Have you ever met someone, a follower of God, who acted as if they were a better believer than anyone else? Someone who never seemed to tire of standing on his soapbox, proclaiming all the things God was unhappy with? Someone who, with great enthusiasm, would declare God’s judgment on all those who were an abomination to God? Someone who actually seemed to enjoy talking about judgment of doom and punishment, as if he were describing the latest action movie, rather than the wrath of the real, present, living God?
Have you ever met someone like that?
I have, and his name is Jonah.
According to the Bible, God called Jonah to go to Ninevah, and preach against the wickedness of that great city.
Ninevah was the capital of Assyria, which, in the 8th century BCE, was the greatest nation on earth. Assyria had more wealth, more power, and more influence than any other nation. It was, one could say, the world’s first superpower.
Part of Assyria’s greatness came at the expense of other nations. It exploited the labor and the resources of many far-away lands. It pushed others aside in order to raise itself up. It made false promises, it was a bully to the nations around it, and it justified going to war on the basis of made-up intelligence, all in an effort to increase its own power. And it worked, too; when judged by the extent of its territory, Assyria was greater than even ancient Egypt or ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire was still centuries away in the future.
Ninevah, the capital city, was the most powerful city in the world. It was located about 200 miles north of modern-day Baghdad, and it was so big that its leader was referred to as the King of Ninevah.
The people of Ninevah were proud of their great city; but the rest of the world viewed its greatness with scorn, because that greatness was achieved at the expense of those other regions that had come under Assyrian influence. The prophet Nahum—a contemporary of Jonah—called Ninevah “a city of bloodshed! Utterly deceitful, full of booty, with no end to the plunder.”
No wonder that, when God told Jonah to go to Ninevah, Jonah went in the opposite direction, as far as he could go. The Ninevites, he believed, didn’t deserve to hear the word of God.
Jonah hopped aboard a ship bound for Spain, which was a really long way away. None of the maps in the back of my Bible even show Spain. In the ancient Mediterranean world, Spain was off the map, at the farthest edge of the world, un lugar lejano, a faraway land. But it wasn’t far enough; no place is too far for God. God found Jonah, and, after letting him sit in the belly of a giant fish for three days, God sent Jonah back to Ninevah.
This time, Jonah did as he was told. He went back to Ninevah. Being such a large city, Jonah knew that it would take several days just to walk across town. He began walking the streets, calling out, “In forty days, Ninevah will be overthrown. Do you hear me? Do you hear what I’m saying? You all are a bunch of sinners. Forty days, that’s all you’ve got. Your punishment is coming! God is coming, to judge you and destroy you!”
Jonah didn’t want to be there, among the “heathen,” among the sinners, but since he was, he could … gloat a little. After all, Ninevah, that great and terrible city, was about to go up in flames. “Do you people hear what I’m saying? You all are TOAST!”
Then something unexpected happened. Well, unexpected to Jonah, but perhaps not unexpected to God. The people of Ninevah heard the word of the Lord through Jonah. Somehow, even though it was mixed in with Jonah’s own prejudice, judgment, and hate, the people heard the word of the Lord. They believed the word that they heard, and they repented. They turned from their evil ways. The King removed his robe, he removed himself from his throne and sat among the ashes, and he ordered the whole city to observe a fast of repentance.
And so, God changed God’s mind about the calamity that had been planned. God showed mercy and forgiveness to the Ninevites, and the city was saved.
But Jonah was not pleased. Jonah wanted nothing to do with that. Jonah was angry. These people were evil! They were bad! They deserved their punishment! “See, God,” Jonah prayed, “I knew you would do this. It’s just so like you, to forgive. I knew all along that you are a God who is merciful, and gracious, and slow to anger; a God who is abounding in steadfast love. Forgive and forget, eh? After all the evil they’ve done? If you’re not going to destroy them, God, then you might as well destroy me. You have made me so angry!”
And God said, “Angry enough to die?”
And Jonah said, “Yes! Angry enough to die!”
Poor Jonah. He was caught between God’s eagerness to forgive and embrace, and his own desire to exclude and judge. His heart was filled with bitterness and anger, while God’s heart was filled with love and compassion.
Are we so different from Jonah? Don’t we sometimes have a hard time showing mercy and forgiveness? Don’t we like to cheer when the bad guys get what they deserve? Don’t we cheer when Dorothy dumps the water on the wicked witch’s head, when Simba kills Scar, or when the swordsman says to the six-fingered man: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to die”?
We love moments like those! Inigo doesn’t say to the six-fingered man, “let’s put the past behind us, and be friends…” What kind of a way would that be to end a movie? Give those bad guys what they deserve! Give those Ninevites what they’ve got coming to them!
There are some churches out there—I don’t like talking about this, because we are all part of the one church, the Christian church, which exists across time and space and even across denominational and doctrinal boundaries—but there are a few churches out there that speak more about judgment and punishment and God’s wrath than they do about God’s love and mercy and forgiveness. Some of those churches are quite large. And like Jonah, they are just waiting for the fiery destruction to happen. It almost seems that they’re looking forward to it.
And they’ll tell you that anyone who doesn’t preach the message they preach isn’t being true to the gospel, that they are compromising the word of God, that they’re taking the easy way out by focusing on love and mercy.
Well, it seems to me that Jonah found it a lot easier to live with hatred and prejudice than with acceptance and love. Forgiveness isn’t always easy. Love for one’s enemies isn’t always easy. For Jonah, it was even difficult admitting the truth that he knew in his heart, the truth that is repeated throughout scripture, that the God we worship is indeed a God who abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness, a God who is merciful and gracious, a God who is eager to forgive iniquity and transgression and sin. That’s the nature of the God we worship. That’s the nature of the God we serve. Jonah knew that. He just didn’t like it.
On this past Wednesday, our General Minister, Rev. Sharon Watkins, preached to President Obama and other newly elected leaders at the National Prayer Service in Washington, D.C. We as a church are so blessed to have her as our leader. As one who was at the Portland General Assembly when she was elected, and as one who has met Rev. Watkins and heard her speak on several occasions, I know that God has blessed us through her voice and her leadership, and at the National Prayer Service, God used her to proclaim a message that blessed our nation as well.
During her sermon last Wednesday, she told an old Cherokee story in which an elderly man was telling his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.
“There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old man said. “One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear… The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love…”
The grandson sat, thinking, and then asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?”
The old man replied, “The one you feed.”
It’s time to stop feeding the angry, vengeful wolf. It’s time to stop feeding the wolf that seeks to pass judgment on entire populations and devour them whole.
Instead, let us feed the wolf of compassion. Let us feed the wolf of forgiveness. Let us feed the wolf of hope, truth, and love.
Let us no longer keep people out of our communities because of their race or ethnic background. Let us no longer keep people out of our homes because they are poor. Let us no longer keep people out of our churches because of their sexual orientation.
Let us stop feeding the wolf of anger, vengefulness, prejudice and fear. Let us stop worshiping the god of anger, vengefulness, prejudice and fear. Let us worship the one true God: the God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; the God who does indeed forgive sins, whose desire is to forgive and not to punish; the God who embraces all people of all nations; the God who relates to us as a loving father, who shows the love and compassion of a mother caring for her infant child; the God who promises to never leave us or forsake us; the God who leads us to a life filled with abundant blessings; the God who brings wholeness to a fragmented world.
Let this be the God we serve and worship.
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