Have It God's Way Series

[This series is based on Reinhold Niebuhr's "The Serenity Prayer" (the full version). This sermon is based on the line: "Taking, as Jesus did, this world as it is and not as I would have it." It was also delivered on Communion Sunday, so it leads to gathering at the Lord's Table.]

Growing up, I loved movies and stories. I loved them because the good guy got the girl and the bad guy always got his in the end, amen? The problem was that, even as a child, I could see that the real world didn’t always work out like it did in the movies or stories. In real life, the good guy can sometimes finish last and the bad guy not only gets away with it in the end but sometimes ends up with the girl, the fancy car, and the big house. One of the reasons that we love movies and stories is that we get to play God. The writer creates the characters, gives them life through his or her words. They set up the conditions, the conflicts, the struggles that their character or characters will go through, and then they get to determine the outcome … and we, as readers or spectators … get to look down from on high or passively sit to the side, so to speak, and wait for the “happy ending.” And then we leave the theater or we turn off the TV or we close the book and come back into the real world where things aren’t, well, so tidy and neat, amen? Boy … if only I were in charge of the world, then everything would be like a movie or a novel. The good guy … that’s me … would always end up with the girl, the car, the big house, and the perfect job … and all the bad guys and gals out there … well, let’s just say that the world would be a much more just and fair place if I ran it … only, it really wouldn’t. It would be a total mess and you should thank God everyday that He is in charge and I am not.

All you have to do is look around to see the mess that we’ve made of the world. Republicans want the world to be one way, Democrats want the world to be their way, and the independents aren’t sure and like to wait and see how the movie or the story ends before they pick a side. Conservatives think the world would be a much better place if they were in charge and liberals and progressives are pretty sure that the world would a much better place if they were charge. Capitalists think that they should run the world and Communists feel the same way. The Russians think they are justified in invading the Ukraine … we feel they’re wrong and send billions of dollars and weapons to the Ukraine so they can fight back … so the Russians cut off their supply of oil and gas … and round and round we go. The Japanese had their justifications for invading China and starting a war with the United States. The Germans were convinced that they were fighting against the capitalist systems of the west which were taking advantage of their economic misfortune after World War I. The North had their reasons for fighting with the South and the South had their reasons for fighting with the North. Everyone is convinced that their side is right and that the world would be a much better place if everyone would just play by the rules … their rules. As Jonah finds out, however, the only rules that matter are the ones that God puts into place.

Jonah had a very curious reaction when God didn’t rain down fire on Nineveh like He did Sodom and Gomorrah … he was angry … so angry that he told God that he wished God would kill him and put him out of his misery. Now, let’s pause here for a moment. Who is Jonah mad at? The Ninevites for repenting? No. He’s mad at God. Why even give them a chance to repent? If anyone deserved total destruction and annihilation, it was the Ninevites for sure. Their reputation for cruelty was well deserved. When their armies captured a city or a country they would do things like skin their captives alive, pierce their captives’ chins with hooks or pass rope through their chins and lead them around like dogs on a leash. They mutilated their enemy, they decapitated them and made piles or pyramids with the heads. This is horrible stuff. But none of this horrible behavior was limited to just the Ninevites. When the Jews took cities, the Bible says that God commanded them to “put all the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil…. But as for the town of [those] peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them … just as the LORD your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 20:13-14, 16-18). Well … maybe that’s what the Assyrian gods were telling the Ninevites to do. Their brutal treatment of captives was a common practice in those days … and, in a similar way, for the same reason that we degrade and humiliate our enemies today … as a show of our might and power and the assumption that our way must be the right way because we won … and part of our “spoils” or our victory is that we get to put an end to their way of life, impose our way of life on them, and, in our hearts and mind, feel that we have somehow set the world right because, well, our way is the right way, amen?