Belonging in the Kingdom

Sermon 20 September, The Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity

Readings: Jonah 3.10-4.end; Philippians 1.21-end; Matthew 20.1-16

Theme: Belonging in the Kingdom.

Identity and belonging are powerful forces in society. One has only to consider the current issues around migration and the control of national borders to see this. Such matters touch upon a range of issues from economics to culture and social cohesion. What makes for an identity and what gives us a sense of belonging in a society are often complex matters which cannot be spoken about as if they were self-evident to all. We have to explore what they are constituted by and come to a common understanding gradually.

In the Bible these matters are also central. A central force field running through the Pauline letters, for example, is how the Jewish and the non-Jewish identities are to be reconceived in the light of the coming of Christ. When Paul speaks about there being no longer Jews and Gentiles, male and female, this does not mean that these identities are erased. Rather it means that they need to be resituated in the light of the new identity that is given in Christ. Nobody knew this tension better than Paul because his life was one of coming to a new understanding of this in the experience he had on the road to Damascus.

As well as a personal matter for individuals like Paul, such concerns regarding identity and belonging are also social matters. Holding a community together with the various tensions that can arise due to a whole range of differences is one which should never be taken for granted. Communities require protection and realistic appraisals of how much difference can be accommodated in order to ensure their health and wellbeing over time.  

The readings for this Sunday consider these issues from a particular perspective. They each, in their different ways, raise the question of, who belongs in the kingdom of God? A simple answer is those who accept Jesus as Lord. But how does this identity marker square with God’s chosen people as being a community with God’s special favour?

Each of the readings for the Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity paint a picture of inclusion in the kingdom of heaven based on following the Lord and working in God’s vineyard. 

The Book of Jonah is a Jewish allegory which raises the question of, why is Israel specially chosen by God? Rather than go to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire at the time, Jonah flees West, perhaps to escape to the area covered by our chaplaincy (Tarshish, possibly modern-day Cádiz). He flees from God’s command because the Ninevites were reputedly a wicked people indulging in immorality and barbarity, and Jonah is afraid that he will be mistreated. For Jonah, these people do not belong in God’s kingdom as they are not Israelites. He is also somewhat afraid that because God is so merciful and generous, they will be won over, convert, and join the community of God’s people.

However, to resist this possibility he escapes. Yet, thwarted in this attempted refusal to obey God’s command, he finds himself thrown into the sea and eventually vomited up from the belly of the ‘great fish.’ Following this incident, he follows the Lord’s command and visits the people in Nineveh and they believe in God, put on sack cloth and ashes, and God relents from punishing them for their wickedness. Jonah is amazed because he thought the Ninevites were outside of God’s realm. It turns out, the Ninevites followed God’s command more eagerly than Jonah. He is left angry at God’s failure to punish them due to God’s infinite mercy and forgiveness. We begin to see the trace of a community of belonging that is beyond ethnic, national and even strictly religious lines.

Such an expansive attitude to belonging in the community of the kingdom spurs Paul on to set foot in Europe. The city of Philippi is his first expedition outside of Asia and the inhabitants there were mainly retired military veterans from around the Roman Empire, who had settled with their families in Macedonia, so that the Romans did not have to provide land for them in Italy. They were mainly gentiles, and when Paul arrives in around 50 AD, there is no synagogue for him to visit, only a “place of prayer.”

When we come to the gospel, about the hiring policy of the landowner, we see the notion of a wide membership in God’s Kingdom is further underlined. All the labourers are given the same wage, even those who arrive at the ultimate hour to work in the vineyard of the Lord.

To make sense of this parable it helps to understand that it is directed primarily at an early Jewish community which was struggling with the diversity amongst it that had been brought by the followers of Christ in their midst. Were these followers of Christ still Jews? If so, what did that mean for the identity of the community with its food laws and prescription about circumcision? These were complex matters in the early Jewish and Christian communities and they would eventually lead to a separation into two distinct communities. However, at the time of the Gospel this is not yet the case and these matters are being worked out gradually.

So, Matthew is narrating this parable of Jesus to underline the fact that though the early followers of Jesus were diverse and included some Gentiles, these Gentiles belonged in the kingdom of God which Jesus came to preach as much as their Jewish sisters and brothers, even though they departed from some of the Jewish traditions. 

Therefore, while the Jewish people remain the chosen of God, their election is to proclaim the kingdom for all through the twists and turns of their particular history with God. This is the divine mission which is given to the Jews and in which the church shares so that all may belong in God’s Kingdom. 

If God preferred our sisters and brothers in the Jewish community, then this was not to be at the expense of other communities whose national, ethnic and even religious origins were different. The preference was so that the story of God’s covenantal relationship with the Jewish people could be one which was shared beyond this community.

All are called to enter into the relationship with God that has been first announced through the sons and daughters of Abraham. In this way, the message of the kingdom is to be viewed as one of inclusion and not of exclusion, of solidarity and of unbounded divine generosity. Such a generous God surprised both Jonah and the workers in the vineyard who had been long working in the heat of the midday sun.