Forty more days and Ninevah will be destroyed. Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed. (Sit on step) That was it! About the worst preached sermon ever. If you think the power of a sermon depends on the preacher – this tells you that any sermon that is effective is because of the work of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Jonah didn’t want the sermon to have an impact. Even though Jonah was given a second chance, when the whale spit him out, he didn’t want to give the Ninevites a second chance. Jonah wanted Nineveh to be destroyed! He didn’t like Ninevites.
In our Bible study, I asked “Who are the Ninevites in our society today?” Who are the people in our society who we don’t like, don’t trust, or who are shunned, categorized, stereo-typed and given negative labels. It didn’t take long to get a list – addicts, convicts, homosexuals, terrorists, Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, the homeless, Iraqi’s the mentally ill, and we could probably go on. We might argue about particular groups or categories, but I think it would be fair to say that there are attitudes about and stereo-typed images of these groups that would create negative reactions from many in our society, including church members.
Most of the time we are not as obvious in our concern and distaste as Jonah was. We try to mask our attitudes and be open and gracious, but there is a level of discomfort, an edge of anxiety, an avoidance of contact, and other unmistakable signs of our true attitudes. Presidents, popes and Christian evangelists have been embarrassed by remarks made about Ninevite groups when they did not know a microphone was on. And, I suspect most of us have made our share of comments, remarks or jokes about one category or another of Ninevites.
So the first question you have to ask is – what does God see in the Ninevites that we don’t see? After all, God wanted to give the Ninevites a second chance. He is the one who sent Jonah to make the proclamation. So God must think there is something worth saving in the Ninevites, he must see something we can’t see. And that is even more apparent when we see the response of the Ninevites to Jonah’s uninspiring sermon.
Most of us would regard Jonah as a kook, or at the very least a curiosity. His message is about God’s judgment to people who don’t worship Jonah’s God. It is not like a Billy Graham crusade, but instead an uninspiring sermon without passion or imagination, there is no back-up music groups or glamorous stars – and yet they respond by the thousands, even the king takes it seriously and proclaims a national fast. That response is the big surprise.
One of the remarkable themes in the Bible is how outsiders -- those who apparently are ignorant about God or unconcerned about God -- respond to God’s grace. Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one – the Samaritan returned to give thanks. The rich young man, a devout follower of Jesus, could not give up his wealth, but Zaccheus, the despised tax collector, an outsider, responded to Jesus’ gracious acceptance of him and gave half of all he had to the poor. The woman with the bad reputation anointed Jesus’ feet, while his host, a respected Pharisee had ignored the traditional gesture of hospitality of washing a guest’s feet. And even earlier in Jonah, it was the sailors, those coarse old men of the sea, whose response of piety, practicality and humane concern, was so surprising!
You know it reminds me of a story that Tony Campolo has told. Tony was in Honolulu to speak at a conference. The time change meant that when it was 3:30 a.m. there, it felt like 9:30 p.m. here. So he’s wide awake and hungry, walking along the street and finds a little “greasy spoon” that’s open all night. He goes in, sits at the counter and when the guy asks what he wants, he says “A cup of coffee and a donut,” and as he brings the coffee, without using tongs or some wax paper, he just grabs a donut with his hand and puts both in front of Tony.
A few minutes later, the door swings open and in come 8 or 9 provocative, boisterous prostitutes. The place was pretty small and so they were sitting on both sides of Tony. Their talk was loud and crude and he was feeling pretty uncomfortable and about to get up and leave when he heard one of the women say to the others, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”
“So whatdaya want us to do,” one of the others said, “throw you a party and sing happy birthday?” “No,” said the other woman, “I wasn’t asking you for anything, why do you have to put me down like that. I’ve never had a party in my life, so why would I expect you to give me a party. Just forget it.” And they began to talk about other stuff.
Tony waited until they left, then he said to the guy behind the counter – “Do they come in here every night?” “Yeah” “The one who was next to me – she comes in every night?” “Yeah, that’s Agnes, why?” “Because I heard her say it’s her birthday tomorrow – How about if we throw her a birthday party right here, tomorrow night?” The guy’s face lights up and he says, “That’s a great idea – she’s really nice and nobody ever does anything nice for her.”
So the next night Tony brings all kinds of decorations and the diner guy had baked a cake and somehow word must have gotten out about it, because by 3:15 a.m. it seemed that every prostitute in Honolulu was in that diner – and Tony. At 3:30 the door swings open and in comes Agnes and her friends and everyone shouts “Happy Birthday!” And Agnes’ mouth just drops open and she almost faints. And then when everyone sings Happy Birthday and they bring out the cake with all the candles, she just begins to cry. Then Harry, the diner guy, says “Come on, cut the cake, Agnes, we all want some cake.”
But Agnes said, “Is it okay if we don’t eat it right away, is it okay if I keep it a little while – could I take it home – I just live a little ways down the street and I’ll be right back, honest.” “Sure,” Harry said, “sure, you can take it home if you want, Agnes.” And holding it like it was the Holy Grail, Agnes walked slowly toward the door. And everyone was just quiet and stood there motionless. And Tony, not knowing what else to do, said, “What do you say we pray?”
Looking back, Tony said it seemed like a strange thing to say, but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. And when he finished the prayer, Harry, without a hint of hostility or sarcasm said to him, “Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?” And Tony said, it was one of those moments when the right words just came to me, and I said “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”
“No you don’t,” said Harry, there’s no church like that. If there was, I’d join it!”
It’s a great story and we all can laugh and feel good about it. But while the response of outsiders like Agnes to God’s grace is often surprising, the response of insiders is not always as positive. If Tony had moved from the diner to a church and suggested initiating a ministry to prostitutes, the reaction might have been quite different.
Like the article I read in The Philadelphia Inquirer on August 6. In part it was a story about Lorna. She’s a Ninevite, though she may not fit your image of one. She is a petite day care worker with a daughter in college and a second at the Masterman magnet school for the academically talented. For the past 14 months she’s been homeless. She lost her Roxborough apartment when the landlord had to raise the rent to the market rate of $850 a month, too much on her $22,000 a year income. And so she has shuttled from place to place, living in shelters and sometimes even having former students deliver meals to the shelters she is in and seeing her.
Christ Ascension Lutheran Church in Chestnut Hill wanted to use their parsonage to provide a group home that Lorna and other homeless families could use as a part of the Interfaith Hospitality Network. As they presented the idea at a meeting of area residents, the residents made it clear that they don’t want homeless families on their street. These are nice people, good people, people like you and me many of whom go to church themselves. But suddenly a social issue became personal. “Our house is our only investment,” one woman said, “allowing the homeless to move into the block would be like writing a check for $100,000.” Rachel Falkove who is the executive director of the Northwest Philadelphia Hospitality Network says she won’t blame the Chestnut Hill families for their reaction. She says “they don’t know our program and they have never met Lorna or our families, so all they are left with are stereotypes and fear.”
The church is at its best and most faithful, when it battles stereotypes and fears and brings the good news of God’s grace to the outsiders of society so that they might know they are insiders in the Kingdom of God. Who cares – God cares, Jesus cares, and therefore the church must care. We are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. But, sometimes, such actions bring reactions and even rejection – even as Jonah reacted to God’s grace to the Ninevites. So next week, we look at how we can overcome the Jonah Syndrome.