Changing the Mind of God

This week's sermon, based on Jonah 3:1-10 continues on with Jonah choosing to obey the Lord when he gets the message a second time.  We already saw part of the story line.  God gives Jonah a task that he doesn't want to do, he tries to run away from God, fails, repents and God gives Jonah a second chance.  Hooray for second chances!  I feel pretty sure that I need more than just second chances, and bet most of us do.  But now it gets messy.  Jonah accepts God's grace and responds by doing what he was called to do - preach repentance to his people's persecutors.  And they repent!

God gives the Ninevites a second chance when they repent, which makes Jonah angry.  Wouldn't you be angry?  How many times have I heard my kids cry, "Uh!  Not fair!" or even said it myself?  Or thought it?  The answer is: too many to count.  It seems to me that our society has confused equality and fairness, vengeance and justice.  Thinking about this as a parent, at any given point in time you give to each child as they need.  That doesn't mean you treat them equally at every given point in time, but you do treat them fairly.  The more we become obsessed with personal control, the more we demand our own definitions be used in proscribing behavior, consequences, justice... the more unfair and unjust everything becomes, and the more we feel the victim.

I did a little (very little) research on the question of what is the difference between vengeance and justice?  The general consensus seems to be that it all comes down to perspective.   If, in the example above, you are the recipient then it all feels fair and just.  If you are not, it feels unfair, prejudiced.  Jonah felt God was being unfair in saving those vicious, blood-thirsty, evil, persecuting Assyrians.  And he told God so!  In fact, that is the main reason he ran away in the first place, because he knew God would be merciful to his enemies!

It is hard to give up control, to trust that God will take care of it, and to believe that your enemy deserves mercy.  And yet, that was the lesson Jonah had to learn.  Recently, when I was talking with my Dad about my brother's death, I told him that I believed that whatever happened to my brother was in God's hands.  I don't get to decide and I also don't get to know - until much later - how this all turns out.  And I am good with that.  It was difficult to arrive at the understanding, but then easy to say when working through such a big, overwhelming event.  I think it is  harder to live out in the day to day minutia.  Maybe that idiot  person who cut me off in traffic deserves a second chance...

 What this passage tells me about God is that God is merciful in God's own unknowable, mysterious ways.  God decides who gets a second chance, and when they get it.  What it says to me, today, is that God was, is, and will be in control of things, and I just need to get over myself, accept that, and move on.