God’s love and forgiveness for us has no limits – it’s unconditional. Jesus calls us to love and forgive each other in the same way – without strings.
God loves us when we do good, and God loves us when we do not so good. He loves the kind and the mean, the generous and the stingy, the saint and the sinner. God’s love and forgiveness are always present for us. We can close our eyes and cover our ears to shut it out but it’s still there.
The Book of Jonah in the Old Testament tells a story about God’s limitless love and forgiveness. Jonah is a preacher and a prophet in Israel 500 years before the birth of Christ. Nineveh, a nearby city, is the longtime enemy of Israel. It is a very wicked city steeped in sin and unrepentance.
God gives Jonah a special mission: he’s to go preach to the people of Nineveh so that they will have a chance to repent and turn away from sin, and thereby avoid the punishment that is coming due for them.
At first Jonah doesn’t want the job. He’s not interested in saving his enemies from getting their just desserts. He tries running away from God by taking a short cruise. You probably remember the rest: God sends a storm, Jonah falls overboard, gets swallowed up by a whale and spends three days in its belly reconsidering his position.
The whale spits him up on the shores of Nineveh and he goes off begrudgingly preaching repentance. To his surprise, the Ninevites listen to him. They immediately repent and turn to God. God seeing their repentance spares Nineveh from the punishment that had been planned. Jonah complains to God about the unexpected success of his mission. He is bitter because instead of destroying the Ninevites, God led them – through him no less – to repentance and to be saved.
The story is a parable of God’s mercy. It illustrates how much God wants all people, regardless of how wicked they may have been, to turn away from sin and embrace his unconditional love.
As his disciples, Jesus calls us to open our hearts and accept God’s love; to let that love transform us; to let ourselves become channels of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness for all our sisters and brothers. He calls us to love and forgive others as God loves and forgives us – without strings.
Just as Jonah had his mission, we as Christians have ours. It’s not easy. In our families, with our friends, in the workplace people sometimes hurt us. Jesus doesn’t tell us to wait until someone says, “I’m sorry.” He calls us to forgive without strings.
It’s not easy. But once our own hearts are opened and we have experienced the Presence of God in our life, all things are possible.
With love, Deacon Lex