wages. During the course of the day he went out 4
more times – 9am, noon, 3pm and 5pm – offering work. And when it came time to
pay them he paid them all a full day’s wage. Even though the ones hired first
received what they had agreed to they were furious because the owner paid even
those who had worked just one hour the same amount of money – a full days wage.
The owner responds: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to
me? Or are you envious because I am generous?
I have to admit that sometimes my
comfort comes knowing that there is a judgment day and that those who have
caused an injustice in the world will need to give an account before God. But
in reality that is no better than Jonah or the workers who grumbled against the
landowner’s generosity. The stories of Jonah and the generous landowner
challenge us when we try to evaluate what is fair or not fair in life. When we
evaluate fairness we usually evaluate from our perspective and how a situation
affects us. What God is trying to teach us here is to consider a bigger picture
when evaluating fairness.
God speaks with a very angry Jonah
who believes God has acted in an unfair way. Nineveh were evil people and they
deserved to be punished – probably very true. But God wants Jonah to see it from
a different perspective. In the heat of the day as Jonah sat and waited for God
to destroy Nineveh, God appointed a bush to give shade over Jonah and save him
from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God
appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it died and the sun beat down
on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to
live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?”
And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.”
Then the Lord said, “You are
concerned about the bush, which you did not grow; it came into being in a night
and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great
city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do
not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Jonah was considering fairness from
his own perspective and failed to see that even though Nineveh were evil they
were still God’s people whom he created. People whom he loved so much that he
would send his own Son to die for their sins. And that’s the same with our
Gospel reading. It was not about fairness but about God’s love and care for all
people. Yes the ones who worked only an hour received exactly the same as those
who worked the entire day and maybe it seemed unfair to those who worked all
day. But God was fair to everybody giving them what they needed and not what
they deserved. God was fair in that he gave what he had promised – a full day’s
wage.
And that’s the lesson for us. That we
received from God not what we deserve but what we need. And God will honour his
promises to us when it comes to eternal life in Heaven. Let us ever be thankful
that we do NOT receive from God what we deserve but from the gracious love and
mercy of God. Let us be thankful that for us God is a gracious God, merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from
punishing. So as we reflect on God from that perspective let us also reflect
that outward and not gauge life as to whether it is fair or not from OUR
perspective but from God’s perspective who desires all people to be saved and
to come to the knowledge of the truth.
As Christians who know that we are
saved by grace this should also be our perspective throughout life.
Life is often unfair. For some it is
mostly unfair when we look at how some people prosper in life and yet have no
regard for God in their life. Paul could easily had seen life as unfair from
his perspective. From the moment he became a Christian it seemed like his
earthly life became so unfair. From a respected and influential Pharisee Paul
was now subject to persecution, ridicule and imprisonment. But Paul did not see
life from that perspective. Rather he saw it from God’s perspective: He says:
To me, living is Christ and dying is gain. I am hard pressed between the two:
my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to
remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. So Paul saw the difference in
perspective. If he were to die he knew he would go to Heaven and how great that
would be. But to continue to live, even though it meant imprisonment, threats
to his life and all sorts of hardship – it meant that he could keep working for
God and spreading the Gospel for other.
Maybe life sometimes seems unfair but
this is where faith comes in. We know God is loving and gracious and will give
to us eternal life as he has promised. If we want to consider unfair, how
unfair that he who had no sin became sin for us so that we should become the
righteousness of God. As we consider Jesus’ parable today let us remember that
those who worked all day, knew all day that they and their family would be able
to afford a meal that night. But those who were employed only in the last hour
did not know until that last hour that they might be able to put something on
the table for their family to eat even if it was just one hour’s pay as they
presumed. Let us continue to pray for the godless so they too may be able to
experience the joy we have knowing that whatever life presents us, our present
suffering is not worth comparing to the joy and glory that awaits us. And let
us remember that today that reality is one day closer that it was yesterday.
.
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