What Is the One Thing You Need for A Truly Significant Life?

He looked a lot like this one you see below.

Granted, he had a few more dings and nicks.  He certainly wasn’t as clean.  But that didn’t matter.   He was mine.    For eleven years we were together.  Now he’s gone.  My carelessness led to a crash that ended our relationship forever..

It’s been months now, and I still miss my mini cooper.  Now you may not get attached to a car.   But in your life, you’ve gotten attached to something, haven’t you?  In fact, you’re likely attached to some things right now, more than you would think.   That’s why when people lose their home suddenly, like in a house fire, the loss devastates them.   Yes, they’re sad that the house has gone.  But houses can be replaced.  What devastates them are what’s in that house, things that can’t be replaced, pictures, mementoes, a family Bible, the list could go on.     If your home caught on fire, isn’t there one thing you would rush to save?  

And let’s not even talk about pets.  My neighbor, Bob, recently lost his dog, Katie.   When he told me I saw the tears.   My heart went out to him.    He loved that dog.  And you don’t know Bob, but did some of you feel for him right now?  Why?  You’ve lost an animal you’ve loved.  You know that pain.

This love, this love you have for things, for animals, and of course, for people dearest to you, where does that come from?   In this story, God tells you.   God tells you how deadly it is when this love dies, and it can die.   And more crucially, God tells you how this sort of love opens you to a life richer, deeper, more powerful than you could have imagined.  How do you experience this life?  Here God shows you the way.   Let’s hear what God has to say.

Jonah 4:1-10

What on earth are you here for?  What in life brings you life, a fuller, more complete life?  How does life become all that life is supposed to be?   In this story, God tells you.   For, here, God shows you at the deepest level who God is.   And when you know that, then you know who you are called to be.    And what does God show you?   God shows you just how attached God is.

If you know this story, you’ll know that God sent this prophet, Jonah, to warn Nineveh, one of the most violent and brutal cities in history. God was preparing to deliver divine judgment there, and God wanted them to have one last chance.   At first Jonah did his best to back out (that’s where the whole swallowed by the fish thing come in).  But when that didn’t work, Jonah went to warn them.   And his warning worked.  The Ninevites begged for mercy.   And God gave it to them, like that.  

Jonah wasn’t surprised, but he got angry, and for good reason.    Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire.  And the Assyrians had done awful things, murderous things throughout the known world, including in Jonah’s homeland of Israel.  Yet these Ninevites didn’t even have to convert for God to save them.  They cry out to God for mercy, sure.  But they don’t make any long-term commitments.   They sure don’t make a covenant like Israel did.   Yet, God spares them nonetheless.   Why?

To help Jonah understand it, God sends this bush overnight to give Jonah some shade.   Yet as fast as it grows up, it dies.   And when it dies, how does Jonah react?   He’s upset.   He really missed that plant, even though he only had it a day.  And how does God describe Jonah’s reaction?   God describes Jonah as concerned for the plant.   But that translation doesn’t get exactly at what the word means.   The word translated as concerned here literally means to grieve.  It means to have your heart broken over something.   It’s that strong.    Do you see what God is saying in that word?

God is telling Jonah, you became attached to that plant.   So, when it died, a little bit of you died with it.   You felt the pain of that loss.  And then God uses that very same word to describe how God connects to Nineveh.   Yet it’s strange because of course, Nineveh still exists. That city didn’t die.   So, what is God telling you?  God is telling you that God becomes so attached to people that God feels pain not simply when people die.  God feels the pain of people’s everyday existence, of how utterly lost they are, as God puts it, how they cannot tell their right hand from their left. 

But in Jonah’s case, something very deadly is happening.  Jonah is beginning to lose this sense of attachment.  You can see it in his attitude to the Ninevites. And even when it comes to the bush, Jonah seems to grieve more for his own discomfort than for the death of the plant.   When you start losing that, you are losing in a very real sense what makes you human.    And it can happen.   You get hurt so you shut yourself off from people.  Maybe you still connect to an animal or an object.   But then in some misplaced desire to protect yourself, you lose that too.   You think you’re becoming safe.  But you’re not. You’re becoming dead.  

As the writer C.S. Lewis put it:

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

And what is stunning is this happens to Jonah, even though he is a religious man.   You can come to church every Sunday, do all sorts of good deeds, and become lost just like this.   The Greeks even had a word for it.   They called it love of benevolence.   It’s the sort of love where you might do good things for others, but you don’t really feel anything for them.  No, you’re doing it out of duty.  It’s all head, and no heart.   And that love, if you can even call it love, will hollow you from the inside out.  

To be human, you need attachment.   In fact, if children don’t get attachments early on, it literally limits their brain development.  But why does God get attached?  God doesn’t need to be attached.   The preacher Frederick Buechner, put it well .  God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love, because within God’s very self, love happens.

That means, God chooses to get attached.   God chooses to become that vulnerable to people, to you and to me.   Not only that, unlike Jonah, who when he sees people doing awful things feels anger and a desire for vengeance, what does God feel?  God feels grief.   God feels grief for these people in Nineveh, even though many of them have done awful things.   And in that grief, God is telling you something very crucial about who you are called to be. 

From the moment, I clicked on the article, I haven’t been able to get the story out of my head.  It haunts me.   It has to do with this boy you see here; 2-year-old Alphonse Gonzalez, a curly-haired little boy who slept in red Mickey Mouse pajamas.”   His mother, Nathaly Ramos, had been struggling with depression and drug addiction.   Last Sunday, that mother stabbed her boyfriend with a knife as he slept, plunged the blade into Alphonse’s neck and then gashed herself. Police say an unidentified person in the home stopped her from killing herself. Ramos and her boyfriend survived the attack. Alphonse did not. He died in his grandmother’s arms on the way to Homestead Hospital.

And God grieves for that.  God doesn’t just grieve for little Alphonse.  No, God grieves for Nathaly,

for the lostness of her life that led her to do this unthinkable act.    My first reaction in reading this article was to judge Nathaly.   But God’s first reaction was to grieve.  That’s what this story tells you.  For the Assyrians had done things just that awful, and worse.  Yet, even as God calls them to account, God doesn’t feel anger as much as God feels grief, for these people who cannot tell their right hand from their left.   

And because God feels this grief, what does God do?  God forgives.  And God doesn’t even wait.   The Ninevites cry out for mercy, and immediately God forgives them.  That’s really what has made Jonah angry, God’s readiness to forgive.   The Ninevite’s don’t even have to make a covenant.   Not only that, their empire still rules Israel.   God has all this leverage over them, but does God use it?  No, God just forgives them, like that.

But don’t think that forgiveness did not cost God deeply.   In fact, later you will see how deeply it cost.    For later, God will grieve over yet another city.   Except this time, God will grieve in person.   In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says this over the city that will kill him.  "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Jonah goes outside the city hoping that God will destroy it.   But Jesus goes outside his city so that he can die to save it.   God in Jesus gives up everything to bring his lost children home, to give them the forgiveness, the restoration, they so profoundly need.    A century ago, the Bible scholar, B.B. Warfield, did a study of the emotional life of Jesus.   Do you know what he discovered?    Jesus wept 20 times for every time he laughed.   Why?    Because God cares that much for people, for their pain, for their lostness.  It affects him that deeply.  And its why God loves cities.  It’s why when the gospel went out, God sent it out to the cities first. Why? That’s where the people are. 

And in Jesus’ compassion, his deep concern for people, God points the way to the life God yearns for you, for this church.  God yearns for you to become someone whose heart is broken by the things that break the heart of God.  Only when you are doing that, are you truly getting what love is, what a life lived in love can be.

Next week, we’re having our annual Kirkin’ of the Tartans,at the church I serve, and we’re doing all that we can to promote it.   And in March, our family ministries director, James will be working with our Learning Center staff on two events to reach the families that attend there.    As a church, we’ve even adopted a vision to reach families with the love of Jesus.   Now why would God lead a church full of people whose children have long since grown to a vision like that?

It’s because in that horrible story of Alphonse’s death, I could not find one crucial thing.  I could not find any connection to a family of faith.  To raise funds for her grandson’s funeral, where did the grandmother go? She had to go to Facebook. 

Here’s the painful reality.  In any community, any city, too many families are lost, some even as lost as Alphonse’s family. They have little if any connection to this God who loves them so very much.  And how will that connection come?  It will come as the church I serve and other communities of faith do all we can to reach them, to love them, to introduce them to the only One who will make them whole.   And if you are one of those people who don't know this God who loves them this much, then as you believe that, then your journey to a significant life will begin.  

For everyone wants their church to grow because that would feel good to see the place filled up.  But if that’s the only reason, we’ve missed the point.  Churches need to grow because people need a God whose love alone will meet the deepest yearnings of their hearts.  

So, this week, if you want to know this God who loves you this intensely, then simply ask.  Simply say, I want to know you, God like this.   Then find a church where you can go to get to know this God more deeply.   You will be starting a journey to significance that will transform your life.  

 And if you already know this God, invite someone to church, to the Kirkin' if you live around this church, preferably invite someone far from God.  If it feels uncomfortable, then get past that.  That person, that family needs what you have to offer, and they may never know it unless you invite them.  So, have concern for them.  Let your heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.  The more you do that, the more you will discover just how truly significant your life can be.