Homily for Sunday,
September 24, 2017 Good Shepherd and Graves
Chapel
Jonah is a lovable
biblical character, isn’t he? He reminds me of familiar TV characters, Fred
Flintstone or Barney Fife or maybe Archie Bunker. How comforting it is that in Jonah we can
recognize many of our own human flaws and find, through Jonah’s interactions
with God, that God’s mercy will absolve us of all of them.
In fact, it is the
abundantly generous mercy of God that causes Jonah to sit down and pout in
today’s lesson. By the time this part of the story takes place, Jonah has
already resisted God’s call and found himself in the belly of the whale. After
being vomited up, he then dutifully carries God’s message of total destruction
to the disobedient and sinful people of Ninevah. But when the people call out
for God’s mercy and God relents, granting them the forgiveness they request,
Jonah becomes indignant. How dare God make him, Jonah, look bad by not
following through on the apocalypse Jonah had predicted for Ninevah? His pride
is so wounded that Jonah says to God, “Please take my life from me, for it is
better for me to die than to live.” Can’t you hear the whining tone in Jonah’s
voice and see the pout that forms around his mouth? In his little fit, he plops
down on the ground.
Then, God makes use of a
weed and a worm to teach Jonah a lesson. So that Jonah will be shaded from the
heat of the sun, God causes a bush to grow near Jonah. We are told, “Jonah was
very happy about the bush.” Ah, therein
lies the rub, as Hamlet said. As Jonah plops down in his pouty anger, he wants
God to believe he is ready to die for the sake of his wounded pride. If so, why
would the shade of a bush matter to him? He is ready to die, right? After God
sends a worm to cause the bush to wither, even though he is fainting from the
heat, Jonah still persists in saying, “It is better for me to die than to
live.”
So, is it prideful self-righteousness
or envy that can keep us, like Jonah, from fully rejoicing in the good fortune
of others? Or is it some combination of those two character flaws? Remember, Jonah begins his pout by saying to
God, “Oh, Lord, is not this what I said while I was still in my own country?
For I knew you that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Think about how self-centered Jonah’s words
are; imagine speaking to any authority figure in such a way, much less God, and
not being punished. Jonah clearly expects God’s mercy for himself even when he
wishes to deny it to others. In today’s lesson from Matthew, Jesus offers a
parable about the Kingdom of Heaven as a place where God’s abundant mercy is
always the prevailing law. In this parable, the human tendencies toward self-righteousness
and prideful indignation are fully on display.
At the end of the day,
when the landowner prepares to pay each of the workers he has employed over the
course of the day, those who have worked all day are in for a big surprise.
Although they are paid the agreed-upon amount, a fair wage for a day’s work,
they are quite indignant to discover the landowner paying all the workers, even
those who worked only a part of the day, the same amount. It isn’t fair, they
say. The landowner is perplexed; he has done the day-long workers no harm and
has paid them the contracted amount. Jesus, through the landowner, asks this
question: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are
you envious because I am generous?”
“Are you envious because
I am generous?” When we consider
ourselves to be “good people,” church-goers, well-behaved for the most part and
forgiven of our sins, we are filled with gratitude for God’s mercy. Right? Out
of that gratitude, we share from our abundance with others. Don’t we expect the
Lord to continue to forgive us, to be merciful to us throughout our lives? It
isn’t as if we are never going to sin again. Sins of one kind or another are
easy to come by on a daily basis—petty anger or foolish pride or simple
unkindness seem to be some of the run of the mill everyday. Even so, I expect
that God will always show me mercy—just as the workers expected the landowner
to pay them the amount they had contracted for. Why is it that we resent it
when others who are also in need of God’s mercy are, in fact, shown that mercy?
Why are we envious because God is generous, Jesus asks us.
For those of us here who
are very blessed and live lives of comfort that would astound the very poor,
this is indeed a tough question. Are we always as generous as we could be? I
don’t know about you, but I have certainly heard well-off Americans complaining
about the money and support given to
poor people through programs such as welfare or Medicaid. Even though suspected
fraud is very rare and the dire poverty of people around us can be quite
obvious, if we would but see, we fall into resentment over what the poor
receive. How many Americans have storage sheds (or attics or garages) full of
things we don’t need or use, but we still persist in buying and keeping such
things? (I confess: I am guilty of hoarding.) The very fact that the storage industry
has become such a major feature of the American landscape is truly astonishing—and
revealing of American values. In his daily meditation for this past Tuesday,
Franciscan priest Richard Rohr wrote, “I have yet to hear a sermon or
confession concerning the 10th Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ It’s
almost impossible for Americans to see capitalism or consumerism as problematic.
Our culture is built upon the idea that there’s not enough, that we must always
seek more—at others’ expense.” Why are we envious because God is generous,
Jesus asks us. Is it because we covet what others’ have, even when we already
have more than enough?
Or, have we simply
forgotten God’s infinite, generous mercy—and our calling, as Christians, to
reflect that mercy and generosity in all that we do? When Jonah sits and pouts,
angry over the loss of the bush and its shade, God says to him, “You are
concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not
grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not
be concerned about Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than a
hundred and twenty thousand persons?” God asks Jonah, to paraphrase, “So, your
pride and your personal creature comforts are worth more to you than the
well-being of thousands of your fellow human beings?” God asks that question of us as well.
All of God’s creation and all of God’s
creatures are subject to the generous mercy of God. For that, we should simply
be grateful. Thank you, our gracious God, for we know that you are merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. AMEN.
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