Not set in stone: Hearts softened by grace

Third Sunday after Epiphany● January 21, 2024

Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 

Rev. Alexis Lillie © 2024

You can view the full worship video recording at:

https://youtu.be/HiID1YypPT4?feature=shared

In our meetings to kick off the year, many of you have already heard me talk about existing in spaces of uncertainty, and feeling that in a variety of ways heading into this new year. I guess in some sense, this is always true. That whatever sense of certainty or control we have is an illusion. We know this in our heads, but that doesn’t diminish that certainly there are times in our lives that lend themselves to particular feelings of uncertainty.

The Corinthian text frames it as “the present form of this word” – things as we know and maybe expect them to be – passing away. And this passing away – while uncertain and sometimes painful – is necessary for what comes next.

As we've considered our series this month, about beginning again, experiencing the cycles of life, I want to offer another way to reflect on this. A way that is not so much about the inevitability of returning to familiar points or struggles or opportunities for growth, over and over -- though that is part of it! But a framework for how grace can be found in these cycles of unknown, in the unexpected.

The text from Corinthians was written to a community that assumed Christ's return was eminent, but – even in spite of its provocative language – I don't think it's a directive to burn it all down! I don’t think it’s meant to be taken literally. It’s not calling people to live like you're not married, even though you've made an agreement with your spouse! Or to put on a happy face even if you're sad. Or forget about responsibilities you have.

I want to suggest it's intended to be shocking, and maybe even confusing, in order to jar the early readers, and us today, out of complacency. Out of our stasis or routine way of doing things, and to move us into curiosity about the unexpected.  It’s an invitation to think: What ways of being are so set-in-stone for me, that they could stand to "pass away"? That they might benefit from a complete 180? From doing something unknown, something totally new! Something I haven't "cycled through" before.

As we turn to the Jonah's story, we find it is full of this softening into grace that can come with the unexpected. It happens on a few different planes, so we're going to look at those. But first let's set up the context.

You really have to back up a bit from this snapshot of Jonah’s story to get the full effect. We’re told in this passage, that this is the "second time" the word of the Lord can to Jonah. You might also be familiar with the first time; it has to do with his experience in a big fish! At the beginning of the story, God calls Jonah to this same mission, Jonah runs away, and gets on a ship. Things go badly on the ship so the sailors throw him overboard, at which point he’s swallowed by a fish, and spends a couple days in there before he repents and is thrown up on shore.

That’s where we find him now. So he’s called again, a second time. He's returning to this call! (Not to something new in this instance!)

But what is new – in terms of Israelite prophets – is that he is called to a non-Israelite community. Specifically, he’s called to preach to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire which is one of the conquering forces responsible for Israel’s fall and Judah’s captivity

You'd think, in a twisted kind of way, he would love to preach destruction to non-Israelites! And yet he argues with God. He knows God's spirit is slow to anger. I think he suspected God would be too merciful for his tastes! Jonah doesn't want to go because he doesn't want the Ninevites to be warned and potentially spared!

So he phones it in! We’re told Nineveh is a three days’ walk across, but Jonah stops after one day. He barely makes it a third of the way before he calls it quits. The irony of Jonah's story is, he's basically the only successful prophet in recorded Hebrew scriptures! He's "successful" as a prophet because the people of Nineveh repent. Immediately.

And we don't read about it here, but further on in the story we find out, Jonah is mad about this success! He’s mad because what he thought would happen (God extending unexpected grace), happens. Jonah is angry at God for the very attributes that have been beneficial to Israel in their own cycle of grace, and return.

Let's take a look at this manifestation of grace that comes with the unexpected in Nineveh. In spite of Jonah's reluctance, and then the bad job he does at warning the city, word spreads, and the Ninevites take things seriously. They have 40 days to repent, but -- unlike Jonah -- they listen to God right away. And unlike so many times in the prophetic books of the Hebrew scriptures where the people – and usually the Israelite people – refuse to repent, this nation (who has invaded Israel and conquered Judah) does something different.

At least for this story, they let their present ways – of oppression, war, and suffering – pass away. They soften a bit into something new and unexpected that is happening. And God takes note.

When God saw how the people of Nineveh turned from their ways, God also turned from what God had planned. Some translations phrase it this way: "God changes God's mind.” I hung onto these words, somewhat subconsciously I think, through my years of fundamentalism. They intrigued me. Something was speaking to me, calling to me from this statement. An allusion to the idea that within God in Godself,  there is an accounting for grace, for disruption of the status quo, for change, fluidity. The vastness of this Divine presence among us accounts for things within God's very nature that might need to pass away. To soften. To try something new and make room for the unexpected grace that is to come.

Now, I do want to note what some of you may have already been pondering. Yes, the Assyrians soften and do something unexpected by repenting. God lets God's initial plan "pass away" and does something unexpected. Unexpected perhaps, based on their declarations or past behavior, but not totally unexpected to Jonah. That's the whole reason he was upset in the first place! Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh because he thought the Ninevites might repent, and he suspected God would change God's mind. Jonah expected the unexpected. And there's a grace in that too, isn't there. Perhaps it's a grace Jonah can't fully comprehend or embrace, but his insight into what eventually happens takes me back to how I opened our time together.

It's all unknown. Some life phases may feel deeper into uncertainty, but -- in a sense -- we should always be expecting the unexpected. This is not to diminish the ways life repeats itself, and the reality that we often struggle with different manifestations of the same shadows, repeatedly through our lives.

 Our Corinthian text today offers some jarring thought experiments in how to let the "present form", our usual way of doing things, pass away. And Jonah's story offers a literary framework for how trying something new, embracing the unexpected, softening our hearts, can be a conduit for grace.

So, the cycle of grace isn't necessarily a perfect circle: returning to the same exact place over and over. But more like concentric circles that touch familiar places, drawing us ever forward, as "present forms" pass away and we expand into the grace, the possibility of the unknown.

Copyright (c) 2024 - Rev. Alexis Lillie
All rights reserved.