Your eyes and heart, how you see and love, are precious to God because they directly affect the joy of your life, and God desires abundant life for you now and always.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 25 A
Texts: Matthew 20:1-16; Jonah 3:10 – 4:11
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
What’s baffling is that everyone in these stories shares the same situation.
None of the people who, in Jesus’ story, came to the little village marketplace looking for day jobs woke up knowing if they’d be able to feed their families that day. Everyone hoped someone was hiring that day, hoped somehow they’d get hired. As the last ones hired said, they weren’t working only because no one had hired them all day. And as 5:00 approached, they despaired that even if they did get hired, the money wouldn’t provide the day’s meal.
All these workers would have known each other. Known their children. Shared an existence on the edge of survival. So why do the early workers resent that their neighbors’ children would also get to eat that day?
As for Jonah, hatred for your enemy, centralized on their capital city, is so common in human history as to be hardly worth mentioning. Of course Jonah hates the Ninevites; all good Israelites probably did.
But Jonah’s real anger is at God forgiving them of their wickedness. Even though Jonah himself has just disobeyed God so significantly he was thrown into the sea during a raging storm and swallowed by a fish as punishment, and then experienced God’s forgiveness. Why would he be angry if others received that, too?
Matthew’s community clearly struggled with how to live in God’s grace.
In the past few weeks, we’ve heard Jesus teach a process of reconciliation, tell a parable of an unforgiving slave, and today a parable of these workers.
The last two weeks the problem was, if you’re completely forgiven by God, why won’t you offer the same love and forgiveness to others? Today it’s even more troubling: if God chooses to offer complete and utter love and grace to all, why would you be angry? It’s not only about whether you forgive, Jesus says. It’s also whether you resent God forgiving someone else. Loving someone else. Blessing someone else.
And if you think someone doesn’t deserve that, if you resent that, why? What’s at stake for you in someone else’s grace? Jesus asks.
These stories hit far too close to home.
We live in a deeply polarized society. The divide between people on so many things, the inability to have civil conversations even with family in these days, is as great as many of us have ever experienced.
It’s not new that we disagree with other people over policy questions, the direction of government, over safety nets versus bootstraps. That’s always been the political reality in this country, in public or at home.
What is viscerally different now is that hating the other person is now our society’s way. It’s not enough to disagree. People loathe those on the other side of issues, mock them, attack them. They nurse that hatred and spew it in social media, on street corners, even in family conversations. Like Jonah, they’d like to sit and watch God’s destruction come on them. Like the early workers, they wish people would get their fair deserts.
I say “they” do this. Let’s be honest. We do this. If any two of us here sat down and talked about this, we’d likely both realize there were people in this country whom we despise, hate. Even wish ill on.
So, Jesus and Jonah’s author are actually talking about Jesus’ hardest commandment: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you – or others.” If someone enrages you so much you can’t think well of them, you don’t want good to happen to them, that person is precisely who you are commanded to pray for. To love.
And our problem with such love is an illness of both our eyesight and our hearts.
“Are you envious because I am generous?” is actually a paraphrase.
Jesus literally says “is your eye evil because I am good?” Is your eye bad, diseased because of my goodness? And the owner genuinely wants to heal the eyes of the early workers. He explains they got a full day’s pay, as agreed. They and their children will eat tonight. But he wants them to see, to understand, that he wants everyone’s family to eat that night.
And God tries to help Jonah see why God doesn’t want to destroy a city of 120,000 people and a bunch of animals. God hopes Jonah will see in his sadness over the loss of a shady bush how God might see the loss of such a city. God wants Jonah to understand. To see as God sees.
And in both stories, the hearts of Jonah and the early workers need healing.
God really wants Jonah to care about the Ninevites as much as he cares about his little shade bush, to have empathy for these people who are repenting, turning to God. The owner really wants the first workers to care about their neighbors, to imagine what it would have been like had they not been picked early and had to sit in the square all day, desperation climbing with every passing hour.
When Jesus says “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (or others),” he really wants your eyes and your heart to be changed.
Now, you know God’s promises well enough to know God gladly will heal you.
God will give you vision to see as God sees, God will create a clean, new heart in you. That can be your prayer, your desire from God.
But you might ask, “why would it be?” What difference does it make if you or I hate someone who we think clearly deserves it? Who cares if we secretly wish God’s punishment on someone? We’re good people, we love our friends and family, do good in the world. Why would we need or want such healing?
Because God cares about your heart and eyes. If they are not well, you are not well and that matters to God. If you have corners of hate in your heart, they will eat away and gradually deaden you. If you have bad eyesight, you will see less and less like God. And eventually you will be diminished, less than you could be. And that would break God’s heart.
Don’t you remember how all these words began a few weeks ago? God is a shepherd who cannot abide losing even one of one hundred sheep. “Some” of God’s flock safe and healthy and whole is just not enough. Your eyes and your heart are precious to the Triune God, because you are precious to God.
We know that faith in Christ isn’t an individualized proposition.
We hear again and again from Scripture that we are called into a faith community, we are called to be Christ for the sake of the world. And that is all true. But for today, just trust this, too: You are precious to the Triune God, and beloved. And if you’ll let God heal your eyes and give you a new heart, you will find the life God has dreamed for you since before you were born. The abundant life Jesus came to bring, filled with joy in all God’s children being held in God’s blessing and love. And yes, you’d even be a blessing to others with God’s grace as well.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
