The Resentment of Grace

Jonah 4

by Daniel Harrell

Last Sunday was like one of those bad movie sequels, like Another 48 Hours, or The Next Karate Kid. You sat there and thought: haven’t I seen this already? The same plot? The same players? The same ending? How can this be happening—again? Somehow you hoped things might turn out differently this time. Its not often you get a second chance, such a textbook set-up for redemption. But there it was, only to be squashed by a furious rally. By a miraculous catch. By a mediocre effort at stopping the inevitable. It ends up like just you knew it would, but you still can’t believe it. It makes you so mad that you’re awake the rest of the night. That’s right, I’m talking about Jonah. (What did you think I was talking about?) God directly orders Israel’s prophet to the pagan city of Nineveh, the capital of enemy Assyria, to warn them of their looming doom. Jonah refuses—the only prophet ever to be so brazen—or so brainless. He tries to escape at sea, but God rallies in furious fashion, sending a vicious storm that forces Jonah to go three and out—of the boat. Then comes the miraculous catch—into the mouth of a fish—compelling Jonah to follow the game plan this time, which he does in defeated fashion. He has to deliberately let the other team score, and then bury his head on the sideline to await the final whistle.

Jonah’s story is one of unwelcome grace. The prophet wanted the Lord of Glory to bear his Old Testament teeth, to rise up in wrath against the odious Ninevites, the epitome of all evil. Drop the heavenly hammer, Sodom and Gomorrah style. Rain down some hellfire and brimstone. Plague and pestilence. But instead, way ahead of schedule, God showed his New Testament side and sent showers of blessing instead. He did as Jesus will describe him doing in the Sermon on the Mount, he “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous alike.” In response to Nineveh’s repentance, the Lord changed his mind and relented from meting out judgment. God’s anger was stopped; but Jonah was just getting warmed up.

The prophet is livid: “I knew you’d be gracious!” he yells as he prays. “I knew you’d be merciful! I knew you’d be slow to anger and abounding in love, that you’d forgive anybody who wants it and would change your mind about sending punishment!” As it turns out, the Old Testament God has a soft spot for contrite sinners too. Jonah labels Yahweh as “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, who relents from sending calamity,” but it’s not a characterization he comes up with all on his own. It’s the way the Lord is described in Exodus, in Nehemiah, in the Psalms and on the lips of the prophet Joel too. When extended to Jonah, God’s grace and mercy made him thankful. But when given to the Ninevites, it just made him mad. Their reputation was as a “a city of bloodshed, full of lies and never without victims.” So what that they repented? People repent all the time, and then after they get their forgiveness, they just go back to doing what they were going to do anyway. Who says that Nineveh won’t return to their murderous ways once they’ve been spared? How can God be so naïve? So soft? So unfair? So unjust? “You’re killing me Lord! Killing me! If your intent is to let evildoers off the hook, then you might as well just take my life and kill me now. It is better for me to die than to live.”

OK, so maybe Jonah is being a little melodramatic. Still, talking about loving your enemies does bring out the drama. Whenever I’m teaching the Sermon on the Mount, like I was doing this past Wednesday night, and get to that part about not retaliating against evildoers and all that turning the other cheek and going the extra mile ridiculousness, the knee-jerk reaction, like Jonah’s, is to immediately object and complain about God’s abdication of justice and about our having to be doormats for the Lord. We roll out the serial rapists and the pedophiles and the repeat drunk drivers and Hitler, and how since nobody could ever be expected to forgive them, how dare Jesus expect us to forgive your own enemies—you know, the rude co-workers, or the insulting neighbors, the customers who stiff you, or the relatives who still owe you money? Sure, Jesus only commands us to turn our heads a little, part with a shirt and walk a few thousand feet more, but why would you ever do that for somebody who’s being a jerk? Oh, and then knowing he’s already asking the impossible, Jesus loads on the guilt, telling us to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” as if your own parents weren’t demanding enough.

As we sit there and stew in our self-justifying juices, God’s question to Jonah becomes his question to us: “Is it right for you to be angry?”

It’s a question that’s left to dangle as chapter 4 goes on to indulge in a bit of a flashback. You’ll remember from last Sunday how Jonah’s token obedience resulted in a short, single sentence sermon: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” The prophet didn’t mention God once. He said nothing about the possibility of grace or any need to repent or any invitation to reform, all on purpose. He skipped the closing hymn and gave no benediction, no hope for any salvation. And then as fast as he could, lest the Lord send some other beast to bite him, he got out of town, shaking the dust off his feet as he went. He secured a perch overlooking the city and set up a temporary shelter, a prime spot from which to view what was sure to be a brimstone blowout. But to everyone’s shock, the Ninevites took Jonah seriously. His sermon set off a stampede of shame and repentance with the entire city stripping down to sackcloth, wallowing in ashes and fasting from all food and drink. It was an unmistakable plea for mercy to a deity they did not even know. And so that their ashen appeal wouldn’t be mistaken as a piety show, they stopped doing their evil and turned from all the violence and injustice of which they were guilty. And they did all of this without any grace guarantee. Lamented their contrite king, “Who knows whether this God will change his mind and pull back his wrath so that we do not perish.”

This being a flashback, Jonah is not yet aware of the Ninevites’ overwhelming reaction to his sermon. He does not yet know that God has accepted their corporate apology, honored their change of behavior and canceled the fireworks. Due to Jonah’s temper, the Lord decides to break the news to him gently. He sends Jonah a houseplant. A fast-growing Jack-in-the-beanstalk that provides additional shade for Jonah’s vigil of vengeance. The plant puts Jonah in a very good mood—it’s the first time we’ve ever seen the prophet smile. But then the Lord sends in a weevil with explicit instructions to chew through the plant and wither Jonah’s leafy canopy. After that the Lord sends a burning hot wind and jacks up Jonah’s discomfort. God does unto the plant what Jonah wants done unto the Ninevites. How does the prophet like his theology now? “Is it right for you to be angry—about a houseplant?” asks the Lord, loading his question this time with a tangible illustration. The heat getting to him, Jonah is in no mood to learn anything. His melodrama reignites. “Yes I have a right to be angry!” he screams, “I’m angry enough to die!”

What Jonah needs is a good therapist. Some pastoral perspective. Let’s analyze it: He’s mad about a football game—I mean a houseplant. Here today and gone tomorrow. It’s not like it would have made a contribution to world peace or eliminating poverty or reducing climate change. It’s just a football game. I mean a college basketball game. I mean a houseplant! It has no impact on the health of my family, my job satisfaction, the happiness of my marriage, my relationship with my friends. So why do I care? Why do I lay awake night and obsess over the one or two plays that could have totally changed the outcome? Need I be so upset? So devastated? Must I bear my teams’ defeat like some indelible sports tattoos, rubbing my grief in my face and until I die? If I must care so much and be so distraught by something intended solely for my entertainment, something for which I did nothing but sit passively and watch on TV while eating buffalo wings and swilling beer, then why can’t God care about this great city with 120,000 actual living, breathing people locked in their sin and self-destruction who know not what they do nor how to be saved from it? And their animals too? “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?” Jesus asked, “Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. And you are of more value than many sparrows.”

The conclusion to Jonah is often used as motivation for mission, specifically urban mission. Half the world now lives in cities, from culture shapers, next generations and immigrants to the poorest of the poor. Christians are called to care about cities like God cares about cities, which is what motivates Colonial Church to partner with city ministry organizations like Community Emergency Services, Families Moving Forward, Young Life and Calvary Baptist Church among others. There are close to 10,000 homeless children in Minneapolis, half of them under age six. 23% of the city’s population lives below the poverty line. Perhaps this makes you mad. If so, get mad enough to do something about it. Compassion is a good way to channel your anger. Unfortunately for Jonah, compassion was what made him angry. God’s grace ticked him off.

Our Wednesday night study prayed for the family of Ann Blake this week, the mother of two middle school children who was struck and killed on a Maple Grove sidewalk as she waited to cross the street. She was hit by a car whose driver had a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit as well as an empty vodka bottle in her vehicle. Police were already tailing the driver at the time of the wreck, after receiving a report of erratic driving. Ann Blake’s twin children, one of whom is autistic, are orphans now. Their father died just four months prior, following a year long bout with cancer. Both parents were active in their Lutheran church and helped with Bible school and were advocates for children with autism. It’s unspeakably tragic. We shake our heads at the senselessness, and we shake our fists at heaven demanding to know why God keeps letting such horrible things happen. But what really enrages us is the fact that this drunk driver gets to go on living her life; that she may even find her way to some kind of redemption. And not only does God allow it, but he loves and cares for her too. And far worse than all that, God insists that I care. That I even go so far as to forgive her. That I “be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.” Jesus! That is so infuriating!

Let’s analyze our anger just a little bit more. If ever you’ve found yourself in the same boat with Jonah—or in the same fish or under the same houseplant—ask yourself this: Are you mad because your faith cramps your lifestyle and places insufferable restraints on your true identity? Or are you mad because your Christian faith is your true identity, and what’s insufferable is your constant failure and refusal to live it out. In other words, are you mad because you feel repressed by being a good Christian, or because you feel frustrated for being a bad Christian? If my question still confuses you, try an experiment. In the next two weeks leading into Lent, take the first week and be as uninhibited and as shamefully abrasive as you dare to be within the law. Forget Jesus and the kingdom of God. Most of all, forget that other people have feelings. Just care about your feelings and then act on those feelings. Lean into your indignation. Be a savage.

Then take the second week and try as hard as you can to be as perfectly Christian as you know how to be. Show as much indifference to other people’s rudeness and insults and you showed for their feelings the week before. Don’t be pious, just live out the gospel in as bold and as loving a way as your imagination allows. Do what’s right and responsible and honoring to God with all the character, integrity, generosity and prayerful humility you can muster. Be a saint.

At the end of your two weeks, ask yourself the following: Which approach to life is the true you? The answer will probably be both.

Fury and faith are not necessarily mutually exclusive categories. Herein lies the mystery of the cross. It is through the injustice and through the anger that compassion and grace finally come. If by anger we mean that unleashed, impassioned and savage hostility against those people and circumstances which violate, offend, frustrate, threaten, endanger or impede; then the cross of Jesus must be viewed as the anger of God in its truest expression. The sin Jesus bore—of which we all share guilt—brought down the full and just fury of heaven. Moreover, if by grace we mean that unleashed love and compassion for those people who do not deserve it and yet understand that they need it and are dead without it, then the cross of Jesus must be viewed as the grace of God in its truest expression too. God channels his righteous anger into compassion for sinners. He so loves the world that his gives his own Son to die and rise for it, forgiving a world that knows not what they do, making it so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish, but can permanently live a life of grace and compassion themselves. To be perfect like their Father in heaven who makes them perfect.

The family of Ann Blake released a statement upon learning about the drunk driver’s alcohol levels. “This information at least provides closure as to the cause. Nothing can bring Ann back or erase the pain that everyone who was close to her has felt for the last week,” it read. And then they added, “We believe in forgiveness and grieve for the driver and for her family just as we grieve for the loss of Ann.”

Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel observes how “God’s answer to Jonah, stressing the supremacy of compassion, upsets the possibility of looking for a rational coherence of God’s ways with the world. History would be more intelligible if God’s word were the last word, final and unambiguous like a dogma or an unconditional decree. It would be easier if God’s anger became effective automatically: once wickedness had reached its full measure, punishment would destroy it.”

Yet, beyond justice and anger, indeed even through justice and anger, lies the mystery of compassion; the mystery of the cross.

The Bible's Shortest Sermon

Jonah 3

by Daniel Harrell

The closest I’ve ever come to wearing sackcloth was the last time the Patriots played the New York Football Giants in the Super Bowl. Overconfident in the undefeated Patriots’ ability to fend off all comers, I rashly wagered with a loudmouth Giants fan that New England would mercilessly mow down her boys in blue as with every other team they’d rolled over that season. Gathered among the faithful to witness what I believed to be the inevitable Super Bowl night, we were joined in disbelief at Eli Manning’s escape and David Tyree’s ridiculous helmet aided catch. Clearly the Lord’s hand was in it. Following the humiliating loss, I penitently paid my bet. I covered myself with a Giants hat and jersey—sackcloth and ashes for any Bostonian—walked the streets of Boston and loudly professed  my love for New York, much to the derision of my fellow New Englanders. On the one hand I deserved the disgrace on account my hubris and misplaced faith. But on the other hand, my display was a hopeful prayer for a second chance, an opportunity for redemption and maybe even revenge. Tonight is that second chance.

For the overconfident King of Nineveh here in Jonah, potentate of pagan Assyria, the Bill Belichick of the ancient Near East, the prediction of his nation’s pending upset to underdog Israel elicited immediate—remorse! The king “rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” For this pagan king to offer such a shame-filled display in response to the words of an insufferable Hebrew prophet before the game had even been played was nothing short of remarkable—so remarkable that Jesus would commend its virtue centuries later as an indictment against Israel’s own arrogance. Not only did the Assyrian King repent, but all of Nineveh reformed their behavior, turned from their evil ways and from the violence and injustice of which they were guilty. And this without any guarantee of mercy. The king prayed to a deity he did not recognize—referring to God with the Hebrew generic elohim. “Who knows” said the king, “this God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

Of course for those who did know the Lord, who knew elohim to be Yahweh, the idea that he should ever change his mind was absurd. As the Reformer John Calvin would later assert, any suggestion that the Lord would change his mind or relent (or as the King James so boldly puts it, repent) would imply that “either the Lord is ignorant of what is going to happen, or cannot escape it, or hastily and rashly rushes into a decision.” The Bible unambiguously declares in Numbers 23 that “God is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through?” Likewise in 1 Samuel 15: “The Glory of Israel will not recant or repent; for he is not a human, that he should change his mind.” The problem, of course, is that God does repent and change his mind. He does it in Genesis where He repents of having made people. He does it in Exodus where he changes his mind about destroying the golden calf-loving Israelites. Likewise with the prophets Joel and Amos, God changes his mind about his plans for his people. Even in 1 Samuel 15 where the Lord says he doesn’t repents he repents over having made Saul the first king of Israel.

If such change of heart on the Lord’s part bothers you (and as we will see it clearly bothered Jonah), it may be because you project too much of your own manner onto God. We quickly think of all the times we change our own minds—times that usually have to do with poor decision-making skills, lack of information, fear, anxiety or sin—none of which characterize God. “God is not a human, that he should change his mind” should be understood as “God does not change his mind like we humans do.” Unlike humans, God does not say one thing and then do another, nor does he change his mind for frivolous reasons or for no reason at all. God is not capricious or arbitrary but consistent and reliable—and he never changes in regard to his dependability or character. As the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Word Made Flesh in Christ and the Holy Spirit who dwells in his people, the Lord is reliably personal and consistently loving. He is eager for relationship and therefore always responsive.

Because God loves us, he responds to our repentance and relents from allowing us what our deeds deserve. He is patient with us, creating space for the experience of relationship on our part, for the awareness of our need and for the necessity of our humility and surrender to his mercy. The long-suffering nature of God makes possible a new beginning after every personal disaster and failure. “God is patient with you,” the apostle Peter wrote, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

This is good news for sinners—not so good for those sinned against. This will be Jonah’s gripe. Nineveh was a nation devoted to violence and murder. The prophet Nahum labeled it “a city of bloodshed, full of lies and never without victims.” How can wearing sackcloth and ashes and promising to do better suffice for years of brutality? What if Syria’s current President Assad and his henchmen suddenly stopped killing their citizens and said they were sorry? Does everything revert back to normal as if nothing happened? What about the abusers in your own life? Saying “sorry” and promising not to do it again may be enough for God, but what about you? I remember a woman once narrating for me a horrific history of her own violation, sins she simply could not and would not forgive. If granting grace to her abuser was what it meant to follow the Lord, then she could not follow the Lord. True, God had forgiven her sins and shown her grace to be sure; but her sins unto others were in no way as heinous as what had been done unto her. “I need a God who gets even,” she said, “The angry and vengeful God is a God I can obey.”

That God was so merciful would be why Jonah found obedience so impossible. The Lord ordered the prophet to Nineveh to warn them their days were numbered—in effect to give them one more chance. But Jonah, the only prophet ever to disobey a direct order, ran away in the opposite direction. He boarded a boat headed for the other end of the earth, but he could not hide from God. The Lord furiously bombarded his boat with a ferocious storm. Recognizing his own days to be numbered now, Jonah gave up, but he didn’t give in. He went overboard, willing to drown rather than do as he was told. But God would not let Jonah off the hook so easily. Making him into whale bait, God had a great fish eat Jonah alive and then puke him up onto the beach. And when Jonah came to, God issued his order again: “Get up, go to Nineveh and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” It’s almost word for word with the command in chapter 1, except that here the main Hebrew verb “proclaim” carries a more positive tone, denoting a call to repentance and deliverance. God is going to give the Assyrians a break and Jonah simply can’t stand it.

And yet maybe because three days in the belly of a fish in the middle of the ocean was as bad as it sounds, Jonah complies, albeit with the smallest amount obedience he can get away with. He trudges into Nineveh and delivers a one sentence sermon. Five words in Hebrew that translate to eight in English: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Jonah doesn’t mention God once. Nevertheless, these minimal words were more than enough, causing a stampede of repentance—an altar call on steroids—which has presented a challenge to long-winded preachers ever since. Like the pagan sailors on Jonah’s boat, the pagan Ninevites were better at being chosen people than the chosen people. The Ninevites took Jonah more seriously than the God’s people would ever take Jeremiah or Joel or Amos or Jesus. When Jeremiah brought them bad news, they had him locked him up. When Jesus did the same, they him strung him up. It’s hard to see your enemies offered grace. Harder still is to have it offered to you. An offer of grace presumes that you need it.

Jonah preached during a politically prosperous time for ancient Israel. They were living the dream of favored-nation status—strong and rich—so much so that they grew complacent and started to gloat. They confused God’s glory for their own and hogged it all for themselves. Jonah breathed in this air of superiority, figuring with the rest of God’s people, that the favor of the Lord was what they deserved. The last thing he wanted was for the despicable Assyrians to have a seat at the same table. God knows they deserved nothing but ruin.

I’m teaching a class up at Bethel Seminary this quarter on the topic of Theology and American Culture. Of course, a better title for the class might be Theologies and American Cultures, given the reality of pluralism in our country. It wasn’t always like this. We hear politicians pine for a “Christian America,” a nostalgic time when, culturally speaking, faith in Jesus was practically inevitable. It was a time when everyone affirmed the same religious values, spoke the same religious language, understood all the religious symbols and had their religious beliefs buttressed by social practices and mores woven into everyday life. Sure there were other cultures around, but they all just melted into the pot. These days, what with the expansive growth of cities and urbanization, with stunning advances in travel and technology bringing with it exposure to so many different cultures and ideas, religious belief is no longer the status quo. The Melting Pot has become more of a Super Bowl Party Buffet, a pluralistic smorgasbord of distinctive flavors and tastes. The buffalo wings share top billing with the guacamole and the fried mozzarella. There’s not really a main dish anymore.

By 2050, America will be a country with no ethnic majority. As we discussed the implications of this in my seminary class, it was clear that Christianity would be changing too. We had Korean-American Professor Soong-Chan Rah as our guest in class this week—speaking to us via Skype from Chicago on his Smartphone (talk about stunning technological advances). He noted how when current majority-culture Christians describe theological perspectives different from their own, they’ll use labels such as Asian theology or black theology or liberation theology. But when speaking of their own theology they just say theology—this despite the phenomenal growth of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, numeric growth that has already lapped Christianity in the West. He called this labeling the bitter fruit of the church’s “western white cultural captivity.” He said it’s the cause of the American church being so individualistic and so commercially materialistic and so morally accommodating to popular culture. Professor Rah then went on to ask why in a day when white Christians jump into the political fray over all sorts of issues with little Biblical precedent, we remain comparably hesitant when it comes to caring for immigrants and aliens, which the Bible promotes over and over again. Professor Rah proposed that the reason for the silence on immigration from white churches is because white people are afraid of a nonwhite America and a nonwhite Christianity.

Naturally I and my class of snow white Minnesotans were duly offended. Were we being called racists? At a seminary? As budding young pastors and prophets for the Lord? And yet even being a prophet of God was no guarantee against fear and disgust toward those unlike himself. Jonah hated the Assyrians. The last thing he wanted was for them to show up in his country or at his church or at his table. So what they wear burlap and say the right words, so what that they turn from their evil—who’s to say that once they’ve been spared they don’t go back to their vicious ways? They were that kind of people.

And they were. Within 50 years, the Assyrians would rise up and run over Israel, leveling the Northern Kingdom and carrying its citizenry into exile. And the Lord’s hand was in it. Israel’s complacency and conceit were sins in his sight. God sent Amos and Hosea and told them to knock it off, but they didn’t. And so the Lord announced he would “spare his people no longer.” The repentant Assyrians became the Lord’s ironic instrument of judgment against his unrepentant chosen people. When it comes to his justice, God shows no partiality.

And yet, because God is reliably personal and consistently loving; eager for relationship and therefore always responsive, his anger can be interrupted, halted or completely turned aside. God can change his mind. His love knows no limits—except the limit on those who would despise his love. In their case, divine patience will take the form of waiting for that Day for which evildoers will have piled up their wicked deeds. In an analogous passage from Joel that gets read every Ash Wednesday, the Lord speaks from the verge of his destructive justice and declares that “The day of the LORD is great; it is dreadful. No one can endure it.” “But even now,” declares the LORD, even then with one last gasp, “return to me with all your heart… Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.”

Because God loves us, he responds to our repentance and relents from allowing us what our deeds deserve. He changes his mind. However strictly speaking, even sinners who repent still deserve to be punished. The God who loves cannot abdicate justice. Everything does not revert back to normal as if nothing happened. God’s righteous anger against sin and injustice remains in force, even in the face of forgiveness. It’s what makes grace so scandalous. God’s righteous anger is enforced, only not against the ones who deserve it. Instead, God absorbs his justice onto himself—onto the body and blood of Christ shed for us. And because God loves us, there’s no changing his mind about that.

Throw It Up

Jonah 2

by Daniel Harrell

I was late for last Sunday’s pot luck meeting due to the football game. My years in Boston made me a diehard New England Patriots fan (this despite Bill Belichick’s reputation as the Darth Vader of football). I had planned to set my DVR for the game, but the lure of live TV got the best of me. As most of you know by now, the Baltimore Ravens drove the length of the field in the final minute only to have their Pro Bowl placekicker, Billy Cundiff, shank a 32 yarder (the NFL equivalent of missing a tap-in putt for the championship). As thrilled as I was for the Patriots to win, I admit I felt horrible for Cundiff. I still can’t believe he missed that field goal. Going from hero to goat in a matter of seconds will haunt him the rest of his life. “It’s a kick I’ve made a thousand times,” Cundiff said. “I just went out there and didn’t convert. There’s really no excuse for it.” Not that he didn’t try to find an excuse. By Wednesday he said he’d had to unduly rush onto the field because of a scoreboard “malfunction” at the Patriots’ stadium. Something about how he coordinates his pre-kick routine to the scoreboard and thought it was only third down when in fact it was fourth down. Everyone knows how Belichick Belicheats.

For Cundiff it was what you might call trying to escape the belly of the beast—the beast in his case being the agony of defeat and the pillory of the press. In the case of the prophet Jonah, who missed his field goal on purpose, the beast was a big fish. Like Billy Cundiff, Jonah went from hero to goat in a matter of verses. The Lord ordered the prophet to the vile Assyrian Death Star city of Nineveh to warn them of their pending destruction. But Jonah, the only prophet ever to disobey a direct order from God, fled in the opposite direction. He went down to Joppa and bought a boat headed for Tarshish—the veritable end of the earth in those days. Knowing God as he did, where exactly did Jonah think he could hide? The Lord hurled a hurricane at Jonah’s ship to stop its forward progress. The ship’s pagan sailors, fearing the Lord’s fury, in turn hurled Jonah into the sea to stop the storm. Chapter 1 proved a study of contrasts. The pagan sailors respected the Lord more than Jonah did. They were willing to do whatever God wanted, as soon as they could figure it out. Jonah knew exactly what God wanted, but could not stand to be a part of it. The chapter ended with Jonah in the belly of the beast, setting the scene for one last hurl.

In the Veggie Tales Jonah Movie, this moment is set to music. Jonah is played by an asparagus who ponders his grim fate to the tune of a peppy Newsboys song:

Up to my ears

In bitter tears.

Can’t believe I’ve sunk this low

As I walk the plankton

Inner sanctum.

Got outta Dodge,

Sailed on a bon-less

Bon voyage.

You said North,

I headed South.

Tossed overboard.

Good Lord, that’s a really large mouth... \

I’m sleeping with fishes here,

In the belly of the whale.

I’m highly nutritious here,

In the belly of the whale.

Had the book ended here, you’d conclude that to sleep with fishes is to be digested with them too. It wasn’t enough for disobedient Jonah to drown. Make this the end of the story and the huge fish a shark, and the moral would have been “disobey God and you’re doomed.”

But as we know, what looked like Jonah’s demise was in fact his deliverance. Even though Jonah rejected the Lord and disobeyed his commands, God saved him anyway. The belly of the beast became Jonah’s lifeboat of grace. Now I need to resist getting into the plausibility of whether humans can actually survive being swallowed at sea. I remember one Easter hearing a sermon on Jonah devoted to evidence regarding people who had spent various amounts of time lodged inside sea creatures. The Easter text was from Matthew 12 where Jesus treated Jonah’s travail as a sign of his own: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” After that sermon a number of listeners were appalled. They’d brought guests to church only to have the preacher that morning go on and on about how people get eaten by whales and survive? What about a whale’s stomach containing a noxious concoction of highly acidic bile that surely would have consumed Jonah in a matter of hours, not to mention days. Then there’s the likelihood of lost limbs, an open gash or decapitation upon entry due to a whale’s narrow esophagus and many giant, jagged teeth. Is Jesus’ resurrection not hard enough to believe by itself?

The preacher that Easter (not me by the way) used the famous tale of a 19^th century whaler named James Bartley. Bartley was lost overboard in a struggle with a sperm whale but was reportedly found alive in the animal’s stomach when they hauled it aboard minutes later. If it happened to James Bartley it could have happened to Jonah. Unfortunately, evidence—both historical and anatomical—strongly suggests that the Bartley tale was a giant fish story concocted by some sea-faring opportunist eager to generate publicity for a local whale exhibition. The story got passed along to anybody gullible enough to believe it. Christians nevertheless insist that because Jesus treated Jonah literally—comparing his three days in a tomb to Jonah’s three days in a fish—that Jonah had to have been swallowed whole. Does this mean Jonah was dead like Jesus? That would make his regurgitation more like a resurrection. Only God could do that. Which may have been the point.

Jonah definitely considered himself as good as dead. His prayer—a classic Hebrew psalm of thanksgiving—has him descending all the way to the land of the dead. Fleeing God’s command, Jonah first goes down to a ship, and then once overboard, he goes down into the heart of the sea, down through the seaweed that wrapped around his head, down to the roots of the mountains, down the very bottom of the ocean, and ultimately down “to the land”—to the netherworld, to the Pit of Sheol—whose bars closed upon him forever. They say drowning is a horrible way to die. When the first involuntary breath occurs most people are still conscious, which is unfortunate, because the only thing more unpleasant than running out of air is breathing in water. But for Jonah, his consciousness allows him one final plea: “As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you.” And God intervenes. “You brought up my life from the Pit.” Jonah’s prayer comes from inside the fish—an underwater grave that would be his salvation. As with Jesus, death was not the last word.

That Jonah would pray is appropriate. Believer or skeptic, we all come to bleak moments when prayer is all we have left. I’m sure that Billy the Kicker said a prayer as that football hooked to the left. I just finished the best-selling book, Unbroken, by Laura Hildebrand of Seabiscuit fame. In it an Olympic miler and World War II bombardier named Louis Zamperini went down with his plane in the Pacific. He floated for almost two months with the two other survivors, living off rainwater and occasional albatrosses that perched on their heads. Never a religious man, Zamperini nevertheless prayed that if God would get him through this, he’d serve him with the rest of his life. Jesus prayed the same sort of thing in Gethsemane, asking that God might save sinners some other way. God’s answers didn’t come as one would want. That kick stayed left. Louis Zamperini was rescued from sea, but his rescuers were Japanese military who tortured him mercilessly until the end of the war. No sooner did Jesus say Amen than Judas showed up with soldiers to betray him. And while Jonah was saved from drowning, it was only so that he could be eaten alive.

To Jonah’s credit he does equate his being devoured with being delivered. With God, like it or not, life usually comes by way of death. You have to lose your life to find it. Thinking about this can be depressing—which led me this week to the existentialist writings of Søren Kierkegaard. I’ll often read Kierkegaard when I’m having a bad day to make sure I milk it for everything it’s worth. Kierkegaard wrote a lot about human despair. He wrote how person who despairs bears all his past problems as the present. Memories haunt and extend their hampering effects into every moment of your existence. It’s what makes despair feel likes it’s going to go on forever. He wrote, “The most painful state of being is thinking about the future—particularly the future you’ll never have.”

Kierkegaard considered despair to be a basic loss of faith; the refusal to trust God. Despair takes two alternative shapes, he said: Either it is “the despair not to will to be oneself;” that is, the loss of will to be the person God calls you to be. Or it is “the despair to will to be oneself;” that is, the defiant, self-sufficient will which disdains the person God calls you to be. The first kind of despair is indifference while the second kind is arrogance. Arrogance cares only for itself while indifference doesn’t care about anything. We see both of these in Jonah. Jonah thanks God for his salvation, but is indifferent toward the pagan sailors who risked their own lives for his. He says no prayers for them. And though Jonah praises the Lord and promises to go to Temple every Sabbath from now on, he arrogantly includes no willingness to repent and go to Nineveh to do what God commanded.

Kierkegaard labeled despair as The Sickness Unto Death, a borrowed and juxtaposed phrase from John’s gospel. Jesus, when told that his friend Lazarus is sick, replies that “this sickness is not unto death.” Of course, Lazarus did die—Jesus even delays going to him to assure that he would. But in dying and then being raised by Jesus, we get a sneak preview of what Kierkegaard calls “the final death of death by death” that would be fully accomplished by Christ on the cross. “I am the resurrection and the life” Jesus said to Lazarus’ sister Martha in her despair, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” “This sickness is not unto death,” he said, “but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God might be glorified through it.” You might say the same about Jonah. The last line of his prayer reads “Deliverance belongs to the Lord.” Or another way to put it, “Salvation comes from the Lord.” Either way, there are any number of Hebrew words for salvation or deliverance, but Jonah chooses the word yeshua, the same word given as the name for Jesus—another reason, perhaps, that Jesus, yeshua, ties himself so closely to Jonah.

Faith in Jesus often happens at the outer limits of our effort, in that despair where all we have left is a prayer. Confronted by the failure of own capacity and will, we recognize the necessity of that failure. It is only in failure that a lost creature can be finally found. Faith is the decisive act of surrender; we get up by giving up and giving ourselves over to God. “Those who cling to worthless idols,” Jonah prayed, who put their trust in their own capability and power, “forfeit the grace that could be theirs,” Aware of his utter failure and lostness, Jonah surrenders and is cast into the sea and onto the mercy of God. Though the sailors pitched him overboard, Jonah recognizes that God was really the one who did it. It was God who “engulfed me,” whose “waves and billows swept over me.” It was God who pulled Jonah as low as he could go, to the very Pit of Sheol itself, so that Jonah could fully experience God’s grace and be swallowed by it.

Jonah’s deliverance was itself a miraculous Old Testament sneak preview of Jesus’ resurrection. It was something only prayer could accomplish because it was something only God could do. Faith occurs at the outer limits of our effort, in that despair where all we have left is a prayer. Confronted by the failure of own capacity and will, we recognize the necessity of that failure. It is there that a lost creature can be finally found.

For Louis Zamperini, his return to America after years of Japanese torture brought him a hero’s welcome. But it also brought him financial ruin and a slow descent into depression and alcoholism. It wasn’t until his desperate wife dragged him to a Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade in the 50s that he remembered his promise to God on that life raft. Finally found by Jesus, Zamperini never took another drink, went on to run a camp for disadvantaged teenagers, and got involved at Hollywood Presbyterian Church where he met our own Dave Williamson. Dave wrote me this week about skiing with Zamperini, about his return to Japan in seek out and forgive his torturers. While in Japan at age 81 Zamperini made it back to the Olympics, running a leg in the Olympic Torch relay for the Nagano Winter Games. Dave says he’s still doing remarkably well at age 95. “Deliverance belongs to the Lord.” In Christ, the lost get found, sinners are redeemed, grace exonerates the guilty, justice comes for the oppressed—and wayward prophets get hurled onto the beach.

Clearly salvation can sometimes be messy. The Veggie Tales movie had Jonah singing as much:

Woke up this morning kinda blue,

Thinking through that age-old question:

How to exit a whale’s digestion?

It might behoove me to be heaved.

Head out like a human comet.

Hmm... I wonder what rhymes with comet?

I couldn’t help but recall Dawn and I flying home one time with Violet standing at our feet on the plane. She turned and gave us that funny look kids get before they throw up all over you. And then she threw up all over us. We still had a couple of hours left in the air. Taking for granted that whale vomit can only be worse than an toddler’s, Jonah had a lot of cleaning up to do. While we can do nothing to earn our salvation, we still must do something to show we’ve received it. Having experienced the deep grace of God, Jonah gets another shot at obedience. Chapter 3 will open with the Lord repeating his command to get up and go to Nineveh. Will Jonah do it? Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “It can be so hard to believe God, because it is so hard to obey God.” May Christ help us do both.

The Fish Story

Jonah 1

by Daniel Harrell

Epiphany, which commemorates the first revelation of Jesus to Gentiles (the Gentiles in this case being the magi), is the perfect time of the year to think about outreach and mission. Inasmuch Jesus was sent to the world as the embodiment of God, so the church is sent as the embodiment of Jesus to love and to serve and to grow his kingdom. Tonight at our potluck dinner we’re excited to share a new outreach initiative we’re thinking about. Outreach is the only reason that the church remains on earth. Everything else we do is just a preview of heaven. Granted, the earthbound nature of mission does make it rough. It was deadly for Jesus—and for much of the New Testament church and many Christians since. Ask any missionary, and if they’re honest, they’ll have all kinds of adversity to tell you about. The same goes for any Christian who steps it up and steps out for the sake of the gospel. Just try to do what Jesus says: love an enemy, serve the poor, speak the truth, share the gospel, forgive an abuser, give away money, fight for justice—you’ll find it can be a tough way to live.

It was hard for the Old Testament prophets too. Moses got blasted constantly by his own people. Elijah was hunted down by the government and put on a hit list. Jeremiah was exiled to Babylon. Daniel got tossed into a lions’ den. No wonder that when the word of the Lord came to Jonah he ran for his life. God told him to go at once to Nineveh and forecast its doom on account of their wickedness. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the ancient nemesis of Israel’s northern kingdom. Sort of like Green Bay is to Minneapolis. Any good Hebrew would have delighted in their downfall, just as every good Vikings fan relished the fall of the Packers last Sunday. But Jonah said no. Admittedly, if my intent is to preach about mission and outreach, Jonah is an odd choice. Consider it a bit of unfinished water business—if you’ll recall all those sermons last fall. I did leave Jonah’s watery adventure out of the rotation. Consider it also a foretaste of Easter. Comparing himself to Jonah, Jesus said: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”

Given Jonah’s disobedience and cowardice, it is strange to have Jesus make the comparison. Jonah reminds me more of that cruise ship captain in the news this week. Reportedly wanting to show off his $450M ocean liner to gawkers on shore, he steered off course, hit a reef and ruptured the hull of his ship. As water gushed in and the boat listed, passengers panicked including the captain who abandoned ship for the safety of a lifeboat. Or as he explained it, he accidently tripped and fell into a lifeboat when the ship tipped to its side. A furious Coast Guard officer radioed the captain to get his butt back on board—using an Italian bad word that is now available all across the country on handbags and espresso cups. One Italian newspaper claimed the episode contrasted the “two souls of Italy” —one of them represented by a “cowardly fellow who flees his own responsibilities, both as a man and as an official” and the other by a man who works to get the coward to do his job.

Jonah is the only Old Testament prophet to flee his responsibility. The only one to refuse an assignment. The only prophet to reject a direct command from God. Like an employee who skips out early to avoid an unwelcome assignment, or a soldier who goes AWOL to avoid following an order, Jonah flees the word of the Lord. He runs in the opposite direction from Nineveh to the seaside city of Joppa where he finds what was known as a “Tarshish ship,” the ancient equivalent to a modern day ocean liner. We read that Jonah “paid his fare”, but the Hebrew actually says he “paid her fare,” meaning he bought the whole boat. He didn’t want this cruise ship making any stops along the way. Of course being a prophet and knowing the Lord as he did, it’s difficult to imagine where Jonah thought he could hide. As the Psalmist sings, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? … If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there… your hand shall hold me fast.” What for most reads as a psalm of consolation was for Jonah a psalm of calamity. He knew he was doomed.

Like any defied boss or disobeyed commander, the Lord could not countenance such insubordination on the part of his prophet. So God hurled a hurricane at Jonah’s boat, so furiously that the experienced sailors on board feared for their lives. They started hurling cargo overboard and praying to every god they could think of. Jonah, meanwhile, was somehow sleeping below deck. The picture reminds me of the young son of friends who would fall fast asleep every Fourth of July once the fireworks commenced. It was how he dealt with the stress. It also reminds me of Jesus asleep in a boat as a storm raged and threatened to sink his disciples—experienced sailors too. Like the sailors with Jonah, the disciples screamed at Jesus demanding to know why he didn’t seem to care that they drowned. What did they expect Jesus to do? The same thing the sailors and their captain expected from Jonah: “Wake up! Say a prayer! Maybe your God will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.” Of course, Jonah, like Jesus, knew exactly how to stop the storm—Jesus much more directly, of course. This may also explain why each slept so soundly.

In ancient times bad weather was always somebody’s fault, so the sailors drew straws to see who was to blame. Once Jonah drew the short one, the sailors pounced on him for corroborating evidence: “Why has this awful storm come down on us?” they demanded. “Who are you? What is your line of work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?” Jonah tells him he’s a Hebrew prophet. That he works for the God of heaven who created the sea and the land. And that he’s shirking his work. Leaving the scene. Hopping a lifeboat. Gone AWOL. Hearing this, the sailors became even more afraid. “What have you done?!” they shriek. You work for the God who made the ocean and you think you can escape God on the ocean? What kind of dumb prophet are you? They demand to know how he plans to placate his God, and Jonah tells them to throw him overboard. And what, make the sailors guilty of murder on top of harboring a fugitive? I always wonder why Jonah didn’t just dive in himself. But another way to read this is for Jonah to say, “Hand me over to the Lord.” Jonah finally surrenders.

Why couldn’t Jonah have just had them turn the boat around and take him to Nineveh? Wouldn’t that have made God happy? Like when Jesus tells that parable about two sons, each directed to go work the vineyard by their father. One son says yes, but then he doesn’t go. The other son says no, but then changes his mind and obeys. “Which of the two did the will of his father?” Jesus asked. The answer was the second son, whom Jesus commends. But apparently Jonah would rather die than change his mind and obey. The author has yet to reveal why—though if you’re curious you can skip ahead to chapter 4. Jonah says that he worships the Lord, but his actions betray a duplicity. The contrasting behavior of the godless sailors further the indictment. They pray while Jonah sleeps. They fear the Lord, Jonah rejects the Lord. The sailors are willing to do whatever God wants, as soon as they can figure it out. Jonah knows exactly what God wants, but cannot stand to be a part of it.

I was sharing with the Friday Morning Men’s Group this week how I ended up as a minister. I heard the call at a fraternity party of all places. But then again Jesus was something of a party guy. I can’t exactly say what happened. I hadn’t been drinking. I just got this sense that ministry was for me. I confirmed the notion with a couple of friends and mentors, and by the next afternoon had dropped my business major and picked up religion and Greek. My fraternity brothers were horrified. They’d thought me to be rather normal. But instead I was throwing away a budding and creative career in graphic design and marketing for sake of pot luck suppers and committee meetings? They did have a point. You don’t have to go to seminary or work in a church to do the work of the Lord. If anything, the Kingdom of God could probably do more, missionally speaking, with fewer pastors and more Christians viewing themselves as “ministers” in other vocations. As the apostle Paul exhorts us, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, working for the Lord and not for people.” When our jobs are done before God, they have their own integrity apart from anything else they might accomplish, for the labor itself brings glory to the Lord. I could do whatever career I wanted for the Lord. Had I been drinking? People do make a lot of decisions when in their 20s that we really shouldn’t be allowed to make.

Maybe my fraternity brothers were right. So I delayed going to seminary, just to be sure. I could still do plenty of ministry in the meantime. In fact, I’d been invited to lead a small group as part of a Christian fellowship conference. Unfortunately, the conference fell on the same weekend as my university graduation. But the girl I was dating was going to the conference, and delaying seminary was going to give me more time to spend with her. So I decided to have the university just mail me my diploma. My parents tried to talk me out of it; said they at least deserved a moment in the sun for putting me through school, but I’d made up my mind. Besides, in addition to becoming a pastor, God also told me that this woman could be the one. So my mom made me a cake with a little plastic graduate figurine on top and I ate a piece and that was basically it.

Up at the conference, the woman for me decided I wasn’t for her. I think she said God told her that. She was up for marrying an ad exec, but what woman in her right mind would ever opt to be a preacher’s wife? Rejected, I went back home to live with my parents who informed me that if I was going to live with them I would need to pay rent. With extra money each week if I wanted laundry. So now I needed to make some money. I tried my hand at the only thing I could find: selling dictionaries and Bible story books door-to-door.

My first day on the job I called on a mobile home and was greeted by this lowly housewife who politely agreed to hear my pitch. I was in the middle of it when her husband drove up in his pick-up, saw my car, came bursting through the door, caught me showing dictionaries to his wife and went full vent into a violent and jealous rampage. “I oughta kill you,” he shouted. He let loose such a string a expletives that I couldn’t help but suggest he might like one of my dictionaries, just to amend his vocabulary. Instead he went for his shotgun which was my cue to leave. Needless to say I didn’t sell a single book. I drove home to discover that the postman had unceremoniously delivered my college diploma into our mailbox. I pulled it out and stared at it and then it hit me: the best years of my life were now over. College was finished, my girlfriend was gone, my parents were charging me rent, my friends had moved on to lucrative careers while I had crazy husbands pointing shotguns at me, a pathetic peddler of books trying to make money for seminary in order to become a minister. Just throw me overboard and put us all out of our misery.

The sailors finally concede, but not without first praying to the Lord they’d never met and begging him not to hold this deed against them. Again, the pagan sailors display more reverence than Israel’s prophet. “Do not make us guilty of innocent blood;” they pray, “for it is you, O LORD, who has done as it pleased you.” Jonah knew this too. The sailors pitched him overboard and the storm stopped. Like with the disciples in the boat with Jesus: the storm terrified them all right, but Jesus stopping the storm scared the crap out them. Like the disciples, I imagine these sailors turning white as sheets, their eyes a-bug and their mouths agape as they say, “Oh-my-God!” Which really is the point of both stories.

And yet despite Jonah’s disobedience, God won’t let him drown. Instead, “the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” If the book ended here, you’d conclude that “to swallow” is the same as “to eat.” It wasn’t good enough for disobedient Jonah to drown. God wanted him digested too. But knowing the rest of the story, we know that what looked like Jonah’s demise was in fact his salvation. Which is why Jesus ties his own death to this story. And also why early Christians used the fish as a sign of their faith and stuck fish shaped bumper stickers on the back of their burros. Jesus called his resurrection the “sign of Jonah.” Even though Jonah rejected the Lord and disobeyed his commands, God saved him anyway. We’re left with this question: If salvation was the outcome of Jonah’s disobedience, what will things be like when he finally decides to obey?

For me it meant finally getting to seminary and into ministry where despite plenty of hardship, I’ve come out with more than my share of joy. I’m very grateful man for whom God has granted all sorts of grace as I’ve shared the lives of his people in this great mission we know as the church.

As we will see with Jonah, the grace that saves us does not absolve us of responsibility. But neither does it bully us into obedience. I like how the fifteenth century mystic, Julian of Norwich envisioned grace as courtesy rather than coercion; as invitation rather than imposition. “Grace works with mercy,” she said, “by lifting up, rewarding, endlessly surpassing all that our loving and our travail deserves, spreading abroad and making plain the high abundance and largesse of God’s royal Lordship in his marvelous courtesy. … ” she said, “He comes to us, to the lowest part of our need. For he despises nothing of what he has made. … he surrounds us so tenderly while we are yet in our sins.” And even when we, like Jonah refuse the embrace, grace still surrounds us like a mighty ocean, until finally, grace swallows us whole and we really can’t refuse it anymore. 

About That Widow's Mite

Mark 12:41-44

by Daniel Harrell

Epiphany, which for church calendar devotees commemorates the Magi’s visit to Bethlehem not only stretches out Christmas (falling as it does on January 6), but historically ranks right up there in importance with Easter and Pentecost. Epiphany was celebrated not because three kings or wise men (actually we have no idea how many there were) traversed afar. Epiphany was celebrated because the Magi were not Jewish. Their meeting Jesus constituted the first revelation of Christ to Gentiles. This is of monumental importance to the Church because the church grew to be comprised almost totally of Gentiles, in fulfillment, ironically, of Old Testament prophecy. That the Magi bore extravagant gifts of worship to Christ signified their immense gratitude to God for reaching out beyond the bounds of Israel’s covenant to include even them. When it comes down to it, for all Christians our giving is ultimately an act of gratitude and worship. We see it with the Magi, we see it presumably with this sacrificial gift from a destitute widow who drops two copper coins in the Temple treasury.

The familiar account of the widow’s two coins—or as the King James renders it, the widow’s mite—has become so familiar because of its frequent use as a shining example of sacrificial giving. Unlike the pompous rich folks in the Temple who sauntered up to the offering box and dumped over gratuitous sums of cash out of their surplus, this poor widow gave everything she had to live on. Jesus calls attention to her sacrifice presumably because that’s how we should all act when it comes to our money. Presumably she exemplifies Jesus’ teaching elsewhere about loving the Lord with all that you have; about how you can’t serve both God and money, about how wherever you put your treasure is where your heart is, about how you’re not supposed to worry about what you eat or wear because God will provide for your needs, about how the kingdom of God belongs to the poor and how if anyone wants to follow Jesus you have to deny yourself and lose your life to do it. It’s not that the widow’s two cents were really going to help the church make budget, but if everybody would follow her example, church finances would be in spectacular shape. It’s what makes this passage such a favorite for Stewardship Sundays.

Of course to follow the widow’s example would make your own personal finances a spectacular mess. Which is why I keep saying presumably in regard to the widow’s mite. Is destitute poverty for all what Jesus intends? Some might say yes. After all, in another passage from Mark that often gets pulled out for Stewardship Sundays, Jesus tells a rich man, “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” It interesting to note, however, that Jesus does tell the rich man to give it all to the poor, not to the church. So much for universal destitution. And so much for church stewardship. Not that it matters. The rich man was so shocked by Jesus he walked away without giving anything. He was not going to sell all his possessions to follow Jesus. That was too hard to do. A lot harder than it was for the poor widow. After all, two cents didn’t buy much more then than it does now. Why not give it all?

It’s like the retiree down to her final quarter in Vegas. She might as well take one last shot at the slots. Maybe she’ll hit the jackpot. Or better, like the person at the end of her rope who figures she might as well give God one last shot. What more does she have to lose? Jesus did say, “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—O ye of little faith?” Fine, I’ll show a little faith. Let’s see what God can do. Who knows, maybe once she got back outside, she discovered a whole pocketful of money—like Jesus miraculously made appear in that fish’s mouth when he needed cash to pay his own taxes. Or maybe that rich man had a change of heart and decided to give all his money to her anyway.

You know, when you actually read this morning’s passage, you’ll see that Jesus doesn’t exactly approve the poor widow’s sacrificial gift. All he says is that she “put in more than all those who contributed out of their abundance” because “she put in all she had to live on.” Was this a good thing? Most commentators insist that the her simple piety was a powerful contrast to the scribe’s pomposity and to the rich people’s money parade. Surely Jesus approved. The children’s version of the widow’s mite that Dawn and I read to our four-year-old Violet concludes, “This story shows what our God thinks about the gifts we bring/ To help our church and missions too, to honor Christ the king.” The children’s version goes so far as to have the now destitute widow holding her dependent child by the hand—a child who will now have to go without food because her mother gave their last dime to the church. Was this what Jesus intends?

Flip back five chapters in Mark and you’ll find Jesus letting loose a scathing indictment against the scribes and Pharisees for the way they hoodwinked poor people into giving when their own personal needs or the needs of their families were at stake. Jesus says, “Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others.”

You don’t even have to go back five chapters to see how mad all this makes Jesus. You don’t even have to go back five verses. Look at the context for the widow’s mite—both here and in Luke where the story also appears—and what you discover is it follows directly on the heels of Jesus lambasting the scribes and Pharisees again, this time for bilking poor women out of whatever dower they inherit upon their husband’s deaths. “Beware of these teachers of religious law!” Jesus warned, “For they like to parade around in flowing robes and receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in church and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly devour widows’ houses, cheating them out of their property, and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will receive the greater condemnation.” Here in Mark and in Luke, Jesus condemns ministers for “devouring widows’ houses” and then points out the widow, a severely disadvantaged and vulnerable member in ancient Jewish society. All she has left to her name is two cents which she gives entirely to the Temple—doing what she thought she was supposed to do because that’s what the teachers of the law told her to do. Her house has now been completely devoured. It’s like the elderly grandmother of a friend of mine who was conned into handing over most of her social security check each month to some huckster preacher she watched on TV because he said he was doing God’s work. She said, “He preached that if I truly believed I should give all my money to his ministry and I’d be blessed.” How could Jesus ever approve of that?

Far from providing a pious contrast to the pompous conduct of the scribes and the rich; this story darkly illustrates of the dangers of misguided devotion (thanks to Addison Wright for insights). The vulnerable widow was swindled by the religious leaders to donate as she does. Jesus condemns the ill-advised values that motivated her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do it. Read on in the verses immediately after this and Jesus condemns the entire Temple system, labeling it corrupt and doomed to destruction. The disciples marvel at the magnificence of the Temple itself—which people’s offerings had gone to construct and maintain. They tell Jesus to check out the impressive stones and the beautiful architecture, to which Jesus replies, “Yes, look at these great buildings. They will all be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!” How is it possible to feel inspired by the widow’s offering now? Not only was her contribution totally foolish, thanks to her being manipulated by the ministers, but given the future of the Temple itself, her gift was a total waste.

Obviously this has turned into a train wreck of stewardship sermon. How to salvage it? Let me try by suggesting to you what may in fact be the main points of this passage; namely, four reasons not to give or pledge any of your money to this church:

First: If your giving is in any way coerced or manipulated by ministers who have every motivation to manipulate you since our salaries are paid by your generosity, do not give or pledge any of your money to this church.

Second: If your giving is in any way motivated by a misguided sense of religious guilt or shame or fear whereby you worry that God will condemn you harshly for not forking over enough, do not give or pledge any of your money to this church.

Third: If your giving in any way threatens your ability to feed your family, pay your bills or keep a roof over your head, do not give or pledge any of your money to this church.

And finally: If your giving in any way comes with any implicit strings attached, or if by giving you seek recognition or applause for being such a generous person, do not give or pledge any of your money to this church. The church does not want your money—at least we’re not supposed to, not under circumstances or motivations like these.

There’s this beautiful stone congregational church near Boston that I used to bike past all the time. It’s called Wellesley Hills Congregational Church, and I was reading about they had launched a recent stewardship campaign in order to raise $100,000 to renovate their rundown Sunday School space for kids. Their pastor, Matt Fitzgerald, turns out to be a Minnesota native. He grew up in Duluth and lived for many years in the Twin Cities with his family and is familiar with Colonial Church. I found this out after emailing him on the heels of reading his story. As the stewardship committee stuffed the last pledge card and licked the final stewardship campaign envelope to go in the mail, a knock came at the office door. It was a Hollywood movie scout. Having seen their beautiful church, he was ready to give them $10K to shut down for three days so that his company could film a wedding scene from an upcoming Adam Sandler movie. The movie plot involved a teenager who gets his schoolteacher pregnant with the wedding scene taking place several years later, when the offspring of this illicit union is a grown man getting married. The scene had something to do with the guy punching a guest who wouldn’t shut off his cell phone or something. Or maybe the minister punched him, I don’t know.

Anyway, Matt wrote how he had seen enough Adam Sandler movies to know they can be pretty funny sometimes, if not pretty ridiculous. And making space for that particular kind of ridiculousness in his somewhat stodgy sanctuary did make him smile a bit. Not only that, but $10K would get the stewardship campaign off to a nice start. It’s not like they’d be filming on a Sunday. So sure, he thought about saying yes. But then he remembered what a pain it was to rent out the church for anything— there were always spills, odd requests, demanding guests and insurance riders to worry about. All the clean up afterwards. At best his church was good at being a church—they didn’t do much else that well, certainly not as a site of a major motion picture. For better or worse, Matt described his church as a classic mainline, main-street, tall-steeple, in-bed-with-the-larger-culture kind of place. But he couldn’t see his church as a Hollywood kind of place. “I am not the sort of Christian who would boycott a movie (I might even wind up watching this one),” he wrote. “And we could use the money. But the church I serve is not mine, and I found myself wanting to protect its true owner from the world.” He said no.

So the Hollywood scout upped his offer to $60K. That’s $20K per day just to use the building.

Now according to congregational polity a pastor has the authority to turn down money, but Matt wasn’t sure he had the authority to turn down this much money. So he called a Congregational Meeting. At the meeting, most of the congregation turned out to be pragmatic types—with a few Adam Sandler fans to boot. They thought it would be fine to take the money. Congregationalists don’t believe the church to be the building. It’s the people. Besides, times were tight. This unexpected windfall would be a huge help to the kids of the church. They’d get a brand new Sunday School wing. And the renovation would make that part as beautiful as the rest of the building. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

However a small number of the members, five to be exact, thought the gift horse looked more like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They felt very strongly that no matter how lightly the treatment might be, their church should not be involved in a story that gets laughs from the sexual exploitation of an adolescent. The Congregation Meeting went round and round about this for several hours, desiring to reach a consensus which for Congregationalists signals the confirmation of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately they weren’t getting confirmation. And it appeared as if they would have to settle for a lack of consensus—albeit one with a nice payoff. By majority rule, they’d take the money and try to patch things up with the people who were offended afterwards.

But just then one of the deacons, one who supported taking the money, stood up and said, “Look—it seems as if saying yes to this offer is going to hurt some members of our congregation. Not most people. Obviously not the majority. But some people. So I guess the question isn’t about a movie. It’s about us. Is $60,000 worth hurting a part of our community?”

Five minutes later the congregation voted unanimously to turn down the Hollywood offer even though most of them thought it was OK to accept it. They went from polarized to selfless in a matter of seconds. Matt the minister wrote, “I have mouthed unanswered prayers inviting Jesus to join our meetings dozens of times. I have interrupted agendas to speak confidently about his presence when he is nowhere to be found. This time I kept my mouth shut, and he walked right in.”