Jonah

On the Third Sunday after the Epiphany the Old Testament reading comes from the third chapter of the Book of Jonah.  It's a short section but it can be an invitation to preach the story, which is always hard to resist. (I think you get the chance twice every three years.) I've preached this sermon before - the story doesn't change. It's one of those about which you can say, "it does not need to have (literally) happened to be true." And honestly, a bit like Esther, it's fun to tell the story to folks who may have last reflected on it in Sunday School. I'll be with the good folks at All Saints in North Adams as their preacher, and to lead a Mutual Ministry Review with the vestry afterwards. 

Today’s gospel reading is about the call of those two sets of brothers and it’s important. In fact this theme of being followers of Jesus and not just fans is an important theme in these weeks after the Feast of the Epiphany.

 But I love Jonah too much to miss the chance to preach on this great fishing story today and that opportunity only comes up twice every three years. And it, too, is a call story even if it’s intended as a kind of parody. So here goes…

Once upon a time there was a man named Jonah, a prophet who never really got it. (Sad, but true!)

The Word of the Lord came to Jonah as it has come to God’s people throughout the Bible and down through the ages: as it came to Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam and Aaron and Joshua the son of Nun and Rahab the prostitute; to Samuel and Jeremiah and Deborah and Esther and Peter and Andrew and the Zebedee boys and Mary Magdalene and Dorothy Day. And to each of us, in Holy Baptism.

The Bible doesn’t give us a lot of specifics about how that call becomes clear or offer seven habits of highly successful hearers of “the Word of the Lord.” But I’ve noticed two things that seem to be consistent throughout the Biblical narrative and down to the present day, whether the call is to be a bishop or a priest or a deacon or a more committed layperson:

1. It is impossible to hear God when you are doing all of the talking.

2. God is very likely to push you out of your comfort zone and ask you to take a risk you may well feel ill-prepared for.

God has this knack of using inadequate people to do very difficult work. So if God’s call scares you, then it might just be real. But be sure to listen closely for the angel that says, “be not afraid” and “I will be with you.” Again and again, the still unfolding story of God working in and through ordinary people is that God can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. In a nutshell I think that is the whole of church history and the journey of faith for each member of Christ’s Body.

So back to Jonah: the Word of the Lord came to Jonah, “go at once to Nineveh, that great city, to proclaim God’s judgment there.” But Jonah didn’t want to go. In fact he promptly got on a boat to head in exactly the opposite direction. Nevertheless, God persists. And one of the points of the story, I think, is that if God calls us to a task, it’s easier to face up to it sooner rather than later because you can never outrun God. You may recall what comes next: a storm at sea. Jonah is thrown overboard when it becomes clear that he is the cause of the storm and he is promptly swallowed by a great fish. And then the text says, quite literally, that the fish couldn’t stomach Jonah. So after three days of belly ache the great fish vomited Jonah back up on the shore right where he began. That’s where we picked up the story today:  the Word of the Lord comes to this reluctant prophet a second time. And the Lord says, “Jonah, go to Nineveh, that great city! (I AM really not kidding around!)”

This time Jonah goes. But he is still reluctant and his heart isn’t in it. Nevertheless, living in the belly of a great fish and being the cause of that fish’s indigestion is kind of gross. So he does it: “everybody repent. Thus saith the Lord…” And, amazingly the king and the people (and apparently even the cattle) of Nineveh all repent. This is pretty hilarious because usually the words of the prophets of Israel fall on deaf ears. Usually Israel tries to kill the prophets or ignore them or lock them up in an insane asylum. But these foreigners—these goyim—repent and change their ways. And God changes God’s mind about doing them harm and forgives them.

If you’ve heard of the Unmoved Mover of the philosophers this idea about God changing God’s mind might be jarring. It infuriates Jonah, but not for the same reasons it may trouble the defenders of Platonic idealism. It infuriates Jonah because he had assumed that his enemies and God’s enemies were one and the same. And so Jonah attempts a sort of jujitsu move against God; he tries to disarm God by turning God’s own nature against God:

I knew you were compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in kindness and renouncing punishment. And that’s exactly why I fled to Tarshish in the first place! I’d rather die than have you extend that kind of love and forgiveness to Ninevites!

My friends: the most real thing about the God of the Bible is not changelessness. The most real thing about God is that God is abounding in steadfast love and mercy. Meister Eckhardt once said, “You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.” Or as the Prayerbook puts it, “God desires not the death of sinners but that they may turn…and live.” (BCP 269) God’s change of mind is not out of fickleness! In fact it is completely in keeping with God’s character to show mercy to all who repent. Even Ninevites.

Some scholars believe that Jonah is a post-exilic book. That is to say, it was written as an op-ed piece after the Babylonian exile. That reading has always made the most sense to me as the right historical context. If it is, then it takes on an even more profound meaning because it’s about asking Jonah to forgive the very same people who caused the exile. (Nineveh is in Assyria, by the waters of Babylon.) So now you know the rest of the story, right? That little bit of geography makes all the difference in how we hear the story.

But regardless of its original context, it’s a story for all times. Is God on our side? Or does God love all the little children of the world? (And even the cattle.) Can God’s love and mercy and forgiveness and healing extend even to those from whom we are tempted to withhold grace? Or would you rather die with Jonah than believe that God can forgive the people that you find undeserving of mercy and forgiveness?

I want to say a few words about each of the three main characters in this story. First, we should notice that Jonah is a funny character, but that he is not unique in the Bible. He is what you might call an unfaithful insider. Israel, as it turns out, has a lot of experience with this, and so does the Church. It’s about being God’s chosen people and yet behaving like everybody else. God says to Israel on a fairly regular basis something parents have been heard to say to their children over many centuries: you ought to know better! If you can recite the psalms and quote from Scripture, but are not a doer of the Word (as the epistle of James puts it) then what on earth is the point? You are supposed to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

The foil to Jonah in this story are the faithful outsiders, the Ninevites. This, too, is not an isolated Biblical claim. Ruth, you will remember, was a faithful outsider too, a Moabite woman who understood covenantal love and responsibility quite well. “Wherever you go,” she told her Jewish mother-in-law, “I will go. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.” In the New Testament there is of course that “good” Samaritan. It is that faithful outsider who shows mercy. In doing so he reveals the will and even the face of God. The irony down to our own day is that sometimes people who claim to be atheists are a lot kinder and more merciful and loving than we Christians are. Sad, but true

The goal of this fishing story is therefore a double whammy that is meant to convert faithful insiders. That may sound odd to our ears: we are tempted to think that we are already “converted” and our sole purpose is to make sure others know what we know. But this story pushes that presupposition. I think the right response to this story is not resentment or denial, but laughter followed by self-awareness. This is pretty funny stuff because it hits so close to home and also, I think, because if we can laugh at ourselves, then we have a shot at redemption. The problem is that very often religious people are too serious. 

This leads me to the third character in the story: God. Most of us find it pretty comforting to be told that God is a God of steadfast love and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. At least when it comes to how we hope God will treat us! But when that same love and mercy extend to people we don’t like very much, then we may begin to wonder if God isn’t getting a little soft on sin. With our enemies we sometimes wish God’s judgment would kick in. It turns out, though, that God’s love is so deep and so broad and God’s grace is so amazing that it can save not just wretches like us, but even wretches whom we don’t like very much.

Our Jewish friends read the Book of Jonah at the afternoon service on the day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In that liturgical context it serves for them primarily as an invitation to repentance: an invitation to return to God and entrust themselves to God’s steadfast love and mercy. They are reading the story in a way that calls upon them to do what the Ninevites did: to repent and return to the Lord. If we were to read this story on Ash Wednesday we’d probably hear it in a similar way.

But our liturgical context on this weekend is three weeks after the arrival of the wise guys in Bethlehem. One of the themes in these weeks between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday is about call. Today’s collect sums this up nicely: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ… 

So I wonder how Jonah helps us to answer this question: “What kind of community is God calling us to become?” And, “what kind of Christians are being formed here at All Saints?” Where are your epiphanies, which is to say: how is God being made manifest in your lives and in the life of this faith community?

We are living in dangerous times. Politically, economically, globally we are facing huge challenges and the Church is not an escape from all of that. Rather, it is an invitation to enter into it all even more deeply. Like Jonah, we are called to share the message of God’s grace and mercy with a broken world. We are called to proclaim that what makes God real is the lengths to which God will go to prove that steadfast love and compassion for all people is the very nature of God. That God desires not the death of sinners but that we might turn, and live. 

Grant us wisdom, and courage, for the living of these days. Help us to be brave enough to see the light, and then help us to be brave enough to be the light.

The Baptism of Our Lord 2024

This Sunday I was supposed to serve at Trinity Church in Ware, but the nor'easter headed our way in New England has kept most of our congregations from gathering in person this weekend. For the folks in Ware and others who may be staying in today, here is what I would have preached if I'd been there. 

For many years now I’ve been connected to the life of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge through the Fellowship of St. John. The photo to the left was taken on a pilgrimage with SSJE to the Holy Land, at the renewal of vows service at the Jordan River. 

Some of you may know a ministry the brothers offer called, “Brother, Give Us a Word” – you can sign up for little tweet-sized daily emails from them that arrive in your inbox each day early in the morning. I look forward to receiving those every day, and sometimes I keep them as reminders.

One that came a few years ago during the twelve days of Christmas was from Brother Curtis and it said this about the word for the day: “presence.”

If this Christmastide you are asking the question, maybe desperately,
whether God is with you, I suggest you rephrase the question. The question
is not whether God is with you, but how is God with you?

Today is the first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany. That word, epiphany, comes from two Greek words epi-phanos: literally “to shine forth.” These six Sundays from now until we arrive at Ash Wednesday invite us to ponder the mystery of the Incarnation and the ways that God-with-us isn’t something that happened a long time ago in Palestine, but is still true today. Not whether God is with us, but how, as light shining in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. This season is a time for us to pay attention to how God is being made manifest among and through us even now. To pay attention to the ways that God is made manifest not just inside the walls of this church but out on the streets and
neighborhoods where you all live and work.

So hold that thought; you have six weeks to reflect on it…

For today, this First Sunday after Epiphany, we recall the Baptism of our Lord. The name is pretty self-explanatory, and today’s gospel reading is pretty straightforward: Jesus comes from Galilee to the Jordan River where he’s baptized by John. Soon after, his public ministry begins. We actually heard this reading back in early December, on the Second Sunday of Advent. But then the focus was on John the Baptizer. Now it’s on the baptiz-ee – Jesus, God’s well beloved Son.

So we return to this first chapter of Mark now that the shepherds have gone back to their flocks and the angelic choristers are back in the heavenly choir room, and the magi (after leaving their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh) have gone home by another way. Most of our trees have been chipped and our crèches have been packed up and put back into  their boxes until next year. New Year’s resolutions have been made, and a few have not yet been broken.

Jesus comes to John at the Jordan River. The Voice, speaks from the heavens: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

We are invited on this day to hear these same words spoken not just to Jesus, but to each of  us, by name. It is no “Messiah complex” to do so, but God’s deepest yearning as a Parent that we hear—and believe—these words. You are my Son. You are my Daughter. You are my Child, my beloved. and with you I am well pleased.

If Holy Baptism unites us with Christ (and of course that is exactly what it does) then I believe we are meant to hear these words addressed to each of us by name. So today we will remember our own baptisms, whether they happened in this font or at another font in another church, or in a river; whether the liturgy was Roman Catholic or Episcopal or Baptist. It’s all the same. 

One Lord. One faith. One Baptism.

Before anything else—before we can take up our crosses and before we can serve others or even attempt to live the ethics of Jesus—we need to soak in these words. They represent a pretty radical claim in a culture that treats us first and foremost as consumers, insisting that our identity is dependent upon the clothes we wear or the car we drive or the college we attend or the salary we take home. It represents the beginning of the faith journey and a Word we need to return to again and again in our lives.  You are my child, my beloved…and I’m crazy about you.

Before moving to diocesan ministry I spent two decades as a parish priest. And before that, I was a campus minister. If I learned anything at all from that work it is this: a lot of people struggle with self-image. Even those whom you might think on the outside have it all together very often struggle with wounds that go deep and are not easily observable to the naked eye. Even those who live in the biggest houses or drive the fanciest cars have a story. No matter how privileged our lives may appear on the outside, most of us are our own worst enemies on the inside. Old tapes sometimes continue to play decades after we’ve thrown away our cassette players, tapes that remind us that we aren’t good enough or thin enough or
smart enough to be loved.

Please don’t mishear me: I do not believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ should ever be reduced to the power of positive thinking. Nor do I think that the gospel is the religious equivalent of “I’m ok, you’re ok.” But it is always—at the beginning and at the end, about God’s abiding love and affection for us. 

You are God’s beloved. We are God’s beloved. All of us. No exceptions. 

God does not love you “in spite of yourself.” God is crazy about you. Jesus loves the little children of the world; all the children of the world.

I have a new way of seeing what this all means that happened on November 15 when my first grandchild was born. My wife and I got to spend Thanksgiving week in Washington, DC with my son and daughter-in-law when they came home from the hospital with Julian. And then they spent ten days with us in December, made possible because both are still on family leave. 

In holding that dear sweet boy as often as I could and even when he might be crying, all I could feel is love. I think that this is a reflection of the divine love, which is not contingent on what we do, but who we are.

Such love isn’t earned. It doesn’t require perfection. I think that’s where our theology can go askew very quickly. As we grow in faith and in love, we don’t just tolerate the wounded places in those we care for, because each of us is a package deal. If a person is outgoing and gregarious, then there is always a shadow that sometimes she will be overbearing. If a person is quiet and reserved, there is always a shadow that sometimes he will become withdrawn and isolated. All of us have those shadow sides. There’s just no getting around that; it’s at the core of our humanity. It’s what being flesh and bones is all about.

But think about it: we don’t just love someone on the good days when they conform to our image of what we want them to be. We love them for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer. Our human love is a reflection of the divine love for each of us and God’s love is deeper and broader still. It isn’t: “I’ll love you when you stop drinking or smoking” or “I’ll love you if you lose fifteen pounds” or “I’ll love you as soon as you stop that annoying habit…” or lose that tic.  

God loves us from before our births and beyond our deaths and in every moment in between and nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from that love. You are God’s beloved.

I saw with my own eyes how you all loved Randy through some challenging times in his own life, with his physical health. I am so grateful to you for managing that. What I think happens to us when we are truly loved in that way and we risk soaking it in, is that we desire to grow and learn and soften the hard edges toward growth in the full stature of  Christ. We don’t need to become perfect in order to be loved; but exactly the opposite—because we are already loved, we want to be better. We want to reciprocate that love. And we want to share it with others and the world. 

The beginning of faith is about hearing that Voice first and foremost over all the others – that Voice of the one who claims us and marks us forever, and calls us by name. It’s hard to hear in the midst of all the other voices giving us all kinds of different messages. But if we trust that Voice over those that tell us we aren’t good enough, then we become radically free to live against the grain and to commit ourselves to the way of Jesus and to follow him all the way to the Cross. To be the person we were meant to become.  

My dream for this parish is not that you will call a perfect rector, or that you will become the perfect parish, but that you will keep trusting that Voice of Love that has already claimed you and know that with love all things are possible. My hope for this and every congregation in our diocese is that no child—not a single one—will ever walk through our doors without getting very clear about the fact that they are each a uniquely beloved child of God. 

That is what these vows we recall today are all about: these vows define who you are and who you are becoming as a faith community. It is our work to model what is possible by living into our vocation as the beloved community, by treating one another with love and mutual respect and kindness. This is the work God has given us to do: love God, love neighbor.

 

Sin thrives when we suffer from a kind of spiritual amnesia and forget this abiding truth, when we literally forget who we are and whose we are. Compulsive behaviors and addictive behaviors and destructive behaviors all grow out in some sense from this deep-seated fear that we are not loved or that we are not worthy of being loved. Most of our sin comes most often from those places where we have been hurt or feel broken or unloved. So we can make all the resolutions we want toward self-improvement, but the journey of faith is to live more deeply into the person God already loves.

Love came down at Christmas and the question is not whether or not God is with
you, but how. You are God's beloved child; with you God is well-pleased. The work of Epiphany is to live into that truth. This is the good news that takes us to the very heart of what the Incarnation means and will get us all the way to Ash Wednesday.

Let your light shine for all the world to see.