Wrestling with God: sermon for Proper 13A

Detail of "Vision after the Sermon" by Paul Gauguin

There has been a lot of action between last week’s reading and this week’s and that is a shame because the story is a good one. Jacob throughout his life was cunning and crafty, living by his wits. He was skilled in exploiting the weaknesses of those around him. Thus he found Esau’s weaknesses (hunger and impulsivity) and stole from him his birthright; with the help of his mother he stole the blessing that should also rightly fully have been Esau’s from his father by exploiting his father’s weakness (blindness).

He then leaves in a hurry to escape Esau’s anger—and to get a wife for himself from among his mother’s kin and ends up abiding with Laban, working for him for 14 years. Laban matches Jacob for trickery and dishonesty, substituting his elder, possibly less-marriageable daughter after making a bargain with Jacob, and then extracting another 7 years of labor from Jacob in order for him to get the daughter he loved as his wife. With each daughter, he received a maidservant, who also bore him children.

Thus he ends up with 11 sons and a daughter by the time his additional 7 years of service are completed. And in that time, Jacob has made Laban even more prosperous, with magnificent flocks and herds. Jacob and his father in law then work out a deal to give Jacob wages in kind, from among Laban’s flocks, with both of them again resorting to trickery and cheating to try to get the better end of the deal. This results in six more years of service with Laban, during which time, Jacob has eleven sons and one daughter by his two wives and by their maidservants.

Jacob prospers, despite every trick Laban can throw at him. This then causes jealous grumbling and resentment by Laban’s sons, which then spreads to Laban. Jacob and his growing family have worn out their welcome through their rivalry with Laban. So the whole family agrees with Jacob to leave without telling Laban. Laban is off conveniently shearing his sheep, and so it takes him three days to realize that Jacob and his extended family is gone. Although Laban chases Jacob down, in the end, they part with a truce declared between them.

As Jacob returns to the land of his father Isaac, Jacob realizes he will have to meet Esau, since he has to pass through Edom, Esau’s home, to return to Isaac’s lands. He sends messengers to send peaceful greetings, only to find that Esau is approaching with 400 men, Jacob rightfully panics, divides up his caravan so that hopefully some might survive if attacked, He then prays to God—the first prayer to be quoted in the Torah-- and acknowledges God’s aid in his life thus far, asking to be delivered from the hand of his brother. For his own part, he sends servants ahead to Esau with three caravans of livestock to Esau as “presents” or bribes to help ingratiate himself. Just in case this doesn’t work, Jacob also sends his wives and children across the Jabbok river, which flows into the Jordan and helps mark the boundary of Israel and spends the night alone, hoping to once again save his family by offering up himself. It is during the night that the events we have in our reading take place.

This encounter in the night with the mysterious man who wordlessly wrestles with him all night is one of the most puzzling and yet famous stories in the Torah. In Hebrew, there is wordplay here that we lose: the Hebrew verb ye’abeq mean to wrestle, and also sounds like the names of both Jacob and the river. Who is the man? Some have speculated it is Esau, or Esau’s guardian angel, or a river demon, or an angel, or God Godself, the last two of which are the most common understanding.

At the end of the night, Jacob himself has no doubt. After he has time to catch his breath, he knows has wrestled with God. And in so doing, he has also wrestled with himself. His story reminds us of this truth—that in wrestling with God, we also wrestle with ourselves, that in seeking to learn about God, we learn about ourselves and who we are as God’s children.

As his outward story has shown us, Jacob’s outstanding positive quality is tenacity—perseverance. Maybe also punching above his weight class. His outstanding negative quality is deception and double-dealing. And that has gotten him into loads of trouble—so much that twice in his life he has had to flee to escape the consequences the danger his treachery naturally has placed him in. But whoever that stranger is, they are locked in a tie throughout the night. His double-dealing against both Esau and Laban have brought him to this moment.

If you have ever studied wrestling or judo, or played any contact sport, you know that there are two forces with which to contend: the force from your opponent, and the force you yourself generate. That is why the metaphor of Jacob wrestling with God is such a illuminating metaphor for the life of faith. In our journey through faith and understanding, we struggle with our understanding of ourselves as much as we struggle with our understanding of God.

So Jacob wrestles with both himself and with God in this encounter—with his own understanding of who he is, and with his own resistance to accepting anyone as his superior, even God. And THAT reluctance to submit yourself to God and accept God’s guidance and will in your life is a problem we ALL struggle with--- it may be even THE religious problem, especially here in the West, with our emphasis on individualism.

It is especially in these kinds of basic struggles within ourselves that the willingness to persevere also serves us well. In Jacob’s case, even as the wrestling match rages silently through the night, and Jacob is matched at every turn by his opponent, still he does not give up. Even when the stranger moves from Greco-Roman wrestling to a little WWE and adds in a cheap shot to Jacob’s hip, still he will not quit or surrender.

Jacob is in a liminal space—between one life and another, between one family and another, between one home and another, facing a come-uppance with the brother he mocked and wronged with his cleverness and manipulation. He’s in the middle of nowhere. He’s in the middle of the night, and suddenly, the circle completes, and the baby who has born grasping his brother’s heel is seized and confronted by an unknown person or force in the night.

Finally, the stranger demands Jacob’s name—but the question goes deeper. His name, Jacob, means “supplanter” one who unjustly takes the place of another. But WHO is Jacob, really? Is he ONLY a supplanter? Apparently God doesn’t think so. And so during this wrestling match, Jacob is going to be led to taking on a new name, a new identity. And when we are engaged in our own wrestlings with God, that is the question demanded from us as well. Who are we? What do we stand for? By our actions in the world, not by our words, but by our actions, what do we show that we believe?

Because the problem for many of us, especially in American popular Christianity today, is that we say we believe in God on Sundays, and we tie “going to church” with being all that is demanded of us. And some people conversely get the wrong idea—that we must physically be together in church to worship God. That ONLY through gathering together in person can God be found. That’s actually not at all what the scriptures say, though.

If you look in the Biblical witness, if you look at this story, God is almost NEVER found in a building, in both the Torah, those first five books of the Hebrew scriptures that we are reading from right now, as well as in the gospels. God is almost always found out where people are in their lives—on a mountain, or on a journey, or in a burning bush, or like in our gospel, out on the seashore.

God is found alongside us in the in-between places in our lives. God is found when we search for direction. God is found when we are oppressed and seeking freedom. God is found when we look deep inside ourselves for our purpose. God is found when we are hungry, like in our gospel. That doesn’t mean that organized worship isn’t important, and that the communities that gather for organized worship and liturgy aren’t important, because they ARE. We can’t turn worship of God into entertainment for ourselves. If you come to church for entertainment only, you might as well just stay home and watch wrestling.

In the end, worshiping God is just a small part of our relationship with God and our willingness to let God rule in our hearts and in our lives. Jacob emerges from his wrestling match with God with a new name, a new understanding of himself, and a new identity. This didn’t come about through worship, but through a deep struggle within himself to learn more deeply who he is, and to deal forthrightly with the places in his life where he had depended upon his own talent for trickery rather than depend upon God. Perhaps he sees that in all his double-dealings and maneuverings, he has actually made his life more chaotic than it needed to be.

Jacob symbolizes all of us in our struggles and wrestlings with God --and ourselves as we go through, in the words of Prince, this thing called life. And even though he emerges with a temporary limp from his struggle, which literally requires him to walk in a new, more vulnerable way, he also emerges with a new name, and a new understanding of himself. He is now Israel—the one who struggles and wrestles with God. Just like his grandfather, Jacob will have a new name bestowed upon him in adulthood. But more importantly, this new name will become the name for an entire nation of people. A people who will struggle with God as the core part of their identity. That is literally what the name Israel means. And taking a step back from this wrestling story for a second, think about how absolutely honest it is for a people to name themselves in this way. They—and we, since we are grafted into their family tree through Jesus—are admitting that they will struggle with God. They will struggle and wrestle with obedience and bending their will with God throughout the rest of time.

And yet there is a promise in this story. God will always engage with those of us who are honest enough and open enough to wrestle with God. God will always ask us to examine ourselves and who we are, and encourage us to lean deeper into God’s guidance. God will always meet us, especially in the in-between, uncertain times in our lives, and never let us go.

We are together as a community to support each other in our wrestling with God—and our wrestling with the world around us, a world that denies the power of God in human lives and throughout history. A God who demands that we work for justice. A God that calls us to see the needs of the world and place them above our own self-centered concerns so that all may be free and brought to an awareness of the presence of God in their own lives. As our gospel today reminds us, our wrestling with God is meant to aware of the strength and resources we have to answer the hungers and needs that surround us.

In this time of COVID-19, we as a faith community are also being called to wrestle with who we are and how we can best serve God. And it is here that Jesus, God made human flesh, shows us the way: by encouraging us to look around us, to see the hunger and need around us, and, very practically, to meet those needs. To claim our power and identity as disciples, even when our wrestling may still be ongoing.

May we all find the courage to wrestle with God, to wrestle with ourselves, as we seek to live deeper into the challenge of living in this in-between time.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on August 2, 2020 during rising levels of COVID19 infection.

Readings:

Genesis 32:22-31Psalm 17:1-7,16Romans 9:1-5Matthew 14:13-21

Wholly Beloved, Holy Calling: Sermon for 3 Lent C

One of my favorite cartoons is one that’s been around for years—you’ve probably seen a version of it. It’s an extension of the idea in that inspirational poem, “Footprints.” It shows God talking with a person with tear-stained cheeks, looking back on the person’s life as if their journey through life has left behind a series of impressions in the sand.

God looks back at an early part of the person’s life journey and points: “My beloved child—I am always with you. See those two sets of footprints? That’s where you and I walked side-by-side.” 

“Yes, God,” says the human, “but what about over there, where there’s only one set of footprints?” 

God answers, “My child, there’s only one set of footprints there, because that’s where I carried you.” 

And the human in the cartoon visibly brightens. Nice, right? But some of you may not have seen the third panel of the cartoon. In the third panel, God continues, “And that deep pair of grooves over there? THAT’s where I dragged you, my child, kicking and screaming.”

Today’s reading from our Hebrew scriptures jumps us from Genesis last week to Exodus—and specifically, to God’s call to Moses from the burning bush. We are hearing this reading today because Lent is often the part of the year where we are encouraged to examine the “kicking and screaming” part of our lives with God, where we are reminded that sometimes we’ve fallen, and we can’t get up, like in those Life Alert commercials. However, in our Christian Lenten understanding, we don’t depend on Life Alert but—thank be to God—on God’s grace, on God never ever giving up on us.

Just like in that cartoon, Moses doesn’t respond with cooperation when God calls to him. There’s more than a little of the “kicking and screaming” resistance, but Moses is no dummy. Rather than outright refusal to heed God’s call, Moses engages in a debate with God, first requiring God to establish God’s bona fides. That’s when God gives Moses God’s actual name—which is a sign of relationship. As we hear repeatedly in scripture, to be called by name is to be known.

This bears repeating, because it seems so obvious: being able to know and use someone’s name implies a relationship. This same situation will later be cited in Isaiah 52:6: “Therefore my people will know my name;
 therefore in that day they will know
 that it is I who foretold it.
 Yes, it is I.” Psalm 91, which we read a few weeks ago also states: “Those who love me, I will deliver;
 I will protect those who know my name.” Naming implies intimacy and the ability to call on someone for help.

Although there have been several names used for God, up to this point in the Torah, the answer Moses receives is “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” which is translated as “I am who I am” as well as “I will be who I will be”—in other words, God exists outside the realm of time and human experience, and past, present, and future are all the same to God. And yet God is hearing the groans of the Israelites and is responding to them. That can be comforting—God has remained faithful to God’s people, even as they have forgotten all about God, lowering their sights from heaven to the brutal task of survival. God has been, and will be, with God’s people always.

God also refers to Godself as “YHVH” which was translated as “The LORD” in the Torah, since the name of God was so holy that it was not to be uttered, in case it was misused. That’s why sometimes, when you see God written about by Jews to this day, you sometimes see it written “G-d” which omits the vowels (as Hebrew does). In Hebrew, God’s name is so holy that the term Hashem is often used in its place. Hashem means, simply, “The Name.” Names are considered to be that powerful. Thus the LORD is the name of God to be used forever.

Notice that God calls Moses by name from the very first. Then, once God establishes a relationship with Moses by giving Moses God’s very name, the story we hear today ends. I think that’s unfortunate, because what we don’t hear is Moses’s resistance to God’s call shifting from asking God's name to stating that he is not cut out for the job—that he lacks the appropriate gifts. But I want to invite you into that part of the story, too.

In the 4th chapter of Exodus, Moses has tried to evade God’s call with a number of objections, and very reasonable ones, too, centering around the idea of “Nobody is going to believe that God has talked to me,” which I think we can all relate to, as well. God then shows Moses a series of miraculous signs that will come in useful later when Moses is talking with Pharaoh. But then Moses pulls out his trump card: “Hey God,” he says, “you know I am not an eloquent speaker and this gig you are outlining requires a LOT of talking. So please send someone else.” And at this point, God gets exasperated at Moses’s shilly-shallying and ducking and weaving, and overcomes that objection too, by promises that Moses’s brother Aaron will help out with the talking thing.

Responding to God’s call is one of the hardest things for us to do, and yet one thing we know is that God has pursued relationship with creation from the very beginning, and it has been done through God calling over and over again. The great Biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman organized his commentary on Genesis around the idea of four vital calls: God calls creation into being, and creation responds in a variety of ways. Next, God calls Abram, as we heard last week, and Abram and Sarai embrace the call of God and enters into covenant, faithful to God’s promises that Abram's descendants will become a great family. God calls Jacob, but that call causes conflict in Jacob’s family, as the younger son is privileged over the elder. Then in the story of Joseph, we are reminded that the purposes of God’s call are often hidden and elusive at first.(1) Now in Exodus, the descendants of Jacob have grown from being a family to being a community—a nation.(2) Yet they are a nation under oppression, and it can only be that in freedom that Israel can answer God’s call affirmatively and freely, rather than under duress. That’s the part that Moses will play. 

God calls Moses to be God’s prophet and spokesman, God’s human agent in the work of liberation. Moses goes from being shepherd for his father-in-law to being called to be the shepherd for his people in their flight from bondage and oppression. And now we hear the story of God’s call to Moses, and I want to be completely honest with you. It is Moses’s last response that I find the most relatable in this story. Burning bushes I have never seen. But feelings of doubt and unworthiness when being called by God? Oh yes—that one I know, six different ways from Sunday. 

During the years when I resisted the full surrender to God’s call in my life, the biggest reason why was my own feelings of unworthiness to fulfill that call. Even after finally giving in and making the leap to retire from teaching and attend seminary, I was buffeted often by feelings of being in over my head, and strong case of “imposter syndrome.”

Then, as I was preparing to go before the several committees who had to approve my ordination, I was specifically, and frustratingly, warned AWAY from using call language, which then makes it awfully hard to answer the question of why anyone would actually want to take on the ordained life. And the reason why I was told that I should NOT insist that I was called by God to be a priest was that the committee members might feel like their opinion then didn’t matter.

But the call of Moses makes exactly that point in a way, doesn’t it? God calls who God calls, and in a way, what we think about it is NOT the point. Just like Moses, many of us have had a hard time recognizing the voice in our life calling us to discipleship as being God’s voice. And then, once we do, we have a hard time believing that we are up to the task, or that the task is even achievable. If we’re honest, many of us are have also struggled to recognize God’s voice and respond to God’s call. 

But just like in that cartoon,
Sometimes we let God walk beside us.
Sometimes God has to carry us.
Sometimes God drags us back kicking and screaming from sin and foolishness into discipleship.

But one thing we should never doubt is that we are worthy of God’s love and regard, and that we are worthy to try to be not just fans of God but children of God, disciples of God. God doesn’t call the perfect, the saying goes—God helps perfect the called.

What’s the big picture? God will call whomever God pleases, even if that choice seems to make no sense. God’s great prophet Moses had no qualifications to speak for God, and didn’t really want to give himself over to God—a very understandable reaction! God can be so… disruptive!

-- and yet, God has chosen, and won’t be talked out of it.

Moses has never been at home anywhere, so who better to argue for a dispossessed people? He has been an adopted son of a princess, and now he’s a scruffy shepherd. It is exactly those experiences that make him the perfect intermediary in this case. God has also revealed the name of God, which shows that God is committed to the people, and continuously opens the door for us to not just approach God but to depend upon God to care for us.

The story of Moses we hear today is the story of a call, and as faithful people we are called too- called to own our heritage of being made in the image of God—of being children of God. Children of God-- and I say that without my fingers crossed behind my back-- called to embody God’s essential goodness in the world-- to embody the love of God as has been and is being revealed in Christ Jesus. And when we fall short, we are called to own our sins, to repent, to turn and try again.

As our gospel today reminds us, Jesus makes it clear that, when we fail to live up to our call as children of God, we can receive God’s mercy and grace rather than God’s judgment, so that we can respond to the call to repent—to make an adjustment, maybe a big one or maybe just a small one—but often, just a small change is enough.

That’s why Lent is such a beautiful thing. It should never be seen as a time to beat ourselves up, or dwell on our own unworthiness, which then can become a convenient excuse for not trying in the first place. Rather, Lent calls us to acknowledge our sins and resistances to living out our calling, to own them and examine them, and then to turn anew, to hear the call of God for us to turn aside, to remember that the ground on which we stand is holy ground.

Our lives are the holy ground in which we meet God. And if we stop our scurrying around and our constant need for distraction, we just might hear God calling us, as God’s beloveds, to help make God’s presence in the world just a little more visible in what we say and what we do.

Listen! The beauty of Lent is that it reminds us of grace and calls us to slow down and listen. To hear that God is calling. Because make no mistake. God IS calling each and every one of us, and all of us as a community of faith, to embody the same grace that upholds us out into the darkness of the world. Let’s turn, and see that light flaring where we don’t expect it.

Let’s turn aside, listen, and say yes. Yes, because we ARE worthy. Yes, because we are upheld by grace. Yes, because we are empowered by that grace to act in the world in the name of liberation and salvation. Walking side by side with our Savior and Redeemer.

Amen.

Readings:
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9


Links/References:
1) Walter Brueggemann, Genesis:Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, pp. 1-5
2) Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Covenant and Conversation 2), pp. 1-6

Taking Up the Mantle: Speaking to the Soul, February 7, 2018

2 Kings 2:1-12

Once, long ago—3000 years ago, actually-- there was a boy out plowing in the field with 24 oxen, plodding along side by side in 12 sets of two. This was the boy’s life—staring at the butts of oxen all day, trying not to slip in their poop, trying to keep them plowing a straight path under the broiling sun, carrying water for them, trying to get them to engage in very un-oxen-like behavior by pulling a plow all day rather than finding a nice mud puddle in the shade and just chilling. This was the boy’s life—and it will tell you something about how different our world is from the world of this boy that that job was actually a pretty good one at the time. This kid was actually pretty lucky. He had a mother and father. He had a home. He had a field—which needed to be plowed and planted and harvested. But this was a good life. It was as secure as any life in the 9th century BCE could be. I mean, if worse came to worse, you at least had a field, and had oxen, and had a job.

One day, though, a crazy-looking old man came wandering up over the hill, and stood watching the boy plowing. The boy was so engrossed in his task he didn’t notice the old man until he was close enough to smell him. And--phew! The crazy old dude smelled worse than the oxen! But there was a strange blue light in the old man’s eyes. There was a silence and stillness and power within him, and it brought that boy and his oxen to a halt as if they’d dropped anchor. The crazy old man may have had hair that stood out all over his head like a halo, but he also had on a fine mantle that stood out from the rest of his dust-stained, sweat soaked clothes, thrown over his shoulder casually. That mantle also caught the boy’s attention. Who WAS this old fossil?

The man looked into the boy’s eyes, and some sort of strange shiver went through the boy as if he had just dived into a cool spring on a hot summer day. Without a word, the old man threw his mantle over the boy, and the boy knew. He just knew he had to follow this old man. Dreams danced before his eyes as that mantle touched his shoulders. Power coursed through him like a lightning strike and it was almost painful, contracting his muscles.

But he was a good boy, and wanted to not worry his parents, so he spoke first, and asked if he could kiss his parents good-bye. The old man turned, almost triumphant at this sign of what he considered to be doubt—what any of the rest of us would consider to be good common sense. I mean, this kid could have ended up side of an ancient equivalent of a milk carton! “Do what you want. What’s it to me?” the old man hissed, and he whipped his mantle off the boy’s shoulders and turned and stalked off as if he had won a bet with someone and wanted to collect.

This response stung the boy. So he decided to show this old man he was serious. He took those oxen, still hitched to the plow, and slaughtered them, and then fed them to his dumbstruck neighbors, kind of as a parting gesture that probably made them think he had lost his mind. There was no going back to plowing now, though. He then ran off and followed that crazy old man, serving him and the God the old man served, leaving his former life behind without a backward glance.

That old man was the prophet Elijah. And that boy was Elisha. Elijah was one of the greatest prophets in all of Israel—which means he was also one of the most hated and most feared men in the land, because prophets tend to be bearers of bad tidings and ill portents. God usually doesn’t send prophets around to proclaim that everything’s rosy. Prophets are called to speak God’s word to the powerful who have shut their ears and their hearts to anything but their own desires, their own lust, their own muscle, their own bellies. Responding to God’s call to preach and prophesy like that probably would at least give most people pause. Prophets like Elijah literally gave their lives to God, which didn’t mean that things were easy for them. Even after Elisha was at Elijah’s side, Elijah kept telling truth to power. He kept rebuking the rich and powerful for their idolatry, for their worship of other gods—gods like Baal, a local storm god. Gods like greed, and oppression, and prejudice, and malice. And Elisha was swept up with along with Elijah, spending his life staring at the back of a crazy old man, and doing the old man’s dirty work, all on the old man’s say-so.

This is the backstory for our first reading from 2 Kings for this coming Sunday, which tells the story of Elijah leaving Elisha a few years after Elijah called Elisha away from his plow, his oxen, and his home. Elisha has given everything up to follow Elijah, and not just follow Elijah, but take up the unfinished task of ministry and truth-telling that God still needs embodied in the world. Elisha knows that Elijah is going to be taken from him. He is concerned he is not up to the task. Elisha has been faithful—and even stubborn in following Elijah as his protégé and disciple. Three times, Elijah tried to shake off Elijah in our story—and three times he flatly refused to turn back. Yet how can he go on by himself? He betrays his worries by asking for a double share—the eldest son’s portion- of Elijah’s spirit. Elisha asks for this double portion because he is afraid he is not up to taking up Elijah’s ministry—and he knows he is going to need help.

The reading from 2 Kings closes with Elijah being taken up to heaven by a chariot of fire, even as Elisha struggles to keep his eyes on the old man as he disappears into the clouds in a dazzling display of light. When the glare wears off, Elisha looks down and sees the old man’s mantle—that same mantle Elijah had draped on his shoulders back when he was just a farm boy plowing the fields—laying at his feet. Ad so a final decision: should Elisha take up that mantle, and thereby also commit himself to continuing speaking truth to power?

Now, here we are living half a world away and thousands of years beyond the stories of the ancient prophets of Israel. Most of us no longer worry about whether the harvest will be good, or if an invading army will sweep in and carry our loved ones off into captivity. The only oxen most of us see are in the zoo or as a piece of meat in a really expensive bowl of soup. What have we got in common with characters like Elijah and Elisha living in their dusty backwater that literally ends up being the nowhere at the corner of three great empires—the 9th century BCE version of “flyover country?”

Maybe nothing. But isn’t it possible, that for all our modern context, many of us still walk around in circles, staring at the ugly ends of the brutish animals in front of us, going through our daily lives, adjusting ourselves to the scenery, no matter how disgusting or appalling it might be? Isn’t it possible that some in our society go around engaged in extolling themselves to the oppression of others, and others look away rather than work for the common good?

And isn’t it possible that times like these call for people who can speak those truths about justice, equality, and hope—people who can dream dreams, and point the way, and pull back the curtain on our divine spark to encourage us to act on a faith that we as a society can be better?

Times like these call for prophets.
Times like these call for healers and workers of miracles, even if one of those miracles is simply loving the people others say are unlovable with everything you’ve got.
Times like these call for someone who can speak God’s truth into the world, even if that truth may seem to be the last thing the world wants to hear.

Dare we consider taking up that same mantle today?

May we have faith enough in the promise of God to be with us, and put our feet on the warm dry ground of that pilgrim path. Take up your power. Step out in faith and hope. Sing out the glory of God’s loving-kindness that walks alongside us even when we feel most alone. Take up your mantle. It’s laying at your feet for a reason.


This was first published on February 9, 2018 on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul.

Photo: 14th century Russian icon from Wikimedia commons

From the Belly of the Whale to the Heart of Mercy: Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany B

You know, when most people hear the readings for today, they go straight for the “fishers for people” image. They skip right over the fact that Simon and Philip aren’t the FIRST fishers for people we heard about today. And that’s because our snippet from the Hebrew scripture provides a tiny fragment of a story that too often gets abbreviated to an image—the image of a prophet getting swallowed by what is usually depicted as a purple whale, and we don’t even hear THAT today.

Nonetheless, we don’t get the whole story, and perhaps we are left puzzled about what this story has to do with our Epiphany message of Jesus as the light of God for all people and nations. I think that’s a shame. So I thought I might tell you a little story right now-- the story of the first fisher for men: the story of the fish who caught a man and swallowed him whole at God’s command (1). And why that story matters.

So….

Once upon a time, long ago, the word of Yahweh came and whispered in a sleeping prophet’s ear. “Get up, Jonah, and go north to your enemy, to their great city Nineveh, and call them to repent, for I see their evil ways.”

The words shook the prophet awake—and he fled from God’s word as far as he could in the other direction. Go to the enemy’s great city? Never! So he went down to the port city of Joppa and booked passage on a boat heading toward the eastern limits of the sea.

Jonah went below-decks, lay down, and went to sleep as the ship set sail for deep waters, because sailing was not a favorite thing for Hebrews to do, since the sea symbolized the home of chaos, tempests, undercurrents, and death. Jonah figured he could just wake up when it was all over, and they were on dry land again.

But God was not about to be thwarted. So no sooner had the ship reached deep water but a mighty storm brewed up at God’s command. And the ship started to lie heavy in the waves that swamped over the side. In desperation, the sailors and even the merchants who were passengers started throwing everything overboard that they could, even cargo they hoped to sell; each praying to any small-g god they could think of that might help: storm gods, sea gods, wind gods. Nothing worked. 

The captain started counting heads and noticed that that wild-haired holy man was missing. As the ship bucked and rolled under his feet, he went into the hold and found Jonah back in a corner, sleeping like a rock despite the turmoil. The captain shook Jonah awake. “Are you drunk? Get up! Pray to your god, whoever he is, that we can be saved, because this ship is coming apart!” The captain’s words made Jonah uneasy, even somewhat guilty. Jonah had a feeling he knew what was going on.

Once Jonah got on deck, he saw that the others were terrified. Nothing was working, and when nothing works, people often fall back on superstition and magic to try to help. So they decided to draw straws to see who was responsible for this terrible storm. Even before Jonah took his turn he knew what he would see when he chose.

Sure enough, when everyone opened their fists, Jonah’s fingers clutched the short straw, and his ship-mates turned on him with faces contorted by fear: “What did you DO to bring this on all of us?” And he told them he had run away rather than obey God’s command. His words turned their hearts to stone. “What can we do?” the other men cried. And the wind howled louder, and the boat sank even lower, and one of the masts broke off with a loud crack and swept over their heads.

Jonah next words astonished them. “Toss me over the side,” Jonah said, resignedly. Now, some considered for a moment—they knew gods who demanded human sacrifice. But most of them were afraid to curse themselves further by putting his blood on their hands. So they hesitated—and a huge wave nearly knocked the boat over. As soon as it righted itself, they moved with one accord, and with a prayer for forgiveness to the prophet’s God, they plopped Jonah over the side.

The sea instantly stilled, and the remaining sail filled with wind, and the boat darted away. The last sight the sailors saw was an enormous fish, big as a mountain, its mouth swallowing Jonah whole, and then the green flash of a tail as it swooped under the waves. The sailors shivered, touched their amulets, and immediately added Yahweh’s name to their prayer lists, promising a sacrifice at the nearest available altar once they were safely ashore.

For three nights and three days, Jonah sat stewing—yes stewing-- in the bouillabaisse of half-digested seafood platters and slime and gastric juices in the belly of that fish. It was dark, cold, smelly, and painful. Jonah was stubborn—three days and nights worth of stubborn—but, eventually, he gave up. 

He prayed a lament psalm to God, admitting his guilt, as the cold and stench of that fish’s innards pickled his very soul. He threw himself on the mercy of Yahweh, and swore a grudging vow of obedience. Immediately the fish tacked sharply and rose to the surface of the waves, spitting him out onto dry land at God’s silent command.

The coating of slime and fish barf Jonah wore as he rested on the sand did nothing to dim the sound of the word of God speaking to him again. “Get up, and go north to your enemy, to their great city Nineveh, and call them to repent, for I see their evil ways.” And without a word, Jonah pushed himself up and stalked off, stiff-legged, to Nineveh. A deal’s a deal.

He arrived days later, covered in crusty dried slime—he wouldn’t give Yahweh or Nineveh the satisfaction of a fresh-smelling prophet. And what a contrast he made: the city itself was dazzling, one of the biggest in the world, so big it took three days to walk across, they say. It was the center of the Assyrian Empire, which owned --and oppressed-- just about everything at one time or another. Including Israel. So Jonah decided he would do as he was told—but he wasn’t going to get spiffed up for the occasion.

So into the city he marched. Looking and smelling like a human garbage dump, he thundered out his eight-word sermon in the streets as the people skidded to a stop at the sight (and probably smell) of him and gaped: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overturned!” he thundered, and man, he couldn’t WAIT to see that happen.

There was a pause. Then bedlam broke out. People were wailing. Children were calling for their mamas. Dogs stopped chasing cats and dropped to a halt before them, and the cats didn’t even slash them. They heard the warning, and they BELIEVED. They tore their clothes. They declared a fast. They prayed to God—yes, even to this God of this pipsqueak people they had crushed to dust long ago.

Never has a prophet had such success with such a piece of prophecy and performance art. The king himself heard about it—second-hand, mind you—but even that second-hand prophecy scared the bejabbers out of him, and that king instantly sat down in the ash heap in rags and poured ashes over his head. He even ordered the animals of the kingdom to fast and wear sackcloth as a sign of mourning—and they DID. Chickens... in sackcloth—pigs... fasting. And God was appeased by their repentance, and had mercy, and turned aside from destroying them.

And, in the center of the pandemonium, there stood Jonah. Here he was, the most successful prophet ever—he’d just set a world record for prophecy that would have made Moses and Elijah WEEP tears of jealousy.

Was Jonah happy? NO HE WAS NOT. He looked around, felt the cool breeze of forgiveness and reconciliation blow through those pagan, enemy streets, and-- he SEETHED. He KNEW IT. He knew God, being God, would have mercy on these jerks—and he wanted to see some smiting instead. He wanted to see the place wiped from the map! Whose God was God, anyway? The Ninevites had made his people’s lives miserable for generations. And now they got off, Scot-free?

“Oh my GOD, God!!!” he muttered furiously. “Of COURSE you are a God of mercy, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and ready to forgive! But this is too much! I’d rather be dead than live to see this! Kill me now!”

And in a silky, what to Jonah was a frustratingly calm voice, Yahweh replied, “You good and angry, Jonah?” And Jonah actually felt something snap in his head.

Grinding his teeth in impotent rage, Jonah stalked off again on his stiff legs, until he could get outside the city walls. He built himself a shelter, and sat there glaring at the city to see what would happen. Maybe they’d screw up and return to evil—seemed likely, with their track record.

But nope. That repentance seemed real. So just like when he was in that fish’s belly, Jonah stewed, while the sun beat down and he squinted toward Nineveh’s shiny, palatial walls with revulsion. And God caused a beautiful thick vine to grow up and it lent its shade to shield his head, but Jonah was having none of it. "Nice try, God,” he thought, but part of him had to admit that that shade sure was nice.

The next day, God sent a worm, who ate that plant straight across the stem like a buzzsaw. And just as Jonah was coming to grips with that, a red-hot wind blew out of the desert, hotter than an oven, and Jonah keeled right over in a faint. When he came to, he grabbed the sticky hair on both sides of his head and yanked handfuls out in fury like a deranged Elmer Fudd. “And now the vine? REALLY?? I’d rather be dead than live to see this! Kill me now!” Jonah shrieked at God.

And again came what sounded to Jonah like a silky, frustratingly calm voice from God, leaning in over his shoulder like the butler on Downton Abbey, murmuring, “You good and angry about that vine, Jonah?”

“You bet I am, God!” Jonah snarled. “Angry enough to die.”

“Why are you angry, Jonah?” God asked, as smooth as butter, reasonably, and everyone knows the most infuriating thing when you’re furious is to be met with someone reasonable. “You didn’t do anything for that vine—I put it there out of mercy. It was here for a day and gone in a day. You should be glad it was there at all. But even when it’s gone, what’s it to you?”

“You promised Nineveh would be overturned, God!” shouted Jonah. “And now they’re better than ever!”

Jonah thought he heard a small chuckle. “Why, they ARE overturned, Jonah,” replied God. “They overturned their hearts, and they overturned their evil ways. You did it!”

Jonah stared up at the sky with his mouth hanging open. “Really, God? That’s your loophole?? A play on words? A PUN??? JEEZ! This is why I tried to run away in the first place!” And Jonah was speechless, and a little ashamed, because he was lying. He certainly didn’t know God’s plan at the start, and now he felt like a total fool, and traitor, too, helping the enemies of his own people like that.  

God’s voice got softer. “You yourself said it, my son. I AM God, slow to anger, abounding in mercy—unlike you, that’s for sure. And that’s lucky for you, too, dear Jonah. And I will have mercy on whom I choose—you don’t get to decide, especially since right now YOU seem to be lacking in mercy, compassion, and loving-kindness.”

The voice grew more tender. “I am God. You are my messenger, and you know I love you and have mercy on you. And right now I also have mercy on Nineveh, and its 120,000 people and thousands of animals.”

And there the story ends.

_________________________

Now, there are a quite a few interesting lessons here.

The story of Jonah reminds us that God cannot be used for our own purposes. We were created in God’s image, not the other way around, as writer and essayist Anne Lamott says her priest friend Tom reminded her: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people that you do.”(2)

I love the story of Jonah—because I have been Jonah SO many times, wanting to see those I’ve decided are my enemies not just fail but get crushed. I stubbornly holding on to grudges as if they were life-preservers. My mother says I was born stubborn.

Jonah helpfully models for us exactly what God is NOT: vindictive, retributive, discriminatory. Sometimes our own heard-heartedness and stubbornness put us in the belly of the whale. Even when Jonah grudgingly did as he was asked, he still tried to impose a theology of vengeance and retribution upon God. Even though he could quote scripture identifying God’s essential characteristics as being gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and eager to forgive, in practice he thought that only applied to his own people.

Yet, if God can help us to imagine marvelous works of forgiveness and reconciliation through a messenger as reluctant and resentful as Jonah, imagine what God can do among those whose hearts have been transformed by the abundant grace of Christ’s gospel of love and healing. As we hear throughout the season after Epiphany, God is not just a God for a few, but God’s love and mercy are available for all.

Part of the beauty and power of scripture is the fact that the people whose stories we hear are folks just like you and me. Jonah is not a bad person—he is a human person, with human reactions. Most of us don’t want to see our enemies prosper, and many of us like to see those who do evil get punished.

The power of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is that we see pictures of real people—warts and all. That helps us know that this conversion of life that God calls us toward is possible, even for rigid, judgmental people like Jonah, or impulsive, enthusiastic people, like Peter, and or self-righteous, long-winded people like Paul, to name just three examples.

Our gospel reminds us that Jesus’s inner circle was filled with common folk—fishermen—who had no special training, who were just mending their nets by the sea when they heard the voice of God calling them. God doesn’t call the perfect- God helps perfect the called, which is certainly hopeful for you and me. It’s comforting to me, at least, in all my flaws.

God is the God of second chances—even when that may frustrate our own plans for vengeance and retribution. Instead, Jesus becomes incarnate to show us that we are capable of following the path of God in our everyday lives: through Christ, God invites us to seek reconciliation and healing even against those we see as enemies.

But the lessons we learn from Jonah carry over into the message we hear from Jesus, who also preaches mercy, grace, and healing in a world devoid of it far too often—much like our own world today. A world in which far too many people suffer want, neglect, and poverty as we will be reminded in our prayers of the people in a few moments. We will be called to consider working to heal the economic divisions that cause very real suffering in our country and around the world.

The story of scripture is God’s capacity and tenacity in loving us in all our follies and flaws while being able to see beyond those things, and call us to something better. Here’s where we still hear God’s call to each of us to overturn our own hearts, our own complacency. The life of faith is a life lived in community, and inevitably hurts will arise, deliberately or carelessly. But our sins and carelessness toward each other are not the end of the story. Mercy and forgiveness and grace ARE the last words.

As our gospel makes clear, God also calls us to follow God’s Son, Jesus, and to emulate that grace, love, mercy, and reconciliation in our own relationships with each other, especially when it’s hardest—when we are in times of crisis, and when wounds are fresh. And that’s true not just when we are angry, but when we are anxious and unsure or even just a little tired. Made in the image of God, we too are called to be both individuals and communities of mercy, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and ready to forgive.

Because that is what God’s justice looks like—like mercy and healing.(3) And thanks be to God.

Amen.

Readings:
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (Jonah chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4)
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on January 21, 2018, at 8 and 10:15 am.

Photos:
(1) Jonah and the Fish, anonymous, Asia; (2) Illumination from the Kennicott Bible; (3) Jonah and the Fish (Islamic); (4) Jack Baumgartner, Jonah and the Gourd Vine (1999); (5) Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308-1311), The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew (National Gallery of Art)

Notes:
(1) In my retelling of the Book of Jonah, I am indebted to Robert Alter's new translation in Strong as Death is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, Daniel: A Translation with Commentary, pp. 135-154
(2) Anne Lamott quote from Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994), p. 22.
(3) The Rt. Rev. Jake Owensby, "Healing Justice," at https://jakeowensby.com/2018/01/19/healing-justice/

Commentary on Exodus 17:1-7

Exodus 17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ²The people quarreled with Moses, and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" ³But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?" ⁴So Moses cried out to the Lord, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." ⁵The Lord said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink." Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

(Note: We saw this reading earlier this year on the 3^rd Sunday in Lent, March 23.)

As I was pondering this reading, I was enjoying a rare afternoon to sit in my backyard garden. It’s the first day off I’ve had in about a month. I decided while I was sitting here to water all the different plants in the hillside garden around the seating area where I like to work. I made sure to fill up the birdbaths while I was at it. Then I just turned on the hose and let it start running down the hill to water all the hostas, ferns, and other plants that dwell under the canopy of trees in our backyard. After about 10 minutes, suddenly there was great rejoicing in the Land of Birds, and dozens of sparrows, finches, chickadees, and wrens began to wing their way over to wash themselves in the birdbath and in the puddles of water on the ground. One of them even had the temerity to land on the empty birdfeeder, give me the stink eye, rap the base of the empty feeder sharply with its beak a couple times, and then flutter off in a huff, as if to say, “Get up off your duff, and get me some food, woman.” Never mind that I had generously turned on the hose, which is what had drawn these birds here in the first place. Never mind that I had graciously filled the bird bath and emptied of all the leaves and other junk that accumulated in it.  This bird was not satisfied, and he was letting me know it. Meanwhile, a gang of sparrows promptly and joyously splashed out all the water I had placed in the birdbath, and one of them flew to a branch over my head and started to shrilly berate me to refill it.

Are these birds never satisfied?

And the answer is, NO. Once I started providing them with birdseed and water, they expect me to keep doing it.  The nerve! That’s also the way it is when you help people, sometimes, too.  There are some people in the world who, when you get into a relationship with them, it ends up being all about them. No matter how much you give them, they always want more. No matter how much you give them, they’re never grateful. They never seem to stop and think, ”Okay, that’s enough.” Some of those people we call ”babies,” and having one of those things basically means a lifetime of servitude to them (I’m kidding). They’re perfectly satisfied when all their needs are met—the problem is, that their needs don’t STAY met. Anyone was ever changed a filthy diaper, smiled into the angelic face of a six-month-old who has fought you every step of the way while you clean her up, and then watched her bat her eyelashes and coo blissfully and immediately fill that diaper right back up with a toxic substance probably banned by the Geneva Convention knows what I’m talking about.

The Israelites are the same way. Over and over again, they long for their days of  slavery in Egypt over freedom in the wilderness. The more the going gets tough out in the Sinai peninsula, the more rosy their memories of their time in Egypt becomes. “Meh! The work wasn’t that hard! At least we had cucumbers!”

Forgotten is the groaning that they raised up to God—groaning so loud that God could not ignore it. Nope, just like infants, the minute their tummies grumble or their mouths get dry, they turn and bite the hand that feeds them. Last week we saw God provide them with meat and bread, manna and quail that fell from the sky, and all the Israelites had to do was go and pick it up. Today, it’s water—or, specifically, the perceived lack of it. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Complain, complain, complain. I think that’s one of the reasons why, although it did them very little credit, the ancient Israelites liked to tell this story on themselves-- one of the side purposes was probably to explain just why they complained so much, as all of us do.

Sometimes, we focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do. Here are the Israelites, freed from slavery in Egypt, moaning about how their every need isn’t being taken care of while they are traveling back to their homeland. We are an unhappy, discontented, grumbling people at times. Our reading from Exodus today is one of an Old Testament genre called “murmuring stories.” These are stories in which the people “murmur”—in our text, it is rendered as “quarreled,” but it seems that misses the flavor. “Murmuring against” someone is so much more suggestive of that tendency we all have to mutter just audibly enough to be heard, that passive-aggressive tactic that allows one to later deny that she has said anything at all. Murmuring of this type is filled with negativity, ingratitude, a simmering resentment. Freedom includes responsibility to look at our situation with clear eyes. And the first step is to be glad that we are free.

In Exodus 16, we hear the first mention of the conveniently named “Wilderness of Sin,” which is also called the “wilderness of Zin” in Numbers, as well as “Wilderness of Sinai.” Wilderness of Sinai has an entirely different feeling, however—in English, a “wilderness of sin” elicits a metaphorical response: who hasn’t felt lost in a wilderness of sin? The concept of wilderness also creates images of chaos, bleakness, desolation. Wilderness is where Jesus goes to be tempted and to encounter Satan, but it’s also a place where one can be alone and encounter God, as when Moses discovered the burning bush. The “Wilderness of Sin” will make three appearances named as such in the Torah: In Exodus 16, Exodus 17, and Numbers 33. We also see Moses using his staff, as he did when he turned the Nile into blood, and when he turned that staff itself into a snake before the Pharaoh as signs of God’s power and might.

A parallel version of this story appears in Numbers 20:1-13, but has an entirely different spin, since it appears as though Moses and Aaron make it sound as if they themselves, are the ones who make the water come out of the rock, rather than the “holiness of God.” In the Numbers version, afterwards, God then punishes Moses and Aaron by declaring that they will not get to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Meribah means “strife,” or “contention,” and Massah means “test.” Moses names this place Massah and Meribah because the people are demonstrating a lack of trust in God—and if you know scripture, this certainly won’t be the last time, either.

There is a lesson here for all of us. The people have been in the wilderness for about two months, and they are wondering where that “land flowing with milk and honey” is. But more immediately, they need water, and supplies are getting low. Even though they have come so far, the people question the commitment of God to provide for them, to care for them in this most basic need. But that saying “It’s always darkest before the dawn” really does have some truth behind it. Rather than focus on how we feel deprived, or lash out in fear when we feel uncertain, we can remind ourselves of the blessing of being one people, united by a common calling and a common identity, our common love of God, who has freed us so that we can love God through our own choice.