Theological Truth: We are all equal in the sight of God’s love and recognizing/receiving that rather than earning/deserving may be frustrating, but it’s also liberating.
In order to graduate from high school, a student I knew was required to participate in a team sport. Institutional coercion was necessary because this young person enjoyed neither physical activity nor the rigors of training. So when his only available option was the swim team, you can be sure he devised all imaginable excuses and schemes to skip practice and miss meets. When he did show up, he was painfully slow—always the last one to finish, still struggling to complete the race while the others were dried off and the next competitors were waiting to take the blocks.
Nevertheless, his team somehow won district and received a massive trophy. The school newspaper wanted a photo of the team, and so the coach told them all to bring their swimsuits to school the following day. My friend “forgot” his, hoping to keep the whole painful memory in the past, but the coach insisted. So instead of being in the pool, my friend was made to stand on the side of the pool while the rest of the team posed in the pool. Then at the last minute, since he was just standing there, the photographer suggested he hold the trophy. You can see it, right? In the paper, he looks like the captain and hero of the team, standing above his teammates hoisting the trophy securely in his hands.
I imagine the rest of that team and their parents must have been livid! It was so unfair. He hadn’t done anything to earn that place of honor. He didn’t deserve that position of prestige. His teammates had every reason to be angry, “angry enough to die,” as Jonah might say.
The reading we heard from Jonah occurs after the more familiar part of his story—the part where he gets swallowed by the great fish after being thrown overboard. You may recall that Jonah is at sea because he’s sailing away from God’s command to warn the people of Nineveh. Jonah didn’t want “those people”—the Ninevites—to get another chance. They’d had their chance, and now they should get their due.
Jonah, like all of us, expects a certain degree of existential fairness. When we do x and y, we expect to get z. We show up, do our work, pay our taxes, say our prayers, take our vitamins, check all the right boxes, and expect things to turn out in our favor. That’s what Jonah did; that’s what the people of Nineveh did not do. Based on that formula, Jonah deserved God’s favor; the people of Nineveh deserved God’s wrath. And then God goes and shows mercy to those people. So. Frustrating.
It’s as frustrating as a boss who pays a laborer the same amount as everyone else, even though he only did a fraction of the work the others had done. I don’t know about you, but if I had been picking grapes since six in the morning, and some other slacker comes in at five in the evening, smokes a couple of cigarettes while pretending to fiddle with the vines, and then the boss pays him the same amount as me, I’d be angry too. Angry enough to die. I mean, what the heck!? This is no way to run a vineyard!
If you find yourself identifying with the grumblers in the story, you’re not alone. Or crazy. In our desire for a religious formula we can control, we expect God to play by the rules, particularly when we ourselves are playing by them. We have little patience for those who show up at the last minute by the side of the pool and hoist the trophy. We are right to wonder if it’s fair. If they haven’t shared equally in the work, why should they share equally in the reward?
By worldly standards, it certainly isn’t fair. But notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “a well-run business is like this” or that “an efficient economy is like this.” He says, “the kingdom of heaven is like this.” Jonah didn’t like God’s maddening mercy, but he wasn’t surprised. He predicted God’s frustrating capacity to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ever ready to relent from punishing. We shouldn’t be surprised either.
Jesus embodies God’s wonderful, profligate, jaw-dropping love for any and all. It turns out, the kingdom of heaven isn’t dependent on our sense of fairness, but on God’s mercy. And while it may frustrate us, it can also liberate us. Because when we realize that our salvation depends on God’s grace rather than our perfection, we are set free from the endless competing with and comparing ourselves to everyone else. When we realize that entering God’s eternal love isn’t a popularity contest where only the top 100 are admitted, or a Black Friday sale with limited quantities, we are liberated from a state of never-ending anxiety about how we measure up. We can gratefully walk around the vineyard, joyfully doing the work of our generous landowner, enthusiastically sharing in the labor with whoever comes, whenever they arrive.
How can we live under this way of God’s grace, instead of expecting God to adopt the transactional competitiveness of our system? How can we see as God sees and love as God loves? Cultivating a practice of gratitude is the key. Diana Butler Bass says, “Being grateful isn’t a magic wand or kind of prosperity mantra. Rather, it rearranges the way we see the world. As we practice redirecting our attention toward the gifts in our lives, [rather than the spiritual achievements of our lives] gratitude lessens our fears, strengthens our hearts, and builds our resilience.” (September 21, 2023 reflection. Emphasis mine.)
Focusing on thanking God for what God has done for all of us in Christ, rearranges the way we see the world. My life becomes less about me and what I’ve done and what I expect God to do. It shifts my attention to God’s grace rather than my works. I’m less likely to be the indignant co-worker who is offended at the notion of being equal with the latecomers. We are in fact equals, but not because of what we’ve done, but because of how we are viewed by God—equally loved, eternally sought out. Since we are gazing at God’s amazing grace rather than keeping score of our deeds compared to the misdeeds of others, we are freed, as our opening collect said, to no longer be anxious about earthly things because we are gratefully loving things heavenly. We no longer need to worry about earning the trophy, because we have received the crown of glory that never fades away.
This is God’s gift, not our compensation. Our work is to receive it gratefully and share it generously.
— Fr. AJ Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, September 24, 2023
Readings: Jonah 3:10—4:11, Psalm 145:1-8, Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16
