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Serving God and Sharing Good News |
Weekly Bible Notes
Ordinary 25 Year A (Trinity 17)
Introduction
The first thing to recognise about the reading from Matthew this week is that it is not fair. Jesus says that somebody who works all day, slogs and toils will be rewarded exactly the same as somebody who has only made a tiny amount of effort at the end of the day.
We are all geared up to believe that those who work hard should be rewarded, and those who make no contribution get meagre returns. We were all told that at Christmas presents would be brought to the good boys and girls, whilst the naughty ones would get a piece of coal from Santa. What is the point of seeking to live a good life only to find that somebody who has not made the effort receives the same recompense? Why bother to try and live good lives, avoid temptation if we are all going to be treated the same?
The Gospel of Jesus demands a completely different way of
thinking. God does no operate on the human system of good
deed and subsequent reward. God is dominated by the
principle of love. If God gave us our just rewards then we
would discover that we all fall far short. Each and everyone
of us requires forgiveness, not rewards!
Opening Verses of Scripture Jonah 4:2
You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in
love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
Collect Prayer for the Day — Before we read we pray
Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you: pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself, and so bring us at last to your heavenly city where we shall see you face to face; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
First Bible Reading Jonah 3 : 10– 4:11
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had
compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, "O
LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so
quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate
God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending
calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die
than to live." But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?" Jonah
went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a
shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.
Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give
shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about
the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the
vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east
wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to
die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live." But God said
to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he
said. "I am angry enough to die." But the LORD said, "You have been
concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It
sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred
and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left,
and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city
(Reader: This is the word of the Lord -- Thanks be to God)
(Reader:This is the word of the Lord -- Thanks be to God)
Second Reading Philippians 1: 21-30
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have
sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body,
whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is
gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for
me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I
desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more
necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that
I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy
in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ
Jesus will overflow on account of me. Whatever happens, conduct yourselves
in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you
or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one
spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being
frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that
they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. For it
has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but
also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you
saw I had, and now hear that I still have. (Reader: This is the word of the
Lord -- Thanks be to God)
(This is the word of the
Lord—Thanks be to God)
Gospel Reading Matthew
20:1-16
"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. "About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went.
"He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the
same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others
standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day
long doing nothing?' " 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
"He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call
the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and
going on to the first.' "The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour
came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first,
they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.
When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These
men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made
them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the
day.' "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you.
Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to
give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the
right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am
generous?' "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." (Reader:
This is the word of the Lord - Thanks be to God)
(Reader: This is the word of the Lord - Thanks be to God)
Post Communion Sentence
Lord Jesus Christ, though we have held and handled bread and wine, we can never confine or contain you; yet, in this sacrament you are closer to us than our own thoughts. Fill us with your peace, and come into every corner of our complex lives, O lord of love. (Angela Ashwin)
Commentary
This parable doesn’t appear in either of the other two Synoptic Gospels, (Mark and Luke) so must have come from the missing “Q” source. It has such a complex and difficult meaning that we must imagine that Matthew’s hearers must have found it as disconcerting as we do. Jesus often used parables based on the farming practises of his time. This one is definitely not meant to be taken as advice on how to achieve good industrial relations with your agricultural workers.
Many casual labourers lived a desperately hand-to-mouth
existence. Whether they were able to get a day’s work, and thus a day’s pay,
was the difference between starvation and food for the family. We must
imagine these workers as a ragged and exhausted bunch, hanging about, hoping
to catch the eye of the foreman. We must imagine their frustration and
disappointment when they were the ones ignored and passed over. We can feel
the relief of the men who were pulled out of the crowd and given work! With
these powerful feelings in our minds we can turn back to the story. Jesus
was using the tale as a metaphor about salvation. He was returning to a
theme he addressed a number of times in his ministry – the belief that some
Christians held, that they had earned God’s love and salvation, that they
had put in the time and the effort and were entitled to their spiritual
reward. In the parable the length of service in the vineyard stands for the
length of time that Christians have believed in and served the Lord. The
long-serving Christians were expecting brownie points and bigger rewards for
having done more for longer. Jesus blew away this kind of spiritual book
keeping. This parable is similar in spirit to the complaints of the hard
working brother who looked after the farm while his prodigal brother went
off partying. It echoes of the disbelief of those who heard Jesus promise
paradise to the thief who hung next to him on the Cross. God’s forgiveness
is shown to be spontaneous and unbelievably generous. Jesus shows that once
a person has chosen to love the Lord, all barriers are down. The new convert
is as deeply loved and highly valued as a long serving believer. This seems
unfair until we remember two things: firstly that God’s love for us is
perfect and not partial, and cannot be graded nor meted out in grudging
pieces; secondly that we are all unworthy of that love and receive it as a
gift, not as a right. Joan Crossley
Meditation
In the story from the book of Jonah today, Jonah is in a
massive sulk! Everything is bad, and awful and he is angry enough to die!
When God tries to reason with him, comparing Jonah’s suffering to the much
worse suffering of thousands, Jonah simply does not want to understand. He
is locked into the prison of his own misery and self-pity. The story makes a
timeless point: that we all tend to see the world from our own selfish
perspective. We can feel sorrow over the fate of starving millions, but if
we stand up and stub our toe, their sufferings are instantly eclipsed and
forgotten beside our own! That temporary self- absorption can grow into a
lifelong problem. Our faith commands us to try and love others as deeply as
we love ourselves, to feel their pain as acutely as we feel our own. It can
be done. The only truly happy people I have ever met are those who can
escape from the tyranny of their own problems and feelings and empathise
with the feelings of others. Joan Crossley
Hymns
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Come down o love divine 89
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Jesus’ love is very wonderful (P News)
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Father hear the prayer we offer 132
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O breath of life 488
Prayers for Sunday and the week ahead
Jesus, who was lost and found in the garden, never to be lost again. Stand by us in the darkness of our crucifixions, as the women stood by you. Die and rise with us in the suffering of the world, be reborn with us, as love and hope and faith and endurance outlast cruelty and death. Amen (Monica Furlong)
Additional Material
Commentary
God asked Jonah to be a prophet to the great city of Nineveh. Nineveh became the capital city of Assyria in the reign of Sennacherib, 704–681. In the mind of the author of the Book of Jonah it stood for all the wickedness which had been endemic in the Assyrian empire. Jonah is told to preach against it, because it is a wicked place and it is important to remember that God sees and knows wickedness and does not like it! Instead Jonah went to Joppa, jumped on a boat and headed off across the Mediterranean bound perhaps for Spain. (Tarshish may have been Tartessus in Spain, in the far west.)
Now you might think that God would be annoyed, well so did the sailors on the boat when a great storm blew up and they found out that Jonah had been messing God about. Albeit reluctantly, they threw Jonah overboard as a sacrifice to placate the wrath of God. Fortunately for Jonah, God did not give up on him. Even when all hope seemed lost God saved Jonah and provided a huge fish. Although the fish ate him up Jonah was able to live inside the whale, just like Pinnochio, for three days and nights. After this time the fish was violently sick and vomited Jonah up safely onto dry land.
Jonah now agreed to go to Nineveh, and he preached a hard message of destruction telling them exactly what was going to happen to them. The people of Nineveh repented, resulting in the forgiveness of God.
Jonah should be pleased but he was not.
Jonah became angry, went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. A vine grew over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was happy. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, there was a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint and wanted to die. God pointed out to Jonah the contrast that he was concerned about a mere plant which sprang up overnight and died, how much more should God be concerned about Nineveh which had more than a hundred and twenty thousand people and many animals as well.
Jonah should have been pleased that his preaching had caused the repentance of the people, instead he was miserable.
Why was Jonah angry at God? He was angry because he felt that God was making a fool of himself and by implication Jonah as well. He was told to preach to the people of Nineveh and tell them that they were going to get their just deserts, but instead of destruction and doom, God went and forgave them all. Jonah knew that he had relied on God’s forgiveness to get him out of the belly of the whale, but he was angry that God was so loving with everybody else as well. In the mind of Jonah God should punish the wickedness in Nineveh, not forgive it, God was exposing himself and his prophets to the charge of being a soft touch.
This was exactly the same problem in the story from Matthew. The landowner was thought to be giving too much away to people who did not deserve it. The people who came at the end of the day were getting too much unearned benefit.
We might share Jonah’s concern that God makes forgiveness too easy. We make people earn their forgiveness when they offend us. If they want us to forgive they had better do more than say sorry, they had better put in a full day’s work!
God seems to allow for the fact that the people of Nineveh didn’t know how bad their behaviour was. Their sin is born of ignorance (‘who do not know their right hand from their left’, v. 11), and their repentance was welcome to a merciful God. This is a concept found in the New Testament, we can think of the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy Chapter 1:13 ‘I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief’.’
Jesus is the most prolific forgiver and shows his attitude in his words from the cross when he even forgives people who fail to say sorry, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’
The compassion of God plays havoc with our understanding of justice.
Charles Royden
Prayers
Merciful God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding. Pour into our hearts such love towards you that we, loving you above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
O God, surer than the breaking of the day, in the morning, fill us with you love, and in the evening, as the dew falls, refresh us with your mercy, that we may live according to your promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
God our Redeemer, who called your church to witness that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself: help us so to proclaim the goodness of your love, that all who hear it may be reconciled to you. Amen
Hymns
- Come down O love divine (Down Ampney) Number 281
- Colours of Day (On Partnership News)
- Now thank we all our God (Nun Danket) 566
- In Christ there is no east or west (Kilmarnock) 758
- Glorious things of thee are spoken (Austria) 817