Jonah 3:10- 4:11; Matthew 20:1-16
The
main points of today’s lessons can be summed up in about 3 minutes. Context for
Jonah: the Hebrew prophets and the Hebrew people are not holding up their end
of the covenant with God, in which they are blessed as the people who reveals
God’s mercy to the world. Context for Matthew: Jewish Christians and early
adopter-Gentile Christians are not happy when it turns out that those who are
new to the faith receive the exact same level of blessing as they do. The
modern upshot for us: God’s grace is not fair, earned, or distributed as
expected. We are both the beneficiaries the expected and mandatory reporters of
these facts.
So,
that’s it.
Except
that it’s not. That’s not actually enough. I am guessing that if I poll most of
you hear, we would agree that God’s grace is open to all. We would acknowledge
that we have some responsibility to spread that news. The truth is, though,
that there are some people who are Ninevah to us. Just exactly who may vary
from person to person. There are people whose latecomer status to church, to
faith, to hope makes us frustrated when they seem to get the same “pay”- that
is, they have equal voice, equal vote, and equal presence in the life of the
congregation.
The
first wedding I did on my own was for two people who did not attend this
church. They had difficulty finding someone to do an outdoor wedding because it
was February. They were very young, 18 and 19. He was about to deploy as an MP
(military police) with the Army and she was 11 weeks pregnant. I wanted them to
wait, but I knew they were not going to listen to that. So, I felt that it was
better for them to have a positive experience with church, in hopes that they
would return if they ever had difficulties.
I
officiated their service, wearing my parka, in snow above my knees at Otter
Lake on Ft. Richardson. I didn’t hear from them again. I did hear of them the next spring, when he had
returned from his deployment. They struggled with reunion. In an unfortunate
series of events, he shot her while she was holding the baby, killing them
both. Then he tried to kill himself, but failed. At the trial, he was sentenced
to more than sixty years in prison. He spent the first couple years in Spring
Creek in Seward, but now he’s in Goose Creek outside Palmer.
It’s
a horrible story, but if you leave only remembering those details- you will
miss the point that I am about to make. While he was awaiting trial, when he
was found guilty, when he was sentenced, for the years he was in Spring Creek-
I did nothing. I talked to the chaplain on the base. I knew that his unit was
being reassigned to another state, so most of the people who knew him were
leaving. He was not from Alaska, so he didn’t have family up here. There were
only a few people with any kind of connection to him and I was one of them.
Would
he want to hear from the pastor who did his wedding? I tossed and turned over
what I should do. I prayed about it. I talked about it. I tried to forget. I
didn’t actually flee to Tarshish and I didn’t endanger any fishing charters, but
my uncertainty became a whale in whose belly I sloshed around. This is what
happens to many of us when we are confronted with a serious situation for which
we feel unequipped.
Of
course, we say, God’s grace is for everyone, but I don’t know how to visit
someone in prison, I don’t know what to do when someone is dying, I’m not sure
what to say when a marriage is breaking up, I am uncomfortable in hospitals. At
a certain point, we fail to act as though grace is enough. We talk about
manning up, womanning up, putting on big girl or big boy pants, but- in the
end- it is the Holy Spirit who equips us to do the serious tasks that are
absolutely, one-hundred percent the work of being a follower of Christ.
So
we either believe God has enough grace for every person AND every situation or
we don’t. We either believe that the Holy Spirit equips and guides or we don’t.
We either believe that we are being Christ to others and that Jesus is meeting
us through them, or we don’t.
Last
December, I wrote out Christmas cards to some people who were not receiving our
family Christmas cards. These were plain cards, with an Alaskan winter scene on
the front. I looked up the I.D. number of a certain prisoner and wrote a brief
card, “I want you to know that you are not forgotten. This is who I am. I pray
for you often. You are remembered by me, by others, and by God. Merry
Christmas.” I got a letter back, thanking me for sending one of the few
personal cards he received. Ninevah, for me, looked like writing to a prisoner,
a murderer, not because I thought God wouldn’t grant him grace, but because I
didn’t trust grace enough to make up the difference in my best efforts.
We
all have Ninevahs. Furthermore, we are all likely someone else’s Ninevah or
even a late-coming worker. Our age, our abilities, our gender, our occupation,
our education level, our habits, our children’s habits, where we live, our
vices, our struggles, our health… all of these things are likely to make
someone around us uncomfortable. They are also the barriers that stop us from
reaching out, because we are unsure, afraid, or just plain disgusted by the
person in this situation.
The
end of Jonah shows God’s mercy- not only to the Ninevites, but also to the
prophet. God doesn’t say, “You ungrateful son-of-a-gun, how about you die right
here and right now and then I won’t have to listen to your whining anymore.”
Instead, the God who sent a prophet to the Ninevites, to encourage them toward
repentance and toward a right relationship with God… does the very SAME thing
for Jonah.
We
worship that same God. We live in the grace of that same God as it has been
revealed through Jesus. We live and move and have our being in that same God
through the mysterious and on-going work of the Holy Spirit. All three persons
of our one God work on us, through us, and for us repeatedly and on a daily
basis, so that we may come to even a basic understanding of grace- not for
ourselves, but so that we can carry that grace to the world. For we are both
beneficiaries and mandatory reporters of the greatest unfairness in the world.
God’s
grace is not fair, earned, or distributed as expected. It is for all. It can
and does help you. It is enough.
Thanks
be to God.
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