| Rev. Pat Bumgardner |
Jonah 3:1-5,10 |
| January 22 , 2006 |
Mark 1:14-20 |
Ever feel stuck in the same old rut? Ever been stuck and not really know it? Everyone else knows it, but you don't know it!
That's some of what I think both of our texts are trying to address today --- that and the call to just make a clean break with what's held us in place for so long --- make a break with business-as-usual, as the disciples will do.
There's a lot of controversy right now over whether we can really do that because of James Frey's book, "A Million Little Pieces." *Have you read i? It was Oprah's book of the month virtually assuring that a lot of people would read it. --- Apparently not everything in the book is 100% true. We are apparently not talking Joe Friday here and "just the facts, ma'am; nothing but the facts." (*Are you even old enough to know who Joe Friday was? Remember --- "Dragnet" --- black and white TV --- the days when children under 10 were the remote control?!?)
Anyway, supposedly James Frey didn't tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth. That, I don't know. I just know most people who are addicts of some kind --- and this isn't about judgment; it's just the truth --- most people who are addicts lie. It's a symtom of trying to hold on to things that should have been let go of a long time ago. Sometimes we lie because we want something and we think we can't get it any other way. --- I'm not sure if Mr. Frey lied, but this I do know: Redemption/recovery isn't about perfection. It's about our need --- our very human need --- to find a way to begin again, and God's desire to help us do that --- to help us get out of the ruts we get into. I just know that "recovery" --- being on the road to wholeness and integrity and health on all kinds of levels --- emotionally and spiritually and physically --- is about trying as best we can to break with the things that bind us or keep us from changing and moving on the way we want to. Recovery is about not being stuck anymore....And so, that's what I'd like to invite us to reflect on tonight.
Will you pray with me please? [Prayer...]
Mark's Gospel is all about new beginnings --- "The beginning of the Good News," his opening line reads. Scholars say it's his way of re-starting the story of salvation. Forget everything else that has happened to mess up what "in the beginning" was the pristine nature of creation, he is saying; we're making a clean break...and starting over.
That's the name of a show on TV right now, "Starting Over." Sometimes when I'm chanel-surfing --- if MJG lets me stay up late and wathch my new 42 inch, Panasonic, flat screen, 992+ chanel television set with DVR capacity (Hey --- if you're surprised that I would own such a thing, I remind you, he says leave your father, the boat and the nets, not your big screen TV!) Anyway, this show called "Starting Over" is on with Ayanla Vanzant as a life coach. And basically, she coaxes all this stuff that's been holding her guests back out of them, encouraging them to break with old patterns/old ways of relating and to try something else that will enable their growth and free them in a sense.
You know, for example, if someone has spent a lifetime weighed down by something bad that happened at a previous point in life, she might try to help them learn to carry --- not forget --- but learn to carry that in a less burdensome or debilitating way. How and what we carry with us is a very important point in our readings tonight.
Sometimes I think ... it can be fruitful to look at all the physical, tangible things we carry with us on life's journey --- things that maybe owning or having in some sense, helps define who we are or makes us feel secure. *Do you know what I mean? --- If I could just be...an elder, then I'd be somebody --- if I could just make supervisor or be the head usher or head of this department, then I'd be somebody.
I go through that off and on in my life as a clergyperson --- thinking about what it means to make it in my line of work --- most of which will never happen for me, simply because I'm "MCC --- which is perhaps a saving grace. Somtimes, writes author Eugene Kennedy, what we think we've lost or will never have, is really what we're finding out about who we are and what we really need.
Sometimes it's helpful to look at what we carry around more tangibly, and sometimes it's helpful to look at what we carry around in here*. Jonah had some baggage in here.* Ever read the story of Jonah? If you haven't, give it a shot. It's only 4 short chapters, and so you can do it on the subway ride to work and guarantee yourself a seat at rush hour, because who wants to sit next to the geek with a Bible open?!? If you really want space, read it out loud, move your lips --- proclaim it! You'll have plenty of room. --- Jonah doesn't want to proclaim anythig. He hates the Ninevites. They are Israel's archenemies. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians, you will remember, carried the people of Israel off into captivity and slavery. THEY are what's wrong with the world today, in Jonah's mind.
He would sooner die --- Jonah would rather die than do anything that might possibly cause the Ninevites to repent/to change courses/to give up t heir evil ways and be saved by God. Of all the people in the world, he least wants to see them at heaven's gates.
Interestingly, this is not the first time God has called Jonah to go to Nineveh. --- (*Cell phone) "Hello, Jonah? It's God...yeah, yeah, everything's fine up here. Say listen, I've been thinking about the Ninevites ----" hang up! remove the battery! disconnect the charger! Jonah is out of there --- he's so out of there, he books a pass on a cruise ship to Tarshish --- he's so out of there, he burrows away in the bowels of the ship, hoping no one will even know he's there --- he has so burrowed himself, he can't even hear the raging storm around him....Jonah had some strong feelings about what the Ninevites/the Assyrians had done to him and his people --- not to mention what might become of his job as a prophet if the Ninevites actually took this "40 days and God's gonna get you" message God wanted him to preach seriously and changed. Dt. 18 says the way you know a true prophet is that what they say comes true. If Jonah preaches "40 days and..." and then the Ninevites don't get destroyed (For reasons that aren't entirely clear, he strongly suspects that they will repent and change.) then what? You got it: He's out of business! Jonah defines himself by his track record, even if that has negative consequences --- as perhaps many of us do --- by the credits he can attach to his name.
It's always shakey, that way of looking a ourselves and what happens in our lives. --- Spiritual "masters" teach that everything in our lives --- all the people we meet, both those we come to love dearly and those we don't; all the things that happen --- both our successes and failures --- everything has one purpose and one purpose only: to bring us closer to God. --- We're never meant to hold on to any of them --- and now I'm not saying we have no long-term relationships of any kind --- I'm talking "holding on" in a way that stiffles who or what those people/those things are or can become. I'm talking "holding on" in a way that stiffles us. *Do you know what I mean?
Think about this: Who really suffered in that first story? 40 days of sackcloth and ashes and the Ninevites are on the road to recovery. --- It's Jonah, if we read the end of the story, out in the desert heat, clinging to years and years of repeated trajedy and insult and humiliation who suffers.
What did we say on Thursday --- Confucius said: If you're seeking revenge, dig two graves
Jonah wants to bury the Ninevites, but he buries himeslf instead --- and God doesn't want to bury any of us --- or anything that has happened to any of us. God wants to use every- thing to raise up in us new life --- to lead all of us on the path to recovery and wholeness.
We think "detachment" --- we hear this Gospel and think "detachment" means losing everything, and so we make all sorts of excuses not to really engage the text. {Well, you know, it was a mild climate --- they really didn't need as many coats as I have. Or, everyone just wore sandals then --- Gucci didn't even exist! Everyone was poor, so it didn't matter. People back then didn't need as much.} We think "detachment" means leaving everything behind; it doesn't. It's not even clear to me that that is what Mark is really saying the disciples did --- because just a few verse following our story tonight, Simon Peter will take Jesus home --- *Hello! Simon had a house; he takes Jesus home for dinner. Read it --- chapter 1, verse 29. The point is not so much what we have or don't have, but what "hooks" us, and whether we are able to break with that or not.
"Follow me and I will make you fishers of humanity" is a metaphor taken from the prophets --- from Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Amos --- that has been grossly misunderstood. Mostly people take it to mean "there are souls to rescue, there are souls to save", as the old evangelical hymn says. But the prophets are using it to talk about what hooks us/snags us --- and in a sense, to call us to switch hooks, from something that harms us to something that helps us. They use it to talk about ending the systems and structures around us that favor some lives and disfavor others. They use it to talk about the universality of God's love --- something Jonah is having a real hard time coming to terms with.
"Detachment", the spiritual masters say is about letting go of the things that make it hard for us to learn to love the way God loves --- and to learn to be loved ourselves in that way. It's about letting go of the things that make it hard fo rus to learn to love the way God loves and to be loved that way.
Jonah knew how things were supposed to be --- bad people meet bad ends; good people --- or at least people not as bad as the Ninevites --- and there's his first mistake! The standard of judgment is not anyone's behavior, but God's unconditional love --- that's what all of us are measuring up against, if you will. --- Johan knew how things were supposed to be, and so did the disciples. They were supposed to grow up and follow in their fathers' footsteps --- be chips off the old block -- but that doesn't necessarily help us --- old patterns, old ways of relating don't always help us love or be loved in healthy, healing ways.
I can think of a lot of examples for myself. --- And right now, you should not be sitting there wondering what my examples are, but perculating yourselves about what yours are. --- I think about how my father treated my mother, for example --- among other things, as a child. She was never allowed/never capable of making any decisions for herself or anyone else. She could make no choices about anything. --- If I was to follow that pattern with Ms. Gibney, I'd have to talk about things that really don't belong in a sermon. --- Jesus is calling people to break with old relational patterns. It's not so much about owning nothing/leaving all our possessions behind, as it is connecting to the world, to God, to other people, to ourselves in a new, more life-giving way.
Recovery, I think, is fundamentally about letting go of the things that block the movement and growth of love in our lives. Judgment does that --- it traps us in what is wrong; it traps the people we judge in what is wrong --- and then there's no way out, because people can never really wipe the slate clean.
They can't do that in Palestine. They can't do that in Israel --- or any of the world's war-torn areas, where people fight to the death because of what one race did to another; what one sect or creed did to another --- no atrocity can ever wipe the slate clean --- who hurt who, when and how many times. We can never even things out or wipe the slate clean.
Right now, a young woman --- I hope she's not dead yet; I haven't seen the Times today --- Jill Carroll --- she's a report for the Christian Science Monitor in Iraq (*Have you read about her?) --- just 22 years old. She sits kidnapped/threatened with execution. Why? Because our government is hold Iraqui women and children prisoners. If we let them go, they will let her go. Otherwise.......... For God's sake, let them all go. "Fishers of Humanity" is a call to let everyone off the judgment hook/off the condemnation hood and re-align on the God is slow to anger and rich in compassion line.
I hope we all get it by now: There's no way that people as individuals/people as nations or groups can pay for what we or anyone else has ever done wrong. That makes a mockery of both the mercy of God and the power of the cross --- a stumbling block to some, Paul will write; utter foolishness to others (I Cor. I), but to those who believe (Rom. 1) the power of salvation --- of freedom --- of recovery.
We can't make anyone pay for anything --- even God had a change of heart about that according to Jonah. All we can ever do is take that fearless moral inventory, the "Steps" preach. All we can ever do is face the truth that all of us fall short of the goodness of God. That's the only truth that ever sets any of us free.
Ray Nagin ---*do you know who he is? he's the mayor of New Orleans, right? --- made a fool of himself this past week saying GOD sent the hurricanes to punish America. --- Didn't you find yourself asking: Why then are the people who took the worst beating the ones whom we could easily say America has sinned the most grievously against?
If we want to be well as individuals/if we want to be well as a nation, as a world we have to stop saying stupid, hateful, untrue things about God. We have to get rid of all that junk we carry in here*, and start again with learning to know and love and serve the God who is slow to anger, and rich in steadfast love and tenderness.
We can't be trying to beat "repentance" out of gay men in Iran, threatening to hang them if they ever so much as think about having sex or entering a chat room, as is happening all across that land right now.
It's what's been happening for years in the Sudan, people of one faith /one tradition in the North trying to force conformity on people of varying traditions and ethnicities in the South.
Isn't that what we're doing in Iraq? Do not tell me anymore --- I am so tired of picking up the paper and seeing on the front page Karl Rove strategizing how to make us believe again we are fighting terrorism or making the world safe for democracy. I've got a hot flash for you: The Reign of God is not a democracy. It's not about majority rule; it's about God rules --- the Holy Spirit rules. It is that way of life that makes room for everyone at the table, the good and the bad alike; the generous and the greedy alike; the pure at heart and the demon-possessed --- believing that it is possible for all of us to change.
That, in the end, may be the most God-like thing about us. --- In what I think is possibly the most singularly spectacular verse in the Bible, Jonah chapter 3, verse 10 says literally: God repented --- GOD repented of the evil God had intended against the Ninevites. God had a change of heart...which gives me hope for those of us created in God's image.
You know, they say people get addicted to things --- to drugs, to alcohol, to sex, to work --- even to ways of thinking, as the Right has in this country --- *and now, I'm setting aside for a moment, the genetic/physiological question, and looking more at the spiritual and emotional component --- they say people trying to avoid dealing with pain and suffering of some kind, sometimes get addicted --- that addictions are ways we avoid what we don't want to face. We run away, the way Jonah did.
But here's the truth: All running, all numbing out, all getting high and crashing and getting high and crashing again ever does is impede the growth of our spirits. --- Suffering isn't something that happens to us because we're bad or God is punishing us. It is simply (Coombs & Nemeck) the price paid for progress, for trying to move through this world toward God. --- If you want to follow me, you must take up your cross, is the way Jesus put it.
You want to get out of your rut? Stop trying to avoid whatever it is you don't want to deal with tonight --- and everyone's got something.
Don't bother beating your breast (*mea culpa, * mea culpa) --- don't waste your time feeling guilty or ashamed, or trying to punish other people --- either way, we shove God out of the place only God should hold in anyone's life --- judgment belongs to God alone, the Scriptures say. "True religion," says Eugene Kennedy, "never adds pain where pain already overflows."
How to start over again, that's our question tonight....There are plenty of examples of people out there*/people all over the world doing it.
The European Parliament this week said member nations must make a clean break with the homophobia of the past and treat Queer people equally. They're just reworking this whold thing about what it means for us to live together in this world. They're changing course. It's "metanoia", what that Greek word we translate as repentance means.
Maine became the last state in the Northeast to enact a Queer rights law this week. They changed direction. --- Illinois became the 16th state to ban discrimination based not only on sexual orientation but on gender identity. And Spain just scrapped everything it had ever held to in terms of immigration policy and said people can immigrate there based on oppression due to sexual orientation or the way we perform our genders.
And maybe here*, on a much more personal level, people here* found a way to change a little...to begin again...to start over, simply by taking one step/one day at a time. --- Jesus seems to say in Mark's Gospel, the first step is simply letting go of what's hookd us for so long, and making ourselves available to follow God's lead. --- I guess in a way, that's what others call the "3rd step": We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
The most helpful thing anyone can ever understand about God is that God is love. The most healing thing anyone will ever do is let themselves be found by that love --- and led by it.
"Love makes the wounded spirit whole, and calms the troubled breast --- 'tis manna to the hungry soul and to the weary rest."
And that, I think, is the kind of Good News that can recover us all.
Amen.
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