Ruth was 85 years old when she left
this world. Her first husband had been an abusive alcoholic, so she
kicked his sorry butt to the curb and raised three children on her
own. She endured the gossip of the neighbors who, back in the day,
were censorious of a single, divorced woman. She worked six days a
week and never took a penny she hadn't earned herself. She raised her
children and cared for her aging mother. Eventually, she married a
nice widower who predeceased her by twenty years.
Ruth's daughter told me about the lady
hospice chaplain who visited her mother in the last weeks of Ruth's
life. One day, as the chaplain read from the Bible, Ruth looked up
from her bed and declared, “I'm just a speck of dirt. God is
everything.”
Sometimes I have to marvel at a
generation who worked so hard, endured so much, and yet felt no sense
of entitlement. Some day soon they will all be gone, and our nation
will be the poorer for the loss.
I see the scripture lessons appointed
for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost as dealing with our wounded
sense of entitlement. The hilarious book of Jonah is really a
remarkable writing. Not only is it a very funny story, but it is
almost revolutionary when viewed in the context of its time. My
friend Pastor Steve shared an interesting historical tidbit. It seems
that the Assyrians, whose capital city Nineveh was, had a reputation
for sadistic cruelty to the people they conquered which makes the
Nazis look like unruly Cub Scouts (Not that unruly Cub Scouts can't
be sadistically cruel, but you get the idea!). One can only imagine
how much the people of Israel hated the people of Nineveh for
what they had done to them in the days of conquest. Jonah going to
Nineveh would be just like a Holocaust victim preaching to Berlin in the days of the Third Reich. This makes God's inclusivity and pity seem all
the more radical, and Jonah's outrage at God's mercy seem all the
more understandable.
The scandal of this story is equal
parts God's profligate generosity and forgiveness and the hero's
unattractive bitterness—a bitterness which makes him embarrassingly
small-minded and silly.
Perhaps in our economy we are even more
scandalized by the appointed gospel lesson, Matthew 20:1-16. I can't
imagine a single union member who would be shouting “Amen!” to
this parable. The guys who worked only a few hours get the same pay
as the long-time employees..? That sucks! That's totally unfair—in
our small-minded and silly way of thinking, perhaps, but not in the
Kingdom of God.
“These last worked only one hour, and
you have made them the equal of us who have borne the burden of the
day and the scorching heat.” says a grumbling laborer in verse 12.
God's answer? Yes. Yes, I have made the least of you as important and
special in my eyes as the greatest. That's called grace.
To me, the great
pity of this story is for those guys whom the landowner hires at
five o'clock. When he asks them why they're standing idle, they
reply, “Because no one has hired us.” When I was a teacher in the
Los Angeles schools many years ago, I used to see groups of Mexican
guys standing on street corners in the mornings, waiting for some
gringo contractor to come by and hire them for a day of manual labor.
I often wondered what happened to the guys who weren't picked for
work that day. Did their families go hungry?
Anyone who has ever
been out of a job for any period of time can sure sympathize with the
guys who get hired last. They spent the whole day wondering if their
families would eat that night. They must have felt like crap, and
they would be grateful for anything that was offered to them
at the end of the day. But imagine their joy and relief at being
given a full day's pay! Contrast this with the bitterness of the guys
who were given a full days' pay for a full day's work. They should
have been grateful for the work, but their inflated sense of
importance robs them of contentment.
The joy of the Lord
comes only, I think, in acknowledging God's awesome goodness and
mercy, and our own unworthiness. Like Miss Ruth who called herself a
“speck of dirt,” Martin Luther's last written words were “It is
true: we are beggars.” This was his testimony to the unconditional
and unmerited grace of God. I get the feeling he died happy.
May you both live
and die in God's mercy and goodness. It's so extravagant! Thanks for
reading.
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