B
Epiphany 3 BFC 2018
Job 12:7-10; Jonah 1:4-5, 14-17
January 21, 2018
You may
remember that this past fall I preached a “Responses to the Religious Right”
sermon series. In that series, I
suggested that we should engage friends and relatives from the religious right
with short, strong statements that defined our most strongly held convictions,
statements that could also open up to a deeper, wider complexity and
understanding. For example, I used,
“Love God. Love neighbor.” Jesus summarized The Law or the Ten
Commandments this way. It is
simple. It orients us in the
universe. It explains away so much of
the hate, judgment, and shame that has been attached like a barnacle to the
bottom of the religious food chain.
“Yeah, I hear what you’re saying about immigrants and refugees, the
LGBTQ community, and people not like you.
But love God, love neighbor. No.
Love God. Love neighbor. Jesus said that. Sooooo . . .”
In ongoing conversation with someone after worship that day, I shared
what I regularly offer to my friends from the Religious Right who believe that
I am a wayward child in need of some good discipline.
I say, “Jesus said that the only sign
I will give this evil and adulterous generation is the sign of Jonah. And Jonah is about sending a self-righteous
prophet to the very people he considered his enemies, to save them. He objects to God’s love so vast. He runs away from a love so wide. He repents.
But then when God actually saves his repentant enemies, he shows himself
to be angry again at a God who would have a love that provides arbitrary
kindness and mercy. So dear religious
right friend, when I hear you talk about your morality and the need to draw
boundaries, build walls, short sheet beds, and have smaller tables, you sound
much like Jonah and not the God who saved Jonah’s enemies. And the really cool, crazy thing about this
God? God loves Jonah all the way to the
end. So you, friend of mine, regardless
of judgment, seem to be embraced by this vast, wide, and broad love of God
too.”
I was spitballing with a clergy
colleague about how we might raise money for our conference church camp, Camp
Mimanagish, and I said, “Hey, I’ve written this Jonah play that the youth of
our conference could go from church to church performing and raising money for
Camp Mimanagish.” She seemed very
excited about the prospect. I have yet
to hear back. Sometimes, I think I have
a warped and overly ambitious perspective about what churches can do.
Why would I think a play about Jonah
make the perfect fundraiser for Camp Mimanagish? Because the book of Jonah is a story about
creation saving the day, as opposed to the activity of the human prophet. God uses creation to provide grace and mercy,
to teach the moral of the story. The
human prophet, the expected vehicle and messenger of God, runs away, is caught
sleeping on the job, and is opposed to the saving mercy and grace of God.
Today is Ecumenical Sunday. One of the ancient symbols for the ecumenical
Christian Church was the boat on the sea, presumably referencing the story of
Noah and the ark in Hebrew Scripture, Jesus with the disciples on the sea in
the gospels. At times of great
persecution against Christianity, the boat could be used to provide a hidden
symbol of the faith as the mast in most depictions was in the form of a
cross. In the story of Jonah and the big
fish, salvation, however, is not found on the boat. God uses those parts of creation which were
thought to be outside divine mercy and care.
The sea, mythologically the place outside God’s created order, the place
of primordial chaos, stirs up the boat at God’s bidding and moves the boat crew
to throw Jonah overboard. The sea
monster, the Leviathan, the creature which God opposes and defeats throughout
Scripture, is used by God to deliver Jonah to the great city of Nineveh. And finally, the sun, the wind, the worm, and
the plant, used by God as a metaphor for divine judgment and mercy, are all
about how God is active and working and seeking to extend the good and the very
good to all of creation.
What we have learned is that the sign
of Jonah has become a minority tradition within the Judeo-Christian myth. Even some of the best theologians in that
majority tradition reference creation as an end to a means, as a resource only
valuable as to how humanity may be supported or sustained by it. I believe we need to own that poor theology
within our tradition and bend toward the Native tradition and mythology, a
tradition and mythology embodied by St. Francis of Assisi who understood all of
creation as an end unto itself, as his own brother, sister, sibling, or
cousin. We are all relatives. And the only sign this evil and adulterous generation
shall receive is the sign of Jonah.
God’s love is more vast, wider, and broader than humankind has
imagined. The sea, the sea monster, the
sun, the wind, the worm, and the plant are alive with God’s judgment, grace,
and mercy.
As people of faith, creation calls us
to repentance as creation helped Jonah to do.
Many of you already do that conscientiously with your personal lives,
live it through the public work and advocacy you do through your jobs and
vocations, and make it real through the ways you establish relationships
through your interactions with God’s good earth. My recommendation is that we find a way to
make it real through committed consensus within our church to become earth
protectors. Within the United Church of
Christ, one of the ways we could do that is by becoming a Creation Justice
church.
We become a Creation Justice church,
as the commercials always say, in six easy steps. First, we create or designate a group which
will be our driving force, a sort of a green team. Because I know the UCC Minister for
Environmental Justice, Brooks Berndt, he seems to like me and I’ve done him a
favor, we could even invite Brooks out to speak to our community and help us
get started. Second, we discern and
implement ways to “go green.” We do that
through our regular education, theology, and worship. We do that through our regular institutional
life and practice. We ask ourselves how
we do this through our everyday life as a congregation and how we use our
building and land to be in loving and just relationship with this very good
creation. We “go green” through circles
of awareness and advocacy and connecting with the broader movement—like
supporting the 21 young people who are suing the federal government.
The third step is to draft a
Creation Justice covenant. Faith people
are intentional people. We find ways to
hold ourselves accountable, hold each other accountable, and from that covenant
comes a grit and determination to make our wider world accountable for God’s
vast, wide, and broad love. The fourth
step toward becoming a Creation Justice Church is adopting the covenant and
becoming that Creation Justice Church.
Step 5 is submitting our application to the national United Church of
Christ and, then, finally, for step 6, we keep on, keeping on and evaluate our
progress.[1] I think some of being a Creation Justice
Church is already a part of our DNA so this seems like a no-brainer. But I think it is time for what is part of
our DNA to become a movement we use to transform all of Billings, Yellowstone
County, and the wider world.
As you all can probably imagine, I
have ideas, cool and rockin’ ideas, by which we make being a Creation Justice
Church a reality. With all the
incredible people in this church who already do so much practice and work
around care for the earth and climate change, we could move this church from
cool and rockin’ ideas to a cool and rockin’ place and movement.
The story of Jonah reminds us that
God’s love and reach is far beyond what God’s self-righteous messengers often
believe. What would it mean to have a
church that set out to make that real in the world, in a world with seas, sea
monsters, sunlight, wind, worms, and plants?
What would it mean to have a people who not only did that individually,
but collectively and intentionally, decided they would become the forum and
leader to transform practice and policy so that our children and grandchildren
might not experience the absolutely worst, cataclysmic effects of climate
change. A church like that, a place like
that, might be one of our few hopes to reverse or stem the most certain changes
coming. We pray then that God’s grace
and mercy is far greater than we imagined as we join hands with God in covenant
found in the river, buffalo, sunlight, wind, worms, bitterroot, and sunflower
that grows tall and provides shade to let us know in relationship that we are
all relatives. Amen.
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