Whats Up With God?

Wednesday, 1st Week of Lent

Jonah 3:1-10

Luke 11:29-32

Poor Jonah, here he was summoned by God to go to Nineveh a city of great wickedness and evil, where he was to warn the citizens that in “forty more days, Nineveh shall be overthrown” and the King and the citizens immediately covered themselves in sackcloth and ashes and renounced their evil ways.  That seemed to have been the last thing Jonah was expecting.  God changed his mind about the calamity he had planned to bring upon them… Jonah went out and sat under a bush and sulked.

Jonah was seriously annoyed.  He had come a long way; he wanted to see Ninevites get what they deserved…. Nineveh should have been destroyed!

 If we are really honest we know at some level exactly how Jonah felt, that part of us that judges and condemns, desires “revenge rather than justice- vengeance instead of mercy”.  We all know people that we don’t agree with, who are different, don’t deserve to be saved.  We categorize people in terms of their differences, real or perceived- Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, gay or straight, Christian or Non-Christian.  We know exactly who God should save… and it’s only those who are the same as us. 

Like Jonah we sit outside sulking, angry and hurting.   We keep trying to create God in our own image, a God that feels the same way we do about “those people” whoever those people are for us.  Black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor, sinners and churchgoers….  the crowds gathered around Jesus wanting a miraculous sign, but none would given except the sign of Jonah.  The Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, but now one greater than Jonah was here. 

Whenever I am feeling a bit out of sorts with God for not sending a few bolts of lighting to scorch a TV preacher I disagree with or at the very least a mild plague of boils on a do nothing legislature…  I try to remember God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to me, and to you, and to us and to them, and even to “those people” whoever they are.  He sent His Son Jesus who showed us that God’s love is bigger than you or I can even imagine.