Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 21, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I love Jonah. He’s so much like me. Unfortunately, our reading from the Book of Jonah this morning picks up in the middle of his story, so let me remind you of the part of the story that comes before the part we just heard. God comes to Jonah and says go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach the word of God to them. Now, Nineveh, that great city, was the capital of the Assyrian Empire; and the Assyrian Empire was the mortal enemy of the Hebrew states of Israel and Judah. Israel and Judah lived in constant fear of Assyria. So Jonah says no to God. He says there’s no way I’m going to preach your word to the hated and feared enemy. So instead of going east from Israel to Nineveh, which was in present day Iraq, Jonah boards a west-bound ship headed for Tarshish, in Spain. God says go preach to the enemy, and Jonah says I’m outta here. Forget it. No way, Yahweh. So God stirs up a big storm, Jonah ends up overboard, and gets swallowed by a great fish, popularly called a whale. Eventually the great fish vomits him up on the beach. So he finally says all right already. I’ll go; and go he does, off to Nineveh, that great city, to preach the word of God to the enemy.

When he does, the most unexpected thing happens. The LORD, Yahweh, had said that unless Nineveh repented from its evil ways he was going to destroy it; and when Jonah told them that, they repented! All of them! From the king on down! So the LORD changed his mind about destroying them. Nineveh, that great city, was not destroyed after all.

And Jonah couldn’t stand it! The story gets a bit obscure with that part about the bush and the worm that we heard, but the point is basically that God cares about the people of Nineveh. God says to Jonah: “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred twenty thousand persons?” Jonah 4:11 It’s a rhetorical question. The Ninevites aren’t Jewish. They don’t follow the Law. They don’t worship Yahweh like the Hebrews do, or at least are supposed to. But God cares about them anyway. Jonah doesn’t. He hates them. He wants them destroyed. He wants them wiped off the face of the earth. He doesn’t have a nuclear bomb to drop on them, so he wants God to do the divine equivalent. He wants God to destroy them with sulfur and fire from heaven the way the ancient story says God did to Sodom and Gomorrah. But God says no. Regardless of what that ancient story says about Sodom and Gomorrah, God says that’s not my way. I care even about people you hate. I want life and prosperity even for people you want to destroy. They’re my people too. I have no desire to destroy them, and I’m not going to do it no matter how much you want me to.

Now, the story of Jonah is itself of course an ancient story, and it reflects some ancient views of God that we might not share. The story, for example, implies at least that if the people of Nineveh had not repented God would have done what Jonah wanted and destroyed them. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it in part because that doesn’t seem to me to be how the world works. The world is full of unrepentant evil people, and I don’t see God exactly wiping them out. Beyond that, I don’t believe it because I believe in Jesus Christ, and he says something very different.

In the passage we heard this morning from Matthew, Jesus says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” for God “makes [the] sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Here Jesus is repeating the lesson from Jonah that God cares even for those we hate, those we call the enemy. Jesus says that because God cares for them, sending them as well as us sun and rain, we are to love them too. We are to pray for them, not against them. They may truly harbor hatred in their hearts against us, but we are not to harbor hatred in our hearts against them. No matter who they are, no matter when they may have done, God cares about them the way God cared about Nineveh. God wants for them life not destruction; and because that’s what God wants for them, that’s what we must want for them too.

Today is International Day of Peace, proclaimed by the United Nations as a day for all people to work for peace and to contemplate the ways that truly make for peace. Our Scripture readings this morning tell us what that way is. It is the way that all of the world’s great religions teach. One way of putting it that I particularly like comes from the Buddhist tradition. In that tradition people say there is no way to peace. Rather, peace is the way. Jesus puts it “Love your enemies.” That is, come to them with peace in your heart. Pray for them, not that they may become like you but that they may have life, and have it abundantly. Come to them with peace in your heart, and peace will spread around the world.

Friends, this is a lesson the world, our country included, desperately needs to learn today. We don’t love our enemies. We don’t pray for them that they may have abundant life. Instead we Americans and most of the rest of the world are addicted to violence. Our real religion is what the great American theologian of nonviolence Walter Wink calls “the myth of redemptive violence.” We believe in violence. We believe that violence can save us. We believe that violence and only violence can bring peace. Most of our popular entertainment even reflects the myth of redemptive violence. In children’s cartoons, Star Wars, and the Batman movies, to name just a few instances of it, evil is defeated and peace restored by heroes who fight, heroes who use violence; and we believe the message we hear over and over again from everything and from everyone from Road Runner cartoons to the politicians of both major political parties. That message is: Violence saves. Violence is redemptive. There are significant differences between John McCain and Barack Obama with regard to the use of violence in specific situations, but neither of them calls us away from the myth of redemptive violence as a matter of principle. For both of them violence is or at least can be redemptive. We Americans are so addicted to violence that no politician who truly called us away from it could get elected to the local water board, much less President of the United States.

And it’s all a lie. Violence is a lie. The myth of redemptive violence is a lie. It is a lie that Jesus laid bare. It is a lie that our world reality disproves if we’ll just look with eyes to see. Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for example. Both sides believe that violence will bring peace, justice, and security. The result is a never ending cycle of violence, a cycle of killing and destruction to which it seems no solution can be found because neither side has the courage finally to renounce violence. Or take the recent history if Ireland. There both the Protestants and the Catholics, despite being at least nominally Christian, kept resorting to terrorism and counter-terrorism. The violence just want on and on. For decades. It seems finally to have stopped, but what stopped it more than anything else was the women of the country saying Enough! We don’t want to bury our sons any more! Violence never stopped the violence. It never does. It perpetuates violence. It doesn’t bring lasting peace. It never has. It never will. Only a willingness to stop using violence brings peace, as the recent history of Ireland proves once again.

We look for a way to peace. Mostly we try to fight our way to peace. Or buy our way to peace, usually by giving people weapons rather than food. We keep looking for a way to peace; but the truth really is that there is no way to peace. Peace is the way. Do you want peace? Be at peace. Do peace. Teach peace. Let go of hatred. Let go of anger. Reject the myth of redemptive violence. Embrace the God who cared for Nineveh. Embrace the way of Jesus, the way of Buddha, the way of Gandhi, King, and so many others. Replace hatred with love. Replace anger with care. Replace weapons with food, clean water, schools, and health clinics. Beat your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks. Turn your tanks into tractors. Replace the bombs in your warplanes with relief supplies for people in need. Be at peace. Do peace. That is the way to peace. It is the only way to peace. Peace is the way. Yahweh tried to teach that lesson to Jonah. Jesus tries to teach that lesson to us. It’s about time we learned it. Amen.