RECEIVING GRACE ... GRACEFULLY

[We tried something different this week in church.  I was delighted by the results]

We‘re going to do something a little different today with our scripture reading.  Actually, we’re going to hear three readings – two from the Hebrew Scriptures, and one from the New Testament.  All three are choices from the lectionary readings for today.

All three are fairly lengthy, so all together they will take a little more of our time today than we’re used to – with the result that I’m going to be speaking myself a lot less.  I’m not going to lead you to the answers as I usually try to do, because I want you to have a chance to give yours.  Yours might be different than mine.

I’m going to ask you to listen to them carefully and see what you think is the reason we’re reading all three.  I could certainly find more stories to include here, but I believe these three will be enough to make our point.

Here’s your starting point:  What do these three have in common?

Exodus 16:2-15
 
The people spoke bitterly against Moses and Aaron.
“Oh, that we were back in Egypt,” they moaned, “and that the Lord had killed us there!  For there we had plenty to eat.  But now you have brought us into this wilderness to kill us with starvation.”
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for them. Everyone can go out each day and gather as much food as he needs.  And I will test them in this, to see whether they will follow my instructions or not.  Tell them to gather twice as much as usual on the sixth day of each week.”
Then Moses and Aaron called a meeting of all the people of Israel and told them, “This evening you will realize that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt.  In the morning you will see more of his glory; for he has heard your complaints against him (for you aren’t really complaining against us—who are we?).  The Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening, and bread in the morning.  Come now before Jehovah and hear his reply to your complaints.”
So Aaron called them together and suddenly, out toward the wilderness, from within the guiding cloud, there appeared the awesome glory of Jehovah.
And Jehovah said to Moses, “I have heard their complaints.  Tell them, ‘In the evening you will have meat and in the morning you will be stuffed with bread, and you shall know that I am Jehovah your God.’”
That evening vast numbers of quail arrived and covered the camp, and in the morning the desert all around the camp was wet with dew; and when the dew disappeared later in the morning it left thin white flakes that covered the ground like frost.  When the people of Israel saw it they asked each other, “What is it?”
And Moses told them, “It is the food Jehovah has given you.


Jonah 3:10-4:11
God saw that the people of Nineveh had put a stop to their evil ways and he abandoned his plan to destroy them and didn’t carry it through.  This change of plans made Jonah very angry.  He complained to the Lord about it: “This is exactly what I thought you’d do, Lord, when I was there in my own country and you first told me to come here.  That’s why I ran away to Tarshish.  For I knew you were a gracious God, merciful, slow to get angry, and full of kindness; I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people.
“Please kill me, Lord; I’d rather be dead than alive when nothing that I told them happens.”
Then the Lord said, “Is it right to be angry about this?”
So Jonah went out and sat sulking on the east side of the city, and he made a leafy shelter to shade him as he waited there to see if anything would happen to the city.  And when the leaves of the shelter withered in the heat, the Lord arranged for a vine to grow up quickly and spread its broad leaves over Jonah’s head to shade him.  This made him comfortable and very grateful.
But God also prepared a worm!  The next morning the worm ate through the stem of the plant, so that it withered away and died.  Then when the sun was hot, God ordered a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah, and the sun beat down upon his head until he grew faint and wished to die.  For he said, “Death is better than this!”
And God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?”
“Yes,” Jonah said, “it is; it is right for me to be angry enough to die!”
Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry for yourself when your shelter is destroyed, though you did no work to put it there, and it is, at best, short-lived, so why shouldn’t I feel sorry for a great city like Nineveh with its 120,000 people  living in utter spiritual darkness?”
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Matthew 20:1-16
Here is another illustration of the Kingdom of Heaven. “The owner of an estate went out early one morning to hire workers for his harvest field.  He agreed to pay them a denarius a day – that’s equivalent to $20 in modern times.  
A couple of hours later he was passing a hiring hall and saw some men standing around waiting for jobs, so he sent them also into his fields, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day. At noon and again around three o’clock in the afternoon he did the same thing.
“At five o’clock that evening he was in town again and saw some more men standing around and asked them, ‘Why haven’t you been working today?’
“‘Because no one hired us,’ they replied.  “‘Then go on out and join the others in my fields,’ he told them.
“That evening he told the paymaster to call the men in and pay them, beginning with the last men first. When the men hired at five o’clock were paid, each received $20.  So when the men hired earlier came to get theirs, they assumed they would receive much more.  But they, too, were paid $20.
“They protested, ‘Those fellows worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as those of us who worked all day in the scorching heat.’
“‘Friend,’ he answered one of them, ‘I did you no wrong!  Didn’t you agree to work all day for $20? Take it and go.  It is my desire to pay all the same; is it against the law to give away my money if I want to?  Should you be angry because I am kind?’  And so it is that the last shall be first, and the first, last.”

This is what was presented at ‘in-person’ on Sunday.  I reminded the listeners that I had urged them to listen for what these three readings had in common -- then I sat back and asked for thoughts  from those present.  What followed was a very lively conversation.

The first thought offered was that these stories involved a lot of whining, complaining people and that they said nothing good about the people involved. I pointed out that these stories were presumably set centuries apart from each other – the Exodus happening sometime around 1400 BCE and the Jonah story occurring roughly around 700 BCE, while the vineyard story from Matthew would have taken place during the time of Jesus.

Someone then pointed out this must be common human behavior and it was noted that we hear plenty of similar stories still today.  Another person added that It seems to be the ones who already have enough, who are comfortable as they are – not those who are desperately poor or threatened – who complain the loudest. 

In each scripture story, no one was wronged, their needs were already being met (or in the  case of the Exodus story, they could reasonably expect that God would help based on their history), but in each story, the people involved acted like victims, regardless of the fact the God has always, so far, cared for them.

We talked for quite a long time about the similarities between people then and people now; about how attitudes like these cause so much friction and damage in the world today; and what we can  (or cannot) do to change these unhelpful responses.
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It was a very rewarding experiment – I believe we all learned from it (and I want to do it again!)


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