Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
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Readings: Jonah 3: 10 – 4: end and Matthew 20: 1-16
Rights and entitlements are very popular with the modern generation. I suppose society has become used to the idea that everyone is owed a living through the rise of the welfare state. Certainly in the last hundred or so years we have seen enormous advances in the individual’s rights and entitlements, some of which, of course, have been hard fought for – such as the struggle to get women the vote.
So now we expect state benefits, free health-care provision, legal rights, protection of our personal data, ‘no fault’ divorces, even compensation if our train is more than 15 minutes late; and a hundred and one entitlements that would have astonished our grandparents if not parents,
We have also grown used to the idea that we are largely autonomous and that freedom in so many areas of life is a basic right. I think this is why people found the Covid restrictions so difficult six years ago and why many people’s mental health suffered and has not fully recovered. “It’s so unfair…” as children are supposed to say, and probably not a few adults as well.
It’s what the labourers in the vineyard said in today’s Gospel reading – those who had borne the heat and burden of the day – only to see other workers taken on for the last hour get paid the same. Perhaps we shared their sense of injustice when we first heard the story. A number of Jesus’ parables make us uncomfortable. Now some parables are quite straightforward illustrations; others are more complex. Some leave us to finish the story. But in today’s, the story is concluded, and we’re left with the very direct closing statement of the landowner – “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” And we imagine it is Jesus, rather than the landowner, who finishes off by saying “So the last will be first, and the first last.”
One truth the parable imparts is that God is the one with the ultimate power and authority. It’s a truth that many people either don’t accept or don’t want to hear these days, but it is at the heart of the three Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
This was the hard lesson that Jonah had to learn in today’s Old Testament reading. Rather as the workers who had toiled throughout the day begrudged those who came late getting the same pay, so Jonah is annoyed that the people of Nineveh repent in response to his preaching. The Lord asks, “Is it right for you to be angry?” To re-cap on the story: God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people that they are to repent of their wickedness. But, for whatever reason, Jonah heads off in the opposite direction, trying to avoid this assignment. He gets caught up in a storm on the ship going to Tarshish, and the mariners perceive that Jonah is trying to escape from the Lord. They throw him into the sea and he ends up in the belly of a whale. But, once he is spewed up, the Lord repeats the instruction that Jonah is to go and preach against Nineveh. It’s a short message: as one writer observes – five Hebrew words, 120,000 people repenting. Not a bad result from a sermon.
But it annoys Jonah that the people have turned to the Lord, and that the Lord, in turn, forgives them. In Job’s opinion, they weren’t worth it. He thinks God is ridiculously soft. But if God wants to make a fool of himself, that doesn’t mean Jonah has to join in. Have you noticed that when you get into a bad mood or a sulk, you go on being determined not to cheer up, and often compound the situation with unwise words or actions, until something or someone catches up with you, showing you what a fool you have been. Jonah complains to God that he knew all along that God was merciful, and that rankled him. He conveniently forgets that God was merciful to him, saving him from the belly of the whale. Why does God have to be loving and forgiving to everyone?
In both today’s stories, we are bidden to look at the wider picture. It seems that the workers who had been in the vineyard all day had little thought for the welfare of the others. Because in those days – no work, no pay. The labourers who had not been hired at first still had families to feed and homes to run. And, presumably, extra help in the vineyard at the end of the day when everyone was getting tired, would be welcome. Surely this would have occurred to the workers who had been there all day; after all, tomorrow they might be the ones left behind in the market-place, with no wages coming in.
So, in addition to the lesson about the generosity of God – in both today’s stories – there is something here about looking after your neighbour, and about fruitful community life. In many passages in the New Testament, and a few in the Old, the vineyard is a metaphor for God’s kingdom. So a third lesson is that there are no grades of discipleship – all are on an equal footing. Thinking about those who arrived late at the vineyard, or the people of Nineveh who conveniently repented when they heard their city was about to be overthrown, we might be a little suspicious of so-called ‘death-bed conversions.’ But there are more insidious temptations we can fall into, such as thinking that as established church members, we have somehow ‘made it’ into the Premier League, and that it is our voice that should be heard. Beware lest you’re substituted in the 89th minute by a keen newcomer!
Maybe we expect to gain from our efforts in proportion to that which we put in, and we expect God to abide by our rules, too. But consider God’s indiscriminate generosity. Somebody has pointed out that the hardest worker in the parable seems to be the owner himself. He goes out five times to search for workers. We’re bidden to wonder at God’s search for us; his desire to bring us into a fruitful relationship with him and to bring us into his kingdom. Paradoxically, we enter the kingdom only when we stop comparing our reward with the rewards of others, and instead consider the sacrifice of Jesus for us. We grow spiritually when we fix our eyes on our own relationship with God, and not look sideways at the luck or fortune of others We would do well to reflect on the loving purposes of God, who tells Jonah, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty people who do not know their right hand from their left?”
Jesus concludes today’s parable with the oft-quoted teaching “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” You could say that this goes against the logic of the story, as it suggests that everyone eventually gets what they deserve. Cally Hammond, writing in Church Times this week, says that it might mean something more like “All’s well that ends well,” because “it all evens out in the end.” She adds, “I am coming to see these words of Jesus as divine reassurance that, in the end, we will all end up together in the Kingdom of the heavens. Winners and losers, workers and unemployed, natives and foreigners, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants: God welcomes us all.”