"Called to More: the God Who Isn't Fair" (September 20, 2026 Sermon)
/Called to More: the God Who Isn't Fair
Jonah 3:10-4:11
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”
Matthew 20:1-16
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
So what are we to do with a God who isn't fair? Or we could also ask, what is a God who isn't fair to do with us? That is what this parable invites us to wrestle with.
A Quiz on the Curve
As I wrestled with this parable this week, I was reminded of something that happened when I was a religion major at Presbyterian College in upstate South Carolina. I had a beloved religion professor named Peter Hobbie. If you've ever been to my office, you'll see a poster on my office door that says "Hobbie is my hero." If you've ever wondered who this person is and why it might come across as idolatrous, I get that. It's because he's one of the reasons I became a pastor. He was one of the people who taught me to love the Bible all over again. Of the eight semesters I was in college, I had him for seven of those eight. So I knew Hobbie really well, and he knew me well.
One thing he did in all his classes, no matter what class it was, was give a quiz every Friday, or Thursday, or whatever the last day of class was that week. There was always a quiz. It was super simple and covered whatever we learned that week. And he always graded the quiz on a curve. You all know what that means. If the highest grade is not a hundred, that grade gets bumped up to a hundred, and everybody else's grade gets bumped up the same, right? So if the highest score is a 95, that 95 becomes a hundred, and my 85 miraculously, graciously becomes a 90. That's how that worked.
So we decided we were gonna test Dr. Hobbie's fairness for one week. We decided that if we all collectively refused to take the quiz, we would all make what? Zeros. Which means the highest score would be zero, which means that score would get bumped up to a hundred, which means we would all make what? Hundreds, right? So we said, okay, we're gonna test the fairness of our beloved professor. And that's what we did. Throughout the week, we all talked, we got organized, and then the big day came. Hobbie came in and handed out the quizzes, and we all just sat there. We put our pencils down and sat in awkward silence. And he looked at us and said, "What the heck are you all doing?" And we said nothing. We nervously looked around the room to see if somebody was gonna chicken out, because we knew we had to stick together. If one person chickened out, he was gonna ruin it for everybody, and that person would automatically become the least popular person in that class.
Eventually, Hobbie said, "Oh, I see what's going on. I'm not gonna tell you whether this is gonna work or not until after you all have turned in your quizzes." So that's what we did. We all turned in our quizzes, held our breath, and he let us squirm for a bit. It was really funny. Then he took a moment, looked at us, and said, "Congratulations, you all just made a hundred." The second thing he said was, "I'm very proud of you for organizing and sticking with one another." Then the next thing he said: “This will work exactly once."
Now, there was probably a student in that classroom who was a little upset that we had spent so much time that week studying for that quiz. It may have been me. I don't remember. And yet that person, if it was me, got a hundred, so I really didn't have much to complain about. But those other people who didn't work as hard, well, that's just not... It's not fair. What do we do with a God who isn't fair?
The Pot-Stirring Landowner
I was thinking about that as I was thinking about the parable of the pot-stirring landowner. And the reason I call him a pot-stirring landowner is that if he had paid the people who had been there at the beginning of the day first, what would they have done? They would have strolled right along and never been any the wiser, right? But this landowner wanted to make a scene. He paid the people who had been there the shortest first, so that the people who had been there the longest saw exactly what happened, and boy, did they throw a pity party. "You made them equal to us? How very dare you," as Bingo and Bluey would say. How very dare you. And so they throw a pity party, right? Because the landowner is just not fair.
And then Bill did a great job reading another story in the Bible about someone who threw a pity party of all pity parties, right? Jonah wanted to see the fireworks. You all remember that story of Jonah. God called Jonah to go preach hellfire and brimstone to the Ninevites because they weren't acting right. And Jonah resisted, and then he spent three days in the belly of a what? Whale fish! No, it's not a whale; it's actually a fish. I know Dylan knows that because he's been studying for the Bible content exam for the past several months. But Jonah went through that ordeal in the belly of the fish, and he finally made it out, and he was ready to see the fireworks. And then what did God do? God had the audacity to change his what? His mind. Because God can do that.
And Jonah throws this huge pity party, and God kind of has fun with him, kind of messes with him. God raises this bush to give Jonah shade, and then the next day, what does God send to destroy the bush? A worm. This is just funny stuff, okay? God is messing with Jonah. Jonah throws this pity party, and I think that's why the people who put the lectionary together paired these two passages: because sometimes we don't know what to do with a God who isn't fair.
Not Fair, but Good
Going back to the parable, I want us to use an image of Lady Justice. Do we have any lawyers in the room? Okay, I know we have a couple. Yeah. What does Lady Justice look like? Is there someone with the last name Rodenbough who can tell me what Lady Justice looks like? Bo, what does Lady Justice look like? What is Lady Justice holding? [Bo Rodenbough: “Holding the scales of justice blindfolded.”]
Very good. She is holding the scales of justice and, most notably, is blindfolded, right? That is our idea of fairness or justice in this country as it pertains to courts of law. And I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing. But when we think of God, we often want to turn God into this sort of blind Lady Justice. That's not the God we find in this story of the parable of the pot-stirring landowner. That's not the God we find in Jonah. Instead of finding a God who is fair, we find a God who is good. And that's something to wrestle with this week.
One thing I learned about this parable is that the final line, when the landowner says, "Are you envious because I am generous?" is actually, in the Greek, translated as "Is your eye evil because I am good?" In the Greek, to be envious is to have an evil eye. To be envious is to see the world through the perspective of that unforgiving servant in last week's parable. Remember the one who was forgiven a bazillion dollars and then walked away immediately and threw his fellow slave into prison for owing him a measly 50 cents? Well, here at Guilford Park, we worship a God who is good. And that can be really offensive to some people, for all of us. I wrestle with it too.
One Vineyard, All of Us
But when you give your money, your time, your talents, when all of us pitch in together, no matter how long we've been in the vineyard, so to speak, we are investing in the kingdom of a God who isn't fair but is good. So no matter how long you've been here, whether you're older or younger, whether you vote one way or the other, no matter where you come from, we are all working in the same vineyard together. And it is going to take all of us, no matter how long we've been here, to do the work that God is calling us to do.
So this week, think to yourself: What do I do with a God who isn't fair? And how can I lean into a God who is good? And how can I share that goodness in any way that I can?
In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s beloved children, say: Amen.