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The Gift No One Wants
Sermon by Sandra M. Thomas December 9, 2007, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Jonah 3:1-4:5 Mark 1:14-20
It was the 32nd office holiday party Joe had attended. Each one just like the one before--after work, in the company cafeteria “made pretty” by some poinsettias and Christmas lights. The caterers brought in aluminum foil pans full of rice and chicken casserole, green beans freshly poured from 2 pound cans, round yellow rolls, squares of yellow butter, an assortment of cakes and cookies, mass-produced fruitcake slices and frequent visits to the open bar. Jingle Bell Rock played ad nauseam broken only by an occasional twelve stanzas of “On the first day of Christmas”. No one paid any attention. There were waves of laughter and raucous greetings shouted across the room and then - - the gift exchange. The standard $25 gifts, had been numbered and tossed into a pile. His wife always provided him with a wrapped a box of Belgium chocolates to give. Everybody likes chocolate – right? The room grew quiet as the personnel officer paused before calling out numbers – to announce that it had been a good year for the company – so the boss had added his own gift to the drawing. Somewhere in the pile there was a box containing a week’s paid vacation. Excitement rose to a new level – but Joe mumbled to himself “so the company does well and we get a 1 in 58 chance of benefiting from a drawing?” Numbers were called and gifts opened one by one. There was the Eagles ski cap – and the movie tickets; the bottle of wine, the lottery tickets, a playboy calendar….the same old stuff. Old Joe was starting to think he might have a chance at the vacation week. His spirits were picking up. The guy next to him had been hanging on the edge of his seat, mumbling about how much he wanted that vacation time. He jumped up when number 37 was called, grabbed box number 37 and ran back to his seat, ripping off the wrapping paper to find – a box of Belgium chocolates. WHAT?! Who needs chocolates! Angry and disappointed he threw down the box of candy and headed for the bar. Then number 19 was called and the new cleaning lady jumps up and opens her box containing – the week’s vacation. Oh man, thought Joe – of course – vacation for the newest employee who earns $5.15 an hour – and we’ll have to empty our own trash that week. Suddenly his number was being called and a gift was passed his way – it had been wrapped by the manufacturer in red and white stripes with the price tag still glued to the bottom-- A pencil holder – surrounded by a tiny 2008 calendar. So much for the office party. 364 days until they would do it all again. Somebody undeserving would draw a good gift – the rest might as have fruitcake. Jonah, what on earth does he want?! He had just accomplished what no other preacher had before or since. He walked across the large city of Nineveh preaching an eight word sermon (five words in Hebrew)! And the entire town responds to the altar call. Not even Billy Graham can preach eight words and get a 100% response. Old men were tearing their clothes, sobbing with repentance; young men were down on their knees praying out to God for forgiveness, women, children – the king! They included their dogs and cats in praying for forgiveness, their sheep, goats, llamas, and cows were led down the sawdust trail covered with torn garments of repentance. What more could a prophet want? It was such an enormous outpouring of confession that God hears and decides not to shower them with punishment. God forgives and pours out grace and love on them – and they weren’t even Israelites! Jonah throws down his gift and heads for the desert. What he wants, the gift that Jonah truly wants – is to see God punish those pagans, give them their due, -- let the strangers hang strangled by their own foolishness, violence and hatred. That’s the gift he wanted – not this one. Sitting alone, far away from the sounds of “those people” – Jonah pouts. His attitude stinks – but his theology is intact as he says to God “I should have known – I should have known you would be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN you would look for any excuse to avoid sending punishment. There, sitting under a pitiful little vine, Jonah confronts a monster larger than the whale. One cold windy night, a little girl accompanied her mother to the parent-teacher meeting at school. Her mother could not afford a baby-sitter, but this meeting was too important to miss, so the girl quietly tagged along. Her mother wanted to speak to the controversy about whether school breakfasts should be continued. After making her plea for continuing to offer nutritious hot breakfasts, the mother and her little girl sat listening as the debate went on about “those people who think the world owes them a living” and “those people who are too lazy to get up and make their kids some cereal” and “those people who are a burden on the rest of the community” until finally a little girls voice was hear asking “Mommy – why do they keep saying those people – I have a name and it’s Christiana.” The entire Bible tells the story of God’s love for the insiders, the people of Israel and the people of the New Testament church. The book of Jonah, however, has a special concern to show God’s love for the outsiders, those whom we refer to as “those people.” Like Jonah we would prefer a system that says everyone gets what they deserve …. and we set the boundaries close to where we see ourselves. The gift that God wants Jonah and us to receive is the same gift Jesus offered when he said "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." Even to the point of “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:44). Martin Luther King Jr. brings the gift home when he said “An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” The gift that God wants us to receive is the unexpected – unhoped for – even unwanted gift. It’s the gift of a helpless, poor, naked baby instead of a mighty warrior and rule. It’s the gift of wisdom about who we truly are, what is required for us to grow up, and how God loves others. The gift Jonah doesn’t want is the knowledge that he himself is the sinner, who has been redeemed. Jonah is the one who repented, only when his back was against the wall. Jonah is the scoundrel who fled from God’s will. Jonah is the one miraculously rescued from the death he deserved. Being swallowed alive and spit up on shore left many folks shaking their heads and saying “I should have know you would be gracious and merciful, abounding in love. I should have known…..” Jonah, reluctant prophet that he was, had a tremendously successful preaching stint in Ninevah (an eight word sermon – six words in Hebrew) and the whole city repents. He is successful, not because he was great – but because God was gracious. And here he pouts – about the gift he didn’t want. Marriage is a wonderful exercise in receiving the gifts you don’t really want. Studies show that we all marry someone with two characteristics. We choose someone: 1) enough like us that we feel comfortable 2) they have some characteristics and abilities that we don’t have – that we want – that we wish for on our Christmas lists. Being shy all my life I wished for a husband who was outgoing – and I received that gift. What happens though is that as soon as the gift is in our hands – we begin to ask ourselves “What was I thinking?” So, desiring a socialite – I received hours after church on Sunday waiting for him to finish talking – and late hours of conversation at parties, long after others had gone home. This wasn’t the gift I wanted! But in God’s wise economy the gift I didn’t want, the gift that was driving me crazy, was the gift I needed. It was the gift that would help me grow and learn to overcome my own inadequacy. It was – a gift from God. God knew that Jonah needed to see himself as a sinner saved by grace – and so the gift! -- exactly the gift required for his growth. The message of Jonah is that God’s love toward human beings is beyond our calculations of what justice should look like – God’s desire for goodness and mercy extends to us, even when we are confused, hateful, skeptical, reluctant or unfathomably wicked. (God, in his great love, even provides a vine to shade his pouting prophet from the desert sun). I’m sure that none of us today can grasp the message here – that God’s faithfulness to us outweighs any disobedience we can think up, his goodness overcomes any evil we conspire to do and God’s system of justice means something so different than we – especially in these anxious times of war and terror—can possibly imagine. If we let the story touch us – we will find Jonah within – desiring revenge rather than mercy. But John Wesley tells us that “before God hath done with him, he will teach him to value his own life more, and to be more tender of the life of others.” Our all American poet – Carl Sandburg invites us to open our hands and receive the gift of Jonah today – as he writes:
I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark And came out alive after all.” |