What kind of a God do you believe in?

Sermon preached at St John the Baptist, Ermine; Trinity 15, 24/09/17

Readings: Jonah 3:10 – 4:11; Matthew 20: 1-17

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Salvation

What kind of a God do you believe in?

Now I’m going to ask a slightly different question.

What kind of a God do you want to believe in?

I think Jonah’s answer to those two questions would have been very different.

We’ve heard him talking to God – he says “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Those sound like good things. But Jonah says that’s the reason he didn’t want to do what God called him to. That’s the reason he ran away (and got into that whole mess with the whale). God is gracious and merciful, always ready to listen to an apology and forgive, no questions asked. And Jonah is not a fan.

Jonah wants a god who is just. A god who does things by the book. A god who is scrupulously fair, who pays back everybody exactly what they deserve, who rewards the good and punishes the bad – and instead, he gets God. Who is gracious and merciful and generous. Who is always ready to give people more than they deserve, to forgive the bad, to forget about punishment.

Jonah is not on his own. If we’re really honest, I think we can all sometimes want a god who does things by the book. Who gives us a list of rules, with clear punishments for doing things wrong and clear rewards for doing things right. Wouldn’t that be good?

But that’s not God. God isn’t a policeman or a lawyer. God is generous, and gracious, and merciful.

In the story Jesus tells about the employer and the employees, the people who started work early in the morning are thinking like Jonah. They’re expecting things to be fair. They started work at six AM and worked hard for 12 hours – they deserve loads more pay than the people who rocked up at 5 pm and helped out for an hour.

And that makes sense. Obviously you should get paid more for 12 hours than for 1 hour.

Obvious to us – but not to God.

When I was little, I used to complain to my mum that such-and-such wasn’t fair. I’ll give you one guess what she said in reply?

That’s right – “life isn’t”. And it’s not.

But more importantly – more shockingly – Jesus says God is not fair!

Be honest with yourself. What does it make you feel like to hear that God is not fair?

I think it’s a really hard thing to hear. It can make us angry or anxious. We are so used to a system which tells us we get rewarded for what we do – and punished for what we do wrong – that it’s really shocking to hear that God doesn’t work like that. We live in a society that talks about strivers and skivers – strivers who deserve to be supported and skivers who don’t deserve any help – and yet here we have God rewarding the strivers and the skivers equally. Here we have God saying there’s no such thing as deserving or not deserving my help. Everyone deserves it. Whatever they do or don’t do. Or rather, nobody deserves it – but God wants to give it anyway.

That’s what Jonah realised – he realised that being sent to Nineveh would mean that God forgave the people there. And he didn’t want any part of it. Jonah is a particularly mean-spirited person... but I think we can all be a bit more like Jonah than we’d like to admit. We can be like those jealous workers, standing in the corner grumbling to each other that it’s not fair. Saying that we deserve more than someone else. Playing along with the way society divides people into the deserving (that’s us!) and the undeserving (that’s people who aren’t like us!)

But if we do, God says to us “I choose to give them the same as I give you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

It’s up to God to choose how to be God – and God chooses to be generous. Unfair. In God’s rulebook, there’s no such thing as deserving. We all get the same – God’s welcome and invitation, regardless of what we do or don’t do.

God is not fair – God is generous.

And it’s a good thing too – because if God played by the rules, those rules would mean we all ended up being punished.

So even though it might shake our foundations – it is a good thing that God is generous and merciful.

If you’re thinking this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. It’s the entire basis of the Christian faith – the idea called grace. Grace means that, even though none of us deserve it, God welcomes us in. God’s unfair like that. And it means that when we say “us” we mean EVERYBODY. Even though nobody deserves it, God welcomes everybody in.

Grace given to us means grace given to everyone.

God’s unfair like that.

So if you are the kind of person who tends to think "I'm not very good. I'm not sure I'm worth it. I don't think I deserve God's welcome" - then God says YOU, just as you are, are welcome!

And if you are the kind of person who tends to think "I'm not sure about them. I don't think God approves of what they're doing. I don't think God wants them." - well then, God says to you that THEY ARE WELCOME.

God gives grace. To us and to everybody. God welcomes us - and us includes them.

And if we believe in this God – this unfair, generous, gracious God – we have to let God be God. We have to stop grumbling. We have to listen when God calls us to share the good news of grace – of freely given, unfair generosity – with people who might not deserve it.

Because we don’t deserve it either. That’s the whole point.

And that means that we need to get rid of the whole idea of being deserving.

Because God’s welcome for everyone isn’t just a church idea.

God’s welcome and generosity and grace aren’t just about who gets forgiven, who goes to heaven. God’s welcome and generosity and grace are about the way we need to live.

We need to get rid of the idea that there are people like us who deserve to be valued, and people who are different who don’t. Whether that’s people from other countries, or people without jobs, or people who don’t work hard. God’s welcome and generosity and grace are for everyone – so when God welcomes us, God asks us to join in. We are people welcomed by God and that means we need to live in a way that is welcoming, generous, gracious. Not just in church – though that’s important! Not just by telling people that God forgives them. But in our whole lives. When we’re at the lunch club or at work or with our relatives. We need to show in how we are that God welcomes everyone and so do we. Everyone deserves God’s help and so everyone deserves our time, our welcome and our love. Nobody is outside God’s welcome and grace, and that means nobody can be outside the reach of our care.