Saying No to God

Sermon

All this week I have wondered why in the world the Book of Jonah is in the Bible. If you took it out, you really wouldn’t miss it, though Sunday School programs would need to find a new use for all their whale flannel graphs.

We might say that Biblical scholars are a bit like treasure hunters – the scripture is a map, and archeology and ancient fragments are keys to that map, as are history and art, and so Biblical scholars work to find answers to questions like “when was this written” or “who is the author” or “what kind of book is this.” The Book of Jonah has stumped the best of them.

Scholars don’t agree on when it was written – during the Babylonian exile or after. Apart from one mention of a prophet named Jonah in the Book of Kings, there is no clear picture of who wrote this book in which Jonah is also spoken of in the third person. This short book may be folklore or satire or midrash (a story about a story in the Bible) but it doesn’t neatly fit into any category.

My question is even more basic than those of the learned scholars: what in this book was considered so important that it was included in the Bible? After wrestling with that question, I still have no good answer, but perhaps after this sermon – well, we still might not have a good answer!

Maybe this book is in the Bible because it is a story about God, about the call from God and about the mercy of God. There are a number of theological themes in the book – the persistence of God, the ecology of God’s creation and how all creatures are part of God’s work, the justice of God in light of the faithlessness of the people.

Our point of connection to the story and its theology is in this person of Jonah. You wonder how many other people God called to warn Ninevah before getting to Jonah; in terms of prophets, he does seem to belong at the bottom of the barrel. I picture him being played by Walter Matthau or Steve Carell. However good or bad a choice this man is, God tells Jonah to go to Ninevah to warn the people to repent of their wickedness. But Jonah doesn’t even say no – he just heads in the opposite direction.

I wonder how often we do the same thing. I don’t know how you sense God moving in your life, if you have a dream that feels like a message from God, or a restlessness in your gut that feels like a call, or if the people in your life keep talking about the same thing until it seems apparent that that thing is something you need to pay attention to. Your sense of God calling you may be as Frederick Buechner describes, “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger coincide.” However we sense God calling us, I would wager that all of us who have heard God’s call know what it’s like to say yes to God, and we know what it’s like to say no to God.

When I was in my last year of seminary, I was working really, really hard to discern the call of God. I had just about finished all my course requirements, I had jumped through all the Presbyterian hoops toward ordination, and I had sent out my Personal Information Form – the Presbyterian resume – in hopes that some lucky church out there would realize how awesome I was and call me. I just had one little caveat. “Jesus,” I said in my prayers, “I feel called to serve you by serving your church. I will labor in joy and in grief. I want to be challenged. Just please, dear Jesus, don’t send me to the Midwest.” My first seventeen years in ministry were in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, and I pass along to you what I learned: Jesus isn’t big on ultimatums. God gets what God wants.

Perhaps Jonah, like me, had forgotten the words of the Psalmist: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” (Ps. 139:7-10)

We have all sorts of reasons for saying no to God: the timing isn’t right, it’s pretty inconvenient, we might offend or alienate the people in our lives, we’re afraid. Some of our reasons are really quite valid and understandable. It’s still saying no to God.

For a while now, I have had a growing sense that might be God calling me to something, and I have done everything in my power to ignore that tug on my heart. I think a lot, and worry a lot, and ponder a lot, about the division in our country. Call it red and blue, call it conservatives and progressives, call it Democrats and Republicans, urban/rural, pragmatists vs. dreamers – we are hardly united states.

I have read so many articles and op-ed pieces and blogs about the need to overcome this division by reaching across those proverbial aisles and getting to know the people so different from us, however you define “us.” And I know that is right. I know it’s really hard to vilify or discount someone after you’ve learned about them and gotten to know them, because really none of us is simply one thing or another; we are all shades of gray when it comes to our outlooks and opinions.

I have a deep sense that God is calling me (and really all of us) to work to overcome this division. I know it’s the right thing to do. I know there are human beings out there whom I have totally discounted because of their politics. And still, I want to say no to God.

I like being right; don’t you? I like the view from the moral high ground. I like the certainty of knowing that I am a good and caring person. I’m really not all that sure that I want to change, or be confronted about my own dug-in opinions, or that I really want to be open to another person’s perspective when I’ve already made up my mind that that person’s perspective is wrong.

Jonah knew exactly what that was like. You see, God called Jonah to warn the Ninevites of their evil, but Jonah had already made up his mind about that city and its inhabitants. He didn’t think they were worthy of being saved. He wanted God’s vengeance to be wreaked upon them; he wanted God to give them the justice they deserved. He wanted to call the shots.

But God had something else in mind. Jonah knew that, deep in his heart of hearts. He knew that what he wanted was not what God wanted. He knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. Jonah liked being right. He liked the view from the moral high ground. He liked the certainty of knowing that he was good and caring. He did not want to change. God is persistent and God is merciful. And that should terrify us and give us great hope.

There are young people in my life who face all sorts of decisions – what elective to take, what school to go to, whether or not to go to a certain party, whether or not to go out on a date with that person. Sometimes those young people invite me into the conversation, and I tell them this: there are no wrong decisions. A bad choice can be redeemed and may even end up being the right choice.

Jazz great Miles Davis once said something along the lines of “when you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note you hit that matters.” No matter how many times we run away from God, say no to God, give God our ultimatums, God will continue to pursue us. We cannot flee from God’s presence. All our noes will eventually become God’s yes.

In the end we won’t want to flee from God’s presence because that presence is full of mercy. If the book of Jonah were a graphic novel, every scene would be framed with mercy – God’s mercy on the sailors who are spared from the storm, God’s mercy on the people of Ninevah, God’s mercy on Jonah.

The call then is to practice mercy on each other. That can be hard when we want justice and not mercy. Robert Frost once wrote a small play based on the book of Jonah, “A Masque of Reason.” The play ends with this line: “Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.”

That line has stuck with me this week as I’ve reentered my usual life after our trip to Guatemala. We saw much injustice there, met many women who live with that injustice every day. They live in a country which has been destabilized again and again by larger nations, like the U.S., who seek financial gain and strategic footholds leaving the country poor and susceptible to corruption. These women live in the aftermath of civil war and armed conflict in which fathers and sons were taken in the dead of night never to be seen again. They live in the reality of a machismo culture that values women for their cooking, their cleaning, and their ability to have babies. How can the injustice they endure every day be made just with mercy?

The amazing, ordinary women we met do not have the power to overturn the government or to change the machismo culture in their lifetimes. Their power lies elsewhere. It is the power of mercy – to forgive what has been done to them so that a different future may open, the power of mercy to let go of hatred and anger so that love and resilience have room to flourish, the power of mercy that demonstrates to their children a way to live with integrity to self and community and God.

I would venture a guess that for these women whom we met in Guatemala, their hope and their calls are deeply rooted in their faith. They praise God so easily, and they give God credit for all that is good in their lives. They pray to God about the injustice and pain they endure. They believe that good will come to them if God is willing.

And they know this God in whom they put their trust. Like Jonah, they know that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Unlike Jonah, they revel in that.

What about you and me? Do we know God well enough to trust God to be merciful, and to trust that mercy is the right path? Do we trust God enough with our very lives to be willing to open those lives to those with whom we disagree? Do we trust God enough to say yes next time instead of no?