While not Ecologically oriented I thought I would share a mini-sermon I wrote and preached for an assignment for my Preaching and Public Voice Class a few weeks ago.
Hope you enjoy it!
Transcript:
I think it would be fair to say that many of us have a fraught relationship with scripture. We don't have to flip very far in any direction to encounter depictions of divinity that disturb and unsettle us. These “texts of terror”, to borrow the language of Phyllis Tribble, often elicit reactions of disgust and dismay in the face of a slew of paradoxical depictions of God as the waters of scripture leave us feeling storm tossed, and sea sick. Fundamentalist accept these texts fully in all their so-called terrible glory, while progressives of various stripes are taught to explain them away.
When making maps of the old world, you know before white europeans discovered that there were two whole other continents brimming with people and cultures, Ancient cartographers would depict monstrous images of dragons and sea serpents on the peripherals of their maps, often accompanied by the phrase “Beware! Here there be monsters.” This designation was given to the obscure places on these maps to show sailors that these areas were completely unknown, and what awaited them in these uncharted waters was danger. These were deep waters, full of terrible creatures, that must be avoided at all cost. Like these ancient maps we use hermeneutical markers to help us navigate the unknown and dangerous waters of our sacred texts. Here, among the poems, prophecies, and myths of scripture lurks monstrous depictions of divinity that we have learned to at worst avoid entirely, and at best gesture vaguely at the danger that swarms just beneath the surface of the page.
While it is easy to not venture into these depths, I believe the text of Jonah invites us into these waters in a way that can lead to genuine transformation. I don’t know about you, but I am like Jonah more often than not. I got no desire to go to Nineveh, and why should I? Why would anyone want to go to a place that was likely a source of great pain in our lives? Why would we want to go to the people who have hurt us? Why would we care to wade into the waters of texts that have been wielded as weapons of oppression and harm? I would like to say it's because I think these texts, like the people of Ninveah, are beyond redemption, but unlike Jonah I don’t usually have a hard time delivering words of judgment or condemnation.
The curious thing about this whole text is that God tells Jonah to go and cry out against the people of Nineveh, to condemn them in their wickedness, and he doesn't want to do it. At first it seems that Jonah hates the people of Ninveah so much that he doesn't even want to waste his breath condemning them, but when we listen it almost seems like Jonah knows there is something else going on in this situation. The deep in God calls out to the deep in Jonah and he runs away only to get cast into the depths of the ocean, swallowed whole by a sea monster, and thrown back up on the shores of Nineveh to at last deliver the terrible news of their coming destruction.
And What do they do when they hear Jonah's reluctant proclamation of impending doom? They repent in sackcloth and ashes and this man is, for lack of a better word, is pissed! He is inconsolable, and he tells us exactly why. Jonah avoided coming to speak words of terror because deep down he knew that it was all a divine ruse. Angrily Jonah yells at God, quoting God’s own self-disclosure to the prophet Moses in Exodus 34, “I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and and that you will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” But wait… that is not quite what Jonah said is it? I can’t help but imagine that Jonah grew up his whole life hearing this scripture, being told that God is somehow both merciful and unwilling to clear the guilty… but Jonah knows better. The deep in Jonah calls back out to the deep in God saying “My whole life I was told you would hold the guilty accountable… but I knew you would relent from punishment and that is why I did not want to come.” In the life of Jonah a text of terror becomes a text of terrible unrelenting love, as the God who we are told holds generations guilty for the sins of their Fathers, is revealed to be a God who relents from punishing the people we are convinced deserve it.
While, Jonah may not itself be a text of terror, it is an invitation into these uncharted depths of a grace and mercy capable of transforming, not only the way we engage scripture, but even the people whom we believe are beyond redemption. The question remains, will we continue to explain away these texts of terror that we find littered throughout scripture, and avoid the people of Nineveh in our lives, or will we, like Jonah, allow ourselves to be transformed in the dangerous depths of God's love?
Here there be monsters Beloved, but how much more of a terrible thing it is to fall into the hands of a loving God.
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