Sermon

God is unfair

Scripture Text:

Jonah 3:10-4:11 (Matthew 20:1-16)

Sermon:

My father likes to tell a story about the book of Jonah and his Dad, my grandfather. The pastor of their church asked Grandpa to lead the men’s bible study once when he had to be out of town, probably because my grandfather was a professor and the son of a pastor.  The men were studying the book of Jonah.  They asked Grandpa, “How could a man stay alive in the belly of a fish for three days?”  And Grandpa explained that the story was a metaphor: it was a story to help us understand our relationship with God and it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.  The men seemed satisfied.  But later, Grandpa heard that when the pastor returned the men asked him again about the story being a metaphor and the pastor said, “Absolutely not! Jonah was swallowed by a fish and it really happened.”  Needless to say, my grandfather was never asked back to the men’s bible study again.

 

Whether you read Jonah as a metaphor or as a literal story, it’s a captivating book, and it’s a true story.  Actually, Jonah is one of my favorite books of the bible.  It’s so vivid – about a man who gets thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish.  It’s so short – it gets right to the point it’s making and then ends very abruptly, after only four chapters.  It’s got a sort of mystical history – the earliest Christians turned to the book of Jonah as a foreshadowing of the life of Jesus, and Jesus spoke about “the sign of Jonah.” We think he meant that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, just as Jesus was in the tomb for three days.

 

And Jonah is not the world’s greatest prophet.  That may be my favorite thing about this book – it’s the story of a reluctant but stubborn prophet whose story ends with one of the most magnificent descriptions of self-righteous pouting perhaps in all of literature. In fact, some scholars wonder if the story of Jonah was first written to be a sort of satire or farce of a story of a prophet – but even if it was, it struck a realistic chord because it became one of the holy texts of the Jewish people.

 

But let’s begin at the beginning. When God calls Jonah to go and preach to the people of Nineveh, how does he respond?  Well… he runs away!  He gets in a boat and heads in the opposite direction.  Is this the bible or some kind of slapstick comedy? (The two actually go together more often than not, actually.)  The Lord chases Jonah with a storm and the wind and waves seem like they’re going to pound the boat to pieces.  Everyone is terrified, except for Jonah who would’ve slept through the whole thing if the captain hadn’t gone looking for him and woken him up.  His fellow passengers figure out that Jonah is the reason for the storm and they throw him overboard.  And they’re right, because then the sea becomes perfectly calm.

 

And God send a big fish to find and swallow Jonah.  God seems to me, here, to both be trying save Jonah and to get him to stay put for a while.  “No more running away!”  To make a long story short, Jonah eventually ends up in Nineveh, tells them to repent of their evil ways, as God asked him to, and the people respond!  They do everything they’re supposed to: they repent, they put on sackcloth and ashes (even on their cows and sheep!), they fast, even their king participates!  (Again, this is not usually the way the story goes for prophets.)  And so God changes God’s mind about the people of Nineveh; instead of destroying their town, God decides to let it stand.

 

And this is what makes Jonah so angry.  God asks again and again, “It is right for you to be angry?” as things get more and ridiculous for Jonah.  He pouts, he insists he wants to die, his happiness rises and falls with a little bush.

 

Jonah just doesn’t like it that the people who were supposed to be punished by God are going to be saved.  Like the workers in the vineyard, who worked for a full day, and are angry when those who have only worked a few hours are paid the same wage.  Human beings love to point out when things are unfair.  It’s one of the first things small children start to notice as they’re learning to talk – “It’s not fair!”

 

God is unfair, really.  That’s because in the end, God doesn’t care about “fair” so much as God cares about us.  God is unfair, but God is love.  Jonah is not a typical prophet, but God uses him anyway.  The people of Nineveh should’ve been punished for their terrible deeds, but when they show remorse and humility, God decides not to punish them.  The workers who only worked a few hours are paid for a whole day’s work.

 

I like the story of Jonah because it reminds me of myself.  Sometimes I run away from God.  I can pout when things don’t go the way I want.  I want to believe I’m right and it’s hard for me to see sometimes that I’m not.  I get angry when life seems unfair.  Sometimes I think I might know better than God.

 

I like the story of Jonah because God doesn’t give up on Jonah.  God send a big fish to swallow him when he gets thrown off the boat.  Not exactly the same as sending a Carnival cruise ship, but still.  Who would think it could be comforting to be swallowed by a fish?  Sometimes God works that way.  And God doesn’t abandon Jonah in his anger and pouting, but keeps asking him questions and trying to help him see himself more clearly.

 

It may seem sometimes that God is unfair and giving other people things they don’t deserve. But the thing to remember is that we all take our turn as the people who deserve to be punished, the people who haven’t worked our fair share, the person who has failed to be everything he or she could be, the person who runs away.  But God is unfair and God is love and God sticks with us.

 

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Uploaded on September 18, 2011 in by RevHeidi

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