Justice and Generosity

A Sermon preached on Sunday September 20 at St. Augustine’s, WI

Jonah 3:10-4:11, Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

In my function as president of the German Council of Churches, I recently co-signed a statement on the results of the elections in Saxony-Anhalt together with the chairs of the Council of the Protestant Church and the chair of the German RC Bishop’s Conference. And just yesterday, at the meeting of the CAECG (the body that brings together all the Anglican and Episcopal Churches in Germany) we also agreed on a statement expressing our concern about the election results. I’ve already received a couple of angry letters in my ACK function (sadly some with the sort of language that we already know from Facebook comments). The factual arguments in those responses were that Churches must stay out of politics: no we can’t, not if we take our responsibility as Christians seriously. That churches must respect democratic decisions: yes, we must, but we also believe in fundamental, inalienable and God-given rights that cannot be changed, even by a majority. Or that churches are all one-sided, with a socialist/green bias: we are not, though it is true that the church leadership, and the regular attendants tend to be a little more progressive than the more nominal members. But all sorts of opinions are held, it is important that we continue to accept them, and are always open to dialogue, now more than ever!

But especially for us as Anglican/Episcopal churches in Germany, the victory of a far-right party, that sees foreigners mainly as a problem to be solved, is of significant concern. Our congregations are mostly made up of people who have moved to Germany from around the world. Some have come to be with their families, some with their companies or to find work, some to study, and some as refugees. As Christians we believe that all human beings are made in God’s image and have an inherent value. Policies that aim to discriminate against groups of people based on their origin, status, religion, or disability are simply not consistent with the message of the Gospel.

The AfD, like similar parties in many of the countries we come from, is successful as it is able to tap into a deep well of worry and discontent, some very genuine – there are a lot of things to be worried about right now with war in Europe, and hybrid attacks in Germany (no comparison of course to the real and deadly attacks in and on Ukraine), AI as a possible job-killer and now according to some developers and even the CEO’s of AI companies a risk and danger to us all, and significant issues around the equitable distribution of wealth  and power (sadly often identical) and concrete economic issues around the cost of living in general and the cost, and availability of housing. But some discontent is manufactured, some exaggerated and used to sell simple solutions, most of which involve identifying a group of people or an institution supposedly responsible for the problem, scapegoating. These include the EU, the existing political parties – all of them, from left to right, a single cartel, the press and of course illegal immigrants or even all immigrants not coming from a supposedly common / shared culture.

There is nothing wrong with discontent as such. On the contrary, discontent shakes and wakes us, and causes us to make a difference. Discontent ensures that topics that might be neglected until they are too late are made public and dealt with, and yes that can include regulating and controlling immigration – in a humane manner. As Christians we can never really be content, because we know the world is not the way God intends it to be. We cannot be content with hatred and hypocrisy, we cannot be content with poverty, we cannot be content with war, we cannot be content with anything that denigrates and degrades our universal humanity. Discontent points us toward the essential work of discipleship.

But some kinds of discontent are harmful, both to those who feel it and to the society they are part of. And this is not new. Both our OT and Gospel readings today address discontent that is unhealthy, spiritually and physically. Jonah, the man who was always running away from God, is very discontented. He had been sent not to warn Nineveh of impending destruction, but to proclaim that destruction: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” he cries out. (Jonah 3:4) And now he is very unhappy because God – seeing the inhabitants’ willingness to repent and change their ways - is going to spare them: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. …. That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; 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.” (4:1-2) That’s a strange thing to get angry about, but he is so angry that he even wants to die. Why, where’s the disadvantage? Is Jonah going to be destroyed because Nineveh is saved? No, he is not. He just does not think they deserved it, Nineveh stands for Assyria, an ancient enemy of Israel. Surely, they can’t be the object of God’s love, surely that is restricted to us!

Our gospel text for this Sunday gives us another angle on human discontent. In Jesus’s parable, we meet some day laborers. They are economically vulnerable and socially marginal — and they will have represented the majority of people of that time, dependent on a day’s payment to survive and to be at the mercy of a landowner. In the story, the day laborers work for various amounts of hours yet are all paid the same (not a generous amount by the way, just enough for a family to live on for one day). Complaints and discontent start when the first-hired day laborers notice that the last-hired day laborers are paid the same wage as them. It’s not fair – and a sense of fairness is deep rooted in our psyche: “That’s not fair” is a common complaint from children! Those who worked fewer hours should not be compensated the same as those of us who have worked all day. But again, where is the disadvantage? Did the first laborers get paid less because everyone was treated equally and given enough to survive? No, but they just do not think the others deserve it, they did not work as hard or so long.

I can think of a couple of contemporary examples in our public discourse. Why do people who have no work (and, so the claim, even do not want to work) get paid as much as those who do? It’s not true for one thing. On their own, benefits are not as much as a working wage, and our system also ensures that working wages that are too low are topped up (though we could also ask why a wage is being paid that is not enough to live on). And ensuring people in need survive does not take anything away from anyone else. Why do refugees get free housing, when we can’t find or afford ours? Refugees do get free accommodation to prevent them living on the street (as is the case in some countries). But do you really want a bed in a room shared with 4 or more others? And does this take housing away from everyone else? There is a problem to be solved, there is a reason for discontent. But it’s not the poor and the refugees or other homeless who are the cause …

Let’s look again at how God reacts in these two stories from Jonah and Matthew’s Gospel:

And God said (Jonah 4:11) “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 reminds Jonah – and the readers/listeners – that God is a God of all people and that God’s primary motivation is love and compassion. The Book of Jonah is a sort of parable, written at a time after the return from exile when many people in Israel, especially those in power, wanted separation and exclusion. Just read the Books of Ezra and Jeremiah written about the same time and in which anyone marrying “foreign women” is accused of being unfaithful to God: In contrast, the Book of Jonah describes a just but also generous, inclusive, and expansive God.

And in Matthew’s Gospel, the landowner’s response to the complaints is to say (Matthew 20:13-15) “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. …. Or are you envious because I am generous?” Matthew paints a picture of a generous, inclusive and expansive God. We interpret the parable as being about salvation. God will show equal generosity both to those who have always been part of God’s people, and to the new believers, the “latecomers,” the new Gentile Christians. We can also apply it to individual Christians, the earlier we find our way to faith the better, our lived will be richer for it. But it is never too late to turn to God. At the same time, the underlying story also has value and reminds us, like Jonah, that justice is never diminished by generosity and that helping those in need to survive does not harm us!

Being discontented is very human, and discontent with want, war, and injustice is a good thing! But we cannot let ourselves be motivated by fear or envy or a false sense of scarcity. Instead let a true sense of justice, generosity and gratitude move us. We trust in God’s unlimited goodness and in the provision that flows from God’s own life and self and is most perfectly expressed in Jesus Christ.

In that sense, as our opening prayer told us, let us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but love things heavenly …. through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.