Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
I
The Charge to Moses
and Joshua
II
The Story of
Creation
III
The Future Glory of
Zion
Part IV of XV
Sunday 14 February
2018
Ash Wednesday
The Conversion of
Nineveh
Jonah 3:1-10
The word of
the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that
great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So
Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.
Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large
city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the
city, going a day’s walk. And he cried
out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And
the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great
and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king
of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with
sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made
in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or
animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink
water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with
sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from
the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may
turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” When
God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his
mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did
not do it.
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
On the first day of Lent, we often hear
of the prophets Joel and Isaiah. Joel
sounds a call to repentance, and Isaiah sounds a call to a fast that is
pleasing to God. But today, as we
continue our exploration of the Old Testament readings of the Great Vigil of
Easter, there is another prophet on whom I wish to focus. That prophet is Jonah.
It’s rather ironic to talk of Jonah on a
day like this. Ash Wednesday is
undeniably a day of repentance. But
Jonah is hardly the picture of repentance.
At his best, Jonah submits to God, but doesn’t quite get to
repentance. At his worst, Jonah throws
the prophet’s equivalent of a temper tantrum when he observes the repentance of
Nineveh. Jonah’s outrage is driven by
the fact that he believes the repentance of this city, its king and people, to
be an empty rite. Jonah believes these
people are incapable of doing the right thing.
And yet Jonah’s story is quite fitting
for us as we begin our Lenten journey.
Better yet, the story of Nineveh is quite fitting for us. I say that because the Lenten invitation is like
the call to repentance that Nineveh received.
We are called to embrace repentance, to hear God calling us to a better
way of living. This is a repentance that
changes hearts and lives. The repentance
of which the Scriptures speak literally means “to turn around.” It is as if we are driving south on the
interstate of life and suddenly realize that we should be heading north, and while
contemplating this we see that there is a U-Turn right in front of us. Only, when we are speaking of repentance, on
this highway, there is no sign prohibiting our use of that U-Turn. On the contrary, God is there longing and
desiring for us to take this path and to set off in a new and better way that
will take us where we need to go.
This image of Lent is wonderful, and it
is something we cherish when we are the ones who are being called to
repentance, who find that God is always merciful and forgives us as often as we
need that gift of forgiveness that turns our hearts and lives for our good and
our salvation. But the challenge then,
for us who have received mercy, is to be merciful. Jonah had received mercy and blessing. And yet, despite these good gifts, Jonah felt
justified in making himself the judge of others who determines who should and
should not receive the mercy he first received.
The city of Nineveh is literally the last place that Jonah felt repentance
and forgiveness to be justifiable. He
even admits this to God, and says that this was the reason why he ran away from
God when he was first called to speak in the name of God to this city. Jonah was offended at the thought that if
these people repented that God would forgive.
As we embrace a holy Lent, who shall we
be? The Lenten call to return to God in
repentance is not only for us but for the whole world. God calls not only those whom the Church deems
worthy of divine mercy. God calls all
persons, even those whom we as the Church would cause us to be offended by
grace and mercy being held before them, especially if even these should turn to
God and find in God mercy and forgiveness that makes it clear that even these
ones have a place in the Kingdom, for the heart of God desires that they would
love God as God has first loved them.
There are Christians who show this
righteous offense by quoting again and again the words of Jesus in John 14, in
which he speaks of himself as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” apart from
whom there is no salvation. Let me be
perfectly clear in saying I believe Jesus’ words to be true beyond any shadow
of doubt. But whenever we profess that
Jesus is the only way to forgiveness and salvation, we also need to remember
that we are not the ones who sit as judge and determine who should and should
not receive mercy and forgiveness. That
right belongs to Jesus, who alone is the judge of sinners, including us. It is for this reason that it has long been
said rightly by the Church that there can be salvation outside the Church, but never
outside Christ. The challenge then is
for the Church to allow Christ to be the judge, to trust in his judgment, and
to not be offended at the mercy of Jesus.
And this challenge is absolutely vital for us as Christians to embrace,
especially whenever we are so bold as to pray as Jesus taught us: “Forgive us
our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
If Jonah were to pray those words, what
would we call him, especially when we see him having a meltdown after God
relented from punishment and granted forgiveness to Nineveh? Would we not rightly call him a
hypocrite? Dare I say we would do even
more. We would believe that God would
have been justified to take away mercy and forgiveness from Jonah. We might even have a Jonah-like tantrum that
God continued to show mercy even to that hypocrite.
But do we want God to respond like that
for us? Do we want God to forgive us as
we forgive, especially when we are aware of those moments where we mirror
something opposite from the divine mercy of God? We don’t have to think long and hard about
that. We cherish the God of mercy whose
heart is always full of mercy for us, who longs to forgive and restore us. As we prepare for Easter, as we seek to grow
as Christians who long to be raised from this life to the next through the
power of Christ’s resurrection, this Lent begs of us that we would rejoice not
only in our own repentance and forgiveness, that we would long even for our
enemies to turn to God and live. This
Lent is an opportunity for us to grow in such a way that if at the end of these
days, as we keep glad Easter on earth, we would not be offended if we were to
be told the names of all those known to us who shall be found in the eternal
Kingdom of God in which nothing shall separate us and them from the love of God
whose heart is always filled and overflowing with mercy and forgiveness.
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
The Rev’d Timothy
Alleman
Rector
The Church of the
Holy Cross
Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
V
The Flood
VI
A New Heart
and a New Spirit
VII
Salvation
Offered Freely to All
VIII
Israel’s
Deliverance at the Red Sea
IX
The Valley
of Dry Bones
X
The
Gathering of God’s People
XI
In Praise
of Wisdom
XII
The Gifts
of Wisdom
XIII
The Three
Youths in the Fiery Furnace
XIV
The First
Passover
XV
Abraham’s
Sacrifice of Isaac
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