Series: Grace Trek: Jonah’s Journey, Our Journey
Title: atONEment
Text: Jonah 4:6-11

Jonah thought his anger was righteous, and thus justified. But his anger was really self-righteous. It was based on his limited and judgmental thinking. It was based on his perspective and not God’s.

4 The Lord responded, “Is your anger a good thing?” Jonah 4:4 (CEB)

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” —Anne Lamott

Jonah’s core issue preventing him from being one with God and others was his thinking. And the way Jonah was thinking was at the root of his anger.
Jonah did not answer the question. He avoided it, doing what Adam and Eve did when they were exposed to God’s questions after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit. He went and built himself a place to hide out from the heat he felt from God’s tough questioning.

6 Then the Lord God provided a shrub, and it grew up over Jonah, providing shade for his head and saving him from his misery. Jonah was very happy about the shrub. 7 But God provided a worm the next day at dawn, and it attacked the shrub so that it died. 8 Then as the sun rose God provided a dry east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint. He begged that he might die, saying, “It’s better for me to die than to live.” 9 God said to Jonah, “Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?” Jonah 4:6-9a (CEB)

Like the shade over Jonah’s head, the barrier between us and God is usually coming from the thoughts up in our heads. God allows circumstances to strip away our faulty, ego based, thinking and to expose us to the light and fire of God’s love which are simultaneously painful and purifying. Exposure to bright light is blinding at first. Exposure to fire is painful, but it has the power to burn away the barriers which keep us from being one with God and each other.

God said to Jonah, “Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?” Jonah said, “Yes, my anger is good—even to the point of death!”
Jonah 4:9 (CEB)

Jonah probably could not imagine moving forward without something that was such a huge part of his identity. It went against everything that had always been a part of who he was. His reasoning went like this: He was an Israelite. He spoke for Israel’s God. Ninevites were Israel’s enemies, therefore they were God’s enemies. Therefore Israel’s God should destroy those enemies. I am on the right side. They (the Ninevites) are on the wrong side.

If Jonah were to accept that God loved his enemies as much God loved him and his own tribe, he would no longer be the person he thought he was and he would have to completely change, not just his ideas, but his behavior.

Once Jonah finally got real with God, God could invite Jonah out of his angry heart (that was coming from his flawed perspective), and into the heart of God.

10 But the Lord said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night.11 Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” Jonah 4:10-11 (CEB)

God’s heart is undivided. God simply loves. God’s compassion extends to all, and not just to humans, but to all creatures. God does not see divisions the way we do. Jonah saw a sharp dividing line between his own people and the Ninevites. Jonah saw good on his side of the line and evil on the other. God does not see the lines our egos love to draw. God’s love is inclusive. It’s all-encompassing. All things are one and held together in and by God’s love. It is just that our old way of thinking keeps us blind to this reality.

We can’t avoid God’s love because scripture says that this love in Christ will be all in all, but God does allow us to decide how we will experience this love.

Some early church thinkers sometimes described this love as a river of fire that flows from the heart of God. To those who respond to this love with love, they experience God’s love as warmth and light. But for those who respond to God’s love as hatred, they experience God’s love as wrath. (Brian Zahnd) For someone who has made continuous life choices that have led them to become more and more loveless, the experience of love is not something that gives them pleasure. Quite the opposite—it is torturous.

God was not trying to kill Jonah. God was trying to kill Jonah’s hatred stemming from his false beliefs. God’s fire was at work to purify Jonah and it was painful.

19 Don’t try to get revenge for yourselves, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. It is written, Revenge belongs to me; I will pay it back, says the Lord. 20 Instead, If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon his head. 21 Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.
Romans 12:19-21 (CEB)

All we have to do is look at the cross to know that this is how God overcomes evil. Our faulty thinking caused us to put God to death on a cross. God returned our violence and hatred with forgiveness. This kindness given to us by God opens the opportunity for atonement. It opens the opportunity for us to go from being enemies of God to accepting God’s offer of love and friendship.

This love, offered sacrificially on the cross, is redemptive grace. It has the power to turn us from enemies into friends when we have a change of heart. It is atoning. This Godly love expressed through grace is what bring us into an at-ONE-ment with God and each other.

The point of the story is to show us that we all have some Jonah in us. Therefore, we are each invited to respond to God’s invitation to see the world as God sees it and to love the way God loves. We each will end the story of Jonah in how we respond to God’s invitation.

16 I ask that he will strengthen you in your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit. 17 I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, 18 I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. 19 I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:16-19 (CEB)

It is a shift from our regular human knowledge (or way of thinking) to a direct encounter and experience of being filled with God’s love.

“I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us….” —Jesus’ Prayer in John 17:21a (CEB)

Just like God journeyed with Jonah and offered him grace after grace along the way in order to grow up into Godly love and unity, God is journeying with us through life offering us grace after grace to help us to do what is humanly impossible—to love like Christ loves. How will the Jonah in you respond to the grace being offered today to shift from one level of human knowledge that weighs you down with anger and resentment, to a higher awareness which is found in having the mind of Christ, and which will allow you to see this world as Christ does without the sad divisions we create?

Songs from Today's Service:

So Good To Me by William Matthews
Rising Son by All by Sons and Daughters
Great Are You Lord by All Sons and Daughters
Empty Me by William Murphy
Build My Life by Housefires