A couple of weeks ago, Sherrie was up here and she told you about a conversation we had regarding our reluctance to give a message on the Old Testament. And it’s not hard to understand this hesitation.
The Old Testament is often full of stories of despair, of extremely cruel violence, of blatant wickedness and even harsher punishment.
The New Testament, in contrast, holds many more hopeful and upbeat passages if you ignore Revelation. It’s the “kinder, gentler” book of the Bible.
But despite this favoritism toward the New Testament, I read carefully each passage of scripture that was part of the lectionary for this week. As I read each passage, I made a quick notation so I could narrow down my choices.
There was Psalms 62: 5-12, beside which I wrote, “the familiar image of God as rock, salvation, fortress.” Then there was Matthew 1:14-20, which told how an angel appeared to Joseph to dissuade him from quietly breaking up with Mary because she was pregnant. Next, there was 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, which prompted me to write, “Time is short.”
Finally, there was Jonah, the passage I eventually selected, where I hurriedly jotted, “If the people repent, you must relent.”
And just like that I heard in my head, “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! I wasn’t sure where that image had come from but nothing seemed further removed from a Sunday message than a quote from Johnny Cochran. Still, the ring of the “If the people repent, you must relent” kept coming back to me. It wouldn’t let go, and just like Jonah, I didn’t want to go there.
But sometimes scripture selects you whether you want it to or not, and here I was stuck with Jonah – in the Old Testament – in a story filled with despair, violence, disobedience and harsh punishment. Great!
So first of all, I procrastinated. It wasn’t quite running away like Jonah, but it certainly wasn’t saying, “Yes Lord, send me!” But over the weeks I had to contemplate my message, Jonah just wouldn’t leave me alone.
So I started thinking about Jonah and what it was God had asked him to do – deliver a message to the people of Ninevah, basically a “repent or else” threat. I researched Ninevah and discovered that in Jonah’s time, it was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Assyria, what in our day is the northeastern part of Iraq on the bank of the Tigris River.
In essence, God was asking Jonah to travel to a city in another kingdom 500 miles away, where the folks don’t even believe in Jehovah. And for those of you who were here last week and heard Rev. Starnes’ message, I would have looked at the G-O-D on call waiting, and wouldn’t have answered that puppy. No way, Jose!
If I were Jonah, I’d be thinking, first of all, I’m sure it’s a wrong number. And even if it isn’t, I am not traveling to a city where the people aren’t going to have the faintest idea what I’m talking about. They are gonna look at me like I’m a lunatic. Which I would be if I were to answer this call.
So Jonah does the only sensible thing he can do and boards the first ship heading in the opposite direction. Yep! He’s boldly running away! And for the Monty Python fans out there, at that point, the sound bite that entered my head was, Run away brave Sir Robin, bravely run away!
Yes, Jonah’s not gonna stop til he’s safely past any hope of God using him as a messenger to those pesky Ninevites. But the problem is God has other plans. We all know what happens next. Small ship. Big storm.
And in the kinder, gentler times that the Old Testament is famous for, the crew tosses Jonah overboard to appease this God of his. Now granted, Jonah was the one who suggested it, and at first the men were reluctant to do so. But as the storm grew more violent the crew changed their minds. If tossing him overboard was what God wanted, who were they to say no?
Again, you know what happens next. Small man. Big fish. Then three days and nights later, with a whale with an indigestion problem, and Jonah is back on dry land.
God commands Jonah a second time, “Go to the great city of Ninevah and proclaim to it the message I give you.” This time Jonah obeys. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to see what God has in store for him if he disobeys again.
Once Jonah was in Ninevah, I think he must have given it his all. Despite his initial reluctance, he musta preached up a storm, because in Jonah 3:5 we learn that “The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.”
Hurrah! You did it Jonah! You’re the man. Your eloquence has saved the people of Ninevah from certain destruction because Jonah 3:10 says, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”
And that’s really where the story should end. We all like happy endings, don’t we? “And they all lived happily ever after.” There’s a reason that’s a stock ending phrase for many fairy tales.
But no, this is the Old Testament and it’s not gonna be that simple. Instead of basking in the glory of God’s compassion, instead of giving the Ninevites high five’s for having come to their senses, Jonah’s overlooking the city, pouting because God hasn’t destroyed it.
And here’s where I’ll make a confession. I get it. I understand Jonah totally at this point. Presumably, as a prophet, despite his human failings, he’s probably lived a good life overall. But he’s fed up with folks who seem to get away with murder, tired of watching the unfaithful get second chance they don’t deserve. Jonah wants to see some heads roll. He wants to see some booty kicked. Bring on the fire and brimstone!
But just the like the prodigal son’s older brother, who in Luke 15:28 “becomes angry” and refused to join in the festivities, Jonah tells God that he is “angry enough to die.”
You remember when I said I “got” Jonah. Well, I really do, and I’m not too proud of that facet of my personality. Ask Mitch or Colette – I’m pretty slow to get angry, but once I do, woo boy, watch out! Like Jonah, I want to see some divine destructive action. I want people falling on their swords. I want to feel justified in my anger. And if someone meekly apologizes without fanfare, I feel very disappointed and deflated. I wanted to see punishment that fit the crime. Turns out I’ve got a little more Old Testament in me than I thought.
But really, it does come down to “If the people repent, you must relent.” Or said, perhaps a bit more eloquently, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Notice that divine part. If God can forgive, and forgive freely, even the most horrible sinners, then why can’t we? Why do we feel it is so necessary to hold onto our anger, to nurse our grudge?
When we, like Jonah, go off to the hillside to sulk, we cut ourselves off from God’s grace. Instead of joining in the celebration of forgiveness, we create our own harsh world that only mirrors our own ugliness back at us.
In the song the choir sang this morning, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy, one verse particularly caught my attention. It states:
But we make His love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.
Today when I leave here, I’m getting in the car and heading for North Carolina. Some of you may have seen my facebook posting on Friday about my Great Aunt Hazel, who died at the tender age of 101. Well, when I go down for her funeral, I have to take my own message to heart because during my Dad’s illness, I got into a nasty little argument with a relative. I felt at the time, and still do, that this person’s behavior was selfish and mean-spirited. You can hear it in my voice, can’t you?
For over a month, I’ve stewed about this thing to the point when the phone rang, and I looked at caller ID (and believe me, it wasn’t G-O-D this time), I refused to answer it. Finally, Mitch nudged me with a “You can’t ignore this forever.” So I answered, and my relative apologized, but like Jonah, I wasn’t ready for it. Still righteous in my anger, I was like, you gotta be kidding me? A simple “I’m sorry,” and all this should be fine?
But God’s love is not that narrow, and I have to get past my own false limits here. There will be no falling on swords, no heads rolling. I know what I have to do – I just don’t want to do it. But the image of Jonah sitting on that hill all by his lonesome, nurturing himself with thoughts of anger and self-righteous indignation is not the path I want to follow. So, after a month, I’m gonna do what I should have done all along, accept the apology and “move on -- get over it.”
So I ask you now. Is there someone in your life who deserves punishment, someone whose actions have made you justifiably angry, upset, hurt? I understand that sometimes the other person hasn’t asked for forgiveness, feels they are right, and so everybody is at an impasse. But if that person has asked for forgiveness, either with an “I’m sorry,” or through actions that communicate their remorse (sackcloths, anyone?), have you granted them forgiveness? Have you moved past your own false limits and allowed God to heal the hurt? Allowed God to work through you?
If not, then let God move you to true forgiveness. I know that’s what I got to do, and it is never easy to practice what you preach, literally in this case. God put this passage from Jonah in front of me, at this particular point in time, and as much as I wish he had not, I get it. G-O-D is on the line, and he’s delivered a message to me, and as much as I don’t like to admit it, it’s time for me to act on that message. If God is delivering a message to you today, then act on it. Don’t run like Jonah, and don’t sulk like Jonah. If the people repent, you must relent.
