I am not sure. My first reaction would be, WAIT A MINUTE! This thumbs its nose at a lot of what makes my religious heart tick. What about making a profession of faith in Jesus? Didn't Jesus himself say, "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6)? Anyway, what about the really awful people - the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Saddam Husseins? What kind of weird heaven would it be with those folks there anyway? What if I got to heaven and found out that God had decided to let EVERYBODY in? I am not sure about this.

This was Jonah's problem, of course. Most folks know some of that delightful Old Testament story. They know that God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah did not want to go and, in fact, took off in precisely the opposite direction. Then there was the storm at sea, Jonah getting tossed overboard, and the world's first recorded submarine ride - three days in the belly of a big fish. Finally, this venerable relative of Charlie the Tuna has what has been euphemistically referred to as an "involuntary emesistic reaction" and Jonah is barfed up on the beach. God says to Jonah, "Are you ready yet?" Jonah grudgingly agrees to go. TA DA! Wonderful message. You cannot run away from God!

But there is much more to this story. And, in fact, there is a much more important message than an inescapable God.

Back to what caused Jonah's journey to begin with - God had said go to Nineveh to preach; it would be an ancient version of a Billy Graham-style revival. That sounds like fun for a preacher, but if we examine the situation a bit, Jonah's reluctance becomes understandable. Ancient Nineveh was the capitol of Babylon... modern-day Iraq...and old Nineveh was just as much an international outlaw as modern Baghdad. God's instruction to Jonah was to go and rescue a long-ago equivalent to Saddam Hussein. No wonder Jonah wanted no part of that.

We pick up the story with the lesson. Jonah gets to Nineveh, preaches the shortest sermon on record (which may be why it proved so effective): "Forty days more, and Nineveh is TOAST!" There is no invitation to repentance, just this word of judgment. And the result is the most incredible response imaginable - everyone repents, from the highest to the lowest, from the king to the cows (which carries the story a bit far, in my opinion, but the point is made). So, as the scripture has it, "God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it."

Jonah's reaction is precious: he has a hissy-fit. "Right on, God! I KNEW this was gonna happen! I KNEW you were gracious and merciful, and I KNEW you would let 'em off. Go ahead, God. Why not just kill me right now? If I get back to Israel and word gets out that you spared Nineveh because they repented after MY PREACHING, I am dead meat anyway. Saddam doesn't DESERVE to be saved. This is the theological PITS!" Then the prophet storms out of the city, plops himself down on a hill to the east, builds a little lean-to to shade himself from the hot desert sun, and sulks...hoping against hope that God will see how important this is to him and will go ahead and blow Nineveh away anyway.

God tries to calm Jonah down. God gently asks him, "Is it right for you to be angry?" Jonah keeps on sulking. As a bit of a peace offering, God allows a fast-growing plant to spring up for a bit more shade. Jonah is so mad he misses the joke - it is a Castor Oil plant,⁽¹⁾ perfect for someone as obviously bound up as our reluctant hero. The blue funk continues. So, the next day God allows the plant to get eaten by a worm and... Well, listen to the text:

When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to DIE." Then the LORD said, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 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?" (Jonah 4:8-11)

And there the story ends. We never learn whether Jonah gets his act together. But we DO learn (if we have not known it before) that God's grace extends farther than we would ever imagine and (if we are honest) sometimes farther than we want.

Someone has suggested that the story of Jonah addresses a primary (but often unspoken) fear about evangelism in many congregations. It is not the fear of failure, but the fear of success that is most powerful. Interesting thought.

Change the scene. Move it to a dusty Palestinian roadside. Jesus is talking with his friends. Not very long before, a wealthy young man had approached them asking what good thing he might do to possess eternal life. Jesus tells him to be obedient to the commandments he has always known and then to give away his considerable wealth to the poor and come follow. No go - as we are aware, the young man was possessed by his possessions rather than the other way around. Sad. And Jesus went on to note how difficult it would be for anyone with money to experience eternal life. Peter follows up with a reasonable question: "Look, we HAVE left everything and followed you. What then will WE have?" Jesus responds that they have nothing to worry about - a wonderful existence awaits, but then a strange statement - "many who are first will be last, and the last will be first" (Matt. 19:30) - followed by the story we encountered in our gospel lesson.

The picture Jesus painted was one with which his hearers would have been most familiar especially at this time of year. "The grape harvest ripened toward the end of September, and then close on its heels the rains came. If the harvest was not gathered in before the rains broke, it was ruined; and so to get the harvest in was a frantic race against time."⁽²⁾ The landowner would come to the marketplace where day-laborers would gather before dawn. "I'll take you, you, you, and you," (as many as necessary), they would agree to work for what would amount to minimum wage - normally a denarius - not much, but enough to feed the family, and they would be off to the harvest. In this case, the owner of the vineyard found himself needing more and more workers to beat the rain, so three more times that day he hired more people - some at nine in the morning, some at noon, and even some at five in the afternoon, just an hour before quitting time. So far, so good.

Now the story turns strange. The paymaster's window. The folks who had only been at work for an hour were paid a denarius. Those who had been on the job since noon were paid a denarius. The ones who began at nine that morning were paid a denarius. Even those who had put in twelve long hours were paid that denarius. No surprise, they thought this was unfair. As the text has it,

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 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. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' (Matt. 20:12-15)

Then there is that line again: Jesus says, "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." In other words, in God's economy, things are not necessarily as you would expect. Jonah would say AMEN to that.

Pose the question with which we began again: What if you got to heaven and found out that God had decided to let EVERYBODY in? The message of the gospel is that such IS the case, even though we and Jonah might not like it. Yes, we are all for being saved by grace, but only if we think that grace is deserved (for example, that grace which God extends to "good folks" like you and me). Hmm.

Anthony de Mello has a wonderful parable in his book, The Song of the Bird. He says, "The kingdom of God is like two brothers who were called by God to give up all they had and serve humanity. The older responded to the call generously, though he had to wrench his heart from his family and the girl he loved and dreamed of marrying. He eventually went off to a distant land where he spent himself in the service of the poorest of the poor. A persecution arose in that country and he was arrested, falsely accused, tortured, and put to death.

"And the Lord said to him, `Well done, good and faithful servant! You gave me a thousand talents' worth of service. I shall now give you a billion, billion talents' worth of reward. Enter into the joy of your Lord.'"

"The younger boy's response to the call was less than generous. He decided to ignore it and go ahead and marry the girl he loved. He enjoyed a happy married life, his business prospered, and he became famous and rich. Occasionally he would give alms to the poor.

"And when it was his turn to die the Lord said to him, `Well done, good and faithful servant! You have given me ten talents' worth of service. I shall now give you a billion, billion talents' worth of reward. Enter into the joy of your Lord!'"

"The older boy was surprised when he heard that his brother was to get the same reward as he. And he was pleased. He said, `Lord, knowing this as I do, if I were to be born and live my life again, I would still do exactly what I did for you.'"⁽³⁾

Guess what? His name was NOT Jonah. Nor was it David. Yes, there is still something in me that wants to argue for God to be fair, even though that would be a pretty dull, uninteresting world. After all, a "fair" God means no special gifts...not the voice to Pavarotti, the ear to Beethoven, the eye to Rembrandt. No. "Fair" is not the best idea. Not in THIS life, for sure. Perhaps not in the next one either.

OK. One other issue. If we get to heaven and do indeed find that God has invited EVERYBODY in, what do we do with Jesus' statement in John 14 that says, "No one comes to the Father BUT BY ME!" Can we still hold that as gospel? Absolutely. And make sure we hold it as carefully as Jesus' words in John 10 that say, "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also..." (John 10:16).

Let me illustrate this way. When I was a boy, one of my best friends was an Orthodox Jew. This young man was (and is) one of the most religious people you have ever met - in fact, he is now an Orthodox Rabbi. All his life, from the time he was able to understand anything, he has known a relationship to the God of his fathers and has sought to deepen that faith in himself and others. He has a great respect for Jesus of Nazareth - wonderful teacher, indeed a man touched of God...but not the Messiah. I cannot imagine a scenario which would cause my friend to abandon those beliefs. What awaits Herbert when he comes to the end of his earthly pilgrimage? Some would say, "Too bad. He never came to faith in Jesus, so he is lost...condemned for all eternity." Well, I do not believe that. That does not sound like the God of love who sent Jesus and whose sacrifice on Calvary scripture says paid for not only your sin and my sin but the sin of the whole world.⁽⁴⁾ I think that what will happen to my friend as he comes to begin his new life is that, no surprise, he is welcomed into the presence of God. However, perhaps he WILL be surprised to find that the reason for his warm welcome is that his ticket was punched by Jesus Christ.

As one commentator has it, "In heaven, there are only forgiven sinners. There are no good guys, no upright, successful types who, because of their own integrity have been accepted into the great country club in the sky. There are only failures, only those who have accepted their deaths in their sins, and have been raised by the King who himself died that they may live."⁽⁵⁾

One more question. If God HAS decided to let everyone in, what does that do to our efforts at evangelism? Well, for certain, it would change them. Instead of trying to SCARE the fire out of folks, we might have to begin sharing the good news as genuinely good news. Interesting concept, eh?

What if you got to heaven and found out that God had decided to let EVERYBODY in? That decision has already been made. Sadly, some will decide not to come in, but the decision will be theirs, not Jonah's, not mine, not yours, not even God's.

The truth is that grace can never be deserved. "When we get what we deserve, that is justice. When we do not get what we deserve, that is mercy. When we get what we do not deserve, that is grace."⁽⁷⁾ Thanks be to God!

Let us pray.

Lord, for the unmerited favor of your grace we come with thanks. Give us the additional grace now, we pray, to share that good news with a world that so desperately needs to hear. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen!

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