Texts: Jonah 3:10-4:11; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16
We are now about three-quarters of the way through St Matthew's Gospel – another couple of months and we put him aside and start the Year of Mark. One thing we should know by now is that according to Matthew the central idea of Jesus' teaching was the Kingdom of Heaven. When Jesus first started his public ministry he started with the phrase that John the Baptist had been using: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near." And when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, one of the things he said we must pray for is that the Kingdom may come on earth as in heaven." So whatever else Jesus' ministry was about, it was about this Kingdom of Heaven.
Which raises the obvious question, what does he mean by that expression, the Kingdom of Heaven? And that's the question we have been grappling with at Ministry School this week On each of the three days we were there – Thursday to Saturday – we started with morning prayer, and then Kelvin Wright led us in a full hour of Bible Study. So altogether we had three hours of Bible Study led by Kelvin Wright.
It got off to a rather alarming start. Kelvin began the first session by saying, "I propose to spend our three hours or so over the next three days on one half of one verse of Scripture, and here is that one-half verse." And at that point he wrote that half-verse on the whiteboard – in the original Greek! Then he smiled his famous smile and said, "Now in twos and threes, discuss what that means, and where we might find it in the Scriptures." [That's what passes for bi-culturalism in St Johns, Roslyn.]
Never have I been more pleased to be sitting next to The Reverend Tim Hurd as I was at that moment. Tim knew enough Greek to translate that half-verse, and as soon as he did, I knew where it was in the Scriptures. In fact, it was in a number of places. The half-verse in English read, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near." Matthew 4:17 is one of the places where that occurs. And over the time that Kelvin led us in our Bible studies, that was the focus of our study. "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near." What did Jesus mean when he said that?
Well, we started by looking at what it didn't mean. In some ways, we have been misled by John the Baptist's take on it. Because of him, we tend to think that this charge is all about cleaning up our act because God has come among us, and if we don't clean up our act in time, then God will wipe us out. When John the Baptist is in full cry, that's the impression we get; because he doesn't leave it at those few simple words: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near." He warms to the theme and we get bloodcurdling stuff about the axe being already at the trunk of the tree, and the winnowing fork already in the hand, and so on, plus a few "brood of vipers" greeting as well.
But Jesus doesn't go down that path. Jesus says only, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near." The idea of repenting is not coupled with a warning or threat as to what will happen if we do not repent; but with a reason for repenting. Why should we repent, not, what happens if we don't? So why should we repent? Because, according to Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.
But where has all that got us? Well, the first clue is that word translated as "repent". It does not mean "confess", or acknowledge your sins and express remorse for them. It means, literally, re-think, have second thoughts, think again. Jesus is saying to the people of his time, what you have always thought until now needs to change. Why does it need to change? Because the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. In modern parlance, he is talking about a world-view, a mindset, a fundamental belief about how things are, the way of the world, and what is and what is not a sensible way to live in it. That is what now has to change, according to Jesus, because the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.
And Kelvin gave us a very simple but startling analogy to help us grasp what we are talking about here. He said, if we look at St Paul's writings towards the end of his life, we will find that his fondest wish was not to finish his days in Rome, the centre of the imperial world at the time, but to finish his life and ministry in Tarshish, as the Bible calls it, or Spain as we call it today. Why Spain? Because at the time it was believed that Spain was literally at the end of the earth. The earth was flat, and Spain was the furthest edge of it – go past Spain and you'd fall off the edge. And for centuries no-one seriously questioned that idea. It was taken for granted, and travellers and merchants and so on conducted their lives accordingly.
So when the scientific breakthroughs began in astronomy and so one – Copernicus and Galileo and all that stuff – a complete change of mindset was required. Some scientific prophet could have cried out, "Repent, for the earth is round." Think again, change your basic ideas, because the scientific revolution has drawn near. So when Jesus cries out, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near," he is saying it is now time to abandon your old view of the world and how things work, and how we should live our lives in it, and substitute something radically new and different.
And one more thing before we go any further into that. Kelvin stressed that too often in our various versions of the Scriptures, the translators have sanitised the original Greek. In this half-verse in the NIV it says, "From that time on, Jesus began to preach..." And in the NRSV we read, "From that time, Jesus began to proclaim..." "Preach" or "proclaim", take your pick: they are both, in Kelvin's word, "sanitised". The original Greek should be translated something like "spill his guts". At the very least it should be made clear that this message was terribly urgent and important for Jesus. There was no time to waste. The Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near, and everyone had to change their mindset immediately.
But why? Because a new way of living was now upon us. Because the Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near – because God had fulfilled his ancient promise to come and live among his people – it was now time to change their way of life, to change their way of thinking, to change their ethics, to change all those things that that they had taken for granted up until then.
And to explain the sort of changes that were now necessary, Jesus began to teach them through the Sermon on the Mount, and other "straight teaching", but also through his parables. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like this...and it's like this....and it's like this?" And we have a fine example of that in today's parable, don't we? This is one of those parables that gets up our nose and sticks in our craw. Because our sympathies rest with the complainants, don't they? We take it for granted that, all other things being equal, those who work the most hours should get the most pay. It's obvious to us, because we think in terms of practical economics, incentives, rewards, and all that sort of stuff.
But the parable seems to suggest that we need to think again; because "the Kingdom of Heaven is like this." All the workers need a denarius to meet their basic living costs; so all of them are given a denarius, those who have earned it and those who have earned most of it, and those who have earned very little of it. They all get it because they all need it. That's what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. Radically different. To live in it, to accept and understand it, we must repent, we must re-think.
And what of Jonah? Do we have any sympathy for Jonah? He was looking forward to the destruction of Nineveh, a godless city and the enemy of Israel. But God had a different plan. He wanted Jonah to warn them, and when they heeded God's warning and repented, changed their mind and their lives, they were spared, and Jonah was furious. And you know what this story reminds me of? The desperate rush to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the Japanese could surrender – before they could think again or repent. There were people in the inner circle of the American Administration who were praying that the Japanese would not surrender too soon, because they wanted to see the destruction of those cities.
Jonah speaks for the way of the world: destroy our enemies, O Lord. But the Lord says, think again. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." Why should we do that? Because the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. And the real searching, deep question for us is this: Do we want to live in such a Kingdom, in such a transformed world? Do we, with all our hard-won competitive advantages, so useful to us in the world as it currently operates, really want to work for and pray for such a radical transformation as Jesus cried out for?
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