First Christian Church Flagrant Forgiveness Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Transcription

1 First Christian Church Flagrant Forgiveness Jonah 3:1-5, 10 This morning we're going to look at the most successful prophet in human history. Our text concerns God's second call to Jonah to go preach to the people of Nineveh, but for our purposes we need to start at the beginning of the story and work our way up to the text. So, one day the word of the Lord came to Jonah and the Lord told him to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and preach to them a word of repentance. We need to consider at this point who the Assyrian's were to the the Hebrew people. To an Israelite this would be a bit like telling someone today to go to the headquarters of ISIS and tell them to change their ways or God will punish them. The Assyrian's were the one's who destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and then enslaved the southern kingdom of Judah for nearly one hundred years. Assyria was more than an enemy; it was a ruthless, brutal occupying force that permanently changed the course of Israel's history. This is the perspective we need to take when considering the story of Jonah. As opposed to being judgmental about the way he responds to God's call, which is essentially to make a run for it. Who can blame him? So Jonah gets the call but instead of packing for the trip to Nineveh, he catches the first boat out of town heading in the opposite direction. But the Lord isn't finished with Jonah, and he creates a great storm out on the sea and it is so severe that it threatens to break-up the ship. The sailors are terrified and turn to their god's for help and they start throwing cargo and such overboard to lighten the load. During all this Jonah decides to go down into the hold of the ship and take a nap. So the captain goes in search of him, and upon discovering him in the hold he wakes him and tells him to call upon his god for help. Meanwhile the sailors up top are throwing dice to determine who is responsible for their dilemma, and the dice tell them its Jonah. So they go down and confront Jonah asking him all types of personal questions about who he is and where he's from, and he ends up telling them about his faith in Yahweh. It then occurs to the sailors that Jonah is trying to get away from his God and that's why all this is happening. All the while the storm is getting worse, and though the sailors now know Jonah is responsible they're not sure what to do with him. And this is when Jonah does his first heroic act which is to suggest to the sailors to throw him overboard, and then perhaps the Lord would stop making waves. Apparently the sailors are impressed by Jonah's suggestion, because rather than following through with it they start rowing harder for shore. But the sea only gets worse until finally even the sailors start pleading with Yahweh. Jonah's not only an effective prophet, but also turns out to be a crack evangelist! Finally, with no other recourse they throw Jonah into the sea, and the sea settles down, and the sailors, now converted to Judaism, worship the Lord. Next comes the big fish and the Lord has it swallow-up Jonah, and since he's in the belly of the fish for three days he has plenty of time for prayer. The prayer that makes it into the text is not entirely appropriate for the occasion since its more so a prayer of thanksgiving, as opposed to a petition for help. Never-the-less the Lord takes heed of Jonah's prayer and has the fish vomit him back onto dry land. 1

2 Now the word of the Lord comes to Jonah once again with the same instruction to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to repent. He does so, and gives them the wimpiest prophetic message ever announced. He say's: In forty days Nineveh will be smashed! Now remember we need to see all this through the eyes of the prophet who has been told to go into the capital of their mortal enemies, these ruthless, cutthroat Assyrian's, and tell them to straighten-up or else. What would you say to them? Certainly Jonah is fearful for his own life, but feels compelled to carry-out this burden of prophecy which the Lord has given him. And then something totally unexpected occurs the Assyrians wholeheartedly respond to the message! First the king declares that everyone and every animal will be covered with sackcloth and ashes, which are traditional signs for mourning and repentance. Just take in that picture for a moment: all the people along with the cows and sheep all fasting with sackcloth tied to their backs! Here their terrifying enemy is transformed into this comic scene, where not only their hearts are transformed, but their outward appearance is also radically altered. Jonah should be dancing a jig and just tickled pink by the success of his prophetic effort. He should be on his way to the evangelism hall of fame! But that's not how the story goes. The story begins to wind down with Jonah in a slump because God is being God. Jonah wants God to follow through and punish the Assyrians, and isn't that how most of us feel when someone hurts us? Don't we, at least initially, feel they should be hurting the way we are or even more so? Again, the Assyrians have been absolutely merciless toward the Jews, but now Yahweh is letting them off the hook, and in the most divine way with unconditional forgiveness. Jonah can't stomach this, its too much to handle, and the book ends without resolution, and Jonah goes away mad. This story is not a child's story at all. Even though its very popular with children, and often taught in Sunday schools. Its actually a story about and for adults, because what it demonstrates is the radical forgiveness of our God. Not only does God forgive this reluctant prophet who attempts a get-a-way by sea, but also unconditionally forgives the mercilessly violent Assyrians who have persecuted and tormented the chosen people for a hundred years. This kind of forgiveness is far beyond Jonah's comprehension, as it is for all of us. We faithful all make the attempt to lay claim to our God and his ways, but when the rubber hits the road how many of us fall far short of those claims? Even with Gods help we all struggle with this kind of perfect love. Every so often someone comes along who is able to allow this perfect love to flow through them. For some reason they are more open to it in a way most of us are not. The three most prominent people that come to mind are Saint Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. There are others I could name, but these are the first that come to mind, and one of them comes with a special distinction for us. Saint Francis was an Italian Catholic, and Gandhi a Hindu, but Martin Luther King was not only a Protestant Christian, but also an American. He was one of us and this suggests a couple things. First comes the bad news which is our culture is so deeply racist, and endued with hatred that we had to produce a Martin Luther King. But the good news is our culture also carries the seeds of wisdom and grace within it to the extent that a Martin Luther King could come forth from it. This all happened within the crucible of the Christian Church where Dr. King could no longer contain the perfect love of God within the boundaries of a pulpit. But took this love out into the streets, and in so doing changed us all forever. 2

3 There were many influences that caused him to make this radical move including the Gospel itself, which he constantly quoted and used to legitimize his cause. He was at heart a Christian preacher. Surely his prayer life also effected him deeply, but possibly the greatest influence was the suffering he saw all around him, and this would include the suffering of his own children. In his now famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail he describes this suffering and what it led him to do: We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at a whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you have seen the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in the airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people. When you have to concoct an answer for a five-year old son asking in agonizing pathos, Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading white and colored; when your first name becomes nigger and your middle name becomes boy (however old you are) and your last name becomes John, and when you wife and mother are never given the respected title Mrs.; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of nobodyness then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience... The letter was written to eight white-clergymen who were critical of Dr. King's movement and methods, and he says at the beginning of the letter that he rarely responded to criticisms of his work. He said if he did so it would monopolize his time to the extent he wouldn't be able to do the work he felt truly called to do. As you can see the letter is painfully descriptive of the effect of racist attitudes and behavior in the south, but certainly not confined to the southern states. We all harbor racist beliefs and feelings of hatred toward those who differ from us. We are not born with such beliefs and feelings, but are taught them through jokes and sly remarks and sometimes just blatant comments made by anyone from your pastor to the President of the United States. The point is we're born innocent, and hatred is something one learns. And if it can be learned then it can be unlearned, which is the very task we are engaged in today. 3

4 Martin Luther King moves us ahead in this unlearning process, and he did it with the Gospel, and at great risk to himself. He was given a vision but it is not a vision we all share. What we do have in common with him is the sacred word of God, and today we've been reviewing the story of Jonah and his prophetic calling. The story of Jonah, and the life and mission of Dr. King are not simply narratives for us to be entertained by. They are windows opened so that we might get a closer look at God's kingdom, and ultimately that always brings us to introspection. Because God's kingdom is not so much something out here that we seek and find, but it resides within us. Many will resist this inward turning because we sense that the very hatred Dr. King is trying to illuminate and eradicate also dwells within us. Though we spend considerable effort trying to deny this, we none-the-less are quite aware of it, and at times it comes forth to reveal its ugly head. We are surprised when this happens because we've become experts at denial, but sooner-or-later something slips out and our racist-side shows itself. At which point we have a choice to make. We can either go deeper into denial or we can face up to the truth, and repent, and be forgiven. That, of course, is a painful process and so we try to avoid it as well. All of us here probably believe, along with the Gospel, that the truth will set us free. What we probably don't want to acknowledge is that first it will make us miserable. Jesus went to some lengths to show us that in order to be reborn we first have to die. This is the primary symbolism of the cross and his crucifixion. He died so that he could rise again, and he lives among us now forever. He's helping us to follow him which means to follow him to the cross. There are a lot of ways to die in this world, and a lot of things we can die too before we are born again in the genuine sort of way. Richard Rohr constantly talks about dying to the False-Self to be born again to the True-Self. I personally like this characterization of rebirth because its such a powerful way of describing what it means to fully become a child-of-god. This long journey to the True-Self involves many lesser deaths along the way. Today and because of Martin Luther King Day we recognized last week, I've chosen to consider what it means to die to our racist beliefs and feelings of hatred we harbor against people who differ from us. This begins by being honest with ourselves, and through whatever gains we make we move ahead in our overall journey toward the True-Self. To the extent we can illuminate and eradicate, by the power of God within us, the hatred we all harbor within our minds, is the extent we can offer God's perfect love to the world. It begins with each one of us, and as a community of faith we can encourage one another to stay the course. Such encouragement comes at the close of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail: I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here...if the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the scared heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Rev. Mitch Becker January 21,

5 5