For the Love of Empire

 

God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

This traditional confession of faith, as found in Exodus 34:6, is repeated many times in Hebrew scriptures. Following centuries of use, it continues to be spoken in liturgies and prayers.

 

Unfolding from this confession of faith, the book of Jonah brings to life the enormity of God’s grace, unfathomable mercy, immeasurable love, and inexhaustible faithfulness. This is the take-away! This story goes to great lengths to illustrate the confession of Exodus 34: 6. Using humour and exaggeration, the story has us look at our human arrogance, egotism, and selfishness. Through raw and truthful expression of human emotion and understanding, the story has us laugh at ourselves. The underlying hope is that listeners’ hearts are softened to repentance and opened to trust God’s deliverance.

 

For a moment, consider the world around you, particularly your relationship with people, places, and things. Which family members exhaust you? Which neighbours annoy you? Who makes you uncomfortable? Which kind of people do you avoid? Whom do you hate? Whom to you label enemy? Who makes you mad? Who bullies you? Who has hurt you? Which world leaders anger you? Which empire or regime causes you distress? Whom do you wish to see obliterated? Who doesn’t make it to heaven?

These are your Ninevites.

Take a breath and let that settle in. And guess what? God has extravagant mercy and forgiveness towards them. All of them. Everyone of them.

Now, how do you feel about that?

Just as generations of people have believed and repeated, “God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.;” as we, with Lutheran congregations across the country, proclaim the tagline that we are about ‘Living out God’s grace and unconditional love;” we, like Jonah have a limit to how far we actually want God’s grace and unconditional love to be applied.

 

The second half of the book of Jonah is one of my all-time favourite stories. The Mystery at work in this, is that the story winds its way into the depths of my being and points fingers at the harshness of my judgements, the hardness of my heart, and truths I hide from myself; and certainly, the hidden secrets I don’t publicly share. In my mind I organize the world in a dualistic framework, where righteousness and goodness reign supreme. It means that people, places, and things who are judged to not be righteous and good, I dismiss them and subsequently relegate them (on my worst days) for damnation, fire, and eternal gnashing of teeth.

I can preach living out God’s grace and unconditional love, and God’s mercy and abounding steadfast love, but the hidden secret is that although I believe it, I don’t want it to actually come true. I delight in the concept of fairness, accountability, and just rewards. I am a Jonah.

The Mystery at work in the story, is that it is a favourite even though it points to my inadequacies.

Returning to hear the story I realize that the humorous nature of the tale arouses an actionable anger within me. I am angry at being the Jonah, enough to want to repent and try with all my heart to wish for all, God’s grace and abounding steadfast love and really mean it. The story reminds me that I will never fully reach this state, but in being reminded I can most certainly try.

 

Today, Jewish siblings mark Yom Kippur.  This is the Jewish Day of Atonement and includes actions of prayer, fasting, and asceticism. The focus is atonement and repentance. The synagogue services follow 10 days of reflection and ritual on broken relationships and asking forgiveness of others. Yom Kippur focuses on sin against God. It is a day to let go of jealousy, hatred, and conflict, to arrive at a heart and disposition that creates love and embraces kinship. The afternoon scripture reading for this holiest day of the liturgical year is the book of Jonah.

 

Myra Berstein writes for My Jewish Learning, four reasons why Jonah is read on Yom Kippur.

First and foremost, the story illustrates God’s infinite mercy. If God can forgive Nineveh, God can forgive us.

Second, the story addresses repentance and the importance of rituals to express heartfelt repentance to God.

Third, readers are reminded that the entire world with all its creatures and natural forces are in God’s hands.

And finally, it is not too late to be heard and saved. Even in the afternoon, as the day draws to a close, it is not too late for God to answer prayer.

 

It is not too late. It is not too late for the Jonah in each and everyone of us.

Jonah’s perspective, his worldview, started with himself and looked outward. He interpreted events as if he was the centre of the universe. But it was not too late for a change of perspective, God was waiting for Jonah to remember that he was part of and represented a people who had a covenant with God.

 

It is not too late to repent from self-serving prayers hoping for predetermined outcomes. It is not too late to repent our individualistic perceptions to welcome and let new-Spirit-Wisdom-filled perceptions take over.

 

It is not too late to repent and confess our brokenness.

The Jonah story is about relationship. Every time I hear the story it once again softens my heart to expand my practice and understanding of relationship, kinship, kin-dom. Mentioning Nineveh, is the author identifying and naming empire. Empire was the force who placed Jonah’s people into exile, shaped culture, held imagination and hope in bondage, and replaced community ideals with individual pursuits and self-centredness. The empire was big and formidable. Everything lived and moved within its power and its unsatiated shadow.

Empire is the world around us. Power. Wealth. It has a raging appetite for conquest, conflict, and complacency of the masses, fed by distraction to depravity and desperation. It is not too late… for empire to repent for

God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, and God response will be mercy.

It is not too late, for the Jonah in us to pray – seriously- for the redemption, the salvation, of the enemy.

We are called to really live out God’s grace and unconditional love in community and through community; together facing empire with God’s call to repent. Prepare yourself now, for God to wait for the empire’s change of heart, and then for God to relent from smiting, no fire or brimstone, just love.

 

We pray with Kat Armas, in the words her book, Liturgies for Resisting Empire; Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World, prays:

 

God of Unmasking,

We resist empire’s illusions that offer a sterile holiness, a conditional love. Forgive us for the times we believed this, for bowing to false gods, for letting empire name us. Let your mercy fall like rain, softening the soil of our hearts. Allow us to receive forgiveness as renewal so that we might sow a new kingdom of justice, truth, and love. For the times we have failed to see reality for what it is, open our eyes O God. ---   pg 43 Liturgies for resistance

Amen.