Sermon; God Needles Us
How many of you know the story of Jonah and the
whale? I was in a Cantata about this
story when I was little, but all I remember is about a guy surviving after
being swallowed by a whale, and the word ‘Ninevah’.
Our gospel passage today is, again, just a
small sliver of the book of Jonah.
Whereas usually would-be prophets protest – Jeremiah thinks himself too
young, Moses thinks himself too weak – Jonah doesn’t even stick around long
enough to hear
what he’s supposed to say to the Ninevites before he takes off running! And
it isn’t until this chapter, at the end of the story, that we get to find out
why Jonah ran.
Finally, he confesses; I knew this
is what you would do, Lord. I knew that
you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, a god
who relents in sending punishment. I
didn’t want to go because I knew you would forgive the Ninevites.
Huh.
What an ironic twist. Jonah is having a 100% success rate. Unheard of
for a prophet! He is supposed to spend
three days in the village, but people begin to repent before the end of day
one! He doesn’t even have to confront the king directly because the
word spreads so quickly, and the king hears he immediately sets out a decree of
fasting and repentance for the entire city.
ALL
of Ninevah wears sackcloth and fasts to repent.
So what’s the problem?
Jonah knows the history of this place. He knows
that Ninevah is the capital of the Assyrian Empire, the empire responsible for
completely erasing the Northern kingdom of Israel. He has heard countless
stories of cruelty and brutality that happened in Ninevah. To be here, to ask them to repent – and have
them do it much quicker than Israel ever does – is an insult to what is fair to
the Jewish people. Jonah wants justice
for his people, not forgiveness. He
wants justice so much, he pouts!
I have to tell you, when I read this story I
couldn’t help but think of my niece Julia.
Julia is the clever, precocious, beautiful youngest daughter of my
sister in Boston. And, apparently being
the youngest in the household, she is on the lookout for opportunities to file
claims of unequal treatment between her siblings. According to my sister and brother in law,
her favorite refrain lately is “That is not fair!” She has been given the nickname: Captain
Injustice.
Today’s bible verses offend our sense of
justice. In Jesus’ parable, the parable
of the landowner, offends our sense of fairness. And why shouldn’t it?
Fairness is a concept we learn early – definitely by the age of 5 - and
employed often to help us learn to share, and to in discipline, and in building
a work ethic. Capitalism teaches us that
we should be fairly rewarded for what we earned… and it’s
nearly impossible to detangle those ideas in our modern world.
When
we read this, we almost always read it with the landowner as the place of
God. It’s a way of talking about God’s
unending grace and forgiveness. It’s a
beautiful way to talk about the journey, the spiritual journey we are all on –
that wherever you are in your life when you recognize that you want Jesus to be
a part of it, you will still get an equal portion of grace. And, since Matthew’s community was very mixed
- some of the Christians in the Mathean community had known Jesus, some were
Jews, some were slaves and newly-converted Gentiles, it is likely there were
feelings of envy and “I was here first.”
But
why do we always leap to that interpretation?
Why do we have such a tendency to equate God with wealth and power? Especially when we know that Jesus was almost
certainly speaking from experience as a laborer.
A
few years ago, the author Reza Aslan spoke at my Seminary about his book, Zealot: The Life
and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan wrote this book from a historical
perspective – verifying what could be verified about Jesus without using
scripture (that he lived, when he lived, and that he was crucified next to
bandits by the Roman Empire), and then filling in the historical context like
the background on a painting. From him I
learned about the enormous wealth inequality that existed in Jesus’ time. Rome was a massive and hugely successful
empire with everything from Roman Senators to a subsistent peasant class to
slaves. Jesus is often referred to as a
‘carpenter’ – and in our modern world, we envision a competent, middle class
tradesman who does woodworking and building.
But the Greek word in the bible was ‘Tecton’, which was merely one step
away from a slave. A Tecton was someone
who traveled village to village looking for day labor. A tecton more closely resembles the men in
this parable, or the immigrant men who I used to see standing on the street
corner near Home Depot, waiting for a truck to pull up and hire them for the
day.
Because of this massive wealth inequality and
the suffering it produced, apocalyptic religion, and political insurrection
were commonplace during this time, and as we’ve discussed, revolts were
commonly overpowered by Rome’s military force.
Historical records show that the city Suferus, not far from Nazareth
where Jesus lived, was a site of rebellion and put down, quite brutally, by the
Romans when Jesus was about 5 years old.
The city was burnt to the ground, and Jesus likely watched the flames from
the high elevation of Nazareth only a few miles away. Ten years later, when Jesus was probably
around 15 and finishing his apprenticeship, Herod Antipas, the appointed ruler
over the Galilee region who eventually beheaded John the Baptist, set about
building a gleaming city upon the ruins of Suferus. It was the greatest building project in the
history of the region, and it was extremely likely that Jesus was one of the
mass of day laborers that flocked to that city looking for work. Nazareth was a village made up of mud huts
and no roads… we can assume that
every day Jesus walked the hour journey to Suferus, a gleaming city of mansion
after mansion, to get a days’ wage.
A days’ wage – the denarius – was barely enough
to feed a family for that day. It was a
subsistence wage. It was the kind of
cycle that ensured you only ate each day if you worked each day. That’s why we can see, in our Matthew
scripture today, why these day laborers were still waiting around at 3 pm and 5
pm – still hoping to make a days’ wage to feed their family.
And, while the unbidden generosity of the
landowner becomes clear as he returns again and again to fold workers into his
fields, and then pays each equal – what also becomes clear is the wide gulf
between the landowner and the workers.
Truly, he is so wealthy that he has the freedom to do what he will with
what is his – he doesn’t even have to make smart business decisions with his
money. His generosity is a merciful act
of life-saving grace, but his actions leave questions and feelings of
resentment. If you are going to up the
hourly wage, then shouldn’t it be increased for everyone? Didn’t
the early workers earn a greater share?
If you’ve put in the time and have seniority, shouldn’t you be paid
more? Don’t people deserve to be valued
for the effort they put in? If you moved heaven and earth to get out of
your house and be on that corner at 6 am sharp, why should the guy showing up
at 2 pm get an equal portion? Shouldn’t
the landowner show some loyalty to those workers who were there first,
especially those who were rightful citizens of their country? And not insignificantly – Why did the landowner
specify that the people get paid with the last going first, if not to arouse
the irritation and division among the workers?
(These all sound like good questions for our new Fair Wage Discussion
Group.)
And in the meantime, Captain Injustice shouts her
battle cry again: It’s Not Fair!
With each of these stories, we are reminded
that God’s love, grace and forgiveness go above and beyond our own human
tendencies. We long for a sense of
order, and fairness that we can rely on and plan around. But in each of our bible stories this
morning, we are again confronted with the truth that God doesn’t operate by our
rules. God does not sign on to our human
ideas and systems of fairness. God’s
grace doesn’t exist in a scarcity system, or in Capitalism – as much as we
would like to believe it so. God is trying to tell us something about how to
create the kingdom of Heaven. But he
needles us a little bit, too.
So back to Jonah. Jonah, after proclaiming to Ninevah, then
acts like a true toddler and goes off to pout.
Captain Injustice himself, he walks through the gates, leaves the city,
goes to sit on a hill and be angry.
Rather than stay and watch his words work, rather than stay and invest
in the people of Ninevah, rather than be concerned for their continued
redemption, he walks off and pouts and asks God to take his life.
And God needles him.
“Is it right for you to be angry about
this?” “Yes, right enough to die.” Is
his reply.
God places a bush to shade Jonah while he
pouts; but then sends worms to kill the bush and leaves Jonah to bake in the
hot sun. And he needles him; “Is it right for you to be angry about
this?”
Yes, Jonah insists. Right enough to die.
God asks, “what have you done to make any of
this possible? Did you plant the
bush? Did you till the field? Did you create Ninevah? What ownership do you
have for your anger at your injustice?
With ownership, the landowner can be as
generous as he likes. With ownership,
Jonah would be invested in his result in Ninevah.
Friends, on this New Member Sunday, which is
also a Sunday where we may vote to embark on a new, streamlined board
structure, I challenge you to think about ownership. Our church body may be on the small side, but
we are mighty, and each new addition to our church family adds new talents and
connections and potential leadership. We
have power beyond measure, and grace beyond human expectation. Our coming changes may no doubt require
patience, and good communication, and repeated generosity of spirit. But with insight and invitation, we may
leverage those talents, connections and leadership to create grace beyond our
expectations. There may be slip-ups or
fumbles, but like the landowner returning for more workers, we can and I
believe we will choose to show favor to willing hands no matter if they’ve been
here since the beginning, or are new to the field.
And, like the landowner; we will need your
efforts. The volunteer structure means
we may be calling, and calling, and calling again on you to help execute tasks
of the church. But this is a risk worth
taking.
A good preacher should be a good
storyteller, always ready with a story in their back pocket to help illustrate
a sermon. Since I, myself, am not, I am
thankful to have a good memory to tell other people’s good stories. At Synod
this year, the Reverend Traci Blackmon shared a phenomenal sermon that begun
with a story of a wheelbarrow.
The story
was of Charles Blondin, a famous French tightrope walker. Blondin achieved his
greatest fame on September 14, 1860, when he became the first person to cross a
tightrope stretched 11,000 feet (over a quarter of a mile) across the mighty
Niagara Falls. People from both Canada and America came from miles away to see
this great feat.
He
walked across, 160 feet above the falls, several times... each time with a
different daring feat - once in a sack, on stilts, on a bicycle, in the dark,
and blindfolded. One time he even carried a stove and cooked an omelet in the
middle of the rope. A large crowd
gathered and the buzz of excitement ran along both sides of the river bank. The
crowd “Oohed and Aahed!” as Blondin carefully walked across - one dangerous
step after another - pushing a wheelbarrow holding a sack of potatoes.
The
crowd was so dazzled by him that, upon reaching the other side, the crowd's
applause was louder than the roar of the falls!
After the last run of pushing a wheelbarrow filled with potatoes across
the gorge, Blondin suddenly stopped and addressed his audience. “Do you believe I can cross this tightrope
many, many times without falling?”
“Yes!”
roared back the crowd.
“Do
you believe I can carry just about anything across these raging falls?” Yes! Came the reply.
Then,
as if the thought just occurred to him: "Do you believe I can carry a
person across in this wheelbarrow?"
Again, the crowd enthusiastically yelled back, "Yes! You are the
greatest tightrope walker in the world!"
"Okay,"
then said Blondin, energized, "Who will volunteer? Who will get into the wheelbarrow and walk
across the falls with me?"
<crickets>
Friends, we need to get in the wheelbarrow
because we are in a world filled with injustice. We are going to have to get in the
wheelbarrow and take the risks that go along with speaking out. We need to get in the wheelbarrow because –
on New Member Sunday – this congregation will not keep track of who was here
first and who got here in the 11th hour – but we will accept your
laboring. We need to get in the
wheelbarrow because, on this day of voting on reorganization, in whatever form
our church takes we are going to need not to run away, but bring our vision and our energy to fill it
up.
Our wheelbarrow is waiting. And – let’s face it – the belly of a
wheelbarrow is better any day than the belly of a whale.
