Good Shepherd Sermons & Blogs

When you’re talking about God, metaphors about working for what we deserve just … fall apart.

2026-51
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20A-tr 2), September 20, 2026

Jonah 3:10-4:11; Psalm 145:1-8; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

I’m a big fan of the Book of Jonah. It’s a funny little story: only four chapters long, easy to read in one brief sitting, accessible to people of all ages. While Jonah is counted among the twelve minor prophets of the Old Testament, he didn’t have a hand in writing his own book. It’s a story about Jonah and starring Jonah—a parable, really—written long after Jonah’s lifetime by an anonymous author.

Jonah also shows up as a character in the Second Book of Kings, where he is a prophet who apparently doesn’t do a very good job, as the prophet Amos correctly opposes him. This is probably where the character of Jonah comes from, since the author doesn’t make him look very good. The point of the book, though, is not to speak ill of Jonah, but to lead us to question our own behavior.

The supposed bad guys in Jonah’s story are the Assyrians, an ancient people that conquered much of the Middle East. To them, Israel was an annoying little country that they would eventually wipe off the map. Talking about Assyria in ancient Jewish circles might be like talking about Nazi Germany now: it was a vicious force of conquest, fascism, and genocide that may have been defeated before, but the evil spirit of it was always ready to rise again through some other means. So Assyria was still reviled among Jews when the Book of Jonah was finally written, several hundred years after Assyria no longer existed.

In the story, God sends Jonah to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, to urge them to repent of their evil ways. Now, there’s nothing Jonah would like more than to see his enemies suffer at the hands of an angry God. They’re so evil that severe punishment would be the clearest sign that God is fair and just. Anyway, for reasons that come clear later, Jonah doesn’t want this assignment. He runs away to get out of this job. But after God intervenes using the digestive tract of a fish, Jonah grumblingly goes to Nineveh after all. He goes to the center of the city and announces that the city will be overthrown in forty days’ time. He doesn’t even mention God.

Then, all of a sudden, contrary to all logic, the Ninevites repent of their sins—very sincerely. They’re so into it that even their animals repent. Jonah has suddenly become the most efficient, most effective prophet in history!

So God doesn’t punish the Ninevites at all. God forgives them for everything they’ve ever done. And that’s what leads up to today’s reading.

What is Jonah’s reaction to this smorgasbord of forgiveness? Anger! Rage! Jonah calls God on the carpet: “I knew it! I knew you were like this, always ready to extend mercy to the guilty people! This is why I ran away in the first place! How could I allow you to subvert justice like this? I’m not going anywhere until you smite them!”

So Jonah sits and sulks. Oh, thinks God, he’ll be so uncomfortable there! I’d better provide some shade. A big bush suddenly sprouts up to shield Jonah from the hot sun. And immediately Jonah feels better.

Hmmm, God smiles slyly. Let’s see what we can mess with here. And God sends a worm to kill the bush, and immediately it withers away. Then God sends a hot wind out of the desert, and the sun beats down on Jonah’s head again. And Jonah cries out to God, “You know what? Just kill me now.”

“Really?” says God. “Because this bush died, you also want to die?”

“YES!” Jonah puffs. “If you had just destroyed the city like you said you would, I wouldn’t have had to sit in the sun like this. When you sent the bush, for a minute there I thought you were on my side … but then you yanked the bush away. What’s the point of anything?”

The point, of course, is that Jonah feels worse about the death of a bush than about the potential deaths of over a hundred thousand people!

So we also need to ask ourselves: How do we feel about our enemies? Do we want them destroyed? Or do we want them to become better people? What if they did become better people but later betrayed us again? Could we say to God “I told you so”?

Well, how would we like our enemies to feel about us? If an enemy were to forgive you for something you did that was legitimately wrong, but then you messed up again … should they keep giving you another chance?

If you want to keep asking this and other related questions, I’m excited to tell you that we’re going to delve into the Book of Jonah more deeply in a couple weeks. Beginning October 7, my wife Christy and I will teach a Wednesday night class on Zoom called “The What and Why of the Bible.” And we’ll begin by talking about Jonah. I hope you’ll sign up—there’s a link in your service leaflet!

Last week we heard Jesus’ parable about a guy who was forgiven a ten-million-dollar debt but found himself unable to endure the torture of having been forgiven. So it’s no surprise that Jesus also loves the Book of Jonah. At one point when the religious powers-that-be subject Jesus to harsh criticism, Jesus basically throws the Book of Jonah at them and says, “You need to re-read this! Look, do you want sinners to be forgiven or not?”

Today, Jesus tells another parable—a parable about a landowner hiring day laborers. He puts out the call for workers, and some arrive at the beginning of the day. He offers to pay them the customary daily wage. Later in the day he needs more workers, so he finds more workers and offers to pay them “whatever is right.” This happens several times, until finally he’s rounding up people to work for only a single hour.

At the end of the working day, the landowner pays all the workers exactly the same amount of money: a full day’s wages!

Is this fair? Everything in our being cries out that it is not. Why would the landowner pay the people who worked for only one hour the same amount as those who worked all day in the hot sun?

Well, maybe God is just … unfair.

Jesus gives us this parable about money and employment and figuring out what is owed to us. I think his point is to demonstrate that when you’re talking about how God operates, any metaphor about money and transactions and working for what we deserve just … falls flat. As long as we keep thinking about God in transactional terms, we also will feel put out.

Because God doesn’t give us what we deserve. God gives us what we need. Every one of those day laborers needed to go home and feed their families that night. This employer was the only one hiring that day, and it took him a long time to find all the people he wanted to put to work. What good would it do to pay some of them one-twelfth of the daily wage, and to send their children to bed with empty bellies?

What if we all lived our lives like this landowner? What if we as a community freely shared with one another the extra that we don’t need, simply because other people need it more? What if we decided not to worry about whether people have worked for their necessities? What if we just gave and gave because we are all God’s beloved creatures?

All right, I hear the objection rising up in you right now: that would be socialism! Well, I’m not advocating for a government program. Jesus sure didn’t operate that way. Jesus lived under the oppressive Roman Empire, against which the Jews eventually revolted, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in the year 70. But during his human life, Jesus specifically discouraged the idea of armed revolt leading to government-organized utopia. He allowed himself to be killed instead. That’s hardly instinctive.

Now, Christians can and should urge our government to be helpful in ways we perceive as Christian. It’s our duty to work tirelessly for governmental reforms that will reduce poverty and oppression. So vote, and don’t let anyone prevent you! But as those who work in the world in Jesus’ name, we don’t insist on having a “Christian nation”; that’s way too close to the very thing Jesus was avoiding. Instead we just need to live like Christians. Throughout history, all over the world and in many different political situations, the Church’s mission has been to reconcile the world to God and people to one another. This begins by taking care of our neighbors—providing for their needs without even questioning who deserves what. As Christians, this will always be our work, no matter what our government looks like.

We all have bodily needs like food and safety, but we have spiritual needs as well. And as Jesus ministers to his people, he sees that one of their deepest spiritual needs is forgiveness. Israel is historically invested in the freedom that results when debts are erased, monetary or otherwise, regardless of who is in debt to whom and why. The focus here is not on record-keeping, but on the abundant life that God wants for us.

There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Justice means getting what you deserve. Mercy means not getting what you deserve. Grace means getting what you don’t deserve.”

In other words, justice is the gift that makes clear to us how badly we have treated others. Mercy is the gift that meets our guilt with a fresh start. And grace is the gift that unites justice and mercy and then goes beyond. Grace is the contagious force of love that transforms human hearts. Grace is the life Jesus invites us into.

We need to know what justice looks like so that we will value mercy. And we need to embrace mercy so that we can begin to understand the world of grace in which God functions. But are we willing to deal with the discomfort of people not getting what they deserve—and even getting what they don’t deserve? That’s the question.