Epiphany 3

Back in my high school and college years, I took three years of German. And I learned words like Weltanschauung, Heilsgeschichte, Kulturwissenschaft, and Schadenfreude.

Four wonderful German words. Tantalizing, tongue twisting terms. Words that are so cool to a lover of language. One of the glorious things about German is that a single succulent word can capture what it takes four or five words to express in English.

Weltanschauung. One’s view of the world. The way one looks at life.

Heilsgeschichte. The history of salvation.

Kulturwissenschaft. The study of culture.

Schadenfreude. This one brings us to Jonah, an individual painfully stuck in schadenfreude. He reeks of it. His whole demeanor is dripping with it. Translation? It means ‘malicious joy at another’s misfortune.’ Schadenfreude.

Here’s the deal: Jonah was perfectly happy to preach hellfire and damnation to the people of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, because frankly, they deserved it. Horrible people. Nasty habits. They were Israel’s longtime enemy, and therefore God’s longtime enemy, right? As long as God pushed the delete key in the end as promised, and served up the obliteration those miserable Assyrians deserved, all would be well, sermon or no sermon.

After all, the Assyrians had humiliated and crushed the Israelites, then stripped them of their culture and their land. Yet God assigned Jonah the task of preaching prophetically to those abominable heathens in the wicked city of Nineveh. That command alone worried our hero. But what exactly did God mean by calling Nineveh “that great city” not once, but twice?

This really piqued Jonah’s suspicions. Yes, Nineveh was wicked, but “great”? It almost sounded like God had a soft spot for those evil Ninevites! How worrisome to Jonah that there

was even a remote possibility that God could see potential in the most depraved of Israel’s enemies!

So Jonah bolted. He skipped town in order to avoid God’s assignment. But after escaping on a ship, almost capsizing in a storm, being swallowed by a great fish and then finding himself regurgitated on the sand, Jonah finally accepted God’s assignment. Even so, Jonah consented with all the enthusiasm of a sullen adolescent.

Jonah spent minimal time on his conversion sermon. In fact, the message was a mere eight words in English: Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown. In Hebrew, it took only four words. Jonah wanted to school them with a minimum of personal exertion.

Well, much to Jonah’s utter astonishment, the sermon was a breathtaking success! It was a real life-changer. Out came the sackcloth! Into the fire went all the little statues of fertility gods.

That’s impressive. Anytime you can get a politician to repent, you’ve accomplished something. Jonah’s revival was an astounding success. Every sinner had repented. Every heart was changed. You would think that a preacher would rejoice in such a great victory being given to him. But not Jonah. He was absolutely livid! How dare God forgive the unforgivable! How dare God love people that Jonah hated!

So now Jonah is having a whale of a time. While he begins stuck in schadenfreude, the story closes with Jonah chock-full of freudeschmerz, an imaginary German word meaning ‘sorrow at another person’s joy.’ Jonah pouts like a fool while sitting beside a withered castor bean plant.

So who is this Jonah? He’s the patron saint of anyone who secretly smiles when the high school prom queen shows up at the 25th reunion with 60 extra pounds and her third husband. He’s the soul mate of the employee who feels delicious pleasure when the boss is suddenly fired

with fifteen minutes to clear out his office. He’s the poster child of all who appreciate reading in the newspaper about the ‘family values’ politician who winds up photographed in a hot tub with a woman not his wife.

Jonah reminds us that even in the community of faith – and perhaps especially in the community of faith – we confuse what we hate with what God hates. Do we, like Jonah, find pleasure in hating? Joy in our enemy’s misfortune? Do we find ourselves working for our own self-interest rather than God’s glory and the growth of the Kingdom?

Are we also schtucke in schadenfreude? While ‘hate’ increasingly becomes news-breaking – stories of hate crimes, hate groups, hate Web sites permeate the media – we see ourselves as innocent in the presence of such malevolence. Those people are sick! And they are certainly not Christian, even if they call themselves some sort of religious group!

But Jonah provides a new mirror for us to examine ourselves. Jonah presents a painfully clear reflection of slice-of-life malevolence. While war criminals and deranged zealots display glaring, colorful hatefulness for all the world to scorn, Jonah reminds us that hate also takes shape in souls that appear to be respectable and faithful. Souls like ours.

Is schadenfreude pervasive in our souls? Do we experience a touch of joy when others falter? Or is freudeschmerz our problem? Do we experience sadness when others find pleasure? Do we rejoice when those we despise – or merely find annoying – suffer? Do we grouse when those same souls find themselves touched by grace? Or have we become so intimate with the God of love that we routinely shower our enemies, our rivals, with Christ-like compassion?

In spite of kulturwissenschaft, our understanding of heilsgeschichte impacts our weltanschauung. In other words, no matter how we examine our culture, our understanding of the history of salvation teaches us how to look at the world. According to Jonah’s story, God saves even our enemies if they turn from faithlessness to holiness. This is excruciating for those

of us who delight in the notion that God detests all the people, all the ideas, and all the organizations that we detest.

Jonah reminds us that wickedness springs not from the fact that you are not like me, or ‘they’ are not like ‘us.’ Wickedness ensues when people are not like God, whether those people in question happen to be North Koreans, Russians, Iranians, Democrats, Republicans, or any one of us. God’s point is that the Kingdom must grow, and everybody is invited. Even the obnoxious neighbor who yells at your cat. Even the coworker who stabs people in the back.

Even those nasty Ninevites. Even us.

God’s plan is that everyone will be saved by turning away from wickedness and toward the only God who can free a guy from the belly of a fish, the only God who can transform an entire city of heathens, the only God who can melt hateful hearts. God persists as the only One who can change us, too.

There is no one that God does not love. Thomas Carlyle put it like this: “And Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking.” Then Carlyle adds, “And God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs to come around to [God’s] way of loving.”

This is the lesson Jonah needed to learn: God is a universal God and God’s love is a universal love. God even loved Jonah, hard heart and all. That’s important. God’s grace is sufficient for all. This is the truth of the New Testament: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are all dependent on God’s grace.

Jonah’s story ends with a question. God tosses one to Jonah, and we never hear the answer: “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more

than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left?” (Jonah 4:11).

The ball is in Jonah’s court. Whether he sulks through the remainder of Nineveh’s penance or comes around to see things God’s way, we do not know.

And there is no tidy ending for us, either. Whether we spend the rest of our lives gleefully enjoying others’ misfortunes, or grumbling about others’ joy, or gravitating toward grace, is yet to be seen. God leaves that up to us.