Sunday, September 14, 2014 | 8:00 a.m.

Facing Nineveh

Matt Helms
Minister for Children and Families, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 103:8–13
Romans 14:1–11
Jonah 4:1–11

One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment and love to revel in our righteous outrage is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy and the harder, messier work of understanding.

Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

The brief story of the prophet Jonah is perhaps my favorite story in the entire Bible—so much so that I took a rare deviation from the suggested lectionary text of Matthew to instead focus on the theme of judgment and mercy that all of this Sunday’s lectionary texts shared.

Jonah is probably the most well known of the so-called minor prophetic books, namely because the story of Jonah and the whale gets a lot of airtime in Sunday School classrooms and children’s Bibles. But typically only the first two chapters of the story are covered: God calls Jonah, Jonah doesn’t want to prophesy and runs away, and Jonah is ultimately coerced into fulfilling that call.

But while there is obvious value to a story about a prophet who is dragged kicking and screaming by God to fulfill his prophetic call, the original intent and complicated message of the book falls by the wayside if we ignore the masterful second half of the story, two chapters that bring the thorniness of God’s inclination towards forgiveness and mercy into focus.

At the start of the story, God tasks Jonah with delivering a message of repentance against Nineveh, the capital of Babylon and a frequent tormentor of Israel and its neighbors. Nineveh doesn’t trigger much reaction from us as modern readers, but the original hearers of this story would have held nothing but anger and contempt for the inhabitants of Nineveh. These were the people that had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, infamous for their brutality and cruelty, and now God was sending Jonah to ask them to repent. In that context, it’s a small wonder that Jonah runs: not only do these Ninevites pose a threat to his health and well-being, but the true horror for Jonah comes from wondering if God would really go so far as to forgive these people who had attacked and murdered Jonah’s countrymen.

In the third chapter—the chapter that preceded our second lesson—Jonah delivers a one-sentence warning against the people: “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Amazingly, and somewhat unbelievably, the entire city responds with sincere repentance. Even the king of Nineveh repents, donning sackcloth and sitting in ashes as an appeal to God to spare the city from judgment. And at the start of our lesson today, we hear God’s verdict. Upon seeing their repentance and transformation, God decides to not tear the city down and instead grants them forgiveness.

It is, of course, the incredible challenge that faces us when we proclaim that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. In a vacuum, these things sound wonderful—until, like Jonah, we’re forced to confront God giving mercy to someone whom we think doesn’t deserve it. Jonah is furious with God and states that he didn’t want to deliver the message because knew this would be the outcome all along. God’s justice and God’s mercy have been rendered incompatible for him. If God is not willing to punish the wicked, to tear down the city that tore down Israel, then Jonah decides that it would be better to die rather than to live. And the prophet goes off to the city outskirts and sits facing Nineveh, waiting to see if God will indeed do what he wants.

It is, in some ways, the ultimate picture of human stubbornness versus God’s broader perspective. Who is Jonah to force God’s hand and to demand that an entire people be destroyed? And yet that’s exactly what the original listeners of this story would have wanted too. It’s not hard to picture people nodding at Jonah’s indignation: if there is any justice in the world, these people should be torn down, humiliated, and even destroyed.

It’s that attitude that God challenges at the end of the story, using a simple bush as a metaphor for creation. If God is truly God of all creation rather than only of one country, shouldn’t God care about the welfare of all creation? Jonah is only one of two biblical books to end with a question, and that question hangs in the air at the story’s conclusion. What is the “right” thing to happen to Nineveh? Is it to see the city torn down, like Jonah and almost all of this story’s early listeners would have wanted? Or is it to see the city transformed and changed forever? In an incredible display of wordplay, the final Hebrew word in Jonah’s prophecy to Nineveh—hapak—carries both of these distinct meanings: hapak can mean “to be torn down” or “to be transformed.” Jonah understands the prophecy one way, and the Ninevites understand it another; indeed, the outcome hangs in the air just like that final question from God.

“To be torn down” or “to be transformed.” Many of you know that I am huge NFL football fan. I think half of Judy’s and my conversations during fall are about the X’s and O’s of the league, and I exchange texts with close friends almost daily throughout the season. But as I’m sure many of you are aware, football and the NFL have been dominating news cycles this week for one of the worst reasons possible. A video of Ray Rice, a high-profile and well-known running back, was published this past week that graphically showed Rice knocking his fiancée unconscious in an elevator this past April. Rice was immediately released from the team when news of the video broke and was suspended indefinitely, but questions about how much the NFL knew and how the original case was handled by prosecutors have fueled public outrage all week in the aftermath of this terrible crime. And just over this weekend, questions have risen about Adrian Peterson, another star running back, about whether he is guilty of physically abusing his four-year-old son. As a football fan, but truly just as a human being, I am deeply troubled by these cases—from Rice’s violent punch to the thought of someone harming a child, to either the incompetence or deception shown by the NFL, to the laws in which a perpetrator of domestic violence can get off with minimal punishment, to the pundits who try to blame the victim for remaining in the relationship. The Adrian Peterson story is still unfolding, but in reading dozens of articles about Ray Rice this week and reading the message boards below, there is widespread outrage over this, as there should be. There is no instance in which violence is acceptable, and it is heartening to see people unanimously voicing that. One of the few positives of this awful case is that it has cast a spotlight on domestic violence, something an estimated twenty-five percent of women will experience in their lifetime but that often occurs out of sight and behind closed doors. But will anything change for these women if Rice is out of football forever or NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is fired? Or will it serve only to assuage our need for payback?

This final chapter of the Jonah story in which Jonah sat in the distance, facing the city of Nineveh and waiting for God to tear the city down, reminded me of the vast majority of comments I read and heard this week talking about the Ray Rice case. The majority were calls for Rice to be banned for life and calls for Goddell to be fired. It was reminiscent of the Donald Sterling case from earlier this year, when Sterling, an NBA owner, was recorded making racist comments and there was incredible and swift public backlash calling for him to be removed. I absolutely believe that there should be consequences to one’s hurtful actions—particularly when those actions are magnified by the stature of that public figure—but I rarely saw the actual problem of racism or domestic violence being addressed beyond calling for the tearing down of these particular public figures. Instead, like Jonah, we as a society seemed to be eagerly watching and waiting for these people to be torn down in front of our eyes rather than asking and demanding that they repent and rehabilitate, rather than insisting that they and those around them transform.

Why is it that we would rather see someone punished rather than see them changed? Perhaps, for many of us, there is a deep cultural distrust that someone can truly transform. I’m sure that all of you have heard apologies offered by public figures and have come away thinking that person didn’t show even the slightest bit of remorse. Our era of PR and carefully crafted media statements has made these apologies feel like nothing more than disingenuous justifications and hollow excuses. Indeed, the public responses of both Ray Rice and Roger Goodell to this case felt that way to me and perhaps to some of you. There is also the perception—or, truly, the reality—that those in positions of influence and power get away with crimes that others would be jailed for. We as a society have grown accustomed to public figures seemingly being above the law, and it’s almost as though we relish the opportunity to take justice into our hands rather than leaving it in someone else’s. We each have a little bit of Jonah in us—hoping to enact justice by tearing something or someone down because we don’t believe that there is any other way. And that’s why that final chapter of the book of Jonah is so haunting. Jonah’s angry charge to God could be any of ours: “Lord, how could you call us to seek transformation of these awful people? Don’t you know what they have done—the people they’ve hurt and lives they’ve ruined. Where is your justice? What good does it do for you to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, ready to relent from punishing?”

There are no easy answers to those questions. There never will be. But that call to transform rather than to tear down is clear, even if it means taking risks and even if it means digging into the harder, messier work of understanding. This type of work takes incredible commitment, but the enacting of a model that balances justice and understanding is not unknown. One of the greatest models for this came from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a task force headed by Desmond Tutu and the South African government after the abolishment of Apartheid in the mid-1990s. Apartheid was a hideous policy, resulting in thousands of human rights violations and affecting millions of lives. Amidst calls for harsh justice in the wake of the abolishing of Apartheid, the Commission gave hearings to more than 7,000 people in positions of power who had abused others during the period of Apartheid. The Commission also allowed them to apply for amnesty for their crimes. These hearings focused on a full confession of wrongdoing, the asking of forgiveness from the victims, and proposals to assist with rehabilitation. Only one of every eight cases received amnesty, but the message was clear: this wasn’t about tearing down; it was about transforming thoughts, opinions, and feelings. It was about building something new and providing a future in which there was hope.

I don’t know what the aftermath of this Ray Rice incident will bring in this upcoming week, but I believe that our response has to be more just than tearing down. Banning Rice and firing Goodell would be treating the symptoms rather than treating the disease. Looking for quick and easy fixes to these problems can only leave us with new problems down the road. We as a people of faith and a community of faith have to be about building a better world, not just tearing down a bad one. Rather than focusing our outrage on removing the easy targets, we need to demand the transformation of them. We need to demand that courts assign abusers to intensive rehabilitation programs, rather than trusting that a few years in jail will somehow resolve their issues with anger. We need to demand that victims of abuse receive quality care and that women’s shelters are provided for. We need to demand that the NFL leads the way in supporting these efforts with the billions of dollars of revenue they earn annually. And if we truly believe that God is gracious and merciful, then we have a call to be gracious and merciful even as we demand all of those things to be better. We are called to face the Ninevehs of our lives, hoping for transformation rather than destruction. It’s not going to be easy in a culture of distrust and disbelief, but we are each called to do whatever we can to build up the world rather than tearing it down.

Where in your life is God calling you to help build it up? What will your response be?