September 20, 2020
/Proper 20
Jonah 3:10 – 4:11; Psalm 145: 1-8; Matthew 20: 1 - 16
The Rev. James M. L. Grace
Let nothing disturb you
Let nothing upset you
Everything changes
God alone is unchanging
With patience all things are possible
Whoever has God lacks nothing
God alone is enough.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
To Jonah’s great disappointment and frustration, God forgives and shows mercy toward the people of Nineveh. Nineveh (modern day Mosul, Iraq) was a city where very few, if any, Jewish or Hebrew people lived. The source of Jonah’s frustration comes from God showing mercy to gentiles (non-Jews) living in Nineveh. This was very problematic for Jonah because God did not demonstrate that same kind of mercy to the Jewish people in Israel, whose cities were attacked by people from the region of Nineveh. God did not intervene. God did not show up. Jonah is angry. God responded to Jonah’s anger not with appeasement, or pandering, but with a question. God asked, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left?
In other words, God told Jonah “Who are you to judge who is right or wrong? Who are you to judge who should receive mercy and who should not?” It was, and still is, a provocative question, a question not intended only for Jonah, but also for us. Today, in a climate fueled by political divisiveness, many of us feel righteous in our condemnation of those whose political opinions are contrary to our own. Whatever our political affiliation may be, all of us are guilty of pointing the finger and judging a person supporting the opposing party. The problem with that is two-fold: (1) that person whom we are pointing the finger at is a child of God, loved by God as much as God loves you. (2) When you point a finger in judgment toward another, there are three fingers pointing back at you.
I keep a sign taped onto my bathroom mirror that which says: “You are looking at the problem.” The problem is not the other person’s political views which are different than my own. The problem is my delusion in thinking that I am right. One of the best things you can say in an argument with a person with whom you disagree are these words: “maybe you are right.”
God challenged Jonah to see things in a different way – to see how maybe the people of Nineveh were not so bad, maybe they did deserve mercy, and maybe Israel did not. None of this was easy for Jonah, and none of it is easy for us either. It is easier for us to live our lives thinking we are right, thinking that our views are the correct ones, thinking that we know our right hand from our left. Many choose to live their lives this way, tragically.
As we draw nearer to a presidential election, maybe all of us could use the weeks ahead to show mercy the other side, and to not judge. Maybe we could use this time to be producers of harmony, rather than of confusion. To realize maybe we are not right, and that is okay. That is a hard lesson to learn. It is hard because to say we do not know or to admit we are wrong because it means our egos must get small. And that can be hard for many of us.
The truth is, however, the smaller our egos get, the more connected to God we become. We do not know what happened to Jonah. We are not sure how the story ends. Maybe Jonah lived out the rest of his life mad at a God who would show mercy to his enemy while punishing his own people. Or maybe Jonah learned to see a wider perspective - because he learned how much he did not know. AMEN.