Tag Archives: Matthew 18:15-20

Resentment | Proper 20A | Time after Pentecost | September 20, 2026

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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. 

In Christ’s Name | Proper 18A, Time After Pentecost +6 | September 6, 2026

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Gathering in Christ’s name requires humility, which demands recognizing our common human condition: sin. Humility grows when we accept God's forgiveness and extend that same forgiveness to others. Ultimately, receiving divine grace depends on our willingness to remain open, humble, and reconciled with those around us.

“Whenever two or three are gathered…” a text we are fond of quoting, though the most vital part is missing.

Whenever two or three are gathered…in my name…

I am among them.

To gather in Christ’s name, for Christ to be among us, requires something different of us than to gather for a Chamber of Commerce meeting, 
a family reunion.

The difference is what is required of us and thus what it means for Christ to be among us.

Humility.

A rare gift, rarer still  because it requires of us what we seek to avoid at all costs, though the cost is falsehood…

Pretending the peace of Christ is the absence of conflict, struggle, sacrifice.

Jesus has begun telling the disciples what lies ahead of him when he goes to Jerusalem.

He is merely telling them the truth, but it so disturbs them that Peter rebukes Jesus for telling the truth.  

The peace of Christ comes with costs, and so does gathering in Christ’s name.

The cost, the price, is truth, and for truth we are gathered in Christ’s name, which returns us to humility. 

In its purist form, humility is to recognize our common humanity…we are all formed from humus, from the dust, the breath of God fills our lungs.

We are human, each  of us, sharing the common truth, we are all flesh and bone, sinews and organs.

Wealth, status we are given by others or assume for ourselves,  do not alter our humanity.

We are all subject to time and the betrayal of our bodies, our friends, our families.

Humility grows from forgiveness, our common humanity revealed on the cross, the humiliation of Jesus for our sake, to show us it is no sin to be human.

This forgiveness flows first to us, originating not in us but from God in Christ to us.  

Christ is present among us when two are three are gathered in humility, accepting forgiveness and giving it, for when two or three are gathered forgiveness will surely be required,  because where two are three are gathered there status will be, who is first, second, and third.  

This is the truth of our common humanity, though we may pretend otherwise.  

When two or three are gathered, there will be hierarchy, and thus also Christ, among them, in the differences between them.  

Humility is about recognizing this truth, which we call sin..

Not an action, not a behavior, though certain behaviors will surely follow.

No, sin is a common human condition, not an action or behavior but an inescapable human condition save through humility.

Humility is a form of openness to what we cannot see in ourselves but is revealed in conflicts and struggles present whenever two or three are gathered.  

But we who are gathered in Christ name seek truth we cannot see and often do not want and this truth is present when we are together in our common humanity, in our common human condition, in our sin.

We need one another and the conflict that opens us to the peace of Christ which is not the absence of conflict but its presence, which sets us free from pretending we can escape our common human condition, most especially from pointing to the sin of others.

The truth: we all need forgiveness. 

Both to be forgiven and to forgive others, and there is no forgiveness without humility, recognition of our common humanity.  

This is what Jesus speaks of in his challenging words about confronting those who sin against us, for we have all sinned against one another…this common human condition we recognize each time we gather in Christ’s name.

Forgive us our trespasses, we pray, another word for sin, as we forgive the trespasses of others, not because God’s forgiveness is limited, not because any action or behavior can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus..

But because humility is required of us 
and lack of humility toward others limits our capacity to receive forgiveness from God

We are able to accept forgiveness as we are able to forgive others.  

Humility is the antidote for our common human pathological antipathy to forgive as we have been forgiven.  

Talking about others rather than to others separates us from the demands the peace of Christ confers.

The harsh, challenging words of Jesus, to excommunicate members who refuse to listen, who set themselves above our common need of forgiveness, is the grace of consequences.

Which seems to be a conflict, and so it is, conflict present when two or three are gathered, Christ is among them, grace is available which means also that grace can be rejected, so too Christ. 

Truth is we have all been forgiven and are obligated to forgive others in Christ’s name; those who reject this truth separate themselves from the grace of God in Christ, the consequence of truth separates the member from the body, the members of the body..

it is grace to recognize this truth, a truth of great cost. 

Like every preacher before me and those will follow, I would like to soften the difficult and challenging words of Jesus.

But like you I am required to live by their troubling demands to remain open and humble while also recognizing that my human condition resists the truth grace requires of me.

With you I hope and pray our capacity for humility will be increased, though it surely comes at great cost, for my openness to truth I cannot find on my own but is present here as we are gathered in Christ name.

With you I pray we will accept the grace of God’s forgiveness, and thus enable us to forgive others and there to find peace. 

Thanks be to God.