Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | Trey Comstock
We all need to hear brutal truths, sometimes. We don’t like it, but it can be the only things that will force us to grow. I’ve talked about it in this space before, but I’m a workaholic and spent my late teens through mid-20s working to a damaging degree. I didn’t need to rise and grind because I never went to bed in the first place. David Hindman, the pastor at my college’s Wesley Foundation, spent years calling me out for my way of living. He tried a wide variety of tactics: making drop some activities to be able to live in the Wesley House, inviting me to take a break once a week by going on a walk with him, and, more often than not, finding every opportunity possible to point out to me the flaw in my life plan. Mostly, he just stated the obvious that I had too many things on my calendar, but one night, while on a mission trip doing Hurricane Katrina relief, his argumentation became more pointed.
“Do you think your more important than Jesus?”
“What do you mean?”
“You act like you can’t time a break from working.”
“You’re right. I can’t. A lot of people are counting on me for a lot of things. I can’t stop.”
“Jesus took breaks. The Gospels tell us a lot about Jesus leaving the crowd and resting.”
“Sure.”
“So, why do you need to work without breaks, if Jesus didn’t?”
“Huh?”
“Is what you’re doing so much more important that what Jesus did?”
Admittedly, I didn’t have a particularly sensible response to that. Even 18 years later, it still stings. A few years back, David and I spoke about that conversation. His reaction to his own his words were, “Wow. I really said that? I was a real (insert synonym for jerk).” I certainly thought that he was a royal synonym for jerk, but that’s not really want stung. On some level, he had thoroughly seen the truth behind my behavior and merely gave voice to the truth of it. I’d love to say, from that moment of hearing the brutal truth, I changed my ways. It didn’t happen. It took a further half a decade before I truly started to clean up my act, but I trace the seeds of change to that conversation, of getting emotionally flayed with the truth.
In the Old Testament, God had an official brutal truth dispenser – God’s prophet. It’s why the records of the prophets make for difficult reading. “Woe to this group. And, woe this group. And, woe to you if you keep acting like that other group.” We see Jonah doing this for Nineveh. The book opens with a confirmation of the city’s need for change, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’” (Jonah 1:1 NRSV) In our text here in Jonah 3, we finally see Jonah delivering the message, after a sojourn into the belly of a fish. “So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’” (Jonah 3:3-4 NRSV) The text doesn’t provide us with any details of their specific wickedness, other than a nod towards violence. Historically, Nineveh was once the capitol of the Assyrian Empire, one of the Biblical evil empires, and its aqueduct system may have been the historical basis for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. So, something in there led to a prophetic declaration of wickedness that Jonah, after long delay, carried to them. They get the brutal truth that rightly, their level of wickedness has condemned them to utter destruction.
It does the trick, though. The king declares a fast. The humans and the livestock put on sackcloth. They refrain from violence. In forty days, they turn in an entirely different direction. The prophecy achieves its divinely intended effect – behavior change. Jonah serves as a reflection on the nature of prophecy, particularly, prophecies of doom. Jonah takes off running because he knows that God won’t really zap Nineveh. If they change, God will relent. In its own way, we glimpse grace, repentance, and redemption. The prophet Jonah shows them what their current path will end in – rapidly approaching destruction. They choose repentance in the off chance that God will be merciful. As the King of Nineveh puts it, “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” (Jonah 3:9 NRSV) We know. God does show mercy, much to Jonah’s chagrin. The brutal words of the prophet shook lose the change.
We need those voices in our lives. Every person needs someone who can speak those brutal truths and have a shot at being heard. Few live truly blameless lives, so the vast majority of us have some rot, sitting somewhere, within our being. Humans have remarkable skill at self-deception. We can too easily rebuff polite inquires `or beating around the bush. It can take the smashing of sledgehammer of truth being hefted by a person who knows us intimately.
This is something like what John Wesley meant, when he said that “there is not holiness without social holiness.” He wanted people to live within accountable relationships, that as many Christians as possible would be a part of a small group that would cut through the niceties and get to the root of people’s struggles. John Wesley designed elaborate systems for these groups. At each, weekly, small group meeting, each person would have to report on their progress or lack of progress. Then, during the week, the small group leader had the additional responsibility of checking in on each group member to see how they fared. John Wesley grasped the transformational power of the properly applied outside perspective. It changed Nineveh. It changed me.
We can easily avoid all of this. We can build elaborate walls to keep people out. We can show up at church, sit down, listen, and go home without ever interacting. We can check the Christian box and move on, unaffected. If we pause and build deep relationships, people might see how great a sinner that we truly are. They just might, and they might help us change.