October 18, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Love One Another Week 3
Jonah 4:1-11
God's Hopeless Optimism
Today we're continuing our series called "Love One Another", which, if you've been away during this time or just need a refresher, is a series that we are doing with other UMC churches around the country right now. It's our lead up to the Midterm Elections and our way to help us as the church focus in on what it means to be a force of love in a world that is deeply divided.
So far, we've looked at how we embrace and celebrate diversity, and how we love each other when it's hard. Today we're shifting to how we love our enemy. Enemy probably feels like a bit of a harsh word, but think of the people that we believe are SO wrong, so flawed, so beyond any kind of redemption or hope. Those are the kinds of people we are talking about loving today.
Sometimes we HAVE these kinds of enemies...sometimes we ARE those kinds of enemies to people. No matter what "side" we're on, it can be so easy to draw lines in the sand and decide who's in and who's out and once we've decided that, we don't usually want to see any of that change.
Last week, I shared with you a bit from the Pantsuit Politics podcast, and today I want to share with you a story from the book that those cohosts, Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers, wrote called (SLIDE) I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening).
Months after the 2016 election, Sarah shared on Facebook that she had voted for Senator Rand Paul (a Republican), due to his strong opposition to the continuing authorization of the war on terror. Sarah is an elected official and active member of her local Democratic party, where she serves on the executive committee. Immediately people began calling for her removal from the local party executive committee because she had violated the bylaws that a party member could not support a candidate from an opposing party. Despite her active Democratic service, a single vote for a Republican was too much for many of her Democratic community members to take. A single political decision, in their eyes, overwhelmed all her past work and progressive ideas. She wasn't checking all the boxes and that was unacceptable...She was no longer a neighbor or a friend or even a complex person. She was wrong, and that was that.
Now, regardless of what your opinion on that specific voting choice is, I think there are two really helpful pieces of this example that frame our conversation today:
First is the immediate and decisive "othering" that happened in this story. The thing she did was so egregious to the people who witnessed it that she was no longer part of "them" she was now "the enemy".
And the second is that once Sarah was considered an "enemy" there was no hope of redemption or possibility. She had to go. That was the end of her story and this was not something that could be redeemed.
While this might seem a little extreme, I don't think it's as unheard of as we might hope. Loving our enemy feels impossible in our polarized world. And even BEFORE this specific moment in time, this has never been an easy thing for people to do.
We see all of this play out in the story of Jonah. Now, Admittedly, we don't know if this story is fact, fiction, a folktale, an allegory...there's been tons of debate about its origins and why it was written.
I won't solve that for us today, but the bottom line is that whatever category you put this story in, at its core, it's a story that tells us something important about both human nature AND how God works. We see this stark contrast between Jonah's ability to love his enemy and God's refusal to STOP loving those same people.
And I want to share the bigger scope of this story with you, because we read the very last chapter of the book today, but that last chapter doesn't make as much sense without knowing everything else that happens.
This is a story about a prophet who really does not want to do the job that God has called him to do. He's a man who is told to go to a place he does not want to go, to bring a word of truth and repentance to people he deeply dislikes, to spare them from a terrible fate by convincing them to turn from their evil ways and worship God instead.
Jonah receives this call from God to go to a placed known as Nineveh. And if we look at how Nineveh is described throughout Scripture, it's not super difficult to see why Jonah isn't so enthused about this assignment. In different places in the Old Testament, Nineveh has a reputation for being, at best, a very arrogant society. At worst, it's known as "the city of bloodshed", it's even described as evil incarnate. Jonah knows this, whether from firsthand experience or just how people talk, and so he has a very clear narrative in his own mind of who these people are and what their fate should be. These are terrible, evil people who are so far beyond help that Jonah has the nerve to respond to a direct instruction from God with a very clear "no thanks."
And not only does he opt out of what God has told him to do, but he goes to incredible extremes to get out of it. He hops on a boat to Spain and what happens during that boat trip is probably why you've heard of Jonah. There's a terrible storm, everyone realizes Jonah has done something to make God angry, they throw him overboard, and, as happens...he gets swallowed by a big fish. Where he get to hang out and think about what he's done for a few days.
And this is a weird spiritual moment if you're Jonah. Not just because of the whole fish thing. But because when he's IN the belly of that fish, when he thinks it's over for him and he's really messed everything up by not following God's instruction, he has this POWERFUL moment of prayer. You can read the whole thing in Chapter 2, but he basically sits there and says, "God, I know who you are, I know the ways that you've been faithful to me, I know I messed this up, but I know that at the end of the day you are GOOD."
He has this moment of clarity, he even gets spit out by the fish and is just fine, and you might think, ok, Jonah gets it now. He's had this life-changing experience, he's come face-to-face with God's goodness and faithfulness, NOW he's ready to love those Ninevites!
But what we quickly find out is that Jonah's heart still isn't in it. It's true that he DOES what God has told him to do. And this time, when God says, "Go to Nineveh, tell them to change," there's no protest or anything like that. He actually spends several days walking the length of the city, proclaiming the message of repentance. And the incredible thing is—he's successful! The people listen, it seems like immediately. Even the King is like, "oh, we better get our lives together because this sounds really bad for us."
So, by all standards, Jonah is successful. But he's not happy. In fact, that first verse from the Chapter we read today says this:
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.
This is the same man who was just on the receiving end of God's mercy and love. The same man who just got delivered from languishing in fish guts. The same man who knows an awful lot about who God is and how God works and this SAME MAN...is furious that God's grace was not limited to just him and the people he had determined were worthy of receiving it.
What we have to understand here, and what is so challenging about this story is that (SLIDE) Jonah wasn't angry because God acted CONTRARY to God's character, he was angry because God acts CONSISTENTLY with God's character.
This is exactly WHO Jonah knows God to be—but it's not what Jonah wants God to do. Jonah is after what he would consider to be JUSTICE. He wants Nineveh to get the punishment that he believes they deserve. Sure, they COULD repent, they COULD know God's love and hope, but WHY in the world would Jonah want that? They don't deserve it. They're the worst!
But God shows up, not with Justice, but with Mercy. And mercy is free and sometimes feels brutally unfair. Mercy is given with deep generosity and overwhelming optimism by God about who people can become. Mercy says, "there might just be a second—or 70th chance in here for them."
Jonah, probably like many of us, has a hard time with this. Yes, he loves God, and he does it in a really public way, but that doesn't mean he wants that love to be for everyone. Not really. He thinks he knows who is and is not deserving of it and that's who should receive it.
I think we see this play out in the real world all the time. And unfortunately, it often comes from people who say they love God and do so in a really public way. This always brings to mind something that happened with some old neighbors of ours. These were people who we were friendly enough with, not super close, but it was fine. They were very vocal about their faith and I will admit that there were a few things that probably should have tipped me off to the fact that we weren't actually in as good of a place as I assumed. They would ask us a lot of questions about St. Luke's, but not in a "maybe I'll check out your church" sort of way, but in a "I'm not sure this is biblical" sort of way. It didn't feel great, but there wasn't conflict, we were just casual and neighborly and that was fine.
Well, a couple weeks before Christmas in 2016, Zack and Hazel were outside, trying to get some of her toddler energy out before it got too dark and cold. I was inside and I was VERY pregnant with Rhys who would be born on December 21st. When Zack and Hazel came in, he had this weird look on his face. He said, "Those neighbors are going house to house on our street handing out Christmas cookies. I watched them go to every other house on our block. They looked me in the face and said hello, told me what they were doing, but there is clearly not a plate of cookies in my hands."
This is just a free life tip—if someone in your life is 9 months pregnant, or if they've had a big life transition or are going through a tough time, and you are in the position to hand out cookies, I don't care if you are friends or frenemies or what...you BEST make sure that you are sharing that love.
I had some big feelings in that moment, as you can imagine. And as I reflect on why that caused such a reaction in me, I think it was because it sent a very clear message—you're the "wrong kind of people." We're sharing some love and you don't get any. I actually wonder if by that point they saw us as people, or if we had become, kind of like the example I shared at the top of the sermon, just a caricature of all these social issues and TYPES of people that they did not agree with. And if that was all we were to them, then why make the effort? Why wouldn't you just write someone off? Why would you think they were worthy of any of the things we've talked about today?
And I would love to tell you that because of that experience, I have never done the same thing to someone else—I mean, I have not withheld cookies, just to be clear—but I have. I've lived into that same false belief that I somehow am able to decide who God's grace is and is not for. I've told myself that I am all-knowing of who is right and wrong. And I have REALLY believed, like in the depths of my gut, that I should have a say in what love and mercy can look like for a person I really disagree with or dislike.
I so easily forget about what it's like to have been on the other side of things. I forget both the pain of experiencing that, but also the blessing of experiencing God's mercy for myself in so many other ways. It's not hard to see a lot of myself in Jonah and how he reacts. It's not who I want to be, it's not who I try to be, but it's an easy part to play, especially in the world we live in.
Jonah has so much anger in him, and we see it all spill out at the end of this story in the verses we read today. Honestly, this book ends in a really weird way. Jonah is sitting on a hill, watching Nineveh NOT get destroyed, and then he starts yelling at God about this random tree.
And I think this is where we see that, for Jonah, this was never really about Nineveh. It could have been anyone or any place. (SLIDE) This is about what's happening in Jonah's heart and what God is trying to teach him about how this God who he claims to know actually works in the world. This is about God trying to get to Jonah and soften his heart so he can actually love people well and generously, even if he doesn't think they deserve that love. This is about God trying to teach Jonah that the way God cares for people is so deep and so beyond our understanding, and it's an invitation to just be part of that. To not be so worried about who is going to get what they "deserve" and instead be part of creating a world where everyone has a chance to experience the unrestrained love of their Creator.
(SLIDE) How do we love people even when we're sure they don't deserve it?
This is an essential question for us to grapple with as people who follow Jesus. Because we don't have to approve. We don't have to like. We don't have to agree. But we do need to love. Because love is the only way that any kind of change or progress can happen—in the world but also inside of us.
One of the things I always say is that we tend to what's happening in here so we can show up and impact what's happening out there. If I'm more fixated on how terrible my enemy is more than whatever good things God wants to cultivate in me, there's absolutely no way I can extend that love. And I'm going to be JUST like Jonah, throwing a tantrum about a tree and missing everything that actually matters. I'm going to be putting my energy into places that make no sense, and miss the people and things that God cares about so much.
I'm going to miss the truth that, because of God's love, we have a reason to believe that no one is beyond hope. I'm not saying that always makes sense, and, again, I'm not saying that means we need to respect or support things that are wrong. But it's about being people who RESPOND to those things from a place of love and not a place of hate. It's about responding from a place of possibility instead of a place of cynicism. It's about responding from a place of moving towards somewhere better instead of reveling in someone's demise.
We're going to close today with singing "Bind Us Together"--we've sang it every week of this series, and it's this beautiful image of how God connects us through God's love. As we sing it today, take some time to reflect on the ways that God's love can enable US to love—the people, the places, the moments where it seems impossible. Hold those things in your heart as we sing together.
Let's pray.