As I looked at
today’s readings this week I've been wondering what they tell us about we
should view life. And in my wondering I
think I see two dimensions cropping up in our readings from Jonah and Matthew:
dependence and interdependence, accountability and grace.
Today has been
designated Sea Sunday by the Seamen's Center in Wilmington. As we think about the lives of those who work
to bring cargo from all over the world to the Port of Wilmington, we may
remember the seamen in the Jonah story:
“Now
the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to
Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come
up before me.’ But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the
Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his
fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of
the Lord.
“But
the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon
the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid,
and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the
sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of
the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to
him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the
god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’
“The
sailors said to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on
whose account this calamity has come upon us.’ So they cast lots, and the lot
fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, ‘Tell us why this calamity has come upon
us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And
of what people are you?’ ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he replied. ‘I worship the Lord, the
God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.’ Then the men were even more
afraid, and said to him, ‘What is this that you have done!’ For the men knew
that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
“Then
they said to him, ‘What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for
us?’ For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, ‘Pick
me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I
know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.’
Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could
not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to
the Lord, ‘Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this
man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done
as it pleased you.’ So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the
sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they
offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.”
The
person who wrote the story of Jonah depicted not only the dangers of a
seafarer's life, but also the theology of both dependence on a power outside
one's self and of interdependence among people when encountering power outside
themselves. These themes come back again
in the portion of Jonah we heard: the repentance of the Ninivities came through
Jonah's prophecy--although he deeply resented being the instrument in which
God's mercy was shown to his people's enemies.
If
this story of Jonah and the Ninivites doesn't unsettle us a bit, surely Jesus'
parable of the Capricious Landowner should.
Matthew leads up to this parable by reporting that Jesus tells the rich
young ruler to sell all he has if he wants to follow Jesus; then he tells the
disciples that only God can save them for the kingdom of heaven; then Jesus
tells Peter that only when you give up everything for God's sake will you
receive eternal life. And finally, Matthew
brackets the parable with Jesus’ upsetting pronouncement that the first shall
be last.
In
the context of Jesus' ministry and at that moment in history, Jesus' demand for
complete surrender of all that has mattered to you in the past makes a certain
amount of sense. The point of the
kingdom parable about the landowner paying the same amount for different
amounts of work appears to be this:
every one of the landowner's laborers, no matter how hard or little they
labored, should be uncomplaining and grateful for his generosity. So doesn't this imply that one's merit, the
accountability for one's deeds counts for little? Somehow in the light of this parable the
grace moment of the last being first seems to make salvation too easy and grace
too cheap.
So
where does that leave us, we who fare forward on the stormy seas of life and
labor daily hoping for God's grace now and in our life eternally? Each of us will have the chance to decide how
this sermon should end. Ending 1: I
preach that you should practice interdependence and gratitude, trusting in
God's grace to calm the storm and to eternally provide for us no matter our
worthiness. Ending 2: I empathize with
your frustration in trying to understand how anyone could possibly live the way
Jesus told his disciples to live and with your difficulty in trying to accept
that God might save our enemies; yet telling you to trust that in the end that
God will find us worthy of forgiveness and eternal life. [Ask for a show of hands in support of Ending
1 or Ending 2.] Theologically, then, the
question becomes should we consider ourselves unworthy or worthy? How do you believe God sees you—sees us? Could we be both?
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