The sermon text is below the sermon video. Today’s sermon is about the prophet Jonah with whom many of us sympathize. We want the Lord to speak to us and, when She/He does, we choose another path. The business of changing one’s mind is not easy but it will often lead to a fuller and freer life.

 

Sermon “Change of Course”. St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Goldsboro NC. Sunday January 24th 2021. The Reverend Alan Neale

Jonah 3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
(Message Translation “God saw what they had done, that they had turned away from their evil lives. He did change his mind about them. What he said he would do to them he did not do.”) The Hebrew word for “relent” suggests taking some very deep breaths!

I have been wondering these past days… how does the God who changes her/his mind comfortably fit into my theology, my image of God. Probably, ad nauseam, I have pestered innocent parishioners with the same question.

On the whole, we tend to like, favor people who are resolute, determined, steadfast.

Long ago I heard of the man who was in a job interview. At one point he was asked, “Do you find it difficult to make decisions?” He thought for a moment and then said, “Well, yes… and no.” He didn’t get the job.

In a sense the hero of our story Jonah (that lovable, irrepressible, incorrigible prophet), Jonah portrays the resolute man par excellence. He is determined not to do the will of God, and he will not change his mind. Jonah 1:1-3 “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah… ‘Go at once to Nineveh and cry out against it’ but, but, but…

Listen to Jonah…

“God asked me to go East… I went west
God told me to go by land… I went by sea
God asked me to live for others… I made choices for myself only
God asked me to go to Nineveh (part of Iraq)… I set out for Tarshish (Southern Spain)

My goodness, here is a man absolutely resolute in his decision to avoid, evade, escape the call of God.

But the time comes when Jonah changes his mind, does a complete about-turn, makes a 180-degree maneuver.

His life experiences of the presence, the power, the mercy of God enabled and empowered him to change his mind.

It seems there is something almost, if not actually, divine to have the capacity to relent, to change one’s mind – the alternative may indeed lead to death and destruction.

The addict who remains resolute that she/he is not powerless, that their lives are not unmanageable… that person treads firmly towards destruction.

The one who is convinced that their friend has betrayed them and can never be forgiven… that person treads firmly towards destruction.

The church that adamantly maintains a cool and wary attitude to visitors… that church treads firmly toward destruction.

And the nation that will not relent and repent for its treatment of the least, the lost, the left out, the looked over and the left behind… that nation treads firmly towards destruction.
Now, the destruction will not be sudden but it will inexorably have its effect as gradual decay and rot becomes the almost invisible process de rigueur.

Of course, like most profound things in life, the inclination towards life and wholeness, well-being and soundness is gradual with hesitant steps.

I believe, for now, that Jonah’s greatest fear was not Nineveh and how he would be likely impaled for such an awful message.

I believe that, despite his race (for the Israelites were not a sea-going people), Jonah’s greatest fear was not the
Sea… remember he slept on while the sailors shouted and screamed in terror.

Thrown into the sea, and unlikely unable to swim, Jonah still did not fear; it seems he was almost indifferent about living or dying.

No, I believe he feared “the mercy of the Lord”; yes, how very strange. Why even engage in this prophetic mission when the Lord’s mercy would almost definitely have the final word. Maybe sometimes we too “fear God’s kindness”… but that’s for another time.

So, Jonah obeys! This time when the Lord commands the next word is not “but” but is “SO”… “so Jonah set out (3:2). The Lord relents… Nineveh (and all its inhabitants “even many animals” Jonah 4:11) is saved. End of story… well, not quite! Jonah is furious, he did not get to watch a free fireworks display of gross proportions. This business of relenting is a process, sometimes we relapse and, hopefully, more often we recover.

I want to reflect, and I urge you to reflect also, is there an attitude, a grudge, a bitterness from which you will not relent, change your mind. The omnipotent mercy of the Lord is on hand to make anything possible. Jephthah obstinately held on to his vow… and his daughter died. Herodias obdurately held on to his vow and John Baptist was decapitated.

I finish with a story… I believe it to be a true story!

When he was 40, the renowned Bohemian novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married, was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll.
She and Kafka looked for the doll without success. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again. The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll.
Letter said, “Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I’m going to write to you about my adventures.”
Thus began a story that continued till the end of Kafka’s life.
When they would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures.
Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased. “This does not look like my doll at all,” she said.
Kafka handed her another letter that explained, “My trips, they have changed me.”
The girl hugged the new doll & took it home.

Please God, may “our trips, our life experiences” not leave us unchanged, impervious to the mercy of the Lord.

Oh by the way… A year later, Kafka died. Many years later, the girl found a letter in the inner pocket of the doll’s dress.
The tiny letter, said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”

Please God, let “love return in different ways” to our hearts and lives.

AMEN