Hope for Haters--September 26, 2023

Hope for Haters--September 26, 2023

And the LORD said [to Jonah], “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And 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, and also many animals?” [Jonah 4:4-11]

So... why does God go to all this additional trouble over Jonah, with a supernatural intervention of a shrub... and a worm... and the elements... when the original objective of Jonah's mission has already been accomplished?  Why would God expend all that additional effort for Jonah's sake, when he's been nothing but a stubborn stumbling block to God's purposes?  And why would God go to the lengths of trying to persuade ol' Jonah to care about the people of Nineveh, if God had already decided to spare them?

Because here's the thing about the living God: God hopes for the restoration not just of the notorious sinners, but for the respectable ones who dress their sin up in religiosity.  God hasn't just been hoping for a turnaround from the people of Nineveh; God's been aiming with hope to produce a turnaround for Jonah, too.

That's really the second wonder of this story (and maybe even the greater one!)--that God hasn't only been patient with the infamously cruel and wicked people of Nineveh, but God has been patient with Jonah, as he faces his own subtle and socially acceptable prejudices.  See, the thing is that Jonah isn't just a bigot; he's the worst kind--the kind that dresses up their hatred in looking pious and devout.  Jonah's not just a hater; he's a religious hater.  He's convinced that his animosity toward all the people of Nineveh is pleasing to God, and so he can't even recognize that it's there anymore.  It's as natural to him as the air he breathes, and maybe Jonah has even told himself that God smiles on his spite for "that great city." And even though Jonah's personal prejudice against them (no matter how reasonable and rational he believes it to be) seems like it's dyed in the wool, God risks hoping that all of the theatrics of prompting a worm to eat a shrub overnight will get through to him and get him to care about the human beings he has written off as unworthy of mercy.  God risks hoping for a change in Jonah, because God loves even Jonah.  Yes, even though Jonah has wrapped his racism in religiosity and confused his prejudice for piety, God is hopeful that he can see the light and come to accept that God cares for the ones Jonah hated.  God goes to all these lengths because there is hope for haters, and yes, even the ones who wrongly believe their hate is holy.  And that is simply because God also loves the hateful and wants to see their hardened hearts opened up to divine mercy.

And that <gulp> is a necessary word of hope for a lot of us, honestly, because for a lot of us Respectable Religious Folks, we have gotten our own learned bigotry and pet prejudices confused for God's will.  And whether we have been able to admit it yet or not, we have needed a God willing to risk hoping for a change in our heart.  We have needed--and still need--a God who is willing to go to great lengths to get through to us so that our old hatreds may be overcome by God's other-embracing love.  From Jonah's day through the legacy of Jim Crow racism in our own history down to the present moment, it has been terribly easy for the ones who call themselves righteous to despise people for how they speak, where they come from, who they love, what they've done or what they look like, and to tell themselves "the Bible told us so" in some form or another.  Jonah is a case study in how easily we convince ourselves our prejudices come from on high.  And yet, God seeks for a change in our hearts when we succumb to that kind of counterfeit faith... God hopes for it, and acts for it, and moves heaven and earth to get through to us... because God loves us.

I know in my own life story, it has been through the patient hope of people who cared about me enough to tell me their stories, to bear with the bigotries I couldn't yet see in myself, and to show kindness to me even when I was bound up in prejudices I had dressed up in piety, that I have been able to grow. They showed me God's love in their hope. It's been the times when I was crusty old Jonah, convinced I was on a crusade for righteousness, and others have been brave enough to be real with me, and to help me see things in a new light, like God hopes to accomplish with a worm and a plant for the cantankerous prophet.  And it's been the times when God has spoken through others who helped the scales to fall from my eyes when I was convinced I knew what "the Bible clearly said" only to discover that maybe I didn't see as clearly as I thought I did, what God was speaking.  The thing is, if there's hope for Jonah, even at his most hypocritically hateful, then there's hope for me, when I've been sulking in his spot and didn't even realize it.

It can be easy for us to read a story like Jonah's and never do the hard work of letting it be a mirror for ourselves.  But taking this passage that many of us heard on Sunday seriously means asking ourselves where we have been unwilling to be patient and persistent with others we know who are entangled in bigotry they have baptized into acceptability, and how we might try again to get through to them.  And this passage also forces us to ask where we have been--and maybe still are--Jonah, on the brink of seeing just how wide God's mercy is after all.

The thing about Jonah's story is that it ends here--with an unanswered hanging question.  We never find out what Jonah does in response to God's extraordinary effort to pry open his closed heart and mind. 

But we can hope.

Lord God, don't give up on us, where our hearts are hardened, and where we have confused our prejudices with your ways.  Keep on reaching out to us, and keep on loving us into the way you love.