How God’s Mind Changed

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (but you should read the whole story)

22 January 2012

                 “I believe in the New Testament God,” one of our legislators said to a Jewish friend of mine. Would he have said that, had he known she was Jewish? I don’t know. But his statement reflects one of the ridiculous things people say about God. The faith formation class heard me get all hot and bothered about this one a few weeks ago when somebody said, “Why is the God in the Old Testament all mean?”

“Where did you hear that?” I snapped.

“From my history teacher”

“Well your history teacher is an id—I mean your history teacher is sadly misinformed.”

The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same God. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible-- that's the bible that Jesus studied. That’s the bible from which Rabbi Jesus taught. That’s where he got all of his best material! So how can anyone say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of vengeance and the God of the New Testament a God of grace—that’s just messed up, and I won’t stand for it and neither should you and what’s a history teacher doing talking about the bible anyway—doesn’t he (or she) have enough material to cover? And furthermore, we know Jewish people who know that God is compassionate. Saying that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous God as if that were the whole story is not just a slander against God, but a slander against a whole faith community!

And here we have a case in point: the story of Jonah, from what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew bible, one of the books of the prophets. Jonah is distinguished among the prophets by his reluctance, to put it mildly. The story of Jonah is a parody, a send up, a spoof, a comic satire of a prophet’s story. Last week, we read about the call of the prophet Samuel. When Samuel was called, he replied “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” When God called Jonah, he ran away! As if a person could outrun the presence of God! Jonah ran for the coast, and boarded a ship headed for Tarshish, which I believe is Hebrew[1] for “the back of beyond,” or “far, far away.” When a storm came up Jonah hid in the hold, the belly of the ship, and you know how he got from there to the belly of the whale and was spit up on the beach, and there our reading for today took up the story.

The story of Jonah is a story of a man who went to ridiculous lengths to avoid the prophetic call of God. That makes him a sympathetic character, somebody we recognize, somebody we can relate to. He’s not a hero, Jonah is definitely not the hero of this story, he’s just a sympathetic character. We can sympathize with Jonah because honestly, who wants to be a prophet? Oh, we would all like to think we might be like Samuel or like Isaiah, and say “Here I am, Lord, send me.” But we know what happens to prophets. Prophets get to speak the truth to power, and power takes offense. Who wants to be exiled and outlawed, like Elijah, or thrown down a well, like Jeremiah?

The story goes to great lengths to demonstrate that once God has set God’s eye on you, you can’t run and you can’t hide. God will continue to pursue and win the game of hide and seek. There’s no evading God’s attentions. God is a persistent suitor.

When Jonah finally acquiesced, and obeyed God’s summons, we can tell his heart wasn’t really in it. He went to Nineveh—that great city. He didn’t even get to the center of the city, he walked one-third of the distance and he said, “Four days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And then, I suppose, he went out to find a safe place to watch the destruction of the city.

But here’s the strangest part of the story: you know how no one ever believes the prophet? You know how Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “You better let my people go or God will smite your firstborn,” and Pharaoh said, “Yeah, right. I’ll take my chances.” You know how Jeremiah said, if you go making deals with the devil the city will be overrun, and the royal family and all their supporters said, “Oh you be quiet, Jeremiah, you’re upsetting people,” and “Into the mud, prophet!”

Yes, the paradox of Jonah is that the most reluctant prophet ever also proved to be the most effective! The people actually listened, and repented, and when God saw that the people repented, then God repented of the destruction that God had planned—which is how prophecy is supposed to work. The job of the prophet is not to predict the future. That’s not prophecy, that’s fortune telling, a completely different business and not one that God is in. The job of the prophet is to tell the truth about what is happening now, and to show people where it might lead, if things keep on going the way they have been going. The goal of prophetic preaching is repentance.

Maybe the reason people get the idea that God, in the Old Testament, is all about punishment, is because they don’t read the whole story. The whole story is that God is—in Jonah’s own words, where he paraphrases a psalm[2]—merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Whenever and wherever people turn their hearts to God and emulate God’s mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, there is life. That is the whole of the law and the prophets, said Jesus, and so said Rabbi Hillel.

The Hebrew bible does not teach that God is vengeful. The Hebrew bible teaches us that God is mutable. God can change God’s mind. The mind of God is influenced by people, by who we are, by what we do and what we say. God listens, God learns, and God changes. Wherever and whenever people emulate God’s ability to listen and learn and change, there is life.

The gospel of Jonah and the gospel of Jesus is the same gospel, the good news of God’s compassion and mercy. The challenge of Jonah and the challenge of Jesus is the same challenge. We are challenged to respond to God’s call, even if our response is reluctant. We are called to speak the truth to power, even if we are afraid. Power might just surprise us, and respond with repentance, mercy and compassion.

One traditional interpretation of the story of Jonah is that Jonah is Israel. Jonah is a parable about Israel. God made a covenant with Abraham, in the early days, God made a covenant that through Abraham’s children, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Sometimes, Israel, like Jonah, avoided the call to be a blessing to all nations, or fulfilled that call only begrudgingly. Because Israel in the time of exile was so used to being disparaged among nations, Israel returned disparagement in kind. The book of Jonah challenges Israel to entertain the possibility that faithful people can be found in foreign lands. The exaggerated response of the people of Nineveh, who repent on a scale unheard of in Israel, emphasizes the possibility.

Jonah could also be interpreted as a parable about the church. We are called to carry the message of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and God’s abundant mercy, to all the world. We have a message to deliver. A message about justice for the poor and marginalized. A message about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and not doing to others what you would not want done to you. We have a message about the God who is still speaking and about people needing to listen and learn and change.

But, like Jonah, sometimes we would rather run away from the call. Because, we know that no one is going to listen, that people have already made up their minds—that’s what we think we know, anyway. We’ll just tweet the message and run away. People have already made up their minds they aren’t going to change.

Truth is, it is we who have made up our minds about “those people,” the Ninevites, the fundamentalists, whoever we think “they” are. “They” will never change. Except, in the story, they do, they change. People can and do, sometimes, respond and repent. However reluctant, meek, or indifferent the messenger may be, people respond to the message.

Let us listen, and hear what the spirit is saying to the church, to us, today.

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[1] Not really. Might have been Tarsus, in what we now call Turkey; or it might have been in Spain. Either one is far, far away.

[2] Several psalms, actually, and the torah. Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18.

The Voice

January 8, 2012

Mark 1:4-11; Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5

The power of the voice is celebrated in today’s scriptures-- the power of the voice of God to create, destroy, and re-create. It is the voice of God that calls creation into being, the voice of God that strips the forest bare, the voice of God that claims Jesus as “my beloved,” and calls him good.
Before the earth had shape and form the wind of God moved over the waters and God said… and it was so.
When Jesus came up out of the water he saw the Spirit descending on him in the form of a dove and he heard a voice from heaven call out, you are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased. In Mark’s gospel, no one else hears or sees what Jesus hears and sees. Jesus alone hears the voice. It is no wonder that immediately afterward he went into the wilderness for a 40 day retreat. He probably needed some alone time to think about what had just happened to him.
In our faith tradition, we proclaim that God is still speaking. We listen for the voice of God speaking not only through the scriptures, not only through tradition, but also through the world that God created. We listen for the still speaking God when we take our morning walk, and hear God in the silence of snow falling; we listen for God in the dark cold night and hear God in the boom of the ice cracking. We listen for God when we read and we hear God speaking through careful study of the world. We listen for God and hear God speaking in the world in many ways, in many languages, including the languages of mathematics and science. We hear God speaking from the Hubble telescope and we hear God speaking from the depths of the earth at CERN; we hear God speaking from the first spark of creation and we hear God speaking at the forward edge of the universe.
God is still speaking, and the voice of God continues to call the world into being. The voice shouts and the voice whispers in the ear, the voice is universal and intimately personal. The voice of God continues to create and destroy and re-create.
The power to destroy is not a power we like to ascribe to God, not as much as the ancients did anyway. Remember the last time a tornado ripped through the south end of town? The psalm seems to have been written in response to an event like that, the psalmist was awed by the power of the wind. It’s not in the destruction of barns and cattle that we see God at work. But what about the power to remove what needs to be removed, to make way for something better? The power to remove old prejudices, the power to remove accepted customs that we now see as barriers, these are the walls that the voice of God can knock down.
We perceive that God is still speaking. But not everyone seems to hear what we hear. And, other Christians seem to hear things that we don’t hear. What do we do when others don’t seem to hear what we hear? How do we know we aren’t just hearing what we want to hear? What’s the difference between hearing the voice of God and hearing voices?
Part of the work of the church is to discern the voice of God, to discern where God is at work in the world for good. We meet together as the church to help one another discern God’s loving Spirit. We meet together to listen for the voice of God, and to test every revelation through the measure of Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. We test every revelation—the new ones and the old standards—by asking if they measure up to Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. Which sounds simple when put so succinctly, but it gets complicated, we know it does. That is why it is vital that the congregation come together for worship, every week.
We know that “being the church” isn’t just about “going to church.” We know that the mission of the church begins at the doorstep. But it is here, in worship together, that we get our marching orders. It is here that we hear and discern the voice that calls us, and here that we get the inspiration and the power and the energy to be the church in the world. Ideally, that’s what worship is. Worship generates the power and light that fuels the mission.
We meet together to share with one another what we hear the voice of God calling us to do, to encourage one another, and to hold one another accountable.
God calls to you, God calls to each of us, “You are my beloved.” God calls to us as a congregation, “You are my beloved.” How then shall we live?

How do you know about God?

My friend Dan sent me a good question:

I’ve been very peaceful with my theology for some time. I start with the basic foundation that there is a God and that God loves us. Everything else grows from that premise. Everything must fit with the concept of a loving God.

So what’s the problem? It occurred to me a few days ago that the energy that I experience and what I call God could be the ‘collective unconscious’ of humanity. What if ‘God’ isn’t a conscious being or deity, but, rather the great cloud of ‘us.’ I’d rather believe that God is a benevolent entity, but how do I know? I won’t believe something just because someone said it’s so. I have to experience it for myself and it has to make sense to me. I thought I’d done that, but maybe not.

So… tell me… how do you come to believe that God exists? How do you know God is God and not just our higher selves?

My Answer:

I don’t know. And for me, that’s not a problem, it is as it should be. Not knowing is a prerequisite for faith. Or, rather, knowing that I don’t know, having the humility to know that I don’t know, is the prerequisite for faith.

There are a lot of the collected scriptures that teach us that when we think we know God, we had better watch out: God is going to surprise us. Like the bit from the book of Job that we will read in church on Sunday. Everybody in that story thinks they know God. Job’s friends think they know God. They consider all that Job has lost—all his children have died, all his wealth has been looted, and he is has become a sick, sad man—and they say to him, “Oh, man, you must have really messed up. Job, what have you done to made God so mad?” That’s a paraphrase, naturally.

Job thinks he knows God too, and he thinks that he has been treated unjustly. But when God finally speaks out of the whirlwind, God puts everybody in their place, saying, “You think you know me? You don’t know nothin’!” That’s a paraphrase too.

The fact that scriptures were written by people, who were doing their best to understand the unknowable, that in itself is an aid in interpretation. For thousands of years people have tried to understand God, and have told stories and written poems and songs to pass on to others the idea of God. Taken as a whole, the Bible, the Koran, the collected scriptures of the world's religions are perspectives on this mysterious concept of that presence that we sense, that in which we live and move and have our being, that breath that stirred the waters of the deep, that breath of life which is our beginning and our end.

So what if God is our “collective unconscious?” So what if God is the web of being that connects us to every living thing? So what if God is “our higher selves?” Those are all good metaphors. Metaphors are, by nature, both true and untrue. “A mighty fortress is our God,” is true and untrue. The experience of God can be like hunkering down in the castle keep during a battle, but not always. Sometimes God is an eagle that lifts us up out of danger. Sometimes God is a mother and I am a hungry infant, sometimes God is a shepherd and I am a lost sheep. Sometimes God is Ad-Aware and I am the hard-drive burdened with spy-ware and trojans—there’s an image too new for scripture, one which is probably already out of date.

I trust that God is. I believe that I will never know God perfectly, but that God is a worthy pursuit. What I have come to believe about God is that God is love, or the ability to love, or the quality that is love, that life-creating power. I believe that God smiles upon fairness, justice, mercy, kindness, whatever is good and pure and life-giving. I think God gets really pissed off at greed, and war, and waste, and meanness.

I believe that people live abundant life when we are part of the love of God. And I believe people are diminished when we fail to be loving. And I believe that whether people succeed or fail to love, as long as we live, we are undeniably connected to God, and in that connection is the potential for redemption, salvation, new life.

And I believe that we may continue in that relationship with God even when we cease to be, even in death, and afterwards. But I don’t know. And that is as it should be, for now.