The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Jonah 3:1-3
Sometimes we get a do-over. Sometimes we mess up. We fall flat on our faces. We find ourselves cast to the outer darkness, or stuck in the belly of a fish. Sometimes we find ourselves embarrassed. Ashamed. Sad. Angry.
If we are lucky - God will call to us out of the depths, pull us back up and invite us to try again.
Jonah got a do-over.
Jonah was told to go prophesy to the Ninevites. To call them back into a relationship with God. To guide them in repairing and restoring their relationship with God. To end their evil ways, their selfishness, their recklessness.
But Jonah hated the Ninevites. He wanted nothing to do with them. You know the phrase ‘Go jump in a lake’? Well Jonah literally chose to JUMP IN A LAKE rather than go prophesy to Nineveh.
But….. he got a do over.
In our individual and collective pasts we have all made similar choices. To run from difficult conversations, to hide from what God is calling us to do. We have heard God’s call to say ‘go be with those poor/minority/liberal/conservative/younger/older/muslim/jewish/rich/white/male/female who need me’ and we said NO.
Memorial said NO to black members for 100 years.
The Episcopal Church said NO to women on the Altar for 200 years.
This neighborhood has said NO to poor people for 150 years.
I have said NO to MAGA supporters for 6 years.
You have said NO to…. Who? For how long?
Today America gets a do over. And we do to. What is God calling you to repair, restore, renew today?
This morning a young poet named Amanda Gorman spoke to the world these words from Micah 4:
Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
Perhaps it is time for us to stop being afraid and to see if God is asking us to try again. Try again in repairing relationships; Reconciling broken communities; and mending broken hearts. May we too study war no more.
You see, Jesus does not believe in ‘Cancel Culture.’ Everyone has the possibility for redemption. In this life or the next. It is my fervent prayer that some day soon I am privileged to sit at a table where Hattie Cromwell and Nancy Davis and the other enslaved men and women held by the Johns and Howard families sit down with Rev.’s Howard and Johns to tell their story, to share their hurt and pain, and their joys and hopes. This is only made possible by our loosening of these things here, so that we may be joined together in heaven.
Don’t be afraid to set free the things you have bound too close to you, the relationships, family, stories, histories that you hold on to. Especially the hurtful ones. Too often the Church has told people to stay in abusive relationships or to ‘reconcile’ with people who continue to hurt and abuse them. That is the kind of binding that can suffocate our hearts and souls. By loosening those bonds you free yourself from the abuse and from the power those memories have over you. More importantly you open up yourself to healing and perhaps offer the other an opportunity to heal as well.
And in the loosening you can breathe new life into that story and make possible a reunification here on this earth or perhaps in the hereafter.
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