The Courage for Conversation Preached for Wollaston Congregational Church On January 24th, 2021 Scripture: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 This morning we re-visit, a fishy tale. Perhaps you heard this story in Sunday School as a child. The story of Jonah and the story of Noah – whose names are intertwined in Hebrew – are often told to children. Perhaps this is because children are known to lap up these larger than life tales that feature animals and water. Sadly, we have no children to hear the story today, but I’m inviting all of us to approach this story “as a child.” To engage the imagery in our imaginations. To laugh out loud at the absurdities. To be awed by the awfulness of being swallowed by a fish. Because this is the way the story was intended to be heard. And so we can relax our serious faces for a few minutes and figure out what God has to teach us through this tall tale. I think we will discover that this story has more to say about us than the Prophet Jonah, who in the words of Veggie Tales “didn’t really get it.” The story begins as “The word of the Lord came to Jonah …” He must go to the city of Nineveh and cry out against the residents for their wickedness. Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, a powerful empire that was a long-time threat to the Israelites. In the seventh century BCE the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, leaving the southern kingdom of Judah to fend for itself. In short, Nineveh was the enemy of Jonah and his people. Jonah is a reluctant prophet. He does not want to go to Nineveh. And no wonder, it’s an enormous city and Jonah is just one man. How is he supposed to prophesy and call for the repentance of the people, the whole mighty empire? And so, Jonah tries to flee from God. He goes in the opposite direction, and boards a ship in the seaport of Joppa, going to Tarshish, somewhere across the Mediterranean Sea. The sailors and the captain find out too late that Jonah is trying to flee from the powerful God of Israel. A great storm threatens to sink the ship, but Jonah sleeps soundly in the hold. He has given up on life and would rather die than fulfill his mission to Nineveh. When the crew realize that Jonah is the one who has brought the storm upon them, they insist that he prays to “his god.” But he knows this will do no good, and tells them the only thing that will save them is to throw him overboard. Once the jinx has gone, the storm subsides, and the crew are awed by the God of Israel. The reluctant prophet has made his first conversions, even as he is thrown into the sea. Jonah’s plan to drown in the Mediterranean, rather than go to Nineveh, is thwarted yet again. God sends a huge fish, to swallow him whole. Jonah survives for three days and nights in the belly of the fish, until he is spat up onto the shore. We might think that this is enough excitement for Jonah. But oh no, the next chapter begins “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time…” This is the point at which we joined the story in our reading this morning. God sends Jonah to Nineveh again calling it “that great city.” God will give Jonah the message he is to deliver, but we don’t know what that message is. The huge city, three days walk across, intimidates Jonah, especially as the Ninevites’ main sin is violence. Still Jonah goes this time. He does his work as quickly as possible. His message is hardly an oracle of God’s great grieving for the people who are lost in their ways. He simply says “Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Despite Jonah’s lack of effort, the message works. Even the king puts on sackcloth and sit in ashes, as a sign of penitence. Even the animals are forced to fast. And so God changes God’s mind about their destruction. As even Jonah knows, the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Jonah might be pleased with his own success on behalf of God, but he is resentful instead. He throws a tantrum, storming off to a place outside the city to watch what happens, declaring that it is better that he dies. And so the tale ends here. The Ninevites have repented, turned from their violent ways and toward the God of Israel. And Jonah, who was supposed to be a faithful Jew has turned away unrepentant, determined to destroy himself. The story of Jonah conforms to the rules of satire. The characters are larger than life, the events are exaggerated to extremes. We know that people do not get swallowed by fish. We can assume that whole empires are not converted by simple threats of divine retribution. And we can also assume that there is no such thing as a city of pure sin and evil, in which every adult, child, and even the livestock are wicked. The messages God gives us to deliver to our “enemies” are not so clear cut. We do not possess full knowledge of the mercy of God, while the “other” remains ignorant. The world is just more complicated than that. When I think of real-world stories in which people have turned toward God, there’s usually change on both sides. I’m reminded of St Francis of Assisi, who lived in the days of terrible violence in the “Holy Land” between Christian Crusaders and the Muslim world, the Saracens. Francis decided to try to broker peace at this time, and so he traveled to Egypt and crossed enemy lines, to speak with the Sultan. The Francis and the Sultan “discussed interfaith conflict, war and the search for peace” probably over a meal. [1] The 2017 movie about this event, “The Sultan and the Saint” is seen as a model for interreligious dialogue today. We – you and I – will probably not get the opportunity to travel to far away lands to broker peace between warring nations. But we have recently heard calls for peace and unity here in the United States. These calls are timely, considering that we have been drawing down into our respective siloes over the past few years: our religious siloes our partisan political siloes our racial or ethnic siloes our socio-economic siloes. And even when siloes mix and mingle, the topics that differentiate us are considered taboo. Politics and religion are at the top of the list of taboos, closely followed by race and money. If peace and unity are to be achieved, we will need to begin talking to one another. We will need to talk beyond the simple pleasantries on which we can agree. We will need to start talking about the things that matter to us with those in the other camp. That won’t be easy and I doubt we will be able to do it alone. These past weeks I’ve been noticing a couple of groups whose specific mission is to build relationships across divisions. One is called “Braver Angels.” [2] My introduction to this group was via a webinar that they recorded just last Tuesday. The moderator of the session introduced pairs of people of differing political views. In some cases they were also from different ethnicities and religions. These “blue/red pairs” shared details of their mutual conversations and the friendships that have developed. Each pair had committed to civil discourse with one another, talking about the things that really matter to them. They had committed to listening and treating their partner’s perspectives with respect. The pairs on the webinar demonstrated strong friendships, they clearly respected one another. They cared about the views of their own political groups, but more than that they cared about unity and peace of the nation. One speaker congratulated the pairs on their bravery. She made the point that it takes courage to engage in this kind of dialogue. That is the courage it takes to be vulnerable. I learned about another organization from a member of the congregation whose spouse is involved in a group called “Coming to the Table.” This group was founded by descendants of Thomas Jefferson, from both Jefferson’s wife, Martha, and Sally Hemmings, an African American woman who was enslaved on Jefferson’s plantation. Black and white Jefferson descendants, and descendants of another slave owning family, the Hairstons, formed the group “Coming to the Table” in 2003. They drew on their own experiences of creating family reunions across the racial divide. The word “table” has a double meaning for the group, as it is also is an acronym for the phrase “Taking America Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement.” Coming to the Table’s vision “for the United States is of a just and truthful society that acknowledges and seeks to heal from the racial wounds of the past—from slavery and the many forms of racism it spawned.” [3] The creativity and bravery of these two groups brings us back to the story of Jonah. When God sends Jonah to Nineveh, God isn’t asking Jonah to do an act of amazing physical courage. God is not asking Jonah to lead the people through the sea while being pursued by an army. God is not asking Jonah to survive a lion’s den, nor telling him to build an ark to accommodate all the animals of the earth. All God asks is that Jonah goes to talk to the people of Nineveh. Not much courage required really, unless you’ve heard the expression “shooting the messenger.” Coming to the table, or becoming a Braver Angel requires courage. And yet, are we feeling God’s nudges to move toward conversations like these? Are we being prompted to go into virtual or physical spaces that feel foreign to us because they are inhabited by the “other”, the “enemy”, or someone who may wish us harm? We could flee in the opposite direction from which God is sending us. We could entrench ourselves more deeply in our own tribes or groups. We could avoid the difficult conversations with those people, steering clear of the things that really matter. But, what if, we prepared ourselves for braver, deeper engagement with the other? What if, this coming Lent, we held an all-church book study, in which we took on the topic of the partisan political divide, or the racial divide, the religious divide or the socio-economic divide? We could start be talking to each other. Over the next week, I will be assembling a list of possible titles for this study. I’m going to send them out to you as a survey. If you have any interest at all in going along with God’s nudging, please respond. We can do better than Jonah. It may take courage, but we are not alone, we can do this if we do it together. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/12/08/1219-st-francis-crossed-crusade-lines-meet-egypts-sultan-what-can-we-learn [2] https://braverangels.org/ [3] https://comingtothetable.org/about-us/
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
If you enjoy a sermon or have a question, please leave a comment. If you would like to quote any of my material in your own sermons or writings, please use appropriate attribution. I look forward to hearing from you!Archives
April 2022
Categories |