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Jonah 3:1-5, 10


Listen now for the Word of the Lord in the Book of the Prophet Jonah, Chapter3:

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed her mind about the calamity that she had said she would bring upon them, and she did not do it.

This is the Word of the Lord.
I begin this morning in gratitude (always a good place to begin when you're talking about God). I thank Judy and Merrie for the honor of the invitation to break open the Word among you, and I thank you, Pilgrim Church, for welcoming a foreigner like me into your midst, and for being willing to believe I might have something to say about God that matters. That is a remarkable thing. Now, the irony of being a guest preacher in another community on a day we're talking about a prophet going to another community to preach destruction has not escaped me, and so I just want to be sure you know here at the beginning that, to be the best of my knowledge, God is not planning to overthrow Lexington in the next forty days. I'm sure you'll be relieved.

So I don't bring judgement with me, but I do bring to you greetings, grace, and peace in the sweet name of Jesus from your sisters and brothers at Old South Church in Boston. When word got out that I was coming to be with you in this way this morning, the people of my church were thrilled to hear it. You see, we know about you, Pilgrim Church. We know that for lo these fifty years, you have brought and been the Gospel in Lexington.

We know about you, Pilgrim Church, and your ministries to the people of this town and beyond, who are God's own dear children.

We know about you, Pilgrim Church, because you have a rep. But also because we know the people you have been sending out into the world to leaven it with grace. We know Judy from the Committee on Ministry and from the Conference. I once met Merrie spreading good news of God in France. Old South sits right around the corner from the Greater Boston YWCA, and so we see Sylvia Ferrell-Jones all the time when she pauses from her work of justice and righteousness and opens that organization's doors to us for meetings and worship services and guests.

We know about you, Pilgrim Church, and we bless you, and we thank God that we are partners with you.

Will you pray for me? Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

So, you know the story of Jonah, right? One day, God tells Jonah to get up and go to Nineveh and cry out against it. Now, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was the sole superpower of Jonah's day.

Nineveh was huge, cosmopolitan, multicultural, wealthy, and, we assume, full of the same sins as any large city, then or now. There would certainly have been plenty for a prophet to decry. But Jonah? Jonah isn't interested. It is far away, for one thing, and a dangerous journey. He also has no reason at all to expect that the people of the world's most powerful city are likely to treat a foreigner well were he to show up in their streets to tell them all that they were doing wrong and threaten them with destruction. Jonah is no dummy.

So Jonah heads out in the other direction, to sea. And you know what happens then. There's a storm, and Jonah ends up in the sea, and then the belly of a fish, where he stays for three days, and is vomited up. Which is where we come upon him today, lying on the beach, covered in whatever comes out of a fish belly. And God tries one more time: "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim the message that I tell you." This time, Jonah does. As a result, the people get religion and mend their ways. The people, and Jonah, discover that God has suddenly loved them right into a life of grace.

Now, I'm sure that the author of the story wanted us to identify with Jonah: we're reluctant prophets, imperfect disciples who run from God's call.

But since I find myself living in a great city in the world's greatest superpower these days, here's what I wonder: What about the people of Nineveh? What was their deal? I mean, picture it. There they are, living lives as they had pretty much always lived them. There were rich people, some good, some not so good, but all of them using their wealth to insulate them from a damaged world. There were poor people, struggling to get along and keep their children alive. There were destitute people begging on the streets, and sick people wasting in sickrooms and dead people being mourned. There were births and celebrations, arts and entertainments. There was life. It was hard, no doubt, and it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't terrible and it was just what everyone was used to. Into all this, into this great flux and swirl, steps a foreigner, a worshiper of another God, a stranger smelling of fish, and he tells them that if they don't get their act together, his God will smack their city down.

How did they even hear him? Why did they even notice him? Would you notice someone yelling such a thing in Copley Square? How did a whole city and its king get converted in such a short time by such a little man? Clearly, there's something we're not being told. But whatever it is, here's the point, I think:

One way or another, when that foreigner Jonah stepped into their midst, the Ninevites let their guard down, and they found a way to hear him, and they were converted, and they learned that the universe is held together by grace, and their lives were better as a result. By the end of the story, they had learned that God was in love with them, that God wanted a better life for them, and that living as people loved by our God is better than living any other way.

Now, this idea of being converted by a foreigner matters to me. It matters to me because I live in the most powerful nation in the world, and not all is right with our life together. It matters because for years now, foreigners have been coming to us and saying, "The way you all do capitalism? It doesn't work. It doesn't work, and just a little bit longer, and your free market will be overthrown." And we were arrogant, and we were sure of ourselves, and we did not listen, and we were not converted, and look where we are now.

The idea of foreigners holding up a mirror to our lives to show us something of who we are matters to me because for years now, foreigners from France and Canada and Germany and the United Nations have been telling us that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the practices there are wicked, that they are wrong, and that they are undermining who we are. It matters to me because somebody in power finally listened (though of course it wasn't only to foreigners who had been saying it), and we are closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center down and because I think we will be better for it; not just because it's the right or the moral thing to do, though it is, but because we will be better, stronger, more stable in the world because of it.

The power of foreigners to convert me to a new way matters to me because of Rick Warren. Now, I don't know about you, but a conservative evangelical megachurch pastor who thinks gay marriage is a sin is pretty foreign to me. So it was a little challenging when we all hear that then-President-elect Obama had invited Warren to give the opening prayer at this week's inauguration. The prayer turned out to be roomier and more respectful of other traditions than I'd feared it was going to be, despite its ending with the Lord's Prayer. And here's the thing: as a result of what Obama and Warren did, millions of evangelicals feel included in the political process and more invested in this presidency-despite Obama's positions on hot-button social issues-than they otherwise would have been. I think our life together will be better because of it. And here's the thing: somewhere in the swirl of debate and drama around the invitation, in the midst of the accusations and anger from liberals and the crowing of conservatives, somewhere in the midst of that, Rick Warren's church did a remarkable thing: it removed from its Website some of its most hateful and vitriolic statements about gay and lesbian people. Now, that's not the biggest deal ever, but it does mean that somewhere in the midst of the meeting of elements foreign to one another, some conversions happened. And our political process is stronger because of it, Rick Warren is thinking more deeply about the lives of gay and lesbian people, the Saddleback Church's Website is just a touch less exclusionary than it was, and we're all just a bit, just a tiny bit, closer to the life I think God is hoping we'll lead.

You know this: a foreigner, an outsider brings fresh eyes, a fresh perspective to a situation. Can see things that those of us deep in it can't see. Can hold up a mirror and remind us of the things we had forgotten were true about ourselves. Can speak with the voice of God when our own throats are too clogged with complacency, or comfort, or investment to speak for ourselves.

This matters to me because it seems to me that more often than not in our Scriptures and in our history, God has chosen to speak through the voice of the outsider and the foreigner to get God's work done. Perhaps the shock of it is the only way God can manage to get a word in edgewise.



The question remains: exactly why did what Jonah did work? Why did the Ninevites change their ways? Here's what I think: I think they were ready for it. I think that some part of them was longing for it. I think they knew that something was amiss. I think they must have been tired of having broken hearts, and of seeing broken bodies. I think they must have been tired of being tired all the time, or angry all the time, or poor all the time. I think they must have suspected that there was a better way out there to be had. And I think God knew about their longing, and that that's all God needed to work a miracle for their sakes.

And that's why I think this should matter to you. Because this isn't all about-isn't even mostly about-societal change, or government-level reform. Mostly, this is about you. I think God knows all about your broken heart. I think God knows that there are days that you can barely claw your way from your rising to your lying down, and days that you are so lost you can barely find your way home. Knows that even when you're feeling good, still we all live in a world that is broken and not as full of grace as it should be. Knows that you're looking for a better way as well. That for some time now, you've suspected that a bit of a conversion might bring you a little closer to the life God, who is, friends, completely smitten with you, hopes you'll have.

God knows that you've been a little too busy for a little too long. Or a little too snappish with the people you love. A little too self-critical, a little too self-involved, a little too addicted, a little too trapped, a little too hopeless. I don't know what sins or traps or injustice you live with. But God does. And God would like for you to know that there's something better out there for you.

And I believe that right now. Right this very minute, God is preparing to get that word to you. Is preparing to send the Word to you to fit you out, to set you up, to get you ready for living in a kingdom where love reigns and mercy has flesh on it. Right now, God is finding a Jonah and saying, "Get up, and go to him, and tell him that I love him even when he doesn't love himself. Get up,. and go to her, and warn her that she is missing out on the good life, that this could all be so much better. Get up, and go to my world, and don't you shut up until they've heard that they are the apple of my eye and I will not let what I've created go down to ruin."

And the Jonah that comes might just be a foreigner. Might just be French. Might be a conservative Evangelical. Might be your cousin Larry, or that woman at the office you can't stand. And wouldn't that be just like God, to make you receive salvation at the hands of the one you most need to be reconciled with?

[pause]

Jonah went to Nineveh to tell them about God, and the Ninevites were converted to love, and it was because God wanted it for them and because they knew that they needed it, and because they found a way-somehow they found a way-to listen to a foreigner that they shouldn't have listened to, to hear a voice that shouldn't have been audible to them, to see that God had come into their very midst bearing salvation in the most frustrating and unlikely of ways. We should all be so lucky-and we will. Amen..