When Communities of People are Wicked

Wrestling With Our Times and the Book of Jonah

Pastor Scott welcomed us into a quieter evening, naming what many of us have felt: we are living in unsettled times. He shared that outside the clear tracks of Advent and Lent, he prays about what we, as a church family, most need to wrestle with. This year, the story of Jonah kept calling to him, not for its odd miracle, but for its window into how God acts when entire communities, not just individuals, go wrong.

He said plainly:

"We're living in biblical times. As we anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ, we need to look and see what we can learn about God, especially in times where violence seems to be something that is every day."

He observed the rise in violence, injustice, and the confusion of language about justice and love. It wasn’t just a lament about the United States. He drew us back to a truth in scripture: God often deals with people together, holding whole communities accountable, not just individuals. He pressed us to let the Bible shape what we expect God to do with collective evil, not just personal failings.

God’s Call to Speak Into Collective Wickedness

Moving into Jonah 1, Pastor Scott shared the context: the Assyrians had a reputation for brutal violence. Nineveh was no outlier, but a prime example of a city shaped by cruelty. God’s command to Jonah to preach there was deeply offensive to a Jewish listener: these were the very enemies who had, and would, do harm to God's own people.

"When communities of people are wicked, God sends his people to proclaim repentance."

Reading Jonah 1:1-17, he pointed out how God is stirred by communal evil, hearing the pain of victims and responding by sending someone, a prophet, to call for corporate repentance.

Pastor Scott paused to name the scandal of grace: God loves even the violent, even the ones doing harm. He confessed his own first, very human reaction:

"When I see violence, I want to repay those who do what's violent to people. I want to see them get their justice. But then what I remember is is that God has given me as an individual this enormous amount of grace and mercy that I don’t deserve."

He shared a recent story: a friend trying to share Christ with someone near death who rejected the offer outright. Pastor Scott encouraged him, and us, to see God's grace in simply being sent to proclaim, regardless of whether the message is accepted. The act of giving opportunity is mercy itself.

Jonah Runs From a Hard Command: Our Struggle, Too

The story’s next movement is Jonah’s flight. Instead of obeying, he boards a ship heading away from Nineveh. Pastor Scott lingered here, connecting Jonah’s resistance with our own:

"Jonah does what any normal person would do. He says, 'I do not want the city of Nineveh to receive God's mercy. I'm going to try to get away from the mission that God has sent me on.'"

But God pursues him. The storm comes, the sailors panic, and Jonah must admit the truth: his own resistance has endangered everyone else. The sailors, pagans themselves, try every other god, every solution, but it is Jonah’s God who brings the storm and can bring relief.

He made the connection to our day:

"All they know is that there's a distress coming. It's much like the world that you and I live in today...they understand that there's a distress that's going to come upon this world at some point because deep down inside of us, we know that God is not going to let these things go, this sin that is happening, how the people in this world are destroying each other."

He highlighted the irony and the mercy: even unwilling, even running, Jonah becomes a witness. The pagan sailors come to fear the true God, offering sacrifice when the sea is calmed. God’s grace ripples outward, often despite us, not because of us.

He pressed into the uncomfortable implication:

"If you don’t do it willingly, dare I say it, God may use you unwillingly and how he sees fit. As much as [the book of Jonah] has his name on it, this book is literally about our God that we serve. He loves everybody."

The Scandal: God Saves Those Who Do Harm When They Repent

Pastor Scott’s heaviest words came as he wrestled with God’s intent in the story, to save the very people Jonah would deem undeserving. He was transparent about his own trouble with this:

"God saves those who do wickedness. That doesn’t make sense. I know. Hearing it out loud, I wish I’d have tweaked that one a little bit. I should have said God saves those who repent of their wickedness. That would make more sense."

He returned to Jonah’s eventual preaching, how the city of Nineveh, enemies and perpetrators of violence, responded with a massive, public turn: sackcloth and ashes, even their animals. He stressed this wasn’t mere ritual, but a sign that God’s mercy really is for the worst, if they turn.

He reflected:

"God in his love and mercy, he loves those who create chaos enough to send those who do not to suffer possibly just so that those who create chaos and do wickedness can be saved."

That’s the heart of the cross, he said. Jesus loved not only the hurting but those inflicting the hurt, asking for their forgiveness even as they crucified him. This should shape how we relate to even those doing wrong in our own communities. The church is not called to protect ourselves first, but to carry the scandalous offer of repentance and mercy as we go.

Our Response: Living Faithfully Amid Community Brokenness

He closed urging us not to avoid places, people, or conversations that are difficult, not to split up or hold grudges over politics, but to unite behind Jesus and the good news he brings. The world changes, he said, not by us running away, but by us stepping up to carry grace where it is least deserved, just as we received it.

"If we don’t proclaim repentance, who will?...You cannot flee your responsibility. You have to be able to give an offer to these people of God’s grace and mercy through Jesus Christ."

He left us with a stark challenge: if we recoil at the idea of God saving the wicked, we must check our hearts. The cross stands as the great leveler, grace for us, and grace for them. In loving those we find hardest to love, we become more like Christ.

Living It Out

This week, let us sit honestly with two things: that God loves the very people and places we are tempted to avoid, and that his mission is for us to carry his mercy out to them. If you are tempted to run, to withhold, or to decide who is deserving, remember: none of us earned grace. Ask God to soften your heart toward those who seem far off, and look for a place this week to risk an act or word of Christlike mercy that stretches you.

Discussion Questions

1. When you think of groups or communities you see as 'wicked' or harmful, what feelings first rise up in you, anger, fear, disgust, or something else? How does hearing God's love for them challenge you?
2. Where do you most feel the impulse to flee your responsibility to witness to God’s grace? What would it mean to take a small step of obedience this week?
3. Has there ever been a time when you saw God use you (or someone you know) to reach someone you would not have chosen? What happened, and what did it teach you about God’s character?