Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20 (September 20, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited by AI for readability.
“Are you envious because I am generous?”
I am put in mind of what it was like when I was a kid on Christmas Day. I would get presents, and I was interested in my own presents. But you know what I was even more interested in? How many presents is my little brother getting? And are they better than my presents?
“Are you envious because I am generous?”
This is a story Jesus tells—a parable. And this one, like a lot of them, like the parable of the prodigal son and the parable of the lost sheep, is designed to get under our skin. Especially if we are—and most of us are—trying to prove ourselves worthy of good things, and especially of God's good things and God's good graces.
There is a saying about resentment: resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that the person who wronged you will die. It hurts me more than it hurts the person I am angry with. To remember last week's parable, it hurts me to have my hand around somebody else's throat.
So resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Jonah is feeling that. You have to hear him, as our reader did so well, in the tone of a petulant teenager: “Yes. I am angry enough to die.”
Why is Jonah so angry?
Because these people who have done wrong are getting the same mercy and love and forgiveness from God that he desires for himself.
But they are bad. Bad, bad, bad. And they don't deserve it.
It makes me angry enough to die.
And if you have trouble empathizing with Jonah—or with me—think of a person in your life, or in the world, who has harmed a lot of people or who has harmed you.
You've got your person.
Now imagine that person walking into heaven ahead of you.
Now you get it.
Now you get that this parable is designed to make you and me mad. It violates our sense of justice.
Not only is the kingdom of God like a landowner who pays everybody the same amount, no matter how late they showed up to work—you could think of it as no matter how late it was when they finally realized the error of their ways—but the landowner makes sure that all the people who were there all day, working so hard, see the latecomers getting paid the same.
And you'll hear next Sunday Jesus go on to tell the Pharisees, the righteous ones: “Truly I tell you, the worst people you can think of—the bottom of the heap, no good for them—the tax collectors colluding with the Roman Empire and the prostitutes, the lowest of the low—they are going into heaven ahead of you.”
So it's not just that God offers the same mercy to everybody.
God is going to make sure that, in the end, we all see that nobody has earned their way through the door. Nobody has earned their place in God's heart. Not even you. Not even me.
So how is this good?
How is this good news?
I have to think, like with the parable of the prodigal son, that it's not great news for the big brother. It's not good news for anyone who has labored a lifetime under the delusion that the hardest work and the best behavior have made them more worthy than anybody else.
We all find our way into that illusion.
But it is good news for anyone who has ever sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Which is also me. And you.
The judgment that eats at our hearts, and the way that we reach for one another's throats in anger, comes from deep down not really believing that God has already opened the door all the way wide.
God's love and mercy are coming to you. Not later, when you get it right. And not to us later, when we've gotten it right. But now. Right now.
And so you are free to begin again. You are free to have a new life in Christ. Whatever your history holds, God's mercy and God's love have already made space for you. And no matter what anybody says or thinks about you, God's love and mercy are holding a big, big place for you. And no matter what you say or think about yourself, God's love and God's mercy have already opened the door to heaven for you.
Think back two weeks ago, when Canon Sam was here, at the close of his sermon he said, “Live like people who know how the story ends.”
The story ends with a wide-open door. The story ends with God's mercy. The story ends with everybody together, walking through that door. And we will all see it face to face.
So why don't we live now like people who know that story and how it ends?
What will be different if we really know that this is the truth?
God's love and God's mercy endure forever. The door is open. This is what St. Paul means when he says, “Live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ.”
God's love and mercy endure forever. No matter what we say or think, the door is open to us all.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.