Jonah take Seven

I imagine Jonah, shoulders slouched, kicking the sand at his feet, grumbling and gripping, “Silly God.  Nineveh, Nineveh, Nineveh.  Can’t believe I am here with these people.  I might be here, but I don’t have to like it.  Look at the guy over there, just standing there breathing in and out, spreading carbon dioxide everywhere.”  I can say that, because I have been there.  At a gathering I didn’t want to attend.  At a meeting where someone keeps adding unhelpful ideas that is only serving to make the meeting longer.  At some place and among some people who don’t seem like they belong to my tribe.  So I imagine Jonah sulking like my kids used to do when we would drag them out shopping.  Nineveh is so large it took three days to walk across.  Jonah goes one day, not even a third of the way into the city.  He is not at the corner of Main Street and 1st Ave, if anything he is barely out of the suburbs.  He stands there, clears his throat, and preaches, the worst sermon ever.  "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"  Eight words.  Just to compare, you have just read two hundred words from me in this post.  Eight words.  I think he did it with all the enthusiasm and inflection of when we ask our kids how school was and get a monotone, exasperated, “Fine,” in response.

Jonah doesn’t want to be there.  Maybe, the part about Nineveh being overthrown was a bit more energetic.  After all, Nineveh as the enemy. It was the largest city in the Assyrian Empire.  And the funniest part of this farce of a fairy-tale like story is that this eight-word sermon works.  You would think I would learn that and write shorter blog posts. The people of Nineveh put on sack clothes, the animals put on sack clothes.  Like Oprah on her holiday give away, "And you get a sack cloth and you get a sack cloth."  Part of what I take away from this story is that God can work even with our half-heart efforts.  We have those moments when we pour all our energy into something or someone and it still goes off the rails.  Then, I throw a few minutes at some event, and it soars higher like a kite on a windy day.  The beautiful truths of Jonah are not only that we are not as in charge as we like to believe, but also that life isn’t only up to us.  There are forces that are beyond our control.  This is not always easy to admit in a culture that preaches that you should pull yourself up by your own boot straps and be the master of your own destiny, Jonah caution us, not so fast. The movement of God can cause us to go places that we cannot reasonably or rationally explain.  The swirling spirit of God prompts us toward people who our friends might question.  And while I am grateful God has let off the whales at the means to get us to go to such places and people, I am convinced that God still nudges us beyond our comfort zones.

So, where is that in these dwindling days of 2019 for you?  Where are you feeling compelled or called to go for no great reason other than we know that everyone is a beloved child of God and that there is no where we can go where God is not?  In particular, the challenging message of Jonah in such a time as this is that Jesus did not just come up with praying for our enemies out of thin air.  This was woven into the faith from the very beginning.  There is no "other" regardless of political, social, economic, racial and orientation boundaries.  We have drawn and defended those lines, like Jonah.  Suddenly, we all feel a bit like Jonah saying, “But I don’t wanna.”  In a world that craves courageous people to be civil.  In a world that thirsts for people who don’t tweet or post judgmental words.  In a world that is hungry for another way, Jonah provides that path.  If, and only if, we are willing to be swallowed by a different way of being in the world today.  May you and I find that sort of conviction and courage in such a time as this.  And may it offer us and the world more than a trace of God's grace.

Blessings ~~