A Sermon Preached On September 20, 2026
Jonah 3:19--4:11
When God saw what the people of Nineveh did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?
Matthew 20: 1-16
Matthew Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
I
Jonah, the curmudgeonly character from our Old Testament Lesson, is resentful. You won’t have missed this. He’s upset that God has shown mercy to the repentant people of another tribe, the people of Nineveh.
The characters in the parable created by Jesus in our Gospel lesson are also upset, though depicted less dramatically, less boisterously, than Jonah. They are upset that the landowner was overly generous, in their eyes, with some latecomers to the vineyard, who are paid the same full day’s wage that they received. So, they are envious and resentful.
And resentful, too, is a large part of the American population.
II
This is according to David Brooks, a former columnist for the New York Times.
I heard him make this claim this week.
According to one measure, he said, since 2010 we have been more pessimistic and resentful about our state of life than at any time since 1850. Apparently, technology makes it possible to scan all the books, newspapers, and magazines published since 1850. And scholars have done that, Brooks said, examining the tenor and contentment revealed in the conversational discourse of each year, decade by decade, for the last 176 years, as reflected in (again) our books, newspapers, and magazines. And what they found was that up until 2010, conversational discourse was more positive, more upbeat, more characterized words like rising, progress, and improving than conversational discourse has been since 2010.
Since 2010 the conversational discourse of America is markedly downbeat, pessimistic, and resentful. Less positive, he noted, than it was at the time of the Civil War, The two World Wars, and The Great Depression. Despite the fact, Brooks went on to say, that our economy, though not great, is not terrible—inflation is higher than we would like, but unemployment is low, and Millennials are ahead of Gen X in their earnings at this stage of their careers.
Now, Brooks knows a thing or two, as we say. He’s been writing on culture and politics for decades. He names as one factor causing our negativity, the stirring up what he calls the dark passions of envy, hated, and resentment. Resentment sells. And stirring up resentment is one way that leaders, so-called influencers, and politicians can create followers. (Church leaders are included in this, too.)
Brooks left his position recently—after a long and distinguished career-- in hopes of being a force for renewal in American life, hoping to help lead us in stirring up the good passions, and helping us move from despair to hope, from resentment to gratitude.
The church—and everyone in it, you, me, each one of us-- has a role to play, I’ll contend, in moving people from despair to hope. I’ll come back to this in a bit after we take a look at today’s lessons beginning, first, with a look at Jonah’s tantrum.
III
Jonah’s Tantrum
That’s as good a word as any for what we see in Jonah, and it’s the word the poet Thomas Carlyle used to lead into a set of poems he wrote about Jonah. The poems, which I’ve slightly adapted, begin like this:
“The generosity of God/Displeased Jonah greatly…” And then end like this:
“so Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God…. to come around to his way of thinking…and God is still waiting (for all of the Jonahs) in the world to come around to God’s way of loving.” I’ll repeat that: “The generosity of God/Displeased Jonah greatly…so Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God…. to come around to his way of thinking…and God is still waiting (for all of the Jonahs) in the world to come around to God’s way of loving.”
Well, God’s generosity is the common theme shared by the story of Jonah and Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard. And each story is meant to bring us out of the dark fever-swamp of resentment to the high country of gratitude and service to God. The story of Jonah—indirectly-- using humor. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard using a bit of shock.
It’s to the great credit of ancient Israel that they crafted the story of Jonah and kept it in the canon of Scripture to scrub out the stain of prideful, self-righteousness. It’s meant to be a humorous story. A story that makes its hearers laugh, and in laughing and enjoying the story, to drop any defensiveness, and let the story and its point make their way into their imaginations.
And the point was that Israel’s calling was to be a light to the nations. They were called to testify to the surrounding nations that the world was not the product of chance. But the good creation of a good God. They were to liberate pagan cultures from worshipping gods who were no gods—gods who were idols that could not act, or speak, or love. And idols they---the people of Canaan tried to appease with sacrifices, even human sacrifices.
In contrast, Israel’s life was to be a joy-filled testimony to the trustworthy character of God. What was that character? Jonah himself knows. This is a “…God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ever-willing to withhold judgment.” This God-like attitude, Israel was to embody toward her neighbors.
And this is what Jonah, the character put before us, could or would not do. This symbolic character of Jonah was meant to speak to all the real Jonah’s in Israel’s life. These are all those who would rather die than deal with their pagan neighbors—or rather die than see pagans come into the truth and flourish. Jonah himself said he would rather be dead than be happy about the Ninevites being repentant and restored with fellowship with God. Have you ever heard people begin a sentence with those words, ‘I’d rather die, than be caught dead hanging out with this or that person…”? Have you ever bristled listening to someone’s life-story, when they talked about coming to faith or changing when you knew they were still far from perfect? If so, you, like me, still have some work to do on your inner Jonah.
When we heard Jonah’s upset that people in Nineveh repented---“And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” I wouldn’t be surprised if many of our minds didn’t run to those contrasting words of Jesus “There is more joy in heaven over one who repents than ninety-nine who need no repentance.”
Jonah finds no joy in the generosity of God. He’s resentful, joyless, and ….forgetful. Forgetful that he himself is has been a recipient of God’s grace all along.
he ran in the opposite direction when he heard God’s call to go to Nineveh,
he was rescued from the deep ocean,
he was used (despite his reluctant heart) to bring about repentance in Nineveh…..all along he he was chased down by God’s grace, but couldn’t rejoice in that grace when it came into the life of others.
IV
The Parable of the Laborers in The Vineyard
We are all creatures of grace, recipients of God’s favor and blessings. And this is the message reinforced by today’s parable, which also warns us about envy and resentment.
The last time I spoke on this parable, someone came to me and said, “Well, that is no way to run a railroad.” He meant: paying a full wage to hourly workers who came late is no way to run a business. And he’s right. But the parable is not about running a business. It’s masterful in the way this warning about envy is set up.
The landowner pays the latecomers the same wage as those who started early in the morning—this is the shock technique used often by Jesusa to draw hearers into what he has to say. “Wait, they get the same amount as us!” the early birds say. But note this: he pays the latecomers first. That is: he pays them in the presence of the early workers. This is important. If the landowner paid the early workers first, they would have never known what the latecomers got. They would have taken their money and headed out…to home, to the bank, to the local watering hole with their drinking buddies.
But they see the latecomers receiving what they received. They cry ‘Foul!’ How unjust they think, and they are resentful. (Note: in his reply the landowner assures them of his care for them, he calls them ‘friends’.) But he makes clear to them that he is acting out of his own generosity, distributing what is his to distribute. It’s not just that he is impartial, treating all people equally. That’s part of it. But the greater point is that the landowner, symbolizing God of the Kingdom, is abundantly generous.
So, the hearers now understand that the parable is not about running a business, it’s about any who align themselves with Jesus: they have all been treated out of the superabundance of God’s grace.
Jesus may have directed this to his very first followers who were bristling when pretty soon they were joined by “tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners.”
Later, the largely Jewish members who were following Jesus may have grumbles about the increasing number of Gentiles who were welcomed into the kingdom Jesus inaugurated.
It’s all about grace.
God’s generosity is abundant, overflowing, even unending. There’s no end to God’s grace and love and mercy. We might try to put a number on it – we might try to set its limits – or specify what kind of people are God’s people in the way we say, ‘They’re my kind of people.’ But the God of the gospel says, I want all people to be my kind of people.
V
Conclusion
Sometimes those who come later in life to the vineyard see how profound and how pervasive God’s grace is—and see it more clearly than those of us who have been intentional about our discipleship for a long, long time.
David Brooks, the columnist I mentioned at the outset, came late in life to labor intentionally in the Lord’s vineyard. In the last decade he said, while retaining his Jewish roots he has (these are his words) “crossed over to Team Christian.” He sees his calling now to stand against the dark passions of envy and resentment by, “bringing a ‘bright demeanor’ to life—sounds like Paul’s words about always rejoicing, doesn’t it?—and to labor for the ‘bright passions,’ those things that makes life good and beautiful. That sounds like Paul’s words, too, doesn’t it: “To embrace and live out “whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4)
He sees that though the world loses its way, the world is not lost to God. Not at all! The world, even in it’s denial of God, is still the object of God’s love/
If we’ve lost sight of this---if some vestiges of ai Jonah lurk within us--every Sunday, today and every day, is a day to let the bright truth of God’s generosity and grace come like a great flood into our souls.
AMEN.