Jonah, a Fish, and a Grumpy Prophet — They Laugh and Learn About God’s Generosity

Foreign.

Thank you for engaging with the homily by Pastor Chill Will from

Chapel Hill.

I hope this message encourages you, challenges you and moves you

to go deeper in your faith and enrich how you love God and love

your neighbor in your day to day life.

Just a reminder.

Like the Scriptures and Gospels themselves, this homily was

written for a particular community in a particular context,

time in history.

And yet, like our sacred texts, I hope that these words hold

timeless truths about God's unconditional love and grace.

We hope these words speak to you in a meaningful way.

The Holy Gospel According to Matthew Glory Jesus shared for the

kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the

morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing that with the laborers for a denarius for the day,

he sent them into the vineyard.

Into his vineyard after agreeing with the laborers for denarius

for the day, sent them to the vineyard.

When he went out about 9 o', clock, he saw others standing idle

in the marketplace and he said to them, you also go into the vineyard

and I will pay you whatever is right.

So they went.

When he went out again about noon and about three o' clock he

did the same.

About five o' clock he went out and found others standing around.

He said to them, when they why are you standing here idle all day?

He said to him, because no one has hired us.

He said to them, you also go into the vineyard.

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager,

call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the

last and going to the first.

When those hired about five o' clock came, each of them received

a denarius, and when the first came they thought that they would

receive more.

But each of them also received a denarius, and when they received

it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, these last worked

only an hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne

the burden of the day and the scorching heat.

But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong.

You not agree with me for denarius?

Take what belongs to you and go.

I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.

Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?

Or are you envious because I am generous?

For the last will be first and the first will be last.

The Gospel of the Lord may be seated.

The name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit so some of

you have heard me share this before.

I was a kid who couldn't sit still in school and got notes sent

home that I talked and laughed too much in class.

I know.

Shocker.

My mom has dementia and while her short term memory is gone, there

are still some core long term memories that have stuck.

When I go to hang out with her and help take care of her, she will

remind me often.

That one I used to have hair.

Thanks Mom.

And boy, you sure did get a lot of notes sent home from school

and I probably didn't see the half of them.

You're right mom, you're right.

Little William's behavior also bled over to church and Sunday school

as well.

Let's just say that I, along with my little band of friends and

rebels, made our Sunday school teachers questioned why they signed

up to teach in the first place.

I remember one of my Sunday school teachers actually showing

up at my ordination just to see if it was really happening.

Yeah, I was a handful and admittedly I confess that when I

got a little older, late high school, early college, I started

to mature a little and became more self aware.

I specifically remember coming home from my first summer as a camp

counselor at Camp Luther Ridge in the North Carolina mountains after

a full and magical and transformative summer being a camp

counselor for youth of all ages.

When I got home I sat my parents down at the dinner table

to have a serious conversation with them.

Could only imagine what they thought I was going to share.

Mom, Dad, I am so sorry you had to tell me more than once to

do something.

They were relieved and they smiled and they were proud.

Yes, telling someone more than wants to do something is super frustrating.

And I'm sure a lot of us have jobs and professions and leadership

roles and in parenting that we have had to repeat ourselves a lot.

It seems us humans need to be reminded about many things from time

to time in order to learn.

We need deep experiences and constant reminders and hopefully

we grow into some healthy self awareness.

When we examine Jesus and his story found in the Gospels, it seems

Jesus repeats himself quite a lot.

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like over 10 times in Matthew

alone.

And throughout the four Gospels Jesus says more than one

time the first will be last, the last will be first.

It seems that God's holy reversal and sacred inversion is

pretty important to how Jesus understands God and God's action

in the world we live in for today's reading.

In Matthew, Jesus shares another parable.

Jesus is wandering the countryside with his disciples and

Jesus shares again the kingdom of heaven is like.

I'm really hoping that his disciples wandering the countryside

with Jesus are saying to themselves and to one another, wow.

Jesus says that a lot.

Perhaps we should pay attention, we should take note.

Not long before this parable, a rich man walks up to Jesus and

asks him what he must do to be saved.

Jesus responds, go sell all your possessions and give to the

poor and then come follow me.

The Gospel of Matthew shares that the rich man walks away sad

because he didn't want to give up his possessions.

Jesus turns to his disciples and says that famous attention getting

quote, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a

needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

The disciples were right in saying, well then, who can be saved?

I'm not sure if Jesus is coming down hard on those who are

doing well financially as much as he is resisting against this idea

that if you are rich, you must be blessed and God likes you more

than others, or if you're poor, you must not be in God's favor.

Jesus was not on board with any version of the prosperity gospel.

Case in point, Jesus's repetitive theme and teaching of

the holy reversal in the sacred inversion of blessed are the

poor faith being compared to a small unnoticed seed.

The first will be last and the last will be first.

Jesus literally flipping over marketplace tables, exploiting the

poor and marginalized to make the point.

Again, Jesus shares the parable about a vineyard and a vineyard

owner who hires workers throughout the day, some working

long hours and others just one hour.

And everyone gets paid the same whether you worked all day or

if you just worked an hour at the end of the day.

The parable's plot twist and scandal that grabs our attention

is that for us it is natural to say, you know what, that's not

fair.

I don't know where you learned account.

That's not fair.

What is Jesus trying to say about God here?

About the kingdom of God, about God's mass?

Sure, Jesus isn't an economist, he's a rabbi.

He's concerned about the spiritual welfare of his people.

And yet you can't separate the spiritual from the physical.

He really doesn't want anyone standing around idle.

And so Jesus has something to say about a surprising God who doesn't

operate the same way we do, who is concerned about the totality

of who we are.

The way we keep score and do accounting, perhaps isn't how God

score.

Or does God's accounting.

We have a surprising God who often inverts and flips over our

understanding of power and wealth, status, influence.

The first will be last, the last will be first.

And Rabbi Jesus is in continuity with the Hebrew prophets

of old.

And specifically one of my favorites, Jonah.

I do challenge you today or sometime this week to read the entire

Book of Jonah in one sitting.

It's only four chapters, and it's like a mashup of a Shakespearean

tragedy and comedy and even a Saturday Night Live sketch, sacred

humor about a surprising God who does surprising things with many

curveballs and plot twists.

And the story still holds up because of the tragedy and comedy

nature of it all.

And there's even a movie coming out this October called Whale

Fall about a scuba diver who gets swallowed by a whale.

Wonder where they got that idea?

Go watch the trailers, a couple of them out.

As a lifelong surfer, I'm not nervous about being swallowed by

a whale.

Now, if they made a movie about a giant jellyfish, I'm not

seeing that.

You can read the book of Jonah for yourself.

But since our first reading drops us right to the end of the

story.

Like with the children's message, Just a short recap.

The prophet Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh to stand on

the corner and tell the people of Nineveh to repent.

And side note, Nineveh was one of Israel's most brutal enemies.

The Ninevites had the reputation of skinning their captives

alive and then impaling them on giant stakes.

Ema throne stuff.

And so, yeah, you could see why Jonah ran in the opposite direction

to Tarshish.

To get away, Jonah's like, ew, those people.

No thanks.

And yet, through storms and wind and tempests, God appointed

a great fish.

Notice the text never says anything about a whale.

And this fish actually put Jonah back on track.

What he was called to do, this fish, is a means of grace to point

him in the right direction.

Once Jonah reaches his call destination, Jonah gives a very short

one sentence sermon.

If you guys were only so lucky, 40 days more and Nineveh will

be overthrown.

All he says.

And that's all it took.

It's a weird plot twist because there is repentance, there

is turning around, there is a change of heart, a change of ways.

And weirdly, the story even shares that even the animals repented.

That's when we get to the part of the story we heard read this morning.

Jonah sulks and grumbles and is super irritated that God changes

God's mind and doesn't smite them with wrath.

The Jonah sits in time out.

And as God appointed a great fish to assist in Jonah's turning

around, God appoints a plant and A worm to make a point.

And I love how the whole four chapter book ends with an open ended

question.

How our first reading ends today is how the book actually ends.

You are concerned about the plant for which you did not labor

and which you did not grow.

It came into being at night and perished in the night.

And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city in

which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their

right hand from the left and also animals?

End of scene, end of sketch, end of story.

Leaves us to ponder that question.

Reflect on it.

Prize God loves everybody, even your enemy.

God even loves the person who votes differently than you.

No matter your status or what you accumulate in life.

God loves you the same as the one who doesn't have what you have.

Even those who say out loud or to themselves, ew, those people.

God loves them too.

You see, we have been entrusted with a vineyard.

You see the work in the vineyard here and beyond our walls,

and how we work together in the vineyard and how we see and value

other people leads to a table and to a cup and to a Messiah, a

Christ who lifts up a cup which contains wine from that vineyard.

A cup that identifies in solidarity with the last and those

waiting and longing for more.

How does our work in the vineyard impact people's lives?

Where we stand in solidarity with the last and those waiting and

longing for more.

In a world of uncertainty, in a world of rising tension, in a world

where Christians and anyone who's religious are seen as that

type of group that says all the time, ew, those people.

You're called not to stand idle.

We're called to continue to repeat ourselves.

And we will that we are loved, with a love stronger than death.

And it's for all.

May we continue to be surprised by God, but not surprised

by God's generosity.

Solidarity with those in the back of the line.

May we not stand around idle because there's work to be done in

the vineyard.

Amen.

Thank you for listening.

If there is anything that stood out for you, or if you have

a question or you just want to have a conversation, you are always

free to reach out and contact us.

And remember you are not alone and that you are loved with a love

stronger than death.

Sam.