Sermon for Good Friday

Preached at Christ United Methodist, Yorkana, PA on April 19, 2019
Preaching Text: Jonah

When I spoke about Abraham at the beginning of this series, I mentioned one of the remarkable things about Abraham’s faith was that he went into this knowing nothing about the God he was coming to follow and worship. There was no organized religion to which he was converting; no doctrines, no dogmas, no Bible to read, not even a name for this god he’d met and decided to place his trust into. All of that would come later.

This highlights a truth in our faith that we don’t always like to talk about. We don’t know everything about God. We like to pretend we do and we often will derive some self-confidence from that arrogant presumption, but there are many things about the deity we worship that are still unknown to us.

And that has been true for a long time. God’s revelation of himself to us has come piecemeal over the generations. But humans are impatient and while waiting for this revelation, we’ve been fond of filling in the blanks ourselves. Usually by assuming that God is just like us, liking what we like and hating what we hate.

Even the Bible itself is guilty of this. There’s a meme that I see floating around Facebook periodically. It says “The Bible is clear. Moabites are evil. They are not to be allowed among God’s people. But then comes a story about Ruth, a Moabite woman who marries a Hebrew and becomes grandmother to a king.”

“The Bible is clear. The people of the city of Uz are evil. Then along comes a story about Job, a man of Uz who is the most righteous and blameless of all men.”

It goes on like this with a few other examples, showing us that our guesses about what God approves or disapproves of are not always right, even in the Scriptures. Jonah is another story of this sort.

Let me give you some historical background. One of ancient Israel’s most vile enemies was the Assyrian Empire. These people were bad. Vicious conquerors who worshiped a series of cruel gods that demanded human sacrifice, often infants. The Assyrians were responsible for the conquest and destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and were a serious threat to the Southern Kingdom of Judea. These were not nice people. The capital of their empire was the city of Nineveh, one of the largest cities in the world at that time.

And so God comes to Jonah and says “Go to Nineveh and call the people of Assyria to repentance for their evil deeds.”

To which Jonah says, with good reason, “I don’t think so.” So he hops on a boat and heads to the exact opposite side of the world; to the city of Tarshish in modern day Spain.

Most of us know the next part of the story well. The ship is swamped by storms. Realizing God is trying to scare him into turning around, Jonah instead offers to commit suicide to spare the crew, so he jumps into the water and is promptly swallowed by a large sea creature.

But that doesn’t kill him. Three days later this whale barfs him up on the sea shore and Jonah discovers he’s been planted firmly in Assyrian territory. Realizing that God doesn’t take no for an answer, Jonah goes to Nineveh and proclaims his message of repentance.

And much to Jonah’s horror, the people of Nineveh listen and obey. They call a fast. They sit in sackcloth and ashes and ask God for forgiveness for their evil ways. And God does what God always does when people he loves ask him for forgiveness. He forgives them and calls off whatever calamity was their due.

This ticks Jonah off to no end and this is where our lesson tonight begins. God proceeds to explain to Jonah his reasons for doing all this. “These people are my children,” God essentially says. “I love them. Should I not care just because you hate them?”

That may be a far harder for us to swallow than Jonah was for the whale. We like to hate and we like to believe that God hates what we do. Oh, we won’t admit that, but let’s be honest. Whether it’s Samaritans, black people, tax collectors, gays, Moabites, Muslims, Assyrians, or whoever, we want God to hate them just as much as we do.

But God continues to surprise us with stories like this one. His love is far greater than we always imagine it to be. And that brings us to the events we usually we remember on this day. Jesus dying upon a cross. His body broken in agony. He’s there willingly. He’s there for you, for me, and (while we say it, we don’t always want to believe it) he’s also there for everyone else too. Even as the nails are being driven into his flesh, he says of his executioners, “Father, forgive them.”

More than anything else that we are taught about who God is, this is the most important lesson. This is the sort of love that God has for his world, for his creation, for his people, ALL OF THEM. Yes, we screw up, we make mistakes, we sin. And so does everyone else. But just as that sin does not separate us from his love, neither does their sin separate them from it either. Even a people as brutal and savage as the Assyrians were beloved of God.

If we take away nothing else from our lives of faith and devotion to God, let it be this. God loves us. He loves you. He loves me. He loves everyone. He sent Jesus for all of us. And Jesus died for all of us. And nothing you do, nothing that you are, nothing that you say, can change that. Neither does nothing your worst enemy does, nothing that they are, nothing that they say, changes that either. We’re all sinners and we’re all unworthy of that great love, but we have it anyway, because that’s who God really is. He is love. He always has been and always will be, even if we don’t know it or want it to be true. Again, what we believe about God or know about God does change him one whit. He will always be love. Amen.