Pride, Prejudice, and Peace. Sermon for Proper 20, Year A

Series: Leaning into the Peace of God. 

Sermon, Pride, Prejudice, and Peace

Sermon by Fr. Rian Adams. Proper 20, Jonah 3:10-4:11

Introduction:

Let me tell you a story about how religious exclusion is born. Pride needs all the right answers. Before long, the addiction to certainty strangles love. 

To maintain certainty, fear requires hundreds of hours and dollars looking for authorities that agree with its position. When fear empowers pride, prejudice is born. 

Finally, the God of their own making gets involved. That’s when “those people” can be persecuted because they are not God’s “true children.” Does that sound like the current news cycle? Actually, it’s the story of the prophet Jonah from the 5^th century B.C.

Pride and Prejudice Prevent Peace

Series Recap: So, we’re in a sermon series on Leaning into the Peace of God. Today we’re continuing the theme of how peace is on the other side of conflict. Two weeks ago the conflict was with others, last week it was with ourselves, and this week the conflict is with God. 

Act 1: Jonah’s Pride

My guess is there are some people here this morning who have been mad at God. If I had to wager, there are people among us who have lost their faith after a tragedy. 

There have been times I’ve said, “God, I just don’t understand why, it’s just not fair.”

The late great philosopher, Tupac, said, “Long live the rose that grew from concrete 
when no one else even cared.”

That’s where the story of Jonah speaks to us. Jonah can’t have peace because he won’t confront his pride. If we step back and look at him, we can laugh at ourselves because he’s really a mirror. 

Jonah is upset. He’s pouting because God doesn’t submit to his will and obey his expectations. Jonah knows how the world should run. Jonah knows who should be in and who should be out. Jonah has more wisdom than God! 

But God normally has a way of speaking to our pride. There is an old proverb that says, “Pride is a mask of one’s own faults.” 

God tells Jonah, “Go preach to Nineveh, call them to repentance.” His pride says no. 

Jonah boards a ship heading to Tarshis, just to show God who is in charge. Some say Tarshish was in modern day Spain. Keep in mind, this text was likely written in the 5^thcentury B.C. when the earth was still flat! People believed you could fall over the edge of the earth into oblivion. Jonah heads to the edge of the map just to escape God’s mercy.

Dwight Moody joked, “God sends no one away empty except those who were full of themselves in the first place.” 

Allow me a moment of honesty; my name is Rian Adams, I’m Jonah, and I’ve been to Tarshish. I have a T-shirt that says Tarshish or bust. I’ve Air B&B’d a room and vacationed in Tarshish…. Here’s it gets real… I saw some footprints that looked familiar.

We’ve all been prideful, and we’ve all ran from God at points in our life. 

Act 2: Jonah’s Prejudice

There were two reasons Jonah couldn’t have peace to carry out his calling. First was pride, the second was prejudice. 

Pride and Prejudice Prevent Peace

Before I dive into that idea, let’s look at the context of the book. 

When the Babylonian armies defeated Israel, their God was defeated too; defeat turned their theology to ashes. 

Let’s apply that to our lives today: When people have a crisis, the natural response is to either abandon their faith in God, or transfer the blame from God and absorb it into themselves. 

The Jews thought God judged the nation because they didn’t keep his laws, and because they were in interracial marriages with Gentiles. That’s when phobia crept into their minds… a fear of the other. 

The problem with that idea is the previous prophets foresaw an age when nationality would not stand between God and the human family. The prophet Isaiah said that all people, even to the ends of the earth, would be saved by God (Isa. 45:22).  

So when everyone else was doubling down on their racial distinctive, one man challenged them. The conservative isolationists were in power, so he couldn’t speak publicly. So he sat down with his pen and wrote a story about a strange prophet.

Bp. Jack Spong, a mentor of mine, refers to Jonah as “The definer of prejudice.”

It was a tale about a prophet named Jonah. God calls him to go to Nineveh, but he refuses. He hops a ship and heads to the edge of the earth. But the ship winds up in a storm, and the sailors throw Jonah into the sea. Then a whale swallows Jonah. After three days inside its belly, it pukes him up on the beach.  

That’s when Jonah decides that it’s in his best interest to go to Nineveh. At least he can tell them God’s going to judge then unless they repent. There’s no way the city of 200,000 people will hear that message. 

But miraculously the entire city, even the government and the king, and even the animals repent. BUT… Jonah is mad about it. He’s not mad at the city, or her people, or even the animals, no, Jonah is mad at God. He goes outside of the city, sits on a hill, and demands that God kill him.

His pride put him in the belly of a fish, and his prejudice against the Assyrians put him under a plant wishing for death.  

Then the writer kicks the humor up another notch. Recent statistical analysis confirms this idea. A recent research partnership between the best universities in the western world—Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge, and Sewanee, of course—revealed a mind-blowing fact…  There is one sure and certain way to make someone who is mad even madder; ask them if they are mad. 

God said, “Are you mad Jonah?” God is prodding him, “Hey Jonah, hey, you mad bro?”

Jonah says, “Yeah, I’m mad. And imma tell ya why. Because I knew you would show mercy to that city, and it disappoints me that your character has room for such inclusion.” 

Then boom, the story ends. There’s no resolution. We’re left wondering if Jonah ever turned the curve and allowed God to transform his heart, or if never overcame his pride and prejudice. 

Jesus even told a similar story about workers who were upset because a landowner who paid workers the same wage who came late to the harvest. 

They don’t have peace because the landowner’s mercy is too wide!

Conclusion:

Let’s bring it home: Jonah didn’t have peace in his soul for the same reason the first workers didn’t; they couldn’t work through their theological and spiritual conflicts, and they blamed God

It’s okay to have a conflict with God. Here’s a little secret, God can handle conflict. What’s not okay is to surrender our peace of mind and board a ship to Tarshish. 

Amen.