The CRCNA’s Nineveh

It is very easy to be hard on the Jonah of the Bible. It seems so obvious to us what he ought to do. However, I believe that each of us has a Nineveh we brush aside as quickly as Jonah does. When God calls Jonah eastward, Jonah goes as far as humanly possible westward. Of all things he goes on a boat. Israelites were not seafaring people. Jonah probably did not know how to swim and in Israelite culture the sea was used to describe chaos, danger and evil, where monsters dwell. Jonah also paid the fare for the ship. Commentators believe that during this time money was rare. Most people bartered for goods and services. So either Jonah was a wealthy man or he sacrificed a lot for this one way trip away from God. He was serious. After Jonah gets his ticket and gets on the boat, the scripture says he went below deck. Other translations say “the lowest part of the vessel”. He was hiding from God. Afterwards Jonah was so sure of his plans that he fell peacefully asleep even in the midst of a divine-level storm. To Jonah the Ninevites were so unworthy and so unsuited to Hashem’s mercy.(1)  Are there people on the brink of disaster to whom our hearts can sleep peacefully with no regard for their value or God’s concern?

In the early days of missions, the CRCNA ran away from God when there was a call to go to Africa. According to the Synod of 1920 the people of Sudan (now modern day Nigeria) were unworthy and unsuited for the gospel. That synod reads: “the people in the Sudan are the type of people of whom one can not expect the most in the kingdom of God".1 At the time there seemed to be no lost sleep over this declaration.

While Jonah runs away to prevent the salvation of his enemies, the sailors try to outrun the ordained storm to save Jonah.

It must be said that Joanna Veenstra, who the CRCNA claims as their first female missionary and first (male or female) missionary overseas, did heed the call to modern day Africa for missions. But she did not go on behalf or with the CRCNA. Rather she went with another mission organization, one open to Africa and open to female missionaries. 

If you really look at it, Veenstra is most aligned with the pagan sailors in the story of Jonah 1. The most decent bunch of the story, who in the end worships Hashem, is not Jonah but the pagan sailors. While Jonah runs away to prevent the salvation of his enemies, the sailors try to outrun the ordained storm to save Jonah. They sacrificed their stores and were even willing to risk their lives for this man who had only brought death to them. While the CRCNA was so quick to dismiss a people group, Veenstra went great lengths to go towards the call of God. In a sense, she entered into a “pagan world” to do so. She left the reformed and hallowed world of the CRCNA to be a female missionary in another mission organization. She left the ‘righteousness’ of the CRCNA to join a theologically different organization.

And so the CRCNA slept while the ‘pagans’ propelled forward for the sake of the gospel. In a 2019 Banner article,Pastor John Medendorp writes that Veenstra’s greatest obstacle to her call was “the institutional opposition of the Christian Reformed Church in North America… Veenstra continued to follow God’s call on her heart in spite of her denomination’s complicit acceptance of an ideology of white supremacy.” 

If we are like Jonah, I wonder how Hashem has been trying to teach and reach us during these strange times. 

It was not until Synod 2007 that the CRCNA’s view of Africa was condemned and repented of.  Are we still that Jonah sleeping in the boat, or complaining under the hot sun? Is it any wonder why Kinism was born and bred out of the reformed faith when we consider ourselves through the lens of Jonah’s continued resistance to divine mercy? If we are like Jonah, I wonder how Hashem has been trying to teach and reach us during these strange times. 

What if Hashem is trying to teach and ‘reform’ our sleepy church through ‘pagan’ people or organizations? Scripture is clear that what the sailors believed was in deviation to the truth of God. And yet, it was precisely in them that the grace and light of God’s mercy shone forth. What would happen if we opened our eyes to what other faiths, Indigenous elders, , and secular advocacy groups were trying to  teach us about loving our neighbours as ourselves?

In the story of Jonah, the sailors and pagan Nineveh were more faithful to the gospel then the prophet Jonah himself. Perhaps our own Ninevehs hold a deposit of Hashem’s grace to awaken the church back to our calling and Christ’s love.

O Christ, who sleeps in the boat of our distress and calms creation, awaken us to your truth and love that we may throw our lives into the sea for our neighbours, whomever they may be. 

(1) Hashem is a Hebrew term for God. Literally, it means “the name.”

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio