May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing unto you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer...Amen.
Today we are continuing our Advent series of sermons on ‘Is Your God too Safe?
Following on from Michelle’s sermon last week – ‘How Dangerous is God’s Love?’ our topic today is ‘Are we Too Comfortable?’
If we go back to the days of the Wild West, we find all the fabled stories of cowboys who were all really good horse riders – very comfortable in their saddles and skilled in controlling their horses. We also find that there was a practice of sometimes placing a burr (which is a very prickly seed) under the saddle blanket on the horse and when the rider mounted the horse and sat down on his comfortable saddle the horse objected and could really jerk the rider out of his comfort zone.
In a roundabout way this brings us to the theme of today’s sermon – ‘are we too comfortable in our relationship with our God?’ or do we perhaps need a burr under our saddles? Do we really take time to listen to what God may be saying to us in terms of what He would like us to do...?
To take a somewhat extreme example from Scripture we have the story of Jonah and the whale – Jonah was a Hebrew prophet from the 8th century BC and he was probably pretty happy with his lot – one could almost say that he was comfortable with his religion and with God.
Just East of Israel was Assyria and, as we know, the Assyrians were a really ruthless, violent tribe – to quote Lord Byron –‘ they came down like a wolf on the fold’ as they attacked people. They were extremely cruel to their enemies. Their capital city was Nineveh – the epicentre of their evil.
Imagine how Jonah felt when... ‘The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’
This was a bad place. Many of Jonah's countrymen had experienced the atrocities of these ungodly people.
It was also a long and gruelling journey to get there. So what does he do? He flees...not from the task but from God.
‘But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish’ in Spain – as far away as he could go.
He was not so worried about how to accomplish the task – if that was the case he would have been in good company: Moses, Naomi, Samuel Hosea, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Jesus – all of whom were asked by God to do things they’d rather not do – but each of their disagreements with God was an expression of their intimacy with Him and they obeyed.
Jonah wasn’t part of this group – he was in the company of the God evaders – starting with Adam and Eve and followed by Cain, the Herods, the prodigal son ...and continuing up to the present day.
Every day people still use religion and irreligion and whatever excuse they can think of to avoid an encounter with the living God.
Jonah was part of this group....
To quote from Mark Buchanan’s book ‘Is Your God too Safe?’
‘He runs away from the Lord. Of course, he doesn’t get far. That story is well known: a wild storm, a near drowning, a big fish, a desperate prayer, a spewing up, a starting from the beginning. Jonah lands rump up and rumpled, reeking, on a beach somewhere, glazed with fish bile, marinated in whale innards.’
One might say that that was a whale of a burr under his saddle!
‘Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.’ ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned’.
So, this time, he obeys the Lord, he travels to Nineveh and proclaims the message of impending doom...perhaps hoping that the hated Assyrians will not obey and that Nineveh will be destroyed.
But judgement doesn’t come, not suddenly, not belatedly, not at all.
For God had embedded a promise in his message of doom – the Hebrew word he gave to Jonah for ‘overturned’ was ‘haphak’ – which has a subtle ambiguity as it can also mean ‘turned around’ or ‘transformed’.
Mercy falls – the Ninevites have believed the message from God, they turn and they repent. God relents. Jonah is not happy with this outcome but, by listening to God he has, in effect, saved the lives of more than 120 000 people...but he is still angry...
This story tells us a number of things about Nineveh: it’s great, it’s wicked. The city is very important and it has essentially lost any moral direction. In the modern world, perhaps to a lesser degree, this could be true of many cities including Johannesburg...
God doesn’t act towards the people of Nineveh according to their wickedness. God has compassion on their moral cluelessness. He sees their importance and he seeks to salvage their greatness and redeem their wickedness. Mercy triumphs over judgement, grace overwhelms vengeance, love trumps fear and evil is overcome by good – and God.
‘But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry and bitter – this was not what he wanted or expected – he wanted the Assyrians destroyed! After all his trials and tribulations to deliver the warning he wanted to see them punished!
...but God had a different agenda and he comes with healing...
In a huff Jonah went out of the city, sat down and waited to see what would happen. The Lord God provided a vine to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort from the sun. ‘and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But then God caused the vine to wither and provided a scorching wind and blazing sun.
Jonah wanted to die and said ‘It would be better for me to die than to live.’
‘but the Lord replied, ‘Have you any right to be angry about the vine?’ You had nothing to do with it. ‘Should I not be concerned about that great city?’
We don’t know what happened after this exchange but there is a similarity in the reaction of the older son to the celebration on the return of the prodigal son...’the older brother became angry and refused to go in...’
So we have two angry sons, both embittered towards their father’s mercy, both pre-occupied with what they have or don’t have, both resenting their father’s careless, boundless affection for I quote from the book ‘riffraff and bad boys and whatever else the cat dragged in’.
As with the case of Jonah we don’t know what happened next – did the older son relent?
The final detail is probably left out so that we can think about it and perhaps reflect on what would we do in each situation?
If God is begging us to join his extravagant initiative of mercy towards a broken world with all its wasteful sons and clueless cities – will we say yes or no?
A thought that possibly crosses our minds at this juncture is: ‘That’s all well and good but what can I, little me, possibly do? There are all these wonderful biblical stories setting great examples but we are talking about now, to-day in Parkhurst, Johannesburg.
Perhaps we should take time during Advent to just relax and listen to what God may be trying to say to us and what he might like us to do – and to do this with an open mind without trying to ring fence our options – we may just get a totally off the wall thought/suggestion about where we could join God’s initiative and move out of our comfort zones...perhaps to step out in faith knowing that the Lord will support us in anything we do...
By way of a small illustration of how possibilities eventuate, here is a short testimony part of which some of you may have heard but which seems to fit into the theme of ‘is our God too safe?’ It’s about how taking that first step can lead to other opportunities to serve our God...it’s a testimony which I was somewhat reluctant to include but it just seemed to be pretty relevant...
Quite a few years back Romy and I were St Martin’s parishioners – and we could probably have been described as comfortable Christians.
At that time there was a youth outreach ministry called Happening in which a team of young people ran a residential ‘Encounter’ type weekend for around twenty or so other young people. Three sets of adult ‘parents’ were also there in a supervisory role. We had heard about this as we had young daughters.
One day, out of the blue, we had a phone call asking us to be ‘parents’ on a week-end. This was absolutely not ‘us’ so we ducked the challenge.
Some months later – another phone call with the same request – same answer – we ducked!
But the Lord is persistent! Some months later – another phone call! This time we reluctantly agreed and we did step out in faith...because we were going into the great unknown...!
In the build up to the week-end we got to know some wonderful young people – the ‘staff’ of the Happening weekend for which we were now committed. The week-end itself was an experience of note – we talk about seeing the Holy Spirit at work changing lives – this was it in reality. To see how many of these young people changed over the course of just a couple of days changed us.
We did more week-ends as parents, we became ‘Head Parents’ and ended up on the main organizing committee = it was a wonderful and rewarding experience.
Then Alpha arrived on the scene – we weren’t involved in the first course – it was just something that was taking place - but then, unexpectedly, together with two other couples, we were asked to take over the running of Alpha at St Martin’s. That was a real challenge for all of us – but we all took the decision to step out in faith and the Lord supported us in the most amazing ways to keep Alpha up and running successfully...
...and that is something to emphasize again – whenever we step out in faith, step out of our comfort zones to do the Lord’s work he will support us every step of the way.
For example, years ago, I would never, in my wildest dreams have imagined that I would be standing here doing what I am doing...’
We must remember that ‘The will of God will never take us to where the grace of God cannot sustain us...’
...and as we approach the Christmas season perhaps we can be Angels of mercy shining light into the darkness of even just one person’s life – random acts of kindness...?
Its worth asking ourselves again – Is our God too safe and are we too comfortable – or, do we need a burr under our saddles?
Amen
Roger Lee
