Jonah 3:10-4:4 (NRSV Updated Edition)
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?”
Isaiah 55:6-9 (NRSV Updated Edition)
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Matthew 20:1-16 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“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.”
~
"If we were truly being honest, God is both a scandal and a supreme disappointment to most of us. We would prefer a God of domination and control to a God of allowing, as most official prayers make clear. Both God and the True Self need only to fully be themselves and generously show themselves. Then the major work is done. The Source will always flow out, through, and toward those who want it. ... To allow yourself to be grabbed and held by such a divine wholeness is a dark and dangerous risk, and yet this is exactly what we mean by “salvation.” We are allowing the Great Allower to allow us, even at our worst. We gradually learn to share in the divine freedom and must forgive God for being far too generous."
- Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, pg. 19
~
"Our strongest resistance to forgiveness is that it just isn’t fair. It blows apart everything we think we know and believe about the economics of life. We think everything has a price, or should. We instinctively keep a tally of what we owe and what is owed us. Usually the latter is much higher than the former. This tally makes up a huge amount of our identity, an identity that forgiveness shows to be totally false. The tally is a desperate attempt to separate ourselves from others by letting the figures on our running tally come between us and them. ...
"The Parable of the Vineyard Workers (Mt. 20:1-16) speaks to this resistance. The workers who worked all day grumble when they get only the day’s wage they agreed on after the workers called in at the last hour of the day got the same day’s wage. I think all of us identify with the grumbling workers. The master sees the problem and seems to shrug his shoulders and say with a divine smile: “This is how I operate. Get used to it.” God’s economy takes a lot of getting used to. We are wise to start practicing now."
- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God’s Desire, pp. 249-50
~
"“For many who are first will be last and the last will be first.” ... [This] little phrase is badly translated if we say “the first will be last and last will be first” - it's an English language approximation. Actually it says “all will be first-lasts and last-firsts.” In other words, there's something much much more interesting being taught here which is actually very much in line with our reading from Isaiah about my ways unimaginably greater than your way, and it's this that Jesus is bringing out ... as a way of illustrating all the strange 'upsets' that he's taught ... about all the people who are going to be inside his kingdom. It's all about the oddness of all of us, all those who might be insiders. ... Of all those who are going to be on the inside of this experiment it'll be a question of being 'first-lasters' and 'last firsters'. This is not so much a moralism as a teaching about discombobulation.
...
"Now as far as I can see, the point of this is to do with how we appreciate our relationship with others inside this project. All of us are 'first-lasts' and 'last-firsts' - there are elements in which some of us started very early and there are elements in which someone started very late and there are also elements in our lives which we are the ones who started late and others started much earlier. The problem is comparison. ...
"What he's suggesting is actually all those who are in inside this project have come to life in quite different ways, at quite different times, have let go of different things at different points, who found themselves called in in different ways. The biography of each one is astounding and unique... Everyone's inheriting the same, but everyone inherited a different way and through a different process. There are bits where we are 'last-firsters' and the bits where we are 'first-lasters' but the one thing we mustn't do is to allow ourselves to get caught up in jealousy about what is apparently being given to others, because that means we won't be able to appreciate what we're being given ourselves.
"I think that it's this sense that Jesus is so richly bringing out, that the life stories of those of us who are involved in this are going to be incommensurable one with each other. We've really no idea where we have been caught up in the coming into the kingdom, it's only after a long time that we may discover something that was part of our life and which suddenly blossoms into who we really are. All of these things are not to be measured in advance, not to be worked out by comparison. ... Just think how many ways we are dependent on comparison to judge our being brought into being our sons and daughters, and that's quite literally ... destroying our imagination of the goodness of the one who is trying to give us a gift.
"This for me is, if you like, this is the culmination of Jesus teaching on being on the inside of the life of the new creation coming into being... We're all screw-ups, we're all being called into being in rather extraordinary ways and finding ourselves on the insides of a process of being brought into being daughters and sons, [which is] the unique reward which is glory. And if we can begin to imagine how utterly astounding the lives, the patterns, the ways of being, are of our contemporaries, our friends, our enemies, those of whom we're jealous, just be able to sit back a little bit from our comparative jealousy, the insecurity, to be able to see where they are 'first-lasters' and 'last-firsters', just as we are 'last-firsters' and 'first-lasters' in different aspects of our lives.
"In that sense we might be able to come and enjoy [non-enviously] the sheer goodness, vivacity and strangeness of the one who is bringing us out of the corrupt and futile ways in which our world tends to curve down. That's what's being offered, and that's what Jesus is trying to bring out at the end of his, what's called ecclesiastical teaching - teaching on how it is that we are to live together in the coming into the new kingdom."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 25 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EBAaXdPtf8)
[Source of quotes from Richard Rohr and Andrew Marr, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper20a/]
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