Not Fair

Pentecost 15A, 9/21/14

Jonah 3:10-4:11; Psalm 145:1-8; Matthew 20:1-16

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s one thing that most of us know about Jonah. Anyone?

Right, he was swallowed by a whale, or technically, a “big fish.”

         We forget sometimes how he ended up in that situation in the first place.

God told Jonah to go to the biggest, most immoral city in the area, and tell the people there to repent, or they would be destroyed.

Like any rational person, Jonah is intimidated by this prospect, and so he tries to run away from God. He gets on a ship, but they haven’t gone far before they get caught in a terrible storm. The only way to keep from capsizing is to throw Jonah overboard. So, Jonah gets tossed into the sea, and God sends the fish to swallow up Jonah and keep him safe until he gets spit out onto the shore.

We can debate how “safe” Jonah might have actually felt in the smelly belly of a giant fish…

Anyway, the fish spits the prophet of God out on the shore, and Jonah does finally go to Nineveh. He gives them a half-hearted order to repent or God will destroy them, and then he figures his work is done.

But then God does something unexpected.

God shows mercy to the people of Nineveh.

God chooses not to destroy the city after all, because once they heard Jonah’s warning, they repented and tried to live better lives.

And Jonah is ticked off!

“Seriously, God?” Jonah says. “This is why I didn’t want to go on this fool’s errand in the first place! If you’re going to send me somewhere to warn people of their impending destruction… well, I expect you to destroy them!

But no.

You have to be all merciful and compassionate, like you always are, and you don’t punish the city full of sinful people like you said you would.

If you weren’t going to follow through on your threat, God, why did you send me there in the first place?!”

And God says,

Why are you mad, Jonah?

Have I done anything to hurt you?

Or are you envious because I am generous?

OK, actually, that last quote is from the Gospel reading today.

But the two stories are making the same point.

They’re teaching us about the nature of God.

And the nature of God is, God is not fair.

God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

We sang that description in the Psalm today.

If you were here last week, we sang the description then, too.

It shows up all over the Bible.

We certainly don’t know everything about God, but we do know that God is gracious and merciful. We do know that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We can be sure at least of those few things.

And because that is who God is, we can also be sure that God isn’t fair.

God does not always give people what they deserve.

Thank God, right?

Imagine if God was so fair that every time you stretched the truth a bit, you were punished for lying. Or if you had to answer for every time you’ve ever used God’s name in vain. Or when you work on the Sabbath, fire rains down from heaven upon you.

Thank God for grace, for compassion and mercy – for the ability to mess up occasionally and ignore God’s laws a few times before God really gets serious about punishing us.

Because we all make mistakes, don’t we? And it’s wonderful to know that we won’t be held accountable for every tiny error we’ve ever made in our lives. God is willing to forgive us, just like God forgave the people of Nineveh.

The first thing we can learn from Jonah and the Psalm and the Gospel lesson today is a little bit about who God is – God isn’t fair, but God is merciful and gracious.

Today’s Bible readings bring up another point, also.

We tend to judge God’s fairness – or lack thereof – based on the way we are treated in comparison to others.

But that’s not an accurate judge. God doesn’t want us to compare ourselves to each other. God doesn’t bless us in comparison to others – we only receive blessings according to our own needs.

So the question that today’s stories raise is, “You have enough. Why are you not satisfied?”

It’s not our place to compare our lives to other people’s.

We’ll never measure up, there will always be something more that we want.

When we use other people as our gauge for what life should be, we will never be satisfied. We’ll be jealous of something they have – and for what?

God doesn’t want us to waste our energy that way.

We gain nothing by comparing ourselves to others.

In fact, it’s a waste of our God-given talents to spend all our time wishing for things that other people have.

One post that I read this past week summarized the Gospel lesson this way: the only reason you should ever look into your neighbor’s bowl is to see whether they have enough.

If your neighbor has enough, how wonderful for both of you! Life is good. Even if what your neighbor has is more than what you have, that is still a reason to rejoice – it means that you both have what you need to get through this life.

If your neighbor doesn’t have enough, then you have an opportunity to share out of your own blessings.

That’s basically what’s going on in the Jonah story today, and in the parable from the Gospel of Matthew.

Jonah has enough, God has provided everything he needs.

The workers in the vineyard have a day’s pay for a day’s labor – they have what they have earned.

And yet these people complain to God about the unfairness of the world.

And God’s answer is, those other people’s lives are none of your business.

I have given you all that you need, God says.

I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

So what are you complaining about?

It’s human nature to behave like those laborers in the parable, or like Jonah after God fails to destroy Nineveh.

But that doesn’t mean it’s how God wants us to respond.

Are we envious because God is generous?

Or can we find a better path?

The gracious, merciful, God-like response to our neighbors being blessed, is to rejoice with them in their blessing.

Don’t compare ourselves to others with measurements that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Simply find ways to recognize God’s blessing, in the life of other people even when you can’t find it in our own life, and give thanks for the generosity of God.

Amen.