He yells at God, "I knew it! I knew you were gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." I knew it you jerk! It isn't Fair! And so God looks down an Jonah and asks what business it is of his who God forgives and how God doles out his love.
It is easy to laugh at Jonah, we are meant to, anything with the language God appointed a bush is meant to make us giggle. but I have another story for you.
Once during my first year of college, I had this instructor who was pretty demanding especially for someone teaching a freshman class. We had a lot of reading and a lot of papers due. Our final exam was an in class essay exam. We would have to write four one-two page answers to four questions about the reading for the semester. We didn't know which readings and so we had to know it all. Some people set up studies group and traded the papers that they had written over the semester to review, others reread many of the required texts. Some just kind of thought back over things and crossed their fingers, having ended up too busy to do too much studying. If I recall correctly this final would be 40% of our grade. So test day came. We got to class first. We waited for the instructor to walk in. He came a little late. He had his hands full, a briefcase full of what we could only assume were the test questions and a bag. He apologized for being late to the final session of our class. He set his briefcase down and he wrote a name and date on the board. There was panic, no one knew what he meant by it, it wasn't from the class material unless we'd missed it. There were nervous glances around. Then he turned to his desk and took the contents out of his bag, juice and cookies. Then he handed out sheets of paper to everyone in class and we each got a pack of crayons.
Finally he went back to the front of the room and explained that, in honor of the birth of his new baby son the day before, hence the name on the board, we were all excused from taking the final but instead invited to remain for class session, have some refreshments and our only requirement for the final grade was that we draw a picture of any scene from any of the literature that we had read during the class and post it on the board. Stick people were okay, we would not be graded on quality. Easiest A I ever received.
But once we were dismissed from class and the instructor was out of earshot a funny thing happened. People started to grumble. They were mad that the birth of the instructor's son had made us all equal in his eyes. The people who had prepared the most complained the most. Especially those who hadn't kept up with the reading all semester had gone back over the last week and worked very hard to get caught up. The only people who seemed genuinely happy were the ones who walked into the classroom sure that they weren't going to do well enough on the final to get a decent grade. This had been a moment of pure grace for them, undeserved pardon for their short comings. In the end the truth was that we all probably got better grades in the class than we were going to, after all, well prepared or not it is hard to be absolutely perfect. Still people were mad, it wasn't fair!
I have a third story about this. It is the one Jesus tells his disciples about the same theme.
There was a man who needed workers for his vineyard and he went out early and he found some eager and ready workers, he negotiated a wage with them and they went to the field. Then later he saw more workers, we don't know where they were in the morning, maybe they were there, maybe they weren't but he sent them out to the field anyway and again later he did the same. What this resulted in was some people working a very full day, some working a half day and some working only for about an hour. But when time came to be paid, he paid them all the same! The same wage that he had negotiated for a full day's work with the ones who worked in the hot sun all day. And he paid the ones who worked the least first, in front of everyone else! And he paid them just as much! It wasn't fair!
Jesus says it is like this with the kingdom of God. This is how God reigns in our lives.
People hate this! They get angry at God about this, they try to make certain rules that everyone has to follow no matter what so that everyone gets the same. But this isn't how God works. God welcomes in the new folks with the old. God offers complete love and grace and forgiveness to the most eager and the most reluctant of us. God offers love and grace and forgiveness to the most frustrating of us. This isn't fair. It is hard to hear. But Jesus doesn't really care about that.
This is the scandal of the gospel for us. It is the reason we make so many unspoken and spoken rules about what a Christian looks or acts like. Why we are happy to welcome certain people through our doors and ready to exclude others. It is because we feel like we are the ones who prepared for the test and gosh darn it why should God be willing to love and pardon everyone the same? Why does God have to keep loving someone who unfairly moved ahead of me in the line for a promotion? Why does God have to keep loving a spouse who had an affair? Why does God have to keep loving someone who hurt my son or daughter or mother or father or me? Why does God love people who do terrible damage to our world just as much as God loves those who work for peace and health? It isn't fair! God isn't fair.
But God also isn't wrong. God knows how much it means for someone who couldn't find work at all day after day, after day some much that he is worn down, weak and tired to once get a full days' wage for just an hour's work. God knows how much it meant to a city condemned, without chance of pardon to be given a second chance. God knows how much it means to someone who came completely unprepared and overstressed to pass a test with an A. God knows how much it means to us on the day that we are that unrepentant city, or that jobless laborer or that misled soul; on that day, that we are completely unable to be worthy or ready for grace, love or pardon to receive it anyway.
As Lutherans we say that we are saved by grace. Grace isn't something that we feel like we need every single day of our lives but that isn't why it is there, it is there to save us on the one day of our life that we really need it, the day when it is all that we get to fall back on. When it is more than we ever deserved or expected. Grace is unfair because grace is God's gift to those who don't deserve it. I know that you are worried so I will say Grace doesn't give us an excuse to get off the hook, to stop doing what we know is required of us by God. I would have been a fool to never prepare for a final exam again, I wouldn't have made it far in college but on that one day I experienced pure grace. And I learned how to share grace with others. We would all be fools to remain lost and distant from God because we believe in grace but on the days in our lives when we can't find hope no matter how we search, we have the promise of pure grace. And on the days when we need it less we have it as a gift to share, we get to speak the words of pardon or of hope or of love. We get to be, we have to be, the man who pays all of the laborers the same in the name of our graceful God.
This is good news. Thanks be to God. Amen
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