It is very popular for retail stores to offer their loyal customers special shoppers’ and reward cards, giving them special deals and privileges that infrequent or brand new customers would not know about or would not automatically receive. To me it seems like a smart retailing practice to build the merchant’s customer base and keep the customer buying there rather than exploring the deals of a competitor. Moreover, every time the card is swiped, it gives the merchant an accurate picture of a buyer’s preferences and is far more accurate than coupons in judging changing tastes and trends.
Now, and please pay attention, for both the first lesson and the Gospel lesson clearly tell us, God doesn’t give out any shoppers’ cards. In God’s eyes we are not consumers, and God doesn’t love us more because we think we are more loyal or deserving than someone else we know. We are indeed recipients of God’s grace and mercy, but they are God’s generous gifts to us, not God’s automatic reward to us because we are such great and wonderful people.
The story of Jonah was never written as an historical account or as a biography; it is a fifth century b.c.e. lesson/parable about the nature of God written with disarming humor so even older children would understand. From the first, it is clear that God wishes the city of Nineveh to repent rather than wishing to punish it. God intends to send Jonah because God believes that Jonah has the skills to convince the people of Nineveh. God intends success, not failure. Jonah says, “Yea, yea,” and then ignores God and goes in another direction from Nineveh. Like us sometimes, Jonah didn’t think Nineveh deserved a second chance. He wanted the city punished, and he likely believed that God’s influence was only so far, and if he put enough distance between him and where he thought God was located, God would never find out.
Jonah discovered that God doesn’t hold sway in just a limited territory, and by trying to escape from God, Jonah alienated himself from everyone else. The stomach of a big fish, swimming around in the depths of the ocean is about as isolated as one could imagine back in the fifth century. In today’s terms, there was no cell phone coverage for Jonah in the belly of a fish. Jonah was lost, really, really lost, and no one was going to come to his rescue, except God. Jonah had exhausted all other possibilities and was in need of God’s grace. God had mercy, and Jonah was spit up on shore, disheveled, but unharmed. This time Jonah went to Nineveh, and to his surprise, the people heard him and repented. Jonah hardly expected that and went out to sulk. God again reached out to Jonah, like the father who went to his eldest son after his younger son had repented and returned home. God again reminded Jonah that God’s grace is always a gift meant for all creation, not just a few. God’s heart is always larger than any of ours. God created the earth not to punish its creatures but to love them.
The parable of the generous vineyard owner is not a lesson on labor relations or equal pay for equal work. It was offered in a time when a day’s wages barely covered living expenses for that one day. A laborer who did not find work or even worked half a day would not have nearly enough to feed his family and faced real deprivation. God is like the generous employer who made sure that everyone that was hired received enough to feed his family. God offers abundant life to everyone, not just those lucky enough to accept or discover God’s love before someone else. Again, God offers no shopping cards on grace to selected favorites. God is a giver of mercy, not a merchant of mercy.
Now we all know that we live in a mean-spirited and self-centered world. It is so easy for that atmosphere to subtly infect us in many ways, not only in our lives outside these walls, but also in our life together at St. John’s. The lesson of Jonah and the parable about the generous employer are good antidotes for this poison. For example, the lessons reminded me this week that when we are asked to participate in a new parish directory, it is easy to think as Jonah who didn’t feel like going to Nineveh and make excuses of why we don’t want our picture taken. Yet at the heart of it, just as God’s mission to Nineveh wasn’t about Jonah’s own feelings, but about the larger welfare of one-hundred, twenty thousand people in Nineveh, the request to get your picture taken for the directory is not about us and how we think we should look, but about contributing to a gift to the larger community that helps develop fellowship. It is also understandable for those of us who have been through the picture directory process several times before, to grumble like the workers who had worked the full day in the vineyard and complain we’ve done this before, so why again. Here too, the parable isn’t about the jealousy of some of the vineyard workers; it is about God continually wishing to include and bring us together to nourish us all. The last picture directory of ten years ago excludes at least half of us and makes some of us lesser-valued people than others. That is simply not God’s way or intention of how we, as people of faith, as sisters and brothers to each other, are to behave. People who have worshipped here for more than ten years don’t expect wider pews or cushier cushions.
To be sure a parish directory is only a parish directory, and it’s no big deal as a litmus test of discipleship in the total scheme of things. Yet I would suggest it is an opportunity for us to reflect upon the picture of how we see ourselves as part of the living body of Christ. Do we model Jonah who thought the world was all about him, or God who seeks to send us on a larger mission? Are we like the envious vineyard workers who are always looking over their shoulder to see if there are others better off than themselves, or about God who wishes everyone to be cared for and well fed? Do we think of ourselves as the world would love to define us and keep us captive, as consumers rewarded with special personal spiritual shopping club cards or do we claim the higher calling as participants in God’s universal plan of justice and fellowship on this earth, living our lives worthy of the Gospel? The choice is ours, today.
