Sunday Service: 20th September 2026
A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church building on Sunday 20 September. The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page. For the next four weeks, you can catch up here.
The Bible passages were Jonah 4 and Matthew 20:1-16 and Duncan led and preached. The sermon begins in 43:40 on the catch up.
Here’s a link to David’s deeply felt and deeply thought prayer in reflection on the passages we thought about at yesterday’s service. (Jonah 4 and Matthew 20:1-16)
Duncan’s subject today was the generosity of God, the extent of God’s grace – and our reaction to it. We looked at the final act of the story of Jonah. (Jonah 4) Here’s a man who is sent by God to preach to the great city of Nineveh, warning its inhabitants of coming judgement if they don’t repent. He’s a reluctant prophet, but in the end he goes, and the results of his preaching are greater than he could ever have imagined. The whole city turns to God and repents. But is Jonah happy? No – because he doesn’t think the city’s inhabitants deserve to be forgiven. He sulks. But God says ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ The lesson of the story, said Duncan, is that ‘God loves the people Jonah doesn’t love.’
And then we looked at Jesus’ story about the workers in the vineyard. (Matthew 20:1-16) The landowner went early in the morning, and selected a team from the folk waiting in the town for work. He promised them 1 denarius, a fair day’s wage. They set to work. But at four more times throughout the day the landowner went and recruited more workers from the dwindling pool of job-seekers, promising everyone selected a fair payment. And then at the end of the day, blow me down, if he didn’t give them all the same amount – the one denarius he had promised the first group. Even those who had just worked an hour received the same pay. ‘This is massively unfair!’ the men grumbled.
The landowner said ‘Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”, and Jesus concluded ‘So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ In a sense the landowner’s treatment of the workers was unfair. But Duncan asked us to reflect on those were hired in the course of the day, those who had not been signed up first thing by any of the others farmers seeking workers for the day. What about the older people, who may not be so strong? What about those who may have been discriminated against because of disability, or because they didn’t know the ‘right people.’
But, says Duncan, ‘Jesus is hinting at a different kind of world. A world where generosity rather than just simple equality of fairness is the benchmark.’
‘Jesus’ story doesn’t favour the best, the biggest or the brightest. It seems in Jesus’ story, the question of who deserves what isn’t a relevant question. All that’s important in the story is that every last person gets a place in the vineyard. The early bird and the late, the able bodied and the infirm, the young and the old, the popular and the forgotten. Jesus through his story is giving us a glimpse of his Kingdom, where it isn’t a case of survival of the fittest, but a world where everyone ends the day with dignity and security. The landlord is not being fair but he is being generous to everyone.’
These stories are enormously challenging! First they remind us of the love and generosity of God who wants each person to have a place in the vineyard. And secondly they lay bare our own Jonah-heartedness as we discriminate in our thinking, and see some people as being beyond the pale of God’s love.
And so we seek to respond in sheer joy that the God who loves us so much also loves everyone in the world, and we seek to treat those we meet with a kindness and love which reflects the kindness and love of God.
And the stories also speak to any of us who, for whatever reason, feel that God does not love us, that we are unlovable, that what we have said or thought or done, or what was been done to us puts us forever beyond the reach of divine love. We are loved. There is nothing which can thwart the love of God towards us, if we orientate our hearts towards God and dare to hope, and make our way to the market place at five in the afternoon, and see, the landowner is standing, beckoning. Beckoning me!
