Yesterday my pastor preached a banger of a sermon that left me thinking long after the sermon ended.
The sermon - one part of two or possibly three - dealt with the book of Jonah. It is a short book in the Old Testament and is likely one of Biblical stories that almost everyone has heard of, even if not a believer: A guy getting swallowed by a large sea animal (whale or fish, your mileage may vary) will stick in anyone's mind.
The first chapter of Jonah appears at first glance to be pretty clear cut: Jonah, a prophet of God in the Northern kingdom of Samaria in the mid-8th Century B.C., is commanded by God to go preach a message of judgement and repentance to the kingdom of Assyria. Jonah has no desire to do so (we will get to that in a minute) and so flees West in precisely the opposite direction. A storm comes up and, through a drawing of lots, the crew discovers that Jonah is the reason for the storm. He is thrown overboard and swallowed by aforementioned fish/whale, where is composes a song to God (more on that later too). At the end of Chapter 2, he is spit back up on land after three days to get back on track.
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My pastor, at the opening of his sermon, proposed two questions and asked "Which one bothers your more?:
1) Why do bad things happen to good people?
2) Why do good things happen to bad people?"
For him, he suggested - and for many - the second question is harder one. We as Christians can walk through the fact of God's sovereignty at difficult times of our lives ("All things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" - Romans 8:28). What is far more difficult is when good things happen to bad people, to vile people, to the worst of sinners. "God makes the sun to shine the rain to fall on the just and the unjust" said Christ in Matthew 5 - but I wonder if I believe too often that God does so grudgingly.
Jonah's sin, my pastor suggested, was that he was so frightened of God's compassion that he fled God's mission. He disliked - indeed hated, as we find out later - the Assyrians, and would rather not preach to them lest they receive God's mercy.
To be fair, from a human standpoint the Assyrian Empire was cruel and treated all of its enemies cruelly (and would, in fact, eventually conquer the Kingdom of Samaria). So - humanly speaking - his reaction was understandable. Why risk offering such terrible people the mercy of God?
Because there was a risk they might get His mercy.
We are no different that Jonah, was the analysis. In Matthew 5:44 Christ commands His followers "Love your enemies and prayer for those who persecute you". Christ, he suggested, does not call us to hate or even to indifference towards them. He calls us to pray for them, to shape our hearts in mercy towards everyone.
Jonah, as the story goes, turns out to be a narcissist:
- He will not carry out God's commands to the Assyrians because he does not like them (in fact, hates them).
- He does not concern himself with the crew during the storm, in which they are working hard to keep the ship afloat and praying to their own gods while he is taking a nap and not praying at all.
- The crew, during the course of the story, come to realize that Yahweh, the covenantal name used by the Israelites, is the one true God (they offer a sacrifice to Him at the end of Chapter 1); Jonah haphazardly mentions he serves that God during his trip but that is about it.
- Even at the end of Chapter 1 when the casting of lots reveals Jonah is the cause of the storm, Jonah does not suggest returning to Joppa so he can continue his mission (it is interesting to theorize what would have happened if he did: would the storm also have ended immediately?), but would rather be thrown into the ocean and, for all he knew, die rather than run the risk of good things happening to his enemies.
Once he is swallowed, he composes a song to God (Chapter 2). In it, depending on your translation, Jonah uses the words "I, me, my" 16 times in 9 verses:
- He cries out to God because of affliction - which would not have occurred if Jonah had followed God's command.
- He says that God cast him into the deep - God did not; he got there in an interest to be sacrificed rather than follow God's command.
- In verses 8-9 he notes "Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to You" - but in point of fact, the pagan sailors found God and sacrificed to Him.
- Jonah could not even be bothered to pray. "I will pay what I have vowed", says Jonah in the latter half of verse 9 - but he had vowed, if anything, to refuse the command of God to go to Nineveh.
Jonah ends up being spit out to start over again, but nowhere in his prayer to God does he talk about actually doing what God commanded.
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I have often lamented here what I have termed "The Age Of Rage", a sense that I have almost everyone is angry at everyone and everything all the time. It seems to me that too often, people assume the worst of others. It is not even that things can be discussed in reason; things cannot be discussed at all. Nothing can simply exist anymore: everything has to serve a cause, and woe be to those on the wrong side.
Understandable from a human perspective. As Christ says in Matthew 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." For many people - for me, too often - they would stop reading right there - after all, it makes complete sense. Like those who like you, hate those who hate you.
Understandable from a human perspective. But we miss that second part too often in verse 44: "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
If all we ever do is live in hatred of others, it cannot but impact our own hearts.
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As always, I write this to convict myself.
One of the best (although accidental) decisions I made during the last election cycle was to set the rule that if anyone posted anything political in nature, I would simply hide them from my feed. That extended to "both sides" as it were. Over time, my feed has become mostly politically and "modern issues" free, for which I am grateful.
But I am still in this climate. I still hear the words that people launch at one another, the emotion that comes to dominate every aspect of their lives until everything is a life or death moment. We are all involved in a great war - not the Spiritual War the Bible speaks of so often (yes, I know, we are involved in that of course), but a great social and political war which is always on and in which we must always choose a side.
I look at that. I am tempted to love some and hate others. And then I look at the commands of Christ.
Does Paul command the Thessalonians to avoid even the appearance of evil? Yes. Does Christ command his followers to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves? Also yes. But I struggle to find the command that I must think poorly of, let alone be at war, with everyone with whom I may disagree about anything.
Marinate a piece of meat in a marinade long enough and it will come to take on the flavour of the marinade. Marinate your heart in anger and hate long enough and no matter how often or much you proclaim your Christian beliefs, the anger and hate will come through.
Forgive them, said Jesus as they nailed Him to the Cross, for they know not what they do. Earlier he had told his disciples that the servant was not above the master, that if they hated Him they would hate His followers.
In an Age Of Rage, I as a Christian should - indeed, must - be different. As my Master was.
