[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?
“Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.” Let’s take the ‘Jesus’ part of this out for now. “Taking this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.” Well, this takes us back to the first part of Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer. Remember, God will grant me serenity once I accept the world … once I accept my situation … once I accept my wife, my husband, my children, my neighbors, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, conservatives, liberals, progressives … as being exactly as they are and not as I think they should be … once I accept that fact that it is not my responsibility to run the world … once I accept the fact that I really don’t have the power to change the people or world. Any attempts to make the people in my life act the way that I want them to act, the way that I think that they should act … when I try to rule the world and try to force it to conform to my ideas of justice … will only end in frustration and futility, not serenity. Trying to change a person, let alone the world, is like trying to put makeup on a pig. It only frustrates you and upsets the pig … and in the end, nobody’s happy.
Sometimes … probably more times than we would like to admit … we get frustrated and angry with God because, well, He just doesn’t run the world the way that we think that He should run the world. Jonah’s reaction to God’s call to preach to the Ninevites was to run in the opposite direction. When God asks him why he did that, Jonah’s explanation was that he “knew” that God was a gracious God … “merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2). Well … he says that he “knew” that God was going to spare Nineveh. Okay, he knows that now because God did, indeed, spare Nineveh but I wonder if he “knew” that back when God first called him. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he only suspected. You’d think that he’d want to go Nineveh, pronounce God’s judgment of Israel’s enemies, and watch God pass judgment on those evil, evil Ninevites. But what if? What if, on the slim chance, the Ninevites did listen to Yahweh and repented? What if he didn’t go to Nineveh? What if he went to Tarshish instead and didn’t deliver the message? Then it was pretty assured that they wouldn’t repent and they would get what Jonah and all of Israel felt that they deserve. The worse thing that could happen is that they would be spared and when God spares them, Jonah is so mad at God that he asks God to kill him. It reminds me of the Merle Haggard song, “Stop the World and Let Me Off.” Who wants to live in a world where brutal people like the Ninevites are offered the chance to repent?
How often have we burned with anger when a criminal walks out the courtroom with just a slap on the wrist, amen? When we see someone escape justice or doesn’t receive their just due? When someone does something wrong to us or to someone we love and nothing happens to them? This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. The good guys are supposed to finish first and all the bad people are supposed to get their just reward, right? That’s not accepting this sinful world as it is but getting angry and frustrated because the world ain’t fair, the world ain’t the way that I want it. Often times, I’ll placate myself and let God off the hook by reassuring myself that they may have gotten away with it in this world but, HOO BOY, are they going to get it in the next. One day they’ll have to stand before God and answer for their sins, amen? And I hope that I am there to see it … assuming that I’m among the sheep, of course, and that Jesus will judge them to all be goats … which, of course, He will because, well, they’re obviously goats … and cast them out into the outer darkness. In the words of Conan the Barbarian, the best thing in life is to crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of their women … and if I can’t see them crushed and vanquished in this life then I want to see them crushed and vanquished in the life after this one. I believe there is a bit of Conan the Barbarian in all of us … even the Disciples. When a Samaritan village refuses to let Jesus and the Disciples take a shortcut through their town, they ask Jesus if it was okay for them to “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them” (Luke 9:54) but Jesus rebuked them.
Jesus cautions us not to judge so that we may not be judged. “For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matthew 7:1-2) … and this is the point that God makes with Jonah. “What right have you to be angry with me because I spared Nineveh?” God asks Jonah. “I am fair and just. I pointed out their sin and they repented. Unlike the Ninevites, Jonah, you are unrepentant. Should I kill you because you sinned and disobeyed me and went towards Tarshish instead of going to Nineveh like I commanded you? Should I destroy Israel for its sins like you expect me to destroy Nineveh for its sins? When I spared you, didn’t you promise me when you were in the belly of that fish that you would sing my praises in the Temple and offer me sacrifices of thanksgiving? Where did all that joy and gratitude go? And didn’t you say that ‘Deliverance belongs to the LORD!’ and now you’re so angry with me that I delivered the Ninevites that you would rather die than live in a world run by a gracious God who gives every one of His children the chance to change and escape destruction? Look at you! You’re mad that I took away your shade … the shade that I gave you. Instead of being grateful, you’re mad that I took it away. Instead of being grateful that I would spare you like I spared the Ninevites, you’re mad that I gave them a second chance … just like I’ve given you a second and a third and a thousand other chances. Yes … the Ninevites have done horrible things … horrible … but they didn’t know better … now, thanks to you, they do. You, on the other hand, should know better. So, even though you’re upset about a little thing like losing a little bit of shade … well … you should know better. Are your sins any better than the Ninevites? They do not know me. They do not know my heart. You do know better … you do know me … you do know my heart … and you outright disobeyed me and I had to force you to finally preach to the Ninevites who, believe it or not, I love as much as I love you and as much as I love the Israelites. I don’t like what they do which is why I sent you there to tell them to stop … and they did. How fair would it be if I killed them for breaking my rules when they don’t know what my rules are? Should I do the same with you? Should I destroy you for breaking the rules that you DO know, let alone the rules that you don’t know? And should I do the same with Israel? Yes, Jonah … I am gracious … I am merciful … I am slow to anger … yes, I am abounding in steadfast love … yes, I am always ready to relent from punishing … and you should be very, very grateful for that and not mad. The fact that I gave the Ninevites a chance to turn from their evil ways … the fact that I turned from my fierce anger and did not destroy Nineveh when they repented … is not only good news for the Ninevites but good news for you, Jonah, and for Israel and, well, frankly, for the rest of the world, don’t you think?”
“Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.” “Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is.” Hummm. Do you realize that God, who created this world, could simply wipe it out and sweep us and the entire universe away with a word or the swipe of His hand? Even when the whole world was doing evil in His sight and He sent rains to flood the earth and wash it clean, He still saved Noah and his family so that they could start the human race … us … over again. The idea that Jesus accepts this sinful world as it is doesn’t mean that Jesus is okay with all the sin that is in the world. He hates sin. He hates what sin is doing to His world, to His children. Instead of wiping the world out and starting over again, God comes to us and tries to save us from our sin and salvage this sinful world. The world is broken. We’re broken … and rather than destroy us, He is trying to fix us. From Genesis 3 to Revelation 22, God is offering us the same opportunity that He offered the Ninevites … a chance to turn from our evil ways and come to Him.
There is a section in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that explains this beautifully. The chapter is entitled “Acceptance is the Answer” and it was written by a recovering alcoholic named Dr. Paul O. He wrote this beautiful explanation that I feel captures what Reinhold Niebuhr was trying to express when he said that we should take this sinful world as Jesus did, not as we would have it. He writes:
“… acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life —unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake… unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes. Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. A.A. and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we each have a right to be here. When I complain about me or about you, I am complaining about God’s handiwork. I am saying that I know better than God…. And if I don’t know what’s good for me, then I don’t know what’s good or bad for you or for anyone. So I’m better off if I don’t give advice, don’t figure I know what’s best, and just accept life on life’s terms, as it is today—especially my own life, as it actually is” (Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 417-18).
Dr. Paul O. concludes: “When I focus on what’s good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what’s bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases….for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance” (Ibid., p. 419-420).
The cross is a powerful reminder of just how much God hates sin. He hates sin because He loves us. He hates sin because of what it does to us. He hates sin and He sent us prophets to warn us of the horrible things that sin was doing to us. Underneath the prophets’ words of destruction and devastation is the love of God. He sends us prophets like Jonah to warn us and when those warnings failed, He came in the flesh and showed us on the cross what sin does to us as a way for us to turn away from our evil ways and turn to Him. He doesn’t want to watch us suffer. He’s not passively standing by and watching us destroy ourselves. Yes … Jesus accepted this world for what it is, for what we made it … twisted, broken, and full of hurt … but He so loves the world that He came to die for our sins on the cross, not to condemn us but that we might be saved through Him. The cross is also a reminder that we cannot change the world … that we cannot save ourselves … but that He can change the world … is changing the world. We can’t change the world … we can’t save ourselves but we can change the world and save the world if we do like God commands us and go to Nineveh, go out to the four corners of the world and share the good news so that everyone who will hear the message of God’s grace and mercy and steadfast love will have the opportunity, as we do, to turn from their evil ways and their own destruction and turn to God, who loves us with all His heart, with all His might, and with all His strength. We might not be able to change the whole world but through us, God may be able to change the whole world one person at a time.
Please, turn with me now to page 12 in the hymnal.
[Communion]
