The answer has to do with the way God acts. And it is in today’s first lesson from Jonah and in the gospel that we have clues as to the answer. There is a sense that the economy of God turns the values of the world on their head. Or in other words we may expect God to be bound by the ways of the world but in fact he is not.

Let’s take a look at Jonah. The Book of the Prophet Jonah is little gem and is a great favorite what with the whale and with story of the Jonah’s sulks. At the heart of the prophecy is Jonah’s call to preach to the people of Ninevah in order for them to repent of their evil ways. Jonah is not impressed with God’s call. Why on earth should he waste his time preaching to that bunch of foreigners who lived in the heart of modern Iraq? Dear God they are not even Episcopalians! So the first part of Jonah tells of Jonah fleeing from his call by boat. That is where the whale comes in; he swallows Jonah when he is thrown overboard by the sailors who blame Jonah for the storm. God saves Jonah out of the whale’s belly and deposits him on dry land so he can fulfill his call. Reluctantly Jonah obeys and preaches to the Ninevites. To Jonah’s great annoyance the King and people of Ninevah listen to the message from God and in fact repent of their evil ways as a consequence of which God relents of the punishment he was going to inflict on them. Jonah is outraged by God’s mercy, by this extravagant and gracious act and has a fit of the sulks. Jonah is furious with God and withdraws to a shady place to see what happens. Note that while Jonah is very angry with God he acknowledges the very nature of God which he has seen in action: “for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” But seeing this love and mercy in action and especially with these undeserving foreigners is more that Jonah can bear. What have they done to deserve this treatment? They have not been faithful as we have been is the assumption. They have not kept the faith, kept Torah, all these years like us. So God plays a trick on Jonah and removes his shade so that Jonah suffers mightily in the hot Middle-Eastern sun. In response to God’s questions Jonah expresses a will to die. He just wants to give up. It is all too much. God has acted in such a way to demonstrate his care and compassion for all humankind; he shows abundant grace; unlimited grace in this instance to the people and indeed to the animals of Ninevah. “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?” God’s ways of acting are beyond our limited ways and perceptions.

In the Gospel we heard Jesus’ parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, perhaps more aptly named the Parable of the Generous Landowner. Once again the action of the landowner goes against what we would perceive as reasonable practice. Normally we would support equal pay for equal work. Our industrial relations system has that as a basic tenet. But the Landowner in this case turns the system on its head and upsets those who worked all day. It is not that they did not get what they agreed to work for. Just that those who worked for only a short time(through no fault of their own) got the same wage. This wage, “the usual daily wage” was the living wage or the subsistence wage, that is enough for a family to live on for a day. But this is not a parable about industrial relations or about equitable pay but about God. “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner” says Jesus. It is also a parable about relationships, in this case the relationships between on the one hand those who worked and the landowner and on the other hand between those who worked all day and those who only worked a short time. The landowner decides to treat all alike; to give everyone “the usual daily wage”. That is appropriate for those who worked all day but very generous to those who worked only a short time. But as the landowner said, it was his money to be generous with and it was not as if he was reneging on his agreement. But the other set of relationships is between those who worked long and hard and those who hardly worked at all. This is very like the Jonah situation. These latecomers surely don’t receive the same wage as we do who have sweated it out day after day?

But the point of the Jonah narrative and of the parable of Jesus as we also glimpsed in last Sunday’s parable of the Unforgiving Servant is that God is a God of grace, and mercy and compassion, which he exercises them in extravagant and surprising ways. We don’t sing “Amazing Grace” for fun. It is what we believe. After all we are here as recipients of God’s grace and how remarkable is that.

At the heart of the Gospel God becomes human in a tiny child, the baby of Bethlehem. We believe that this weak, tiny, vulnerable child, is God incarnate. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his Glory, the Glory of the Only Begotten Son of the Father” says John. It is because we believe in such a God who acts in such surprising and extravagant ways that we dare to baptize this tiny child today. For such is the economy of Grace. Thanks be to God.   Amen

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