Worship
Service for September 20, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: When the tides of fear seem to overwhelm
us, we cry out…
P: Lord, come to us and lead us to paths of
safety!
L: When we feel lost and alone and we wonder
if anyone cares about us, we cry out…
P: Lord, come and heal our wounded spirits!
L: When turbulence within and without seem to
threaten us, we cry out…
P: Lord, bring us peace. AMEN.
Opening Hymn – Holy, Holy, Holy #138/3
Prayer of Confession
Lord, we confess that we don’t
always turn to You in our troubles.
Sometimes we are paralyzed by fear and anxiety. We cannot see “the light at the end of the
tunnel”. For us, there is only the
ongoing darkness and hopelessness. Clear
our sight, O Lord. Bind up our wounded
spirits! Fill us with your mercy and
love. Forgive us when we stray; when we
fear; when we falter. Pick us up and
place us on pathways of peace and hope, for we ask this in Jesus’ name. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: No matter what befalls us, the Lord walks
with us on the path, bringing us courage and hope.
P: No matter what, we belong to the Lord, now
and forever. AMEN
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
With
our hearts, minds, and souls we praise you, O Lord, for we are fearfully and
wonderfully made. How grateful we are
that you love us with a love that will not let us go even though we have, by
design and default, resisted you. What
is it about us that causes such resistance?
We know, O God, even as we ask, that it is the rebellious spirit within
us. Help us. Don’t leave us to the consequences of our own
foolishness. When we come daily before
your throne of grace with repentance and humility, pour out upon us the
cleansing power of your forgiveness and fill us anew with the joy of Christ’s
victory over death. Then, Lord, help us
not to be just receivers, but givers of these same blessings. Sensitize us to those who need the merciful
touch from you that we ourselves have received.
Grant us, we ask, the courage to extend it even to those who have
wounded us deeply. In so doing, may they
then be drawn to Jesus Christ whose forgiveness was, is, and always will be
boundless.
Hear
our prayers this day as we pray for our loved ones and friends. We lift up to you….
And
in this time of silence listen to the beatings and groanings of our heart’s
desire and replenish us O Lord.
We
pray these things now in his precious name, who taught us to pray boldly
together……Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – Open My Eyes, that I May See #324/563
Scripture Reading(s):
Jonah
3:10-4:13
Matthew
20:1-16
Sermon When
Grace Reaches the Wrong People
(based on Jonah 3:10–4:11 and briefly Matthew 20:1–16)
Last week, we recalled
Joseph’s story and his continued willingness to forgive his brothers, even
though they were sure that he did not. He
understood that forgiveness begins when we stop trying to occupy a place that
does not belong to us, and when we trust that God can open a future larger than
the worst thing another person has done.
But then we come to Jonah, and
in many ways Jonah is Joseph’s opposite. Joseph had every human reason to want revenge,
yet he made room for mercy. Jonah had
not personally been thrown into a pit by the people of Nineveh, yet he was
furious that God would not destroy them.
Joseph surrendered the right to sit in God’s judgment seat; Jonah, on
the other hand, pulled up a chair, settled himself beneath a shelter outside
the city, and waited for God to carry out the sentence Jonah had already
decided was appropriate for them. If
Joseph’s question from last week was, ‘Am I in the place of God?’ Jonah’s
unspoken answer seems to be, ‘No—but I would certainly like to advise God on
how the job ought to be done.’ And if we’re
being honest, there may be more of Jonah in us than we would like to
admit. Yes?
A little background
information might be helpful though, if we aren’t that familiar with
Nineveh. Jonah’s resistance did not come
from nowhere. He had reasons to fear
them and reasons to hate what they represented. The people of Nineveh were not harmless
neighbors who had mildly annoyed Jonah.
Nineveh was associated with Assyria, an empire remembered for conquest,
violence, and the humiliation of other peoples.
When God originally told him to go to Nineveh, Jonah fled in the
opposite direction because he knew something about God that he did not want the
Ninevites to discover – God’s mercy.
After a terrible storm, the
sailors, in the boat on which Jonah was trying to escape the Lord, threw him
overboard to appease God, then he was swallowed by a great fish, and finally
Jonah reluctantly entered into Nineveh; then, and only then he finally preached
what God had wanted him to preach. It
may be the shortest and least enthusiastic sermon in all scripture. Jonah cried out to the people: ‘Forty days
more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.’
That was it. That was the extent
of his sermon and message to the people of Nineveh. There was no tender appeal, no soft
invitation into God’s good graces, and no promise of mercy. Yet the people listened. From the king to the poorest citizen, they
turned from violence, fasted, and repented.
When God saw their change of heart, God changed course and did not bring
the threatened destruction upon them.
We might expect a prophet to
celebrate. Imagine preaching one
sentence and watching an entire city reconsider the way it lives – I only
dream! Jonah, however, was not pleased; he
was angry enough to die. He prayed, ‘O
Lord, is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I
fled toward Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God
and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent
from punishing.’ Jonah recited Israel’s
great confession about the character of God, but he did not recite it as
praise. He spoke it as an
accusation. The very mercy that
comforted him when he was sinking beneath the waves, in the belly of a fish,
offended him when it was extended to people he didn’t like.
That is the uncomfortable part
of this story. We usually love grace
when it travels in our direction. We are
grateful that God understands our failures, considers the wounds behind our
worst decisions, gives us another chance, and refuses to define us by our
lowest moment. But grace can become much
harder to celebrate when it crosses a boundary we have carefully drawn and
lands upon someone we believe should finally receive what is coming to
them. We talked about this in a past
Bible Study; that God extends grace to everyone, even someone like…let’s say,
Hitler. We may believe in forgiveness as
a beautiful Christian principle, yet still keep a private list of people,
groups, and kinds of sinners to whom it should not apply. Jonah wanted a God who would be merciful to
Jonah yet severe with Nineveh. He wanted
grace to be personal but not universal, freely given to the people inside his
circle but carefully rationed to everyone beyond it.
Last week we said that
forgiveness does not require us to call evil good. That remains essential
here. God’s mercy toward Nineveh does
not erase the violence of the empire, excuse injustice, or ask its victims to
pretend that nothing happened. The text
says that God saw how the people turned from their evil ways. So, repentance mattered. Changed behavior mattered. Mercy is not indifferent to harm; mercy
creates the possibility that harm does not have the final word. The story of Jonah pushes us one step further
than last week’s story, because it asks whether we can allow God to work even
in people we do not trust yet, whether we can hope for their transformation
rather than secretly preferring their destruction.
There’s a difference between
seeking justice and needing an enemy. Justice asks that harm be named, stopped,
repaired where possible, and prevented from happening again. The need for an enemy asks for something
more: it asks that another human being remain forever reducible to the harm
they have done, so that we never have to imagine them changing and never have
to reconsider the story we tell about them.
After Jonah’s feeble attempt
at preaching, the city repented, the violence had ended, and yet Jonah was
still angry. What he wanted was the
ending he had already imagined. He
wanted to be proven right, getting the opportunity to watch while Nineveh
burned.
We are skilled at keeping
permanent records of one another’s failures.
A careless comment, an angry outburst, or a position held years ago can
be stored, replayed, and used as the complete definition of a person. Of course, accountability is necessary, but
if we leave no room for repentance, learning, or change, then what we are
practicing is not justice. It is a world
without resurrection.
This is where Matthew’s Gospel
enters the conversation briefly. The
landowner in Jesus’s parable offers payment in equal measure to all those who
worked regardless of the time they spent in the field. Some were angry that others received more and
felt that it was unjust. Yet, the
landowner says, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to
me? I choose to give to this last the
same as I give to you.” In other words,
what God and the landowner offer is theirs alone to give. Who are we to judge how it is given?
Those words carry us back to
the challenge of Joseph’s brothers, the unforgiving servant in last week’s
Gospel lesson, and Jonah beneath his shelter. Joseph had received a life he could not have
built by his own strength, and grace became provision for the family that once
harmed him. The servant in Jesus’ parable received the cancellation of an
impossible debt, but the mercy never traveled from his account into his
character. Jonah received rescue from
the depths, shade from a plant, and patient conversation from God, but he
wanted every gift to stop with him. The
earliest workers were resentful of those who came to work later, feeling
envious of those who received the same amount.
Each story asks the same question: Does grace become gratitude and
generosity, or do we turn it into evidence that we should be favored while
someone else should be unequal to us?
Sometimes faithfulness means
leaving the outcome with God and continuing on our own road with God and not
judging how God is dealing with someone else.
That is another way of saying, ‘Am I in the place of God?’ We are not responsible for judging the final
worth of another person, and we are not capable of controlling their
transformation. Our calling is to speak
truthfully, to act justly, to offer peace, to protect those who are vulnerable,
and to give away the mercy we ourselves have received. The rest belongs to God. That does not make the journey easy. Christian mercy is not naïveté. That balance is difficult. Some of us were taught that being Christian
meant being endlessly agreeable, never becoming angry, and allowing people to
cross every boundary. That is not what
God or Christ asks of us.
God tried to teach Jonah this
lesson through something wonderfully ordinary.
A plant grew and shaded Jonah from the heat, and Jonah was very happy
about the plant. Then a worm attacked
it, the plant withered, the sun beat down, and Jonah again announced that he
was angry enough to die. God asked, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the
bush?’ Jonah insisted that it was. Then God exposed the smallness of Jonah’s
compassion: Jonah cared deeply about a plant he had not cultivated, because the
plant made him comfortable, but he had no compassion for a city filled with
human beings and animals. Jonah could
grieve the loss of shade while remaining unmoved by the possible loss of
thousands of lives.
We know how to care
selectively. We can become passionately
upset when our comfort, routine, or sense of being right is disturbed, while
barely noticing the suffering of people outside our familiar circle. A church can spend hours debating the color
of a carpet and very little time asking who in the neighborhood is hungry. A community can grieve the loss of
convenience while treating vulnerable neighbors as interruptions. God’s question to Jonah is not meant merely
to shame him. It is meant to enlarge his
heart. ‘Should I not be concerned about Nineveh?’ God asks. Can your compassion grow large enough to
include lives that do not serve your comfort and people who have not earned
your affection?
The book of Jonah ends with
that question. We are never told how
Jonah answered, whether he returned to the city, whether he learned to
celebrate its repentance, or whether he remained outside with his anger. I think the unfinished ending is deliberate,
because the final answer does not belong to Jonah alone. It belongs to everyone who hears the
story. Will we sit outside the city
waiting for people to fail, or will we enter the places to which God sends us
carrying the possibility of a different future?
Will we insist upon occupying the judgment seat, or will we rise from it
and make room for God?
There may be someone in your
life whose change you find difficult to trust, or someone you cannot yet
imagine forgiving. There may be a group
of people whose very name causes your body to tighten because of what they
represent to you. The invitation in
these scriptures is not to deny what happened, surrender wisdom, or rush toward
a reconciliation that is neither safe nor honest.
Perhaps we need to return to
Joseph’s words from last week. ‘Am I in the place of God?’ We do not have to keep the universe’s
accounts, decide who is beyond redemption, or force every story to end
according to our timetable. We can tell
the truth about the pit. We can insist
that Nineveh turn from violence. And
through it all, we can trust that the God who met Joseph in slavery, Jonah in
the depths, and Nineveh in repentance is still able to create a future that our
resentment cannot imagine.
May the mercy we have freely
received travel from our prayers into our character and from our church into a
world that has learned too well how to condemn one another.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord, You have blessed our lives in so many
ways. In gratitude for all these
blessings and in confidence that our gifts will be used for ministries of peace
and hope, we offer these gifts. AMEN
Closing Hymn – Now Thank We All Our God #555/788
Benediction –
Go in peace into God’s world
to serve and help others. Go in
confidence of God’s presence with you.
Go into this world with messages of hope and reconciliation. Go in love.
AMEN
Postlude
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