Reflections on "What Kind of God?" Nahum 1: 1-11; 3: 18-19

Another sermon I enjoyed preparing and preaching, although my guess would be the congregation is getting tired of the minor prophets!

A cool thing happened in the Sanctuary service. At the end of the sermon (just after the story from the Truth and Reconciliation experience) when I asked "Would a what goes around comes around approach have worked better?" I had several people nodding their heads "No." 

In the Chapel service when I asked if they remembered why Jonah ran away, one of the persons nodded "Yes," so I asked her "Why?" (probably a dangerous thing to do!), and she answered, "because Jonah did not want to go and preach forgiveness to Nineveh." I could not have set that up better if I had tried!

I am grateful for the teaching of Professor Louis Donelson, who taught me NT at seminary, and who also taught me that we could and should use the texts to interpret one another.  Nahum needs to be interpreted in light of other texts. 

For you Revised Common Lectionary buffs, do you know what other books are not used in the three year cycle?  Don't hold me to it, but I believe that Obadiah (another minor prophet), Ezra (the lectionary does include Nehemiah, which is part of the same story), and I and II Chronicles (I suspect they are left out since they tell the same stories as I and II Kings).  

“What Kind of God” FPC, Troy; 7/19/15; Minor prophet series; Nahum 1: 1-11; 3: 18-19

Introduction: We continue to reflect on the minor prophets, this time Nahum.

Did you even know Nahum was a book in the Bible?

I bet most of us have not spent much time reading Nahum.

I'm not sure I have ever preached from Nahum.  In fact, I looked up his name on the Internet to hear how to pronounce his name. Nahum.

Revised Common Lectionary – four Scripture readings each week so that over three years all of the Bible can be heard in worship.

Or at least almost all. Nahum is one of the few books totally left out of the lectionary. Those people who want us to hear a bit of everything in the Bible, leave out Nahum. Not worth reading! Or maybe they do not know what to do with Nahum.

In Hebrew Nahum means "comforter," which seems appropriate since he has no bad news for God's people. The major prophet Jeremiah (28:9) claimed that bad news is the mark of the prophet.

Nahum, unlike the other prophets we have encountered, has no bad news for God's people. There is bad news, but it is all for Assyria, Judah's enemy.

Move 1: what is Nahum doing?

a. Answering important questions that the Judeans have.

1. late 7^th century in Judea.

2. Assyria has been a brutal power.

3. had not destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, but had been a fearsome enemy.

4. Babylon on the rise.

5. Assuming Nahum written as Babylon comes to power or maybe after the fall of Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria.

b. First question with which the Judeans struggle: What good did it do them to be God's people, to have God on their side if God could not protect them from the Assyrians?

1. what good does it do us to be God's people if terrorists can strike and kill four Marines in Chattanooga or take down the Twin Towers?

2. What good does it do to follow God is I can lose my job just like anyone else?

3. what good does it do to be God's people if cancer can strike me just like anyone else?

100. Second question: If the rise of Assyria was God's will, how did that explain the cruelty and abuse of power that Assyria showed, particularly since God was just and righteous? (These two questions are discussed in Theology of the Prophetic Books: the Death and Resurrections of Israel, Donald E. Gowan, 86).

1. if God is at work in the world and God's will is being played out, why do so many things happen that do not seem like God.

2. Or perhaps even scarier, do we have the wrong impression of who God is and how God works?

Move 2: Nahum looks at what is about to happen to Assyria and has this to say: Nah, na, na, nah! God's going to get you!”

a. Destruction.

1. Destruction of Assyria, the enemy.

2. God acts upon Assyria in a vengeful way.

3. The prime example is the destruction of Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria.

4. In fact, Nineveh is compared to Thebes, which Assyria had destroyed about fifty years earlier.

5. In some ways, a pretty good image of God if you are a Judean, a God who will destroy Judah's enemies.

6. Maybe you would like to follow that kind of vengeful God who hates your enemies?

b. Having three daughters grow up in my household means I am often exposed to and confused by the language and thinking of the younger generation, or at least as interpreted by my daughters.

1. Fads in music and clothes.

2. TV shows -- "Fixer Upper" is the hot ticket these days!

3. Language and ideas.

4. I used to hear a lot about karma. Not as much anymore, but it still gets mentioned.

5. Karma –  in general, too simple terms, karma is the Buddhist belief that whatever you do comes back to you, e.g. if you do something good, something good will happen to you, and vice versa. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=karma

6. Typically, karma is espoused at my house when something bad has happened to someone with whom one of my daughters is displeased, or maybe with one the sisters who has done something.

7. let's say one girl gets dumped by her boyfriend after having just dumped her previous boyfriend – when the story is told, “karma,” is the explanation.

8. Or if one sister borrows a pair of shoes from the other sister without asking and then trips and falls, “Karma” is the answers.

9. Every once in awhile I felt compelled to respond to the appeal to karma with “I don't believe in karma, I believe in Jesus,” but I don't think they ever took me too seriously!

100. But, in effect, that's how Nahum comes to understand God.

1. the God of karma.

2. Assyria is bad, so they are going to get theirs.

3. the comparison between the looming destruction of Nineveh and Thebes is a great example of karma – Assyria destroys Thebes; before too long God destroys Assyria.

Move 3: So what do we do with the cross?

a. How do we interpret Nahum in light of Christ’s death and resurrection?

1. Instead of what goes around comes around, we learn that our only hope is that what goes around can be transformed by love.

2. God does not seek vengeance for Christ's death on the cross – God offers resurrection, the transforming of death into life.

2. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. . . . Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace. . . . [We] must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” http://donteatalone.com/words-from-martin/; Milton Brasher-Cunningham, January 17, 2011

3. Remember Jonah, one of the minor prophets we do read and most of us do remember.

4. Jonah who runs away from the task God has for him.

5. What was the task? To go to Nineveh and call the people to repentance and to know God's forgiveness.

6. Jonah runs away because he does want any part of a God who offers forgiveness to the enemy who live in the capital city of Assyria.
7.  Karma sounds better to Jonah than forgiveness.

100. one of the great examples in our time for how God's people might respond comes out of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
     1. In response to the crimes of apartheid, the commission discovered the importance and power of involving the victims in determining the punishment.
     2. Story of a woman who saw her husband and her son killed in front of her by the same Afrikaans policeman. When he was convicted before the commission, they asked the woman what she thought his punishment should be.

“I was once a mother and a wife and now I am neither,” she said. “Let him come to visit me so I can be a mother to him.” She then rose and embraced him as the man wept uncontrollably. http://donteatalone.com/life-sentence/, Milton Brasher-Cunningham, July 6, 2006

3. Would a what goes around comes around approach have worked better?
Conclusion: Nahum invites us to consider how God is at work in the world. Not is some theoretical way, but in the concrete happenings around us.
But, we accept his invitation as people who know the about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as people who know the transforming love of God.