DS 004

Centrality of Grace

Jonah 1:1-3; 3:1-4:11

Grace is a concept we find difficult at best. Far more than grace, we are enamored with retribution, revenge, and violence as solutions to conflict. It is hard for us to accept grace for ourselves, just as it is hard for us not to feel cheated when we see grace lavished on others. We want to categorize grace as a display of weakness. We like to consider violence as the demonstration of true strength. In the end, grace falls by the wayside in our lives. So why would we consider it an important concept when it is so often absent in the world we inhabit?

The Jonah story begins with a man who knows about grace, but does not want God to use grace toward his enemies. Yahweh called Jonah as a prophet, giving him a specific mission to take a word of warning to the enemies of Israel. This was not something Jonah wished to do. He much preferred the idea of Yahweh destroying the enemies of his people. He decided to flee instead of being obedient to the instructions and call set before him.

Jonah took passage on a ship heading the opposite direction from Nineveh. He determined to go to the opposite end of the world to escape the mission before him. He wanted his enemies to die. He wanted God to go ahead and condemn them. He wanted no part in taking them a message they might heed, thus enabling them to avoid the calamity Yahweh was promising to send upon them.

We mostly know the story of the big fish that swallowed Jonah and coughed him out on the shore near Nineveh. We so often hear Jonah's story as a miracle story used as a test case for proving God's intervention in the world. We concern ourselves with how Jonah could stay alive in a fish for three days. Perhaps we should wonder, instead how a fish could circumnavigate the continent of Africa in three days (some 12,000 miles), as there is no other water connection between the Mediterranean and the coast near Nineveh. All of that kind of speculation, however, misses the point of the story at hand. It places undue emphasis on the particulars of the story and sidesteps the issues of Jonah's anger, xenophobia, hate, and desire to circumvent Yahweh's desire to treat one and all with grace and mercy.

In spite of our differences in culture, language, morals, and life priorities, this story is about God's care for all life in all its forms. It is the story of how a prophet of Yahweh may fail to adopt the principles and values of Yahweh's love, care, mercy, and grace toward all people, all cultures, all nations, and all other forms of life.

This prophetic text is not about the miracles described in Jonah's transit across the sea. It is about the attitudes of Yahweh's people who harbored resentment, anger, and vitriol against a foreign people whom Yahweh desired to care, protect, and redeem, even as Yahweh had redeemed Israel. The text is about grace. It is about God's will to shower mercy and redeem people not because of their righteous deeds, but precisely because their unrighteousness cries for mercy, grace, redemption, and a new way forward.

It is not that Jonah was not justified in wanting to condemn the people of Nineveh. He had every reason we would give to want to condemn our own enemies. The people of Nineveh were idolatrous. They were known to abuse their enemies harshly. They were known to rip open pregnant women to kill their unborn babies. They were known to torture victims taken in war. They were known for all sorts of atrocities against Israel and other nations. No, Jonah could feel very justified in desiring to obliterate the Ninevites by refusing to give them a chance to repent and so avoid Yahweh's punishment.

Jonah had the same reasons to desire to see Yahweh inflict condemnation and retribution upon his hated enemies as the people of the United States have felt justified in condemning and wishing to kill those responsible for the atrocities of 9/11. His were the same reasons modern Israel has to hold those attacking Israel responsible for the atrocities committed against them. His were the same reasons modern Palestinians have to hold Israel and the West responsible for the plight under which they live. These are the same reasons we have ever given for casting condemnation upon any group of people we consider less than worthy of our care, love, and positive attention.

Jonah was justified in his attitudes. He was responding to the nationalistic and patriotic cries of his people in response to their oppressors. His anger against Nineveh had merit. It had a foundation in atrocities and war crimes. It was based on the knowledge that Nineveh wanted to destroy Israel and subjugate the land and all its inhabitants. He knew that if Nineveh had their way he and his loved ones would be killed or enslaved. Jonah had every right to be angry, every right to pray for the destruction of these wicked people. He had every reason under the sun to do anything and everything in his power to seek their condemnation and complete destruction.

The problem was that Yahweh was of a different mindset. Jonah knew that, but he was set in his self-justified anger against an oppressing nation.

Instead of offering condemnation to a nation of oppressors, Yahweh wanted to send Jonah with a message of repentance that would allow them to avoid Yahweh's condemnation. Jonah did not want to go. He took off in the opposite direction. Once he found himself unable to avoid Yahweh's call on his life, he charged through Nineveh, preaching Yahweh's warning in one day. This was a rush job as it normally took three days to walk through the city.

His point seems to have been that he would obey, but he would do so in the least productive manner he could manage. It would seem he probably did not shower and change clothes to quell the reek of fish. He ran through the city as fast as he could, delivered his message as recklessly as he could, and then lay down at an overlook hoping to see Yahweh bring condemnation down upon his enemies.

He was as sorely disappointed by the outcome as groups like Westboro Baptist Church who have prayed for God's condemnation upon gays, lesbians, and others whose lives they find abhorrent. He was as disappointed as soldiers from both sides of the Civil War praying to the same God for victory over their enemies. Our tendency has ever been to determine that we must be on the correct side of an argument and the only valid response is for God to take our position against those who would disagree with us.

We tend to see the only appropriate response from God as condemnation and the violent destruction of those we would write off. Our attitudes toward those we condemn take priority over God's attitudes toward those same people.

This was the difficulty Jonah was facing. He wanted to condemn. He wanted revenge. He wanted God to side with him. He wanted God to vindicate his desires to act and respond in anger, violence, and purge his enemies as being the solution to Israel's problems. Xenophobia, hate, anger, and malice toward his enemies were attitudes to which Jonah justifiably clung. Justifiably as far as he was concerned, as far as we are concerned, but not justifiably in terms Yahweh was willing to accept.

Instead of condemnation, Yahweh offered a way out. Yahweh offered a path of change, a path of repentance, a new way forward. Instead of sending Jonah to condemn Nineveh, Yahweh had sent Jonah to offer a word of warning. By Jonah's own admission, he had understood all along that Yahweh is a forgiving, merciful God. God deals in grace toward those who indeed deserve condemnation.

Yahweh's message through Jonah was that Nineveh needed a course correction to avoid condemnation. It was a corrective, restorative message of grace. It was a message of redemption through grace.

This was what Jonah knew about the character of Yahweh. It was also the reason he had rebelled against Yahweh. He knew that this redeeming grace was central to Yahweh's character and dealings with people. Grace was not central for Jonah, however. That is why Jonah had fled in the first place. He did not want to coordinate his life and attitudes according to the centrality of grace in Yahweh. Are we any different?

 —Pr. Christopher B. Harbin

© Copyright 2017 Christopher B. Harbin.