October 14thFrom the Desk Of Our Executive Minister
We Are Jonah: Let God Be God
This summer I had a chance to preach at our churches a few times, and the book of Jonah was on deck (ha ha). Those of us influenced by VeggieTales can’t help but remember the movie and the refrain from the Gospel Choir, “Jonah was a prophet…but he never really got it.” There is a tension in the book of Jonah between desiring that our enemies “get what they have coming” or “get what they deserve” and Jonah’s raging at God: “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment. So now, Lord, kill me instead, because I would rather die than live!” (4:2b-3).
The book ends with a rhetorical question in God’s voice: “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city…?” The problem is that Jonah’s answer has been NO NO NO! Jonah pitied a gourd more than the people, the image-bearers of God. Jonah preached a half-hearted message, not even telling the people which God they were turning to or what repentance looked like, yet clearly they responded. And Jonah was not happy. He would have rejoiced in their destruction and continued violence more than in the kind of redeeming love that breaks the cycles of oppressed-oppressor.
Today we have many opportunities to live in the new humanity, empowered by the Holy Spirit, that shows how we live in tension and let God be God. But so often we want to tell God how and whom to judge. We want to quote the law to God (or our law), and when God doesn’t act, we kick God off the eternal throne and plop ourselves right down on it.
We are called into a wild trust that God works through, and in, the messiness of others. There is a time for boundaries, sure, but judgmental boundedness, no. In fact, when we refuse the tension of living life as sinners and saints in process, we lean into false holiness (and it abounds Left, Right, and Centre). We actually cut ourselves off from the mercy we need and the transformation that happens, three steps forward, two steps backward. The brother of Jesus said it well: “Mercy triumphs over judgement” (James 2:13).
In the Goodness of Jesus
+Boese