Forgiveness

Some people think there’s something fishy about the book of Jonah. They say they find the story of Jonah and the whale hard to swallow. That shouldn’t be surprising. It is a whale of a tale, and Jonah is such an obstinate character that, in the end, after all, even the whale himself couldn’t stomach Jonah for very long. The story starts with Jonah turning from God and ends with the enemies of Jonah turning to God. Jonah was running away from the Lord, and the Ninehvites ended up running to the Lord. When Jonah boards a ship, heading in the opposite direction of where he was commanded to go, he immediately goes below deck and falls asleep. Meanwhile, on deck in a torrential storm, the heathen sailors are crying out for help. The pagans are praying, the prophet is sleeping, and the whole world seems upside down. And maybe that’s the point. Sometimes the people whom you would expect to be the closest to God are the farthest away, and the people you would expect to be the furthest from God are closer than you ever imagined.

You don’t need to travel far through the Gospels to see that story played out over and again. Jesus is born, and the Jewish religious leaders don’t take the time to seek him out; they don’t bring a birthday gift, not even a congratulations card for Mary and Joseph on the birth of their baby. On the other hand, the foreign pagan Magi, following a star of all things, go to great lengths and expense to track down the one born King of the Jews so that they might worship him, and once again, the good guys are in the wrong and the wrong guys are doing good, and everything seems upside down.

Jesus told so many stories bearing that same theme. “Two men went up to the temple to pray,” Jesus once said, “one was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.”

In case you are so familiar with that story that it’s lost its punch, let me remind you. The Pharisee, from every outward appearance, is a good, upstanding, moral man who gives to help the poor. His prayer goes:

"God, I thank you that I am not a thief.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m with the Pharisee. I’m glad I don’t have to steal to survive. I’m certainly glad I don’t rob people for pleasure.

“I thank you that I am not an evildoer,” he says. Personally, I’m pretty glad about that. I’m not particularly fond of evildoers. Are you? Rapists? Con-artists? Sex traffickers?

“I thank you that I am not an adulterer.” Well, I feel the same way. I’m sure that my wife is glad, too.

I mean, it’s hard to disagree with the Pharisee. Do you wish you were a thieving, evil-doing adulterer?

He’s also grateful that he’s not a tax collector. A tax collector in Jesus’ day would have been working for the Roman Empire, taking his fellow citizens money by force and giving it to the oppressive occupation army that was overrunning their nation. A tax collector was considered a traitor to his own people. Everybody knew a Pharisee was a good guy. A tax collector was a bad guy. And then Jesus comes along and turns everything on its head. Jesus says that God listened to the prayer of the tax collector, who cried for mercy, and rejected the prayer of the Pharisee, who looked down on everyone else. And here we are again; everything seems upside down.

In story after story, the person you expect to be closest to God is farthest away, and the person you expect to be far from God is closer still. At the end of the day, the whole lot of us, the religious and irreligious, the good guys and the bad guys, every one of us, are all a lost mess, and our only hope is to fall upon the grace of God. “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” Once we do, no matter who you are, no matter how far away or how close you seem, there is hope for you. The very best of people still need forgiveness; that’s Jesus’ point, and the very worst of people can still be forgiven. And the people in the most precarious position are the ones who think they can’t be, or even worse, think they don’t need to be.

For some people, all of it just sounds too good to be true. God is willing to wipe your slate clean, forgive you of your sins, and give you a brand new start, no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done. How does that work? For some, it’s not just Jonah; the whole thing seems hard to swallow. And maybe that’s why when the Pharisees questioned Jesus about what authority he had to say these things, he said he would only give them one sign, the sign of the prophet Jonah. Because if you think Jonah’s story is hard to swallow, wait ‘til I tell you what Jesus did.