Review of George Yancey's "Beyond Racial Gridlock"

Review of George Yancey’s Beyond Racial Reconciliation (InterVarsity Press, 2006).

            “I believe racism is a problem that requires specifically Christian insight” (p.77).  George Yancey makes a bold claim when he declares that the solution to a problem that affects all people of all races and all religions is found in the Christian worldview, molded as it is by Jesus.  I believe Yancey is right.  I applaud him for not pandering to universality and not striving for detached neutrality (that might gain him kudos in academic circles).  Yancey is an accomplished scholar, but he is Christian before he is an academic.  He works hard to see the situation of race in America from as many points of view as possible.  And, he admits when he is not able to do so. 

            He writes as a black man, as a minority who has been hurt by America’s racist past.  However, he doesn’t beat up whites in the present who want to atone for our part in this drama of race, and he critiques black authors who do.  Yancey’s vision for reconciliation is fair-minded, but more importantly, it is Gospel based.

            His core idea is the mutual responsibility model which he defines as a “concept that takes seriously the Christian teaching of human depravity” (p.78).  Starting with this definition, he demonstrates that sin is the root problem and that racism is the form in which sin rips society apart.  Jesus gives us power to overcome sins and at the same time wipes off of us the sin already stuck to us.  We have to admit our sins and our part in the sin narrative.  For whites Americans, this will different confession than for African Americans and other People of Color, but all have to confess sin and especially sin within the race drama. 

            From confession, we then work on relationships.  We work to deep friendships with people from different backgrounds than our own.  This work is intentional, sometimes tedious, and ultimately necessary if we want to have a part in the way God will bring healing to our nation.  Yancey’s work in this book is the as comprehensive and theologically cohesive as I have found.  I will use his ideas as a part of our church’s attempt to become a multi-ethnic church.   I hope I can convince everyone in our church to read it.  

Where God Won’t Go (Jonah 1:17-2:11)

Sunday, November 6, 2016

            Is it odd that sometimes people turn to Jesus after they are incarcerated?  In a child’s way of thinking, people in jail are called ‘bad guys.’  Often these bad guys find Jesus in prison.

            Is it odd that Christianity is growing rapidly in places where faith is discouraged and violently persecuted, places like India, Iran, and China?  Christianity is exploding in those places.  In America, where we are free to go to church and literally have hundreds of choices, church attendance is in decline.  As our population grows, less and less people are go to church even though going to church couldn’t be easier.  In China, attending an unregistered church could get you fired or fined or even arrested, and people keep going.  New churches cannot begin fast enough.  What do we make of this?

            Is it strange that when life is running smoothly, our faith is relegated to a dusty corner?  This doesn’t always happen, but sometimes it does.  We find ourselves winning – whatever winning might mean in your life.  And faith isn’t needed.  But, then we lose – because sometimes we do.  In losing moments, pain-filled, then we desperately rush back to God. Why is this?

            Jonah chapter 2, verse 2.  He says, “I called to the Lord out of my distress.”  If you look at a Bible map of the Mediterranean Sea in the days of Jonah and you look all the way to the left, the far west.  There’s Tarshish.  After that it is the Strait Gibraltar and then the Atlantic Ocean which the ancients believed you’d fall off the edge of the earth.  You’d fall to the depths.  Jonah was safe and sound in Israel.  That’s where God called him.  Jonah didn’t need to call God from his distress.  God called him in his comfort.  All he needed to do was obey.

            Instead, he jumped on a ship going the opposite direction, Tarshish, the farthest point in the known world.  He was trying to get away from God all the while knowing one cannot get away from God.  When God whipped up a storm that rocked the ship and showed Jonah the score, he had himself thrown into the sea, into the depths.  Jonah, knew God would be present on the boat.  Jonah knew God would be waiting in Tarshish.  Yet, he tried to go to those places to hide from God. 

Jonah knew that God not would sink to the deep.  The depths of the sea is the one place God won’t go.  Yet when Jonah ended up there, where God was not, then he reached out to the Lord.  When all was lost, Jonah found himself praying.  When all was well, he ignored God.  From that place where God won’t go, he prayed. 

In the latter half of the verse, we read that Jonah was in the belly of Sheol.  Sheol is sometimes thought of as an Old Testament word for ‘Hell,’ but the Old Testament did not have categories of Heaven and Hell.  Those ideas came later, when the Greeks had heavy influence on Jewish thought during the New Testament period.  The Old Testament sense was focused on the living.  If one lived a good life and had children, when he died, would be buried and considered at rest.  He would live on in his descendants.  That’s why having children was so important and going childless such a tragedy.  One with no descendants was lost.

Sheol was a place of disembodied shades cut off from the living.  Former UNC religion Professor Jack Sasson writes, “We have imprecise and sometimes contradictory knowledge on exactly what the [ancient Jewish person] believed occurred after death.  … Israel’s poets generally locate this other world somewhere below terra firma or even below the oceans; occasionally they place it beyond God’s control and assign it to the dead.”[i]

We see an example of this thought in the Bible, in the great lament psalm, Psalm 88.  Beginning in verse 3,

For my soul is full of troubles,
    and my life draws near to Sheol.
⁴ I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
    I am like those who have no help,
⁵ like those forsaken among the dead,
    like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
    for they are cut off from your hand.
⁶ You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
    in the regions dark and deep.
⁷ Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
    and you overwhelm me with all your waves.

            “Cut off;” the singer says.  This notion of complete separation colors Jonah’s prayer at the outset, and then, his lament intensifies with each new phrase.  In his song, in chapter 2, the Hebrew poet uses the technique of intensification.  From Sheol’s belly, he cries, “You cast me into the deep” (v.3a).  And it’s not just the deep, but the heart of the seas.  Waves and billows pass over Jonah.  The abyss engulfs him, kelp wraps around his head, and the bars of the netherworld imprison him. 

            The NRSV, the version I use most of time, translates verse 6 like this.  “I went down to the land, whose bars closed upon me forever.”  Sasson thinks it should read this way.  “I sink to the base of the mountains.  The netherworld, its bars about me are there forever.”  ‘Netherworld,’ is a better translation than ‘land.’ 

Here’s how Sasson describes the Hebrew concept of netherworld.  “The dead [in the netherworld] lead an eternal but dull existence, where the hurt is due to the unbridgeable separation from the loved one left on earth.  It is now recognized that [this is how] [ancient Jewish] poets [described] life apart from God.”[ii]  Nothing could be worse.  This is the end for the prophet who runs from God’s call. 

            What end lies before us?  Is life hard right now?  What poetic intensification would track your downward spiral?  I knew a guy who was complete broke was he got married.  He was also too young.  There was abuse, and then diagnosis of mental illness, and then divorce.  He wound up homeless.  I have, I am sad to say, seen it a couple of times.  Maybe you’ve seen it too.  How would the Hebrew poet use intensification as a technique in his verse to describe what you’ve seen?  Or what you yourself have experienced?

            In the New Testament, in parables, Jesus uses phrases like ‘weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth,’ and ‘outer darkness,’ and ‘unending fire.’  Some Christians take Jesus’ metaphors as if he were describing a literal place called Hell.  Jesus described the world the way ancient Jews described the world.  His metaphors made sense to his listeners.  He used these word pictures, so familiar to the people around him, as a way of depicting the absolute, ultimate horror the Hebrew poet could not abide – being cut off from God. 

To be where God won’t go; there is no worse fate.  That’s Sheol.  When we use the word ‘Hell’ to describe the lowest one could get, the worst pain, then we know Jonah’s feeling when he says he’s crying out from the belly of Sheol.

There, Jonah discovers what I pray my homeless friend and others I have known might discover.  God is there, even there.  Jonah 2:6 is one of those scripture passages demanding to be highlighted, underlined, and noted in the margin.  The Hebrew poet dramatically disrupts the intensification, with reversal! 

“I went down to the Netherworld,” Jonah moans.

“You brought me up from the pit,” he sings one stanza later. 

The ancient Jews uncompromisingly declared God’s sovereignty.  God is all-powerful, so, God can, when God so chooses, go where God won’t go.  Jonah’s praying from the belly of the whale, the belly of Sheol and yet he says, “My prayers came into your holy temple.” 

The Israelites believed that once David established Jerusalem and brought the Ark of the Covenant there and then Solomon built the temple, God lived there – in the temple.  Worshipping there, in the city of Zion, in the temple, was different that worshipping anywhere else.  God was there in a way that He was not in other places.  Yet Jonah, swimming in a fish’s gastric juices, deep in the ocean felt God’s presence and felt his own prayers rise all the way to the temple. 

In the New Testament epistle, Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 16, we are told we can approach God in the heavenly throne room.  “Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and help in time of need.”  In Christ, no distance comes between us and our God.  Jonah did not know Christ, but he learned that his calamity, brought on by his own disobedience, did not separate him from God’s love because nothing can separate us from God’s love. 

I alluded to my friend whose life fell apart.  His story has the makings of a Hebrew lament poem or a country music song.  I mentioned that maybe you knew of people in similar despair, or, perhaps yourself are in such a state of loss, pain, and defeat.  We go through seasons in life where problems become so large, the problems are all we can see. Arrested in depression, we are incapable of seeing anything except evidence that all is lost.  In this condition, we miss the most obvious thing.  God, being God, can overcome all difficulties.  This is not just fluffy church talk.  I know people whose pain has landed them in deep ditches of despair.  I have seen God pull them out.

Earlier I used a word – sovereignty.  It is a theological term describing God’s unrivaled might.  God is all-powerful.  In the Jonah this aspect of God’s character is displayed in three ways; first, in God’s presence.  God is with Jonah on the boat.  God hears Jonah’s prayer from the fish’s belly.  When the sea creature vomits Jonah up on the shore, God is waiting for him there.

Last week when we prayed over backpacks to be sent to needy children in Appalachia, God was with as we prayed.  God went with me on the road as I drove those backpacks to a church in Apex, NC.  God was waiting for me there.  God will travel with the people of that church when they take those backpacks to a depressed coal mining town in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  God is already in that town, with each child who is waiting to receive a backpack.

I cannot explain the omnipresence of God except to say that you and I can never reach that place where God won’t go.  He is with us always.

A second way sovereignty is seen in Jonah is in God’s supernatural authority over nature.  The winds of the sea obey him when he needs a storm to get his prophet’s attention.  A fish works for him, swallowing that prophet so he won’t drown.  Later in the story, we’ll see a plant grow because God told it to, a worm eat the plant because God told it to, and then a hot desert wind scorch Jonah’s unshaded head because God told it to do so.

In addition to omnipresence and authority over creatures and the weather, a third way God’s sovereignty is on display in Jonah is God’s freedom.  God is free to save the Pagan sailors we meet in chapter 1, even though they do not know the Law.  God is free to give his obstinate prophet second chances, even though he ran away at first.  In chapter 3, God is free to spare the lives of evil kings when they repent.  We’ll get to that next week. 

            Omnipresence, authority over nature, and freedom all show God’s might and power and authority.  Thus Jonah ends his Psalm in chapter 2, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord” (2:9b).  It’s a great statement, but it’s not worth a bucket of doodle if it just serves as the climax of talk about Hebrew poets and Hebrew prophets.  A famous professor of preaching demanded that he students ask and answer, so what?  In Jonah, we see God’s sovereignty through the brilliant poetic techniques of intensification and reversal.  So what?

            Here’s what!  Verse 6 is the center of the Psalm.  In order for us to get to that critical center where everything turns around for Jonah, we have to catch the shift in the latter half of verse 2.  In the first stanza, Jonah says, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me.”

            In the second stanza, the pronoun changes.  “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice.”  In Jonah chapter 2, we enter a prayer from a lost, hurting man that reach across the impossible distance from the depths of Sheol straight to the heart of God. 

            Jonah’s prayer becomes real when you and I shift pronouns in our own lives.  This prayer is the first step in reversing the course of a life hell bent on destruction.  When we move from descriptions of God to conversation with God, everything changes.  Theology, words and ideas about God, is important, very needed in the church’s expression of faith.  Theology matters and must be practiced.  But when we’re hurting, when we’re broken, theology doesn’t help much.  We need to move from theology to encounter.

            Jonah shows us that the encounter with God can happen anywhere.  Your encounter with God can happen anywhere because there is nowhere God won’t go.  God is here now.  We all need him.  And He wants us to turn to Him.

            As we sing a closing song, if you especially need God to reverse the trajectory of your story, come to Him.  Come this morning.  Come to the present God, the Almighty God, the God whose love is seen on the cross and in the Holy Spirit who hovers over us in this very moment.  We’re going to sing.  If you need the life change that only God can give, come to Him.  He wants you to.  He wants your heart.  Let the pronoun change so that you are focused on God directly.  Come and give yourself to God right now. 

AMEN

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[i] J. Sasson (1990), The Anchor Bible: Jonah, Doubleday (New York), p. 171.

[ii] Ibid, p.188.

The Spirit of Writing: Review of "Walking on Water" by Madeleine L'Engle

The Spirit of Writing

            Along with ‘Dancing on the Head of a Pen’ (Robert Benson) and ‘Creator Spirit’ (Steven Guthrie), ‘Walking on Water’ by Madeleine L’Engle is among the beautiful descriptions of the creative process that I have read.  And like Guthrie, L’Engle shows the way creativity and one’s life as a Christian are inevitably intertwined.  The Christian does not create ‘Christian art.’  The artist works very hard to create beautiful art (be it poetry, music, novels, plays, or paintings).  Because the artist follows Jesus Christ, what she ends up creating is infused with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit speaks through the art without the work being intentionally evangelistic.  L’Engle writes beautifully about both Christianity and the creative process.

            One great insight of the book is the way science expands (not reduces) one’s faith.  L’Engle wrote this at the beginning of the 80’s, long before Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne and others taught us that science can actually grow someone as a believer and Christ follower.  L’Engle was saying this almost 4 decades ago. 

            She doesn’t trust theology as a discipline nearly as much as she trusts the way scientific discovery can grow the faith of the believer.  Perhaps this is because writers like Polkinghorne and Alister McGrath and N.T. Wright had not yet become popular in her time.  Perhaps she was listening to the wrong theologians.  But, she admits more than once her own prejudice against theology.  I found her admission to be a welcome expression of humility.

            L’Engle resides in a world of artists who that some readers may find difficult to access.  She recognizes that and tries repeatedly to close the gap while at the same time remaining firmly planted in the world of dreamers and seers and creators.  If a reader struggles to see as L’Engle sees, I recommend pushing through and attempting to see differently.  See with childlike imagination.  The world is a big place, and artists like Madeleine L’Engle help the rest of us see more of it.  

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

Haloween

‘Halloween’ began nearly 2000 years ago in Ireland as a Celtic festival involving the warding off of ghosts.  It was co-opted by the Roman Catholic Church 609 AD.[i]  Immigrants from Europe revived old country traditions around “All Hallows Eve” in the United States in the 19^th century.  The day became associated with vandalism until there was a shift in the 1950’s.  At that time, Halloween morphed into the family-friendly neighborhood holiday we now celebrate.

 Today, Halloween is a $6 billion industry in America.  Some Christians feel followers of Jesus should not celebrate Halloween.[ii]  I respect the argument Jamie Morgan makes in the article cited in the footnotes.  I don’t agree with him, but I respect the case he’s making.  If a person’s participation in Halloween festivities truly is a celebration of witchcraft, then I would join him in renouncing all participation in the day.  In this line of thinking, I would renounce non-Christians legends around Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and other holidays.  But, I think you can have a good time with costumes and candy without giving any ground to witchcraft (which is real and very dangerous), just as I think candy canes and Old St. Nick are OK for Christmas.  Our legends and traditions are part of who we are and they don’t have to be inherently evil or in conflict with our deepest reality, our identity in Christ.

For my family, Halloween is a time to enjoy dressing in costumes and being out in the neighborhood with friends.  It is communal and family fun.  Aside from the need for added rigor in dental hygiene, I find Halloween harmless.  It brings my family tremendous happiness when we look at old Halloween trick-or-treating photos.  My oldest is now 14.  Soon he’ll be too old for this.  The thought of it makes me sad. 

My decision as Christian to participate in what I see to be a benign, religiously ignorant holiday should not be taken to mean I don’t believe in spiritual warfare.  I most certainly do.  I believe demons are real and roaming about, spreading mayhem and harming people on the earth.  I have been present for exorcisms, both successful and unsuccessful.  My reading for this morning, Luke 4:31-37, is one of many passages which deal with demon possession.  Before Jesus exorcises the demon, it is able to throw the possessed man to the ground.  Jesus saves him, but some damage has been done. 

Yes, I believe demons are very real.  And maybe, Halloween can be a time for demons to wreak damage in the lives of men and women.  However, I believe demons are just as potent at all times of the year.  We constantly must be on our guard against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6).  Prayer is how we stay on our guard.  We have to, through worship, prayer, Bible reading, and acts of service, build up our relationship with God in Jesus Christ.  We have to learn to listen to and heed the voice of the Holy Spirit.  In these ways, we are connected to the God who protects us.  In the light of God, those dangerous demons are utterly impotent. 

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[i] http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween

[ii] Here is one article that makes this point - http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/52738-why-christians-absolutely-should-not-celebrate-halloween

Faith from Fear

In my previous post, I shared the manuscript of the first message I wrote.  Here is the sermon I actually preached.  I worked this up this morning.  I sat down to read my first manuscript, and while it wasn't terrible, it was not right either.  I don't know if this one is right, but it is what the church got.

Faith out of Fear (Jonah 1:4-16)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, October 30, 2016

⁴ But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. ⁵ Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. ⁶ The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”

⁷ The sailors^[a] said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. ⁸ Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” ⁹ “I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” ¹⁰ Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.

¹¹ Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. ¹² He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” ¹³ Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. ¹⁴ Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” ¹⁵ So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. ¹⁶ Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

The men of the sea, the mariners, were among the bravest of people in the ancient world.  Their ships were ancient.  If they ran into trouble on the open ocean, no coast guard was coming.  There would be no search with the coordinated efforts of several nations.  They were on their own.  And they certainly would run into trouble.

But, they did it.  They set out on the Mediterranean Sea in search of adventure and prophet. They came from different places, different cultures.  And on the ship, with nothing but trust in one another, they journeyed about the known world.  They were definite believers in God or in many gods, but their religious practice amounted to superstition more than faith. 

On this day, at port in Joppa, they would make the Tarshish run as they had before.  A few days at sea would bring temporary wealth and at the end rest and relaxation awaited.  They took on passengers as they had before – this time an Israelite who said as little as possible and kept to himself. He was aloof.  Did he think himself superior?  Did he look down on the sailors?  Would they make life miserable for him because of his standoffishness? 

It did not matter.  The captain admitted him passage and took his money.  They had no care for why he came.  The simply told him to stay out of the way as they did their work.  They did not ask for his story – not at first. 

Was it a beautiful day when they set sail?  The port of Joppa shrunk behind them as they moved into the deeper waters.  They were experienced navigators who by the stars and the winds and the familiar landmarks always knew their location.  The one thing that might throw them was if a significant storm arose.

It did.  The winds started up as the sky blackened.  No panic.  They had seen this before.  But when the lightning cracked across the sky, it felt particularly close.  When waves began to rise, sailors began to comment in a way more tinged with fear than the normal seaman exaggerations.  “I’ve not seen waves like this before,” said one man.  This was his third Joppa to Tarshish run.  “That rain is running sideways,” another exclaimed.  And he was far saltier than the first who spoke.  Then, the man who had been on the seas longer than any spoke solemnly. With a note finality he said, “Men this is trouble.  Call on your gods.”

As they followed their elder’s advice, the boat began to toss and turn, nearly heeling over.  At this point, their prayers were fear-filled prayers.  They made recitations.  They promised things.  They prayed panicked prayers.  Have you ever prayed a promised-filled, panicked prayer in your life?  Then you might understand what this men were doing. 

The prayers didn’t work.  They began tossing cargo – their prophets – overboard.  This entire trip would be for nothing.  No money waiting in Tarshish; and not a one of them even paused, because in panic, we throw whatever we have overboard if it will save our lives. 

The prayers didn’t work.  Neither did lightening the load.  There was nothing left to throw overboard.  They were going to die, and die completely penniless.  The captain ran below deck.  Was he turning coward?  Not this captain.  He was tough, windblown, and fearless.  A moment later he re-emerged with the Israelite.

Now these superstitious sailors were all interested in his story.  This storm was an act of God.  They had no doubt.  Each one had prayed.  Then, they took a dice that had black on three sides and white on three.  In the midst of the tempest they lined up and each man rolled.  Each one came up white.  The Israelite might as well join them in their panic.  He rolled.  Black.  What had he done? 

The sailors were in his face.  “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”

“I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.  I am on the run, fleeing my God.  He has brought this upon us.”  He said this soberly, with no trace of terror.  Who was high-minded fool? Was he so taken with his own dignity that he could not see the death about to swallow them? 

The men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” He looked into the driving rain and let the drops, like wet bullets, pelt his face.  “Tell us, darn you. “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?”

He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” 

Fool.  Fool!  Fool! Fool!  God was punishing the boat, the sailors, and the sea itself because of his arrogance.  Did he think these sailors wanted to bring God’s wrath on themselves by sending him to death?  They began rowing furiously, praying they were headed south, to the coast of Egypt.  It would be a full day’s row in ideal conditions.  But we don’t act logically when we are panicked, do we?  Have you ever been there?  Life is so out of control that you do something that makes no sense in an attempt to fix things.  That’s why we say, “she’s losing it.” 

Reality set in on them.  Prayer hadn’t worked and only increased their fear.  Throwing everything overboard had not worked.  When they confronted Jonah and heard his story, their fear spiked.  Now, they saw the insanity of rowing in this squall.  One more prayer was all they had left.

 “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.”  So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. 

What conversations did they have in the blue-skyed, quiet calm?  Not a one.  Not one sailor said a thing.  The image of Jonah sinking to the depths was emblazoned on their minds.  Those sailors would never forget that image.  At every turn in this tale, one thing was clear.  The fear in those men grew incrementally.  Each new twist drove the tremors deeper in their souls.  Now, with the danger past, they were spent.  The men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

After chapter 1, we don’t hear from the sailors again in the story, but by the end of Jonah, we are left to wonder.  What did their lives look like after they worshiped on the deck of their ship as the soft waves gently rocked them?  We suppose that they made it to Tarshish, but then what?  As each sailor, got off that boat, how was his life different after his encounter with the living God.

            How about our lives?  One of the cornerstones of the way we try to live as a body of believers is the encounter.  We pray that when we gather, people will meet God in this place, this gathering of believers.  In that meeting with God, when holiness exposes us completely, including our darkest secrets and deepest pains, will fear drive us to our knees in confession and worship?  Or will fear make us runaway and pretend that God is far off somewhere, mostly uninterested in our lives?  We at HillSong try to set conditions so that you will meet God here and stay with Him.  Meet God and be made new in the process. 

            God controls how He will reveal himself.  When he does, we decide if we will run away, or if stripped down, we will kneel at the cross and receive forgiveness and grace and new life. I don’t know what you’ve been through today.  I don’t know the pains stabbing at your heart.  I don’t know the brokenness that drove you to panic and then despair. 

            I pray this morning, you’ll open your eyes and mind and heart wide enough to see God.  When you see God, I urge you step into the fear.  Step to the cross and let the Lord hang your sins on it.  Name your personal disasters, see God in them, and then give yourself to Him.  Let the Lord wash you and bring you up from the waters clean, refreshed, renewed, and alive.  The sailors in Jonah 1 help me see the new possibilities of life that come when, in our fears, we step to God.  Faith can come out of those moments – life renewing faith.  I pray you will see that too and that you will step toward God right now.

AMEN

Holy Fear

This was the sermon I planned to preach this morning (Oct 30, 2016).  It is not terrible, but it had two things wrong with it.  It is too similar to what I preached on Oct 23rd, and it is not what I really wanted to do.  So, I scrapped it at the last minute.

To understand the way the sailors of Jonah chapter 1 related to God, we need to look at the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5.  There, Jesus is already extremely popular, but has not yet called together his 12 disciples.  He is preaching by the shore.  After his sermon, he see Simon Peter, and Jesus tells him to put his fishing nets out in the deep water.  Peter responds that he has not caught anything all night.  Peter probably wants add, ‘Why are you, a carpenter, telling me, a fisherman, how to fish?”  What he actually says is “If you say so, Jesus, I will let down the nets.” 

            The catch is so massive, the nets began break and two others have to help him and they fill two boats with fish.  Awestruck, Peter throws himself at Jesus’ feet and, groveling, says, “Go way from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  The holiness of Jesus shined a light on his own condition.  Peter could see who Jesus was and who he, himself, was.  He shakes with fear.  Jesus gently raises him to his feet and says, “Fear not.”

            This phrase comes up throughout scripture.  When an angel appeared to Daniel, the angel had to tell Daniel, “Do not be afraid” (10:19).  He had to say this because Daniel was very, very much afraid in the presence of this Heavenly being.  The angel who told Mary she would be the mother of Jesus began by saying, “Do not be afraid, Mary” (Luke 1:30).  In the book of Revelation, the resurrected Christ himself appears to John of Patmos and when John sees him, in awestruck terror he falls to the ground, the life scared out of him.  Jesus raises John saying, “Do not be afraid.”  And in Luke 5, Jesus tells a terrified Peter he need not fear.

            Fear is appropriate and inevitable.  God’s holiness magnifies the corruption sin has inflicted on humanity.  We were created “good,” made in God’s image.  Sin reduces to less than the vision God had in creating us.  In creation, we reflected God’s glory. Tainted by sin, we fall short of God’s glory.

            Yet Jonah was dishonest with himself when it came to appropriate fear of the Lord.  Seeing God, we know that running from God is impossible. Jonah saw God with greater clarity than we do.  He was a prophet called to a specific mission.  His sense of God was particularly sharp.  Yet, he who knew how futile running would be ran!

            Why he ran is a matter of debate.  He was told to prophesy against Nineveh.  God did not say a word about saving Nineveh.  Jonah was sent with a judgment prophecy.  Later, Jonah will claim that he knew God was going to relent from punishing the city (4:2), but that comes after the fact.  That’s like picking the winner after the game has been in played.  In chapter 1, when God tells him to go in verses 1-2 and in verse 3, he goes in the opposite direction, we are not told why.   What’s obvious is the absurdity of it.  He knows God.  He knows there is nowhere one can run from God.  Yet he runs from God. 

            God is holy and we are profane because of sin.  We were created to be holy, but every day, we make choices to rebel against our creator, and the accumulation of sin mocks the God of the universe.  We should fear God, but in a way that compels toward reverence.  Our fear should lead to worship, not retreat.

            This is not like the fear one might have of an abusive parent or of a bully or a dictator.  If you have been a victim of abuse or molestation, that is a different kind of pain and a different kind of fear.  That fear is a fear of evil, an evil born in the heart of the one doing the abusing.  God is not like abuser, the molester, the rapist, the bully.  God is who we run to in order to get away from the abuser. 

            I throw in this caveat because fear has in many cases been a destroyer of faith.  A lot of broken people won’t come to church, and more importantly, don’t think to turn to God for help because the people who taught them about God are the same people who abused them.  Pastors have been guilty of every form of abuse and it is awful.  When my title is “Fear out of Faith,” I do not mean the type of fear related to abuse.  When people have been abused, we who make up the body of Christ have to give them grace and mercy and we do this with enormous patience and gentleness. We have to be the community in which they are safe from fear.  God is graceful and merciful, patient and inviting and gentle.

            God is scary where holiness shines a light which reveals our sinfulness and our smallness.  Peter saw that miraculous catch of fish and wanted no part of it.  But, he didn’t run away.  His mouth said, “Go away from me Lord.”  But his body said something else.  His body was at Jesus’ feet, clinging to Jesus’ knees.  Jesus met him at that point of internal conflict.  Right there, Jesus called him to be a disciple.  Peter wanted to be as far from Jesus as possible and as close to him as he could get; he wanted both at the same time.

            Jonah, possessing much greater knowledge of God than Peter, much more experience in his relationship with God, only wanted the first part of the equation.  He just wanted to bail out, to flee, to get away from God.  His fear led him to abandon his own faith and to accept a gross self-deception.  Many believers today want to know God and then to disavow God when knowing God has implications for our lives.  Would-be disciples settle for the same self-deception that tugged at Jonah as he fled God. 

            People convince themselves that it is enough to check off “Christian” on the census, to tell others “I am Baptist,” to go to church 3 or 4 times a year, and to memorize the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s sufficient to be right with God and that’s all they want.  They don’t want to actually know God.  This hands-off approach to faith requires almost nothing, it has no impact on the person’s life at all, and it produces someone who has no sense of what God is about in the world.  That individual might be a church member.  However, that individual has no relationship with God. 

            That person with the noncommittal faith deep down knows he or she is living a lie, but it feels easy to keep living it.  It feels scary to open ourselves up completely so that the depths of our hearts are fully exposed before the living God.  That’s terrifying because when we do that, we are inviting God to step in and begin changing us from the inside.

            In the book of Jonah, we see God willing to do that, step into the lives of people, even for non-Jews.  The sailors on the boat where not Israelites.  They believed in God – or in gods – but, they did not know God.  The storm at sea confirmed something they already believed.  The world is much bigger than them, and it was beyond their ability, even as able bodied mariners, to control it.          The mariners’ response to all loss of control was to run to God.  When Jonah told them his god was the creator of land and sea, those sailors believed without hesitation.  And their fear increased.  They believed God would sink their ship because of Jonah and they would go down with. When Jonah told them the solution was to throw him into the sea, their fear increased more.  They hesitated.  They tried rowing (it hadn’t worked before, and it didn’t work now).  Then, they prayed, and threw Jonah into the sea.  The waves stopped battering the ship, the wind died down, and rain stopped.  The storm was over.  And, like Peter trembling at the miraculous fish catch they feared God even more. 

            In verse 12, Jonah tells the sailors, “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven.”  The actual Hebrew word is not “worship.”  It is “fear.” Jonah literally says, “I fear the Lord, the God of heaven.”[i]       The book of Jonah displays real faith that comes out of genuine fear of the magnificent holiness of God.  Jonah speaks this fear but betrays himself by running, and ends up swallowed by the fish and the sea.  The sailors live what Jonah says.  Their fear leads to worship.

            After chapter 1, we don’t hear from the sailors again in the story, but by the end of Jonah, we are left to wonder.  What did their lives look like after they became God-fearing worshipers?  They made it to Tarshish.  As each sailor, got off that boat, how was his life different after his encounter with the living God.

            How about our lives?  One of the cornerstones of the way we try to live as a body of believers is the encounter.  We pray that when we gather, people will meet God in this place, this gathering of believers.  In that meeting with God, when holiness exposes us at our worst, will fear drive us to our knees in confession and worship?  Or will fear make us runaway and pretend that God is far off somewhere, mostly uninterested in our lives?  We at HillSong try to set conditions so that you will meet God here and stay with Him.  Meet God and be made new in the process. 

            God controls how He will reveal himself.  When he does, we decide if we will run away, or if stripped down, we will kneel at the cross and receive forgiveness and grace and new life. I don’t know what you’ve been through today.  I don’t know the pains stabbing at your heart.  I don’t know your brokenness. 

            I pray this morning, you’ll open your eyes and mind and heart wide enough to see God.  When you see God, I urge you step into the fear.  Like Peter, even though you want to say “away from me Lord,” I pray you will step to God.  Step to the cross and let the Lord hang your sins on it.  Let the Lord wash you and bring you up from the waters clean, refreshed, renewed, and alive.  The sailors in Jonah 1 help me see the new possibilities of life that come when we step to God.  I pray you will see that too and that you will step toward God right now.

AMEN

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[i] E. Achtemeier (1996), New International Bible Commentary: Minor Prophets I, Paternoster Press (Peabody, MA), p.262