Listening to the Unexpected

I was asked recently to provide the homily for a worship service at the monthly meeting of the Presbyterian women. I really got into it and thought I’d share with you some of what I said. What follows are snippets.

“Let’s be clear that a whale didn’t swallow Jonah! Whatever the beast was that got Jonah, it was a figment of the storyteller’s imagination. The sea was the great unknown, and awful unknown things dwelt in it. In being swallowed by the unknown, Jonah experienced primal, primordial separation from God and realized that life lived in service to God, whatever the dangers, was better than separation from the love of God. This was, by the way, the lesson Jesus learned in Gethsemane, what the gospel authors referred to as the ‘sign of Jonah’!”

“Jonah finally makes his way to Nineveh. He goes partway into the city and speaks a five-word prophecy! Wonder of wonders! It works! The people who hear it repent, and in a complete reversal of ancient political behavior, when the people repent, so does the king. In fact, the king is so frightened by the threat of the warrior god of Israel that he even orders the animals to be dressed in sackcloth! The total effect is to influence God to change her mind!”

[That response from God made Jonah almost irrationally angry.]

“Jonah has a very pious view of the world. He tells God at one point: ‘…I knew that you are a gracious god, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.’ But he had always figured that God reserved that behavior for God’s people. It just wasn’t right that God should act towards others the way God acted towards Israel. The very idea that God could do that, that God could change God’s mind once having announced judgment, meant that nothing could be certain any more. How could Gentiles enjoy the same privileges and protections as those of Israel? How could God allow for the destruction of Israel and Judah and yet save one of the destroyers?”

“I think the answer to that question lies in [something]… I remembered [from] a study I did years ago on the name of God in the burning bush story. While doing the research on that, I ran across somebody—I don't remember now who it was or even where I found it—who made the observation that the first identification of the name—“I am who I am”—could be understood as “I will be known by what I do!” That insight fascinated me, because it implies a continuing revelation, an invitation to find God in the activities and processes of living, and suggests that God is revealed not only in what God does but also in our recognition of it. In that sense the only immutable truth about God is that we cannot, will not ever ‘know’ God because God is always being known! It is a masterful theological turn by the one telling the burning bush story, and a truth Jonah never saw. He first ran from God’s call and then behaved badly, petulantly, in parochial fashion when things didn’t work out the way he wanted them to, because his god had to fit his understanding of God.”

“God’s call requires us both to believe that there is more to know about God and the Kingdom than we now know, and that we must act on that belief even when it, from time to time, seems to fly in the face of all we have known and done before. It requires us to overcome our fears and manage our anger. It requires us to run towards God, calling out like a child on a playground, ‘Here! Here! Pick me! Pick Me!’ It requires us to accept and act on the possibility that ‘God is Still Speaking.’”

“May we be given the grace to risk standing on holy ground, listening to the great ‘I Am!’ with ears to hear and hearts to act!”