Jonah’s story and Jesus’ parable of the vineyard reveal how easily we become resentful when God’s mercy and grace disrupt our human expectations of justice, fairness, and who deserves reward or punishment. We want God to recognize our sacrifices and punish wrongdoing, yet God’s grace is freely given, unearned and unearnable, extending even to those we believe are undeserving. The cross reveals a Kingdom that overturns our moral order, calling us to let go of resentment and embrace the truth that “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

unning away, doing all he can to escape his calling, Jonah finds himself deep in the belly of the whale, that leviathan that consumes the human soul

….depression, illusion, distraction …

The belly of the whale consumes us so that we are unable to choose mercy and grace, so that we come to think we know better than God, who is unknowable, who does not fit into our tidy moral universe, our human sense of moral order.

That the just will be rewarded in this life,
that the wicked will be punished. 

This is to be but human; we can’t help ourselves, nor escape our expectations that God will is our will,
though we pray it will be, that our desire is God’s desire,
though our hearts pull us away from God, despite our longing it be otherwise.

In the end, after what it would seem he would have learned, human that he is, 

Jonah is angry with God.

Look at all he has been through, all he has sacrificed.  

Sacrifices should be rewarded, shouldn’t they?

God should honor all that we give, should bless us for our sacrifices.

Jonah sits up on a hill, looking down at Ninevah,
angry that God has changed God’s mind, that God has decided not to execute judgement on the city but instead extends mercy to them…

for the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Which is good and a comfort, until it violates our sense of right and wrong, as with Jonah, as long as mercy and grace does not disrupt our moral universe, as with Jonah.

But Jesus disrupts our moral universe, enters human time to reveal the universe of God, the Kingdom of God, which does not conform to our expectations of God.

The last will be first, and the first will be last, Jesus says, though it leads to envy, to resentment when, like Jonah, we expect God to honor the sacrifices we have long made, the time we have given over the years, our labor in the vineyard of the Lord.

There is a moment in the parable of the vineyard when the landowner pays his workers.

You know the story, a group beginning at break of day, another group beginning at 9am and 3pm, and the last at  5pm.

Now if the landowner wanted to pay them all the same, cause no trouble, no disruption, then wouldn’t he call the first group first and pay them their pay: then, after they have left, then pay the second and third and then the last?

Yet this is what he does not do but rather pays the last group first and pays them the amount he promised to the first group.

What were the other groups of laborers thinking when the landowner paid the last group what he said he would pay the first group?

Excitement, I should think….

If the landowner paid the last group what he had promised the first group, then surely he would pay them more than they had expected to be paid.

That would be justice, no?

That would be what is right and fair, yes?

By the time the last group receives their pay, they are as angry as Jonah was.

Anger is rather a blunt word.

They are resentful, a form of anger…

resentment is the story we tell to justify our anger.

Their story, like Jonah’s story, is that they have been treated unfairly, that they have been violated…

what they have given has not been rewarded, has not benefited them according to their sense of right and wrong.

They have been wronged so they are resentful.

God’s mercy to the Ninevites, the landowners gracious giving to those who come late to work, is an injustice,
an outrage to the moral order of right and wrong.

Here is our story, what is handed down to us from of old, as with Jonah, and revealed for all time in Jesus Christ.

God’s mercy and justice does not conform to our sense of mercy and justice but disrupts our moral order, of right and wrong, of who deserves to be rewarded and who deserves to be punished.  

We are thankful, glad the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, 

Until mercy is shown and grace given to the undeserving…

Like those who pray for mercy merely to escape punishment as the Ninevites do. 

Like those who expect to be treated as our equals when they don’t show up, don’t roll up their sleeves and get to work in the field of the Lord.

There is an opportunity here, the gift of truth for which we are gathered.

For we want God to execute judgement when it is sorely needed, to punish the wicked, to reward the deserving.

Jonah, the parable of the vineyard, helps us see the cost of resentment, the challenge of unmerited grace, of unlimited mercy.

This opportunity is to see mercy and grace, the goodness of God is a gift freely given, generously given, unearned and unearnable, it cannot be lost, neither can it be gained. 

The universe of God, the kingdom of God, does not conform to our moral order, nor our sense of justice,

…but challenges us to see our Jonah like tendency, like the labors who begin at break of day, to expect God to reward our sacrifices, to recognize our hard work, our discipline

But this goodness, dear friends, this opportunity, is the cross which reveals God’s love for all not,
for just the deserving,
and because of the cross,

the first shall be last, and the last shall be first…

Thanks be to God.