Daily Devotion – August 13, 2020 – Pastor Erick Thompson
I would guess that many if not all of us have heard the story of Jonah and the Whale… or Jonah and the Really Big Fish. If you haven’t, then today is the day. Basically, Jonah was asked by God to do something, and rather than do it, he ended up in the belly of a big fish for three days. After which he was spit out onto dry land and ended up doing what God asked him to do in the first place. Most people focus on the fish in the story. I’m always curious how Jonah smelled after hanging out with rotting sardines for three days. But, what really gets me is why Jonah ran in the first place. When you first read the story, you don’t get many clues. God commands Jonah, and Jonah runs. Pretty simple. What we don’t know is the back-story… the real reason why Jonah was running. It turns out that God wasn’t asking Jonah to go preach to just anybody. God was asking Jonah to preach to the Ninevites, aka, the Assyrians. Not exactly your most notorious evil-doers of history. But, as it happens, the Assyrians were, in a way, Jonah’s sworn enemy. They had conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and taken Jonah’s ancestors into exile… a sort of genetic cleansing.
So, it might make sense why Jonah wouldn’t want to go to Nineveh. He didn’t want to go to the country of his enemies. But, this is the Old Testament God…. This should have been his opportunity to get the Ninevites damned to Sheol! I mean, the Old Testament God is the one who visits retribution upon the umpteenth generations of his enemies, right? Well, kind of. The problem is that Jonah apparently knew a little bit about God. And, what he knew was that God was really a softie. He knew that with God, when push came to shove, mercy trumped judgment. Mercy, forgiveness, grace, love, these always were more important to God than getting revenge, more important than getting back at the ones who had harmed his people. So, when Jonah heard God tell him that he was to go to Nineveh to cry out against it because of their wickedness, he knew that he might actually end up being the reason why his sworn enemies would receive God’s forgiveness and mercy…. So he ran.
When I tried to think of who Jesus Christ was for us today, I didn’t immediately think of Jonah, but it started to make sense after a while. For so many people, Jesus Christ is some absurd, otherworldly concept which makes no sense. Part of that absurdity is that Jesus Christ is not just some great teacher, or healer, or miracle worker. But, Jesus Christ means the love of God given to the world. Yet, it’s hard to reconcile that message of love with the history of violence that has surrounded the name of Jesus Christ. People who happen to be Christian have been some of the notorious evil doers of history. And, sometimes it’s easier to do as Jonah did and simply prejudge the whole group as enemy, bad, evil, deserving judgment, or The Other. It’s a lot harder to try and get beyond those simple labels, the easy prejudices, and see each person for who they are. Real people just like you or me.
Another problem with trying to understand who Jesus Christ is for us today has a lot to do with our sense of being victims in some way. I think part of why God doesn’t make sense to us it that we feel a need for revenge, maybe like Jonah did. There are always people have hurt us in some small way, and instead of hearing that famous call of Christ to “love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” we run from this call for mercy. It doesn’t make sense to our bloated in the sun sense of victimhood. Nothing is fishier than a Christian who doesn’t want peace.
By not reaching out to our enemies with mercy, we are trying to be the ones who decide who receives grace, just like Jonah was trying to decide whether the Ninevites received grace or not. He was trying to be God in a way, just like we do in so many ways. We, like Jonah, would rather be in the belly of a whale than have to go up to the people who have wronged us and show them mercy. Who is Jesus Christ for us today? The meaning for us is clear. Jesus Christ is the continued grace of God being poured out for all people… no matter what their offenses.
And, this is not a tomorrow or a next week Jesus Christ. It’s so easy to think about showing mercy or getting to know the Other as a great idea… for tomorrow…. Or next week… sometime…. Not now. But, this is a today kind of Jesus. Jesus Christ is present with us even right now, and that presence brings peace.. A peace that passes all understanding. A peace that gives mercy even when revenge is desired. A peace that comes in spite of us, and a peace that is promised to all of us… today!
Amen.
