Not fair!

Sermon Notes, Sunday, Sept. 20,2020 Proper 20 And the LORD said, "Do you do well to be angry?" Have you ever been so angry that you couldn't see straight? That's a cliché that rather perfectly describes Jonah. Jonah has a gripe and he is angry with God. His anger is blinding him to everything God is wonderfully doing all around him. The Lord's question to Jonah is one we should be asking of ourselves. "Do you do well to be angry?" "How's this anger working out for you?" "Has your anger accomplished what you hoped it would?" Jonah was angry at God because God did just what Jonah knew he would do. That is, God would express himself by forgiving the people of Nineveh. He is a God of forgiveness who welcomes the repentance of sinners. That is his nature. Jonah knew that going into his missionary assignment. But that didn't suit Jonah. Jonah preferred a God who stuck to his word, who punished when he said he would. If God wanted Jonah to prophesize, the least he could do would be to make the prophecy come true. That, after all, is the measure of a prophet. When God instead forgave and relented, Jonah resented it. Jonah translated his resentment into anger and his anger into self-pity. Jonah sees God as out to torture him. God sends him a sheltering plant to comfort him. Then sends a worm to destroy the plant and then turns up the heat. God has it in for Jonah. And Jonah just wants to die. He says to God, "It is better for me to die than to live." Theatrical? Over the top? You betcha, to use a good midwestern expression. The Lord and Jonah is a classic stare down and Jonah is not going to be the one who blinks. "How's that working out for you Jonah?" Lately it seems that God has it in for us. How else to explain the succession of calamities we've dealt with this year? Sars-COVID 19 crosses all international boundaries and affects the whole world, but especially so in the US. People suffer and die. The preventative measures are their own curse. Isolation. Self-quarantine. People using facial protection resent those who don't. Those who don't resent those who do. Then came the racial tensions ignited in cities across our land. Fanned by political rhetoric in an election year, there's fighting, burning, open warfare in our streets. And as if the fires lit on street corners weren't enough, fires erupted in forests and range lands across the West and in our own backyard. Smoke from the fires make the air hazardous to breathe. Don't go outside because it is hazardous to your health. Don't stay inside because the virus lurks on surfaces and is passed between people in close contact with each other. Our frustration boils over into anger. And like Jonah, our anger finds expression in self-pity and we may say, to ourselves if not in public, "It is better for me to die than to live." Dare we say we have a death wish? Paul identifies it more precisely in his letter to the Philippians. More of a death temptation than a death wish. He is tempted to turn his back on the struggles at hand and embrace the assurance offered by his faith, of eternal life with Jesus. That is an invitation hard to ignore. It is after all the prize that awaits us. But in God's time. In the time he gives us, this present age we live in, we need to deal with the COVID virus and the racism and the fires and the political rhetoric. All of it because that's where God's placed us. Just like he placed Jonah in Nineveh. Jonah doesn't sound so theatrical anymore. He sounds like he is a prophet for our times. That which God tries to teach Jonah, he tries to teach us. Simply stated, He is God. His ways are his own. We get that. But the question remains, why do things often seem so unfair? Jesus faces this question head-on in our Gospel reading from Matthew. His answer is that the Kingdom of Heaven is unfair, but not in the way we may think. The Kingdom of Heaven is unfair in its generosity. In Jesus' parable the workers are hired throughout the day and each is offered the same pay for their work. We may assume that the group hired first thought this was a reasonable offer because they went to the vineyard and began without further squabble. The later groups were given the same offer, begging a comparison between those hired first and those hired last. When they are all paid the same at day's end, the resentment of the earliest workers bubbles to the surface. The owner says to them, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" He has been generous to the later hires, but he has also been generous, maybe even more generous, to the first hires. To see that we need to readjust our glasses ad see the parable for what it is, an example of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom, labor is not what it is in sinful earth. Labor in the Kingdom is a joyous fulfilling of god's intended purpose for mankind. God gives Adam and Eve labor as a blessing. Gen 1:28. "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Labor doesn't become work as we know it until after the fall. Genesis 3:17. "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Vs 19: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." In the parable, labor is doing the work of the vineyard owner. It is honorable. It is a blessing. When the owner returns to the town throughout the day he finds workers who are idle. The Bible has a lot to say about idleness, none of it good. Ecc 10:18 If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks. Prov 31:27. Speaking of a good wife, "She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. 1 Thes.5:14. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. The workers in the town are sufferers. They are contending with their own worthlessness while those in the field are doing the master's work. Remember this is a parable about Kingdom life. Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. It's around us and waiting to be experienced by those perceive it. I gave Peg a Tee shirt recently that says on its front: "I just want to work in my garden and hangout with my chickens." For her, that's not work. It's a love labor that she looks forward to each day. She's doing the work that God gave Adam and Eve in the garden. Kingdom work. When the vineyard owner discovers idle workers, he rescues them and gives them purpose. The early hires have had this purpose all their day and have been blessed by it. The owner's generosity was extended to them first in Kingdom terms. Jesus' summation of the parable is that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. He is saying that God's ways are not our ways, but he is also encouraging his followers to not accept the world's values as their own. Jonah could have rejoiced in the saving of Nineveh instead of resenting it. The early hired workers could have enjoyed the fruits of their labors instead of grousing about their wages. In the middle of our 2020 struggles, Kingdom work is happening by those who follow Jesus. They aren't the angry voices. They aren't the voices drowning in self-pity. They're the ones rejoicing to do God's work in the time and place that he's appointed. In the Name of the father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.