Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity 2017

Jonah 3:10-4:11 (and Philippians 1:21-30 and Matthew 20:1-16)

When the great prophet Moses asked God to show him what he was really like, ‘The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed,

“The LORD, the LORD [that is, Yahweh—a name, not a title; repeated, for emphasis], a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.”’ (Exodus 34:6, 7)

This is the fundamental revelation of who God is and what God is like, and these verses are quoted over and over, about God, and back to God, more than any other in the Bible. Jonah throws them back in God’s face in our first reading, disgusted that God should be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, ready to forgive. Of course, he wants this for himself, and for his own people: but not for the enemies of his people. That is unacceptable. If this is what God is really like, Jonah would rather be dead.

The Book of Jonah is like one of those sets of Russian nesting dolls. In fact, it is like one of those sets of nesting dolls, inside another, larger, set of nesting dolls.

The backdrop is this: God chose one people from among the nations, through whom to bless all nations; but the people he chose were serially unfaithful. Eventually, God appoints David as king; and David’s son Solomon is king after him; but under Solomon’s son, the kingdom divides, north and south—Israel and Judah—sometimes in uneasy alliance, sometimes in open conflict. In the north, there is an unbroken line of kings who lead the people away from God, until eventually Israel is swallowed-up by the Assyrians (whose capital is Nineveh).

Assyria, in turn, is swallowed-up by the Babylonians.

In the south, the line of kings who lead the people away from God is occasionally interrupted by a king who calls them back to covenant faithfulness. It is never lasting, but it does delay the fall of Jerusalem by 135 years. Assyria fails to swallow them up; but Babylon succeeds, and carries the people of God off into exile.

Babylon, in turn, is swallowed-up by the Persians. And at this point, the king over the Persian empire sends the people of God back to Jerusalem, in three waves. They are, so to speak, vomited up out of the belly of a great fish.

Persia, in turn, is swallowed-up by the Greeks. Greece, in turn, is swallowed-up by the Romans. And Rome, in turn, is swallowed-up by the triumph of Jesus, by the conversion of the Roman empire, which brings this biblical sequence—although not history, and not the ultimate purposes of God in Christ Jesus—to an end.

The prophets understood the rise and fall of nations to be appointed by God, in exercising his slow-but-sure judgement on injustice. The Book of Jonah sits within that worldview. Jonah was a prophet who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel at a time when it felt relatively secure, under its longest-reigning king (by quite some distance), Jeroboam II. Nonetheless, Israel was rotten: God sent prophets, but would they listen? Meanwhile, Assyria was on the rise, a definite threat, notoriously violent: would God intervene?

We don’t know when the story of the prophet who was sent to take the message of impending judgement to Nineveh first began to circulate by word-of-mouth, or when it was first written down. But we do know that, unlike the people of Nineveh in the story, God’s people didn’t repent. We do know that they were swallowed-up, and eventually vomited up again; and we also know that they kept telling the story, in trying to make sense of their experience: even Jesus, living eight centuries later and in the Roman empire, refers to it.

All of which brings us to our second set of Russian dolls. God instructs Jonah to go to Nineveh. When Jonah runs away, in the opposite direction and to the ends of the earth, God appoints a storm to surround him, and then a great fish to swallow him, and then a plant to shelter him, and then a worm to attack the plant, and then a hot east wind to beat down on Jonah’s head. God, we are told, appoints these things—a storm and a fish and a plant and a worm and a wind—to fulfil his purposes, just as he appoints kings and empires.

In other words, the story of Jonah is the story of the people of God, over and over: the iniquity of the parents being visited on the children, until it is dealt with, until they might truly be set free.

The iniquity is in wanting to keep God’s goodness for ourselves, while demanding his judgement on others. Jesus addresses a variation on the theme in our Gospel reading, where the hired labourers grumble against the landowner, failing to share his compassion—his insistence that those without security of employment do not go hungry—envious because he is generous.

If we are honest, I think this is still a work in progress.

The Book of Jonah ends with God restating what Jonah has thrown back in his face: that who God is, is who God is, in relation to all people, everywhere. God is concerned about Nineveh. God’s fundamental attitude towards her hundred and twenty thousand citizens is mercy [the word comes from the root, to carry in the womb] and grace. God longs to show steadfast love and faithfulness. This love is expressed in great patience; but at the same time, this love will not turn a blind eye to injustice—for how can genuine love do that? The cry against wickedness will not be ignored; but God is also quick to respond when the wicked repent. This is the scope of God’s concern for Nineveh, that great city.

Might God say to us today, should I not be concerned with Sunderland, that great city, in which there are almost two hundred and ninety thousand persons who do not know my concern for them?

The motto of our city is Nil desperandum auspice Deo: ‘Do not despair, but put your trust in God.’ This is, of course, the advice of the king of Nineveh to his people, when confronted with their own wickedness. It is more often shortened to Nil desperandum, which is, at best, a whistling in the dark.

What might happen, were we to share God’s concern for the people of our city?

What might happen, were we to proclaim that concern—a concern in which even the bad news is good news, and the good news is very good indeed—to all we meet?

The day is far gone, but it is not yet too late. The landowner comes looking again and again, calling labourers into his vineyard.