I had the privilege of speaking at First Presbyterian Church in Harlan this morning. The following is my somewhat-9/11-themed sermon, "The Face of the Enemy." Tip o' the cap to Shane Hipps of Mars Hill Bible Church, Brian McLaren, and Sojourners magazine for some stuff I "borrowed" :)
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At first glance, the story of Jonah might seem like an odd choice for the day we commemorate the attacks of September 11. But if we look a little closer, I think we’ll see the story connects deeply to the events we remember today.
Let’s begin with a couple of notes about the book of Jonah: It’s part of a group of books collectively known as the Minor Prophets (which seems insulting to me), but it differs from the other books of prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures in a couple of distinct ways.
First, it isn’t tied to any particular time period. The other prophetic books link their main character to the reign of a certain king – so they’ll open with something like, “The word of the Lord came to So-and-So during the reign of So-and-So, king of Israel.” The book of Jonah simply begins with God speaking to Jonah. This leads many scholars to the conclusion that the story of Jonah is a legend, meaning it didn’t literally, factually happen in reality. Even so, it can be very instructive for us all these years later.
Secondly, it contains virtually no oracle. All of the other prophetic books contain chapter after chapter of the prophets speaking the words of God, with a little narrative sprinkled in from time to time. Jonah is all narrative, with the prophet speaking only one sentence on God’s behalf.
I’d like to share a couple of thoughts from the passages we read at the beginning and end of the book. The first comes from the first part of our text. It’s helpful if we have some understanding of where God tells Jonah to go, and where Jonah decides to go instead.
Nineveh was the seat of power of the Assyrian Empire, which was the first of a succession of empires to dominate Israel following the reign of David and Solomon. The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom in the eighth century BCE. Needless to say, the Jews and the Assyrians were bitter enemies.
The hatred was so strong, in fact, that Jonah chose to disobey God’s command and instead boarded a ship bound for Tarshish. Located on the coast of what is now Spain, Tarshish was known as a tourist hot spot, a vacation destination for the wealthy. Nineveh, on the other hand, was exactly what you’d expect the capital of an empire to be. First, it was known as a brutal, violent city. Like the Roman Empire a few centuries later, the Assyrians were known for dealing very harshly with anyone who interfered with the interests of the empire. History tells of one Assyrian king who boasted of quashing a rebellion by peeling the skin off his opponents and cutting off the fingers and noses of survivors. Nineveh had a reputation as a city of immense depravity; and, like most powerful cities, it was also known as a place of both tremendous wealth and tremendous poverty, with a large gap between the rich and the poor.
It might seem interesting to us in the 21st century that Jonah chose to flee to Tarshish in order to get away from God. There’s an entire theology now that would have us believe that we would be much more likely to find God in a place like Tarshish than in an uncivilized place like Nineveh. We don’t think of God as residing in places like the red light districts of Amsterdam, the streets of Compton, the alleys of Skid Row or the Horn of Africa. It’s easy for us to rationalize that Tarshish is where we need to go to find God, when in fact God has called us to our own Nineveh.
Tony Campolo is a writer and speaker I greatly admire. It seems that Tony, who lives in Philadelphia, was traveling on the West Coast a few years ago, and the time difference messed up his sleep schedule. He found himself sitting in a donut shop near his hotel at 3 a.m., when a group of prostitutes came in and sat down at the booth behind him. They had just finished their night and stopped in to grab a bite to eat before going home.
Tony couldn’t help but overhear the women’s conversation. One of them, a woman named Agnes, told the others that the next day was her 39th birthday. When one of them sarcastically offered to throw her a party, Agnes said she had never had a birthday party and didn’t expect to have one now.
When the women left, Tony asked the shop owner if the women came in every night. The man said yes, and Tony proposed a plan. The next night, when Agnes came in with her friends, the shop owner presented her with a birthday cake, and the patrons sang “Happy Birthday.” Agnes cried so hard that she could barely blow out the candles.
After Agnes left with her cake, the shop owner discovered that Tony was a preacher. When he asked what kind of church Tony attended, Tony said, “I go to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3 a.m.” The man said, “No, you don’t; a church like that doesn’t exist. If it did, I would join.”
The truth is, God likes to hang out in donut shops at 3 a.m. to throw birthday parties for prostitutes. God resides in refugee camps where people have been displaced by war and genocide. God lives in the ghetto where single mothers do whatever they have to do to make ends meet. God shows up in exactly the kinds of places we least expect it; and God calls us to show up in those place as well.
When you think about it, our community bears some striking resemblances to Nineveh. We have a culture in which people who hold certain beliefs find themselves subject to hostility, particularly around the issue of responsible coal mining. We also bear the burden of immense poverty. In my line of work, I routinely speak to people who live on $1,000 a year, plus food stamps. A lack of opportunity and poor family structures have contributed to epidemic levels of drug abuse.
We don’t have to go far to find a Nineveh that God wants to transform. And, like Jonah, we are invited to be part of this transformation.
Of course, we know that Jonah didn’t make it to Tarshish; after a terrible storm, he is thrown overboard and swallowed by a big fish (or a whale, depending on which translation you’re reading). In the belly of the creature, Jonah has an epiphany and is spit back out onto the land. God again dispatches Jonah to Nineveh, and he goes; but even this time, he puts little effort into fulfilling his assignment. Jonah simply walks into town and speaks one sentence: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” No prescription for avoiding judgment; no call to repentance; just a simple, somewhat insincere pronouncement of destruction, then Jonah walks away and claims a front-row seat for the show.
The people of Nineveh, meanwhile, repent of their wickedness, and God decides not to destroy the city. Jonah gets angry and sulks, until he is confronted by God in the closing verses of the book. Here, again, is what God says to Jonah:
“Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left – and also many animals?”
The story of Jonah bears one more distinction: It’s the only book in the Bible to end with a question. And that question sheds light on another lesson, one that is especially poignant on this day, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11.
The question God poses to Jonah strikes at the heart of Jonah’s mistake. God reminds Jonah that Nineveh is not a caricature; it is a real place that is home to real people.
Like the terrorists who brought such destruction on our soil 10 years ago today, Jonah seems to have forgotten that “the enemy” has a face. The people of Nineveh were real men and real women and real children, many of whom were innocent. In questioning Jonah, God offers a reminder that those we would consider our enemies are real, living, breathing people – people who laugh, people who cry, people who love, people who feel pain. When we lose sight of this reality, we are incapable of loving our enemies, as Jesus commanded.
When a small group of terrorists failed to put a face on their enemy 10 years ago, they not only struck a blow to our nation; they irreversibly changed thousands of real lives – thousands of parents, thousands of children, thousands of spouses, thousands of friends. Likewise, when our nation retaliated, we not only avenged innocent deaths; we created more.
The implications of this lesson reverberate far beyond military strategy or foreign policy, right down to the depths of our personal lives. Whatever difference it is that we find intolerable in another person – whatever it is that causes us to label someone our enemy – if it defines that person for us, then we are in danger of losing sight of that person’s humanity.
So, who is your enemy? Is he someone of another religion? Is she someone whose sexual orientation is different from yours? Is he someone who is on the other side of the aisle politically?
A few years ago, I went to hear a well-known pastor speak on UK’s campus in Lexington. He took questions from the audience, and someone – one of the pastor’s many critics – quizzed him about his position on homosexuality. I’ll never forget part of his answer; he said, “I think, before any pastor preaches about it, he should make a gay friend.” What he was suggesting was simply that we are much more likely to show love and grace to a group of people if we have “put a face” on them. It’s easy to strongly criticize a group of people when you don’t know them. It’s much more difficult not to extend a measure of grace when you have established a mutually respectful relationship with someone in that group.
This, I believe, is the single greatest obstacle our political system faces today. Republicans and Democrats, particularly those in power, forgo relationships in favor of ideology. Republicans paint Democrats with one broad brush, and Democrats return the favor. In the process, both sides are reduced to mere caricatures, and gridlock is the result. You simply cannot find common ground when you have determined that the person sitting across from you is something less than a real person.
As we prepare to spend a few moments reflecting on the attacks of September 11th, I would like to close with a story about how one unlikely relationship between Christians and Muslims forged another on the other side of the world.
Two years ago, a congregation of Muslims near Memphis, Tennessee, bought a piece of land to build a place of worship. The land was located next to a Methodist church. While some in the community spoke out against the proposed building, the church put up a banner welcoming their new neighbors, and the two congregations quickly established a friendship.
A few months later, with Ramadan approaching and their building still not finished, the Muslims asked for permission to use one of the church’s classrooms for their Ramadan observances. Instead, the church offered the use of its sanctuary for the entire month.
In the months since then, the two congregations have worked side-by-side at homeless shelters and in other community service projects. Their story has been featured on national news. A CNN report caught the attention of a community in a predominantly Muslim country across the world – a group that had been persecuting a local Christian church. One of the Muslim leaders contacted the pastor of Heartsong Church and told him that they had been so moved by the story of Heartsong’s response to their neighbors that they had decided to take care of the Christian church in their community – to help them maintain their building and protect them from persecution.
This is what happens when we put a face on our perceived enemies. And this is what will change the world.
May we be mindful of our calling and faithful to bring God’s message of love to our own Ninevehs. May we put a face on our enemies and begin to realize that we really aren’t that different. And on this day we remember terrible loss, may God speed the day when the Kingdom is fully come, the day when all the nations will beat their swords into plowshares and no longer train for war.
