January 24, 2021 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday Text: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Dear Friends in Christ,
Jonah wants an abortion. Jonah wants God to do it. He would never do it himself, but he supports the option remaining available for Nineveh, even if it means crossing state lines to Tarshish. Clearly these Ninevites were a mistake – sinful and against the Israelites – unfortunate and unwanted. One way or another, Jonah wants to see the Ninevites euthanized.
Their continued existence makes him uncomfortable. They embody his mistake. Should he suspend his career aspirations to single parent them? Should he be saddled with their responsibility? Does he have any use for them? Surprisingly he finds them quite important. They matter.
Their punishment matters – “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!” Jonah is delighted to cry out. He camps outside the city and waits for the worst. Their suffering matters to Jonah, to demonstrate his superiority. Their mistakes are pawns to advance his agenda. They are trophies to justify his self-indulgence. They matter, but not as hearts and lives. They matter to Jonah not for their own sake but for his. Use them, but abort and euthanize when done.
You matter too. To supporters of abortion, you matter. To advocates of assisted suicide, you matter. To embryo experimenters and fetal tissue pharmaceuticals, you matter. To power hungry lawmakers, you matter. You matter to the consumer culture and sexual freedom. You matter to crusaders for progress. To hands that want to hold authority over life and death, you matter. To sinful souls that long to play god, you matter.
Your ambitions need to be exploited for their benefit. You need their support for your political aspirations and they need yours to stay legal. Your crisis is leveraged for their profit. They need your insurance coverage. Your rebellion and sexual choices validate their services. Your unborn and elderly make great sacrifices to the god of choices; they can’t speak for themselves or are too old or frail to put up much an argument anyway.
Your suffering warrants my freedom. Because you sin, I should get to also. I stand on the side of history. Everyone wins when you let me use you. Never mind that it looks like hell. It only costs humanity.
Rather than punish, God pursues and persuades. Instead of condemning, He courts and convinces.
“GOD’S LOVE MAKES EVERY LIFE MATTER”
His love is big enough to make Jonah and Nineveh matter. Where the Ninevites settle for sex scenes, God writes them into a love story. Jonah angles for a divorce while God is already arranging a next date. Instead of slinking into a one-night stand, God would have none of it and He serves up happily ever after. Jonah and the Ninevites would accept spiritual prostitution, but the Almighty Maker of them all can’t stand any less than proposing marriage, and family as well.
He wants to win their love. He craves their heart and prizes their eternity. “When God saw what they (the Ninevites) did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” (v. 10) It only takes four chapters and three days and God moves the heaven and earth for Nineveh. His Word secures their survival and salvation. Faced with keeping Jonah or Nineveh at the other’s expense, God sacrifices himself and His justice instead. All suffer loss, but only the loss of self, and they gain the other two for the price of that one.
Your life matters as much as any other life. Your entire being matters to God so He leads with the full-force of the Law, but He follows with the sweetness of the Gospel. God doesn’t perform sleight of hand and make your obstacles disappear. He sends Jesus. He enters and involves Himself. He sets His mind, heart, body, and will next to and in front of yours, because all of you matters. Mary’s manger, violent cross and vacant grave show how much you – yes, you – do matter.
Time and servanthood He inhabits. In suffering and humility, He reaches the infant and elderly and unplanned and accidental ones, because your life matters right now and ever after. With body and blood, He touches the harlot and Pharisee, because your life matters – earth and kingdom come. He gives life to unwanted and unworthy and selfish, because your life matters – resurrection and immortality. For better and worse and richer and poorer and sickness and health; to have and hold and love and cherish; from this day forward and even forevermore; and not even death do us part, because your life matters.
Jesus ascended but present, Christ enthroned but intervening, Savior imminent – your life matters and others just like you. Their life matters because your life matters. Our lives matter because His life matters. Jesus life given into death was sufficient to save us all. The same Word, Baptism and Communion grace us all. Faith in Jesus saves us all. Forgiven and redeemed changes world like it changes Church. This Father, Son, and Spirit God of ours knows nothing other than love making lives matter out of once did not.
Amen.