Sunday, November 20,
2016
Jonah chapter 3 ends with God
changing his mind. God was going to wipe
out the city of Nineveh. However, when
the people turned from their evils ways, God changed the plan. Then chapter four begins, “this was very
displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry” (4:1).
Eugene Peterson writes “Jonah is
quarreling because he has been surprised by grace. He is so taken aback that he is disagreeable
about it. His idea of what God is
supposed to be doing and what God in fact does differs radically. Jonah sulks.
Jonah is angry.”[i] Peterson goes on to say that Jonah is stuck
in literalism. Because God put the
message of destruction in his mouth, then in his mind, it must play out only that
way; no other outcomes occur to him.
Nineveh, one of the largest cities in the world, has to be
obliterated. Peterson observes that
Jonah fails to see Nineveh. He’s so caught
up in a narrative in which he is one of the “good guys” because God is on his
side and the Ninevites are “bad guys” that he never considers their humanity or
their need for God. He has no grief for
their destruction because he does not think about them at all.
Peterson is the scholar who
translated the entire Bible into a colloquial vernacular that is very popular
today – The Message. He originally translated Paul’s short letter
to the Galatians into everyday language in order to help the members of his own
church better understand the scripture.
He did not intend to translate the entire Bible. He was a pastor trying to liven up a Sunday
school class and help the people feel the full emotion and effect of scripture.
Editors who had worked with him on
other books persuaded Eugene Peterson to give up his pastoral ministry and
dedicate his time to writing The Message. His work conveys an understanding that the
power of the Bible comes in the story. In
story, we can relate to God and see how past interactions between God and
humans speak into our lives. In Jonah’s
case, it is the story of someone who thinks of himself as one of God’s insiders
even as he disregards those he deems outsiders.
Peterson says Jonah is guilty of a failure of imagination.
I know in my own life as a
Christian, I have been guilty of this too.
From high school to college to seminary to full time ministry, I have
always been inside the church. That’s
not the same as being close to God, but I often tell myself it is. I worked a summer in the Ingersoll Rand
factory Roanoke, pulling parts for the guys on the line who made heavy digging
equipment. I played football in highs school
and a little bit in college. I went
through army basic training and spent six years in the National Guard. I am familiar with the crass language of the
barracks and the locker room. But when I
spent time in those earthy places, in my mind, I was a person from the church
and of the church. I was separate from those places even when I
was there.
Restricting my identity and my sense
of God to so-called holy spaces, I failed to appreciate the transcendence of
God and the love of God. Inside the
church, we worship God. He is
here. But God is not bound by the
church. When we walk out the church
doors and go other places, God is in those places too. God was with me in barracks and in those
factories where I worked between semesters.
If you had asked back then, “Was God present when with you all night as
you pulled parts and took them to workers on the line,” I would have responded,
“Yes.” Mentally, I knew God was in all
places. But I wasn’t conscious to the
possibility that God might actually be at work while I labored in uncomfortable
steel-toed shoes at the Ingersoll-Rand factory.
It didn’t occur to me that great works of transformation could happen
there because God loved those factory workers who weren’t, like me, going back
to college in the fall.
It didn’t occur to Jonah that God’s love was
bigger than God’s judgment. Yes, the
Ninevites were wicked. But so was
Jonah. So am I. We all sin.
Our sins might be different than the sins committed by the ancient
Ninevites or by attendees at a frat party or by poor Syrians recruited into
ISIS. In each case the specific acts of wickedness
is different, but people in every walk of life in every nation sin, and God
loves us in spite of our sins. This is
the Gospel. Jesus died on the cross out
of love for human beings. In becoming
human, he embraced the end of all humans – death – even though he never did
what brings death; sin. In his
willingness to die and in rising from death, he defeated death and invited us
to join him in resurrection, if we would receive forgiveness from him and
follow Him as our Lord and Savior.
We see this failure to imagine that God would
turn around the lives of sinners in Mark chapter 2. There Jesus calls Levi to leave his work as a
tax collector and to follow Jesus as his disciple. Levi is so overjoyed, he has a party and
invites all his friends. All his friends
are tax collectors who became rich by overcharging people who were already
quite poor, and prostitutes who – well, we know what they do – and, other
miscreants. Pharisees, the legal experts,
aware that Jesus was partying with this motley crew, rejoiced. “Yes Jesus,”
they cried, “you’re leading these lost people back to God!”
Actually, no, that’s not what the Pharisees
said. Actually they complained bitterly
because, like Jonah, they perceived themselves to be part of the in-crowd,
insiders with God. They weren’t
interested in helping society’s deviants to grow closer to God. They were happy to let the lost stay lost and
magnify their own reputations as holy men.
How do we recover imagination? How do orient our hearts so that when great
acts of God’s grace are seen, we are ready to rejoice instead of complain? I can’t go back to the factory or the locker
room or the barracks and have a “do over” from those times I failed to keep my
eyes on God’s glory and failed to help other see him. Too
often, I missed opportunities to be a witness in those places. But today God gives me new chances see Him at
work among people who don’t know him.
God is calling you and me to be part of his work of inviting hurting
people to the healing and love he gives.
How can I be ready to join God in this work? How can we change our outlook so that we show
up at Levi’s party full of rule breakers able to relax among them and love
them? We don’t join the tax collectors
and prostitutes in immoral behavior, but do we reach out to them in friendship
because we believe God will work miracles in their lives. How do get to the point where we can do
that? How can you and I learn to rejoice
when we see Nineveh saved?
First, of course, we recognize that it is a
work of God, thus we must draw close to God.
We pray, we worship, we stay in the scripture, we meet in small groups
to discuss life and faith with other believers in our church family,
participate in works of the church, and we eliminate from our lives activities
that prevent us from living more faithfully.
All this is basic to knowing God better.
Second, we live with uncomfortable honesty
about our own sins and this drives us to confession. Deceiving ourselves into thinking we’re “not
that bad,” whatever not that bad
means, is a total waste. We begin to be
shaped by God when are unabashedly honest with him and with ourselves.
Third, we live on the look-out. This is where Gospel imagination can kick
into overdrive. Suppose you’re running
errands. Might God there, at Harris
Teeter? When you go in to buy eggs,
bananas, tuna, and bread, do you expect to encounter God in the aisles? No?
Why not? He’s there. He’s at the post office and at the auto
mechanic’s garage. When we leave the
house in the morning, headed out to the most mundane of places, do we expect to encounter God in our daily
comings and goings and are we prepared to join God when we see God on the loose
in the world? When we pass people at the
grocery store, at the bank, at the mall – do we see potential for great works
of grace? No, not every trip to
McDonald’s is going to be akin to going to the Mount of Transfiguration. But, we go through our days thinking “this
trip has the possibility for me to meet Jesus as I see his face in the faces of
the people I meet.
Stay connected to God through life in the
church in order to know God more deeply.
Be brutally honest with God and with yourself about everything that’s in
your heart and mind and comes out in your actions. Live on the look-out, expecting to see God at
any time, in any place. There’s one more
thing.
This one more thing is tough because it go
against the way our society has conditioned.
As we watched all the election coverage, we were told how African
Americans voted, how women voted, how the LGBT community voted, how white
professional males voted, how working class people voted, how Hispanics voted;
and on and on. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz
were each trying to become the first Hispanic president. Bernie Sanders would have been the first
Jewish president. Hillary Clinton would
have been the first woman president.
Taking it away from presidential politics, in
our daily interactions with people, do we notice? Was that exchange in the parking lot at the
library with a man, or with a Chinese man?
Would I say the General I saw on the news was a courageous, bold
soldier, or would I say she was a courageous and bold for a woman? Would I say the
guy at the party was tremendous dancer, or I would I say, he could really
dance, for a white guy?
Staying in touch with God through devotion and
through life in the church; being completely transparent with God and with
ourselves; living in expectation that today, we’ll meet God; the fourth
essential for recovering and then living in a Gospel imagination is the release
of categories. I don’t mean we’re color
blind. We should acknowledge the pains
of African Americans, or indigenous Americans, or of different immigrant. It would be an affront to Jews to ignore the
Holocaust. It would be akin to spitting
in the face of black people to pretend slavery didn’t happen. We acknowledge
cultural distinctives and we celebrate them.
We rejoice in the unique contributions and accomplishments different
cultures make to the human tapestry. In
art, in music, in sports, in business, in technology, in food, in dance, in
personality, in style and in a 100 other ways, different cultural expressions
are to be championed.
When I say that release of categories is
essential for Gospel imagination, I mean, I cannot assume anything about
you. If you’re unshaven, wearing a Dale
Earnhardt hat, a camouflage-styles coat, and muddy boots, I must not assume you
are a dumb bumpkin because you might be smarter than me in 100 ways. Maybe you’re a country person, but country
folk contribute a lot to make the world better for everyone. I dare not assume you’re a racist because wearing
your books and camo-shirts, you may have done immeasurably more to fight racism
than I have. I cannot assume
anything. I will celebrate who you are,
I will seek the face of God in your eyes, I will not bind you in some category,
and upon meeting you, I will eagerly await the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit
as you and I talk, however briefly. The
same would be true if you are black or if you are Asian or female or of a
different economic background. However
we are different, when I meet you, I need to release categories and come
believing God is about to show up.
I heard Kelly McEvers interview white
nationalist Richard Spencer on National Public Radio. Spencer said he found nothing immoral about
swastikas or the KKK. He intimated that
different racial groups in America should stick to their own kind and that the
white kind, European Americans, should be the ones in power. Many in America believe that with Donald
Trump coming into the oval office, racists like Richard Spencer will gain power
and nonwhites will be in some trouble. I
pray that this is not the case. I think
one response – the church’s response is to live in Gospel imagination.
We repel the ideology of Richard Spencer by
living with arms wide open to all people.
She is not that black woman;
she is my beautiful African American sister in Christ and when we get together
we both believe something amazing can happen because God is in it. When Spencer advocates for advancing the white
race, we announce the Kingdom of God.
Where Spencer promotes segregation, we display our diverse unity – the
full colors of God’s church. Where white
nationalist groups process down the street in a parade of hate, filled with the
Holy Spirit, we lock arms with one another in a show of love.
We even pray for Richard Spencer because we
know that God took Saul the Christian-killer and turned him into Paul the
church-planter. Release him from the
categories to which he clings. His mouth
speaks hatred, but he is a lost soul who needs Jesus. We are free to see that even as we renounce
his hateful words. We are free to pray
for Donald Trump because we know God is God in the white house and in Trump
Towers. God’s sovereignty reigns in
those places, so those places, even there, can be a site of miraculous
transformation. We are free to go to
Levi’s party of sinners and laugh and eat alongside Jesus as he loves people
who need him. We are free to sit with
Jonah overlooking Nineveh, and we are free to rejoice in the mercy God has
shown.
America is in transition. Acts of harassment and bigotry have been
reported. There’s an uneasy wind in the
air and many are scared. But there is another
story to tell, the one in which God is God and is on the loose in the
world. Let’s tell that story. Let’s believe all the things we say about God
in our song and our prayers. Let’s live
that story.
What’s going to happen this week? I am not sure. But I look and I see a lot of people who are
going to walk out of here ready to love all people and ready to meet God in the
simplest of places. I see a people ready
to cheer for the salvation of Nineveh, the people and the animals.
What’s going to happen? I don’t know, but God is about, so we will
find out.
AMEN
[i]
E.Peterson (1992), Under the
Unpredictable Plant, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (Grand Rapids),
p.157.
