Sermons

Sep 18 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

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We Americans are a can-do bunch of people. We believe that with enough will-power and stick-to-itiveness, we can do anything. Optimism and self-confidence are our greatest strengths. We’ve crossed deserts and the Rocky Mountains, turned wilderness into farms, built dams, stopped Hitler, invented miracle drugs and surgical procedures, and amassed fortunes. Our ideal is the self-made man who pulls himself up by his bootstraps and creates the kind of life he wants. It was Ben Franklin who said God helps those who help themselves, but we hold this philosophy so dear that many think it came from the Bible itself.

Our bookstores are filled with self-help books: How to be a good parent, how to reach your fitness goals, how to practice the 7 habits of highly effective business people…There’s a lot of good in all this self-improvement. There’s a lot of good in the American can-do spirit.

But we’ve taken it too far. We think that because we can accomplish some of our goals if we really try, we can also, if we try hard enough, we can build our own goodness — a kind of do-it-yourself self-worth. We set about doing this like the renovation of an old house: Why if I pray hard enough and try to be the person God wants me to be, if I’m pure and consistent, then I’ll whip this old house into shape! God will love me then. Even many Christians believe this unchristian doctrine, that the sole responsibility of religion is to keep us pure so that we earn God’s favor, not his wrath.

Today’s readings contradict all this. They are so subversive that they call into question the very foundation of our culture and our religion: the notions of earning and deserving, spiritual and moral success and failure.

Jonah had been called by God to pronounce doom upon the wicked city of Nineveh. It is not said what their sin was; perhaps they still allowed smoking in bars. In 40 days, Jonah gleefully proclaimed, you will all die. To his great chagrin, everyone from the king on down to the animals put on sackcloth and ashes and repented of their sin. I think this may be the only place in the Bible where animals repent. God decided to spare them.

This morning’s section of the story has Jonah complaining bitterly to God because he didn’t destroy Nineveh. He was convinced that the city did not deserve God’s mercy. They had been wicked, and it was too late. They earned only destruction.

But God had other ideas. They may not have deserved it, but he was merciful. As God said, Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?

You see, it wasn’t really about Nineveh’s deserving or undeserving. It wasn’t about Jonah’s mission to stride into town like a fiery angel of death. It was about God. The whole point of the story was God’s compassion for a people that were lost: They didn’t know their right hand from their left. God saw their confusion and had mercy. Forget their wickedness; forget Jonah’s righteousness; forget what Nineveh deserved; none of that mattered. What mattered is God’s concern for the 120,000 lost and confused souls.

Jesus tells a similar story. All the laborers start work in the vineyard at different times: early, 9:00, noon, 3:00, even 5:00, the end of the day. All are paid the same. It isn’t fair, the first workers rightfully charge; we’ve worked longer; we should be paid more. The owner replies Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? It wasn’t about what the workers earned or didn’t earn. It wasn’t about how long or how hard they worked. It wasn’t about them at all. It was about God, God’s generosity.

Jesus told this parable because he had been constantly criticized for giving people things they didn’t deserve. Why this outcast, this sinner, this Gentile, this tax-collector, this known reprobate — they have cut themselves off from God; they deserve every calamity that we hope God will bring upon them. We all know that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. And what do you do, Jesus? You forgive and heal them! You drink and dance with them! You reward them for their wickedness! And you have the temerity to tell us that they will enter the kingdom before we do? That the last will be first?

To this Jesus, in effect, said: It isn’t about them and their failures; it isn’t about you and your righteousness; it isn’t about anyone’s deserving or undeserving. It’s about God’s love and mercy.

Our culture, too, everything that surrounds us, tells us over and over again that we get what we deserve, that we accomplish only what we have earned. Improve yourself! Make yourself rich, thin, really spiritual, deliriously happy as a lover and effective as a parent! Are you a failure at money, health, relationships, and religion? You have only yourself to blame. And so we spend way too much time looking in the mirror and asking How am I doing? Am I faithful, loving, and wise? Am I doing what God wants me to do? How am I doing?

There’s a time for self-improvement, a time for measuring our happiness, our faithfulness, and our effectiveness. But our scriptures today tell us that at some point, it isn’t about any of that. Like the poor lost souls of Nineveh, like the losers and misfits that Jesus attended to, it isn’t about us. It’s about God.

So, at least for today, forget yourself. Forget how well you’re measuring up. Forget whether you’re a sinner or a saint. Drop both your pride and your shame. Forget whether you came to work in the vineyard at the first or the last hour, or even how productively you’ve been working. It’s not about you. It’s about God.

Well, that’s fine to say, but how on earth do we do that? Our tradition says that we do it by means of a much-misunderstood thing called repentance. We think that repentance means that we grovel a bit, then try harder to be a better person. But the biblical word for repentance means to turn. To turn towards God, that’s all. That’s what the city of Nineveh did. The story of Jonah says nothing about whether they became better people; it says nothing about how they thereafter worked harder to earn God’s mercy. It just says that they repented; they turned to God, and that was enough. That’s what the workers in the vineyard did. They turned to work in the vineyard, even at the very last hour, as pointless as it may have seemed at that time in the day.

We turn to God when we worship. We turn to God when we say thank you for all your blessings. We turn to God when we’re in awe of creation or of a baby’s smile. We turn to God when we forget all our problems and simply rest quietly in the Spirit. We turn to God in this sacrament, singing God’s praises, receiving the goodness of Christ’s own presence into our hearts. We turn to God when we ponder a reading from scripture and wonder what God might have to say to us today. We turn to God when we lose ourselves in our concern for another person in need. We turn to God when we surrender, saying I don’t know my right hand from my left; guide me.

I’m not saying it doesn’t matter how you live, or whether you try to be a better person, whatever that means to you. There’s a time for that. But there’s also a time to remember that ultimately the continuum of our self-improvement — from miserable offender on one end to the crown of righteousness at the other — is about an inch long compared to the infinite beauty and love of God.

If you focus less on yourself and turn more often towards God — if you lose yourself in worship, silence, gratitude, service, and surrender — your life will become less about your small failures and successes, and more about God’s infinite goodness. Your mind and your heart will open out to the wonderful mystery of God, and all will be well.

As we prayed at the beginning of our liturgy today, Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure. Amen.