The Worst Sermon

Propers: The Third Sunday After the Epiphany, AD 2024 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“40 days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” —is likely the worst homily in the whole of the Scriptures. It is abrupt, judgmental, unlearned, all Law with nary a hint of Gospel, not even attempting to explain the meaning of the Word of God, which is of course the purpose of a sermon.

Moreover, it is delivered by a preacher who despises his audience, who hates the congregation to which he has been sent. Jonah views Nineveh as the enemy, and the last thing that he wants is for them to be delivered from the wrath that is to come. Nineveh deserves to burn. And it has only been through extraordinary means, involving storms and whales and a pagan crew, that God has managed to bring His reluctant prophet, kicking and screaming, to this massive capital of the much-loathed Assyrian Empire.

Jonah as a book is all about exposing our expectations and flipping them on their heads. We anticipate an angry, violent God, only to discover that we are the ones who ever seek the downfall of our foes; we are the ones who want vengeance, in brutality and blood. The book of Jonah presents us with a very different understanding of God: one in which He loves all peoples, even the worst of the worst, even the ones whom we would damn; and yes, my friends, even us.

The prophet doesn’t want a word of grace. The prophet doesn’t want a God of love. And so the prophet flees to the ends of the earth, sets out upon the sea, braves the savage storm, all to avoid, not the judgment of God, but His mercy poured out on our nemeses. Jonah literally descends to the dead, only to be swallowed by a sea beast and uphurled upon the shore. The whole book is a farce, you understand, a parable intended to illustrate our own hardness of heart, and how it pales before the mercies of our Lord.

And so we must imagine this bedraggled prophet, back from the dead—bedecked, I’d like to think, in seaweed, salt, and ambergris—fuming, petulant, pouting, finally giving the absolute bare minimum message that God has impressed upon him: “40 days and Nineveh shall be no more!” I mean, it’s laughably bad. That’s the point.

And yet! Somehow the Word works. Somehow the Spirit gets through. This utterly abominable sermon has the desired effect—desired by God if not by the preacher—that the whole city of Nineveh, a vile hive of scum and villainy, and even the Emperor upon his throne, all repent in sackcloth and ash and turn from the myriad evils they have wrought. They repent and are forgiven. They return to God and are saved.

And this of course leaves Jonah hopping mad. He knew that this would happen! He knew it from the beginning, that God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from punishment.” What a load of hippy-dippy drek. He didn’t want them saved! He didn’t want them forgiven. He didn’t want them loved. And yet, the grace of God came through—both through the preacher and in spite of him.

This often gives me hope: that even in the lamest sermon, Jesus’ love gets through. All these terrible things we’ve thought of God were only our projections, mirrors we held up in which to see ourselves. God is always better than we think, than we even could think. Jonah’s sermon was the worst, and yet the Word got through. The flipside to this, of course, is that outward signs of failure may not be the preacher’s fault. Discouragement and struggle are a feature, not a bug. The best of us may bear the Cross in their obscurity.

There is a famous midrash—a pious Jewish legend—that the King of Nineveh in the book of Jonah is none other than the Pharaoh from the book of Exodus. After the Red Sea washed his horses and chariots away, as the story goes, Pharaoh stood aghast upon the shore. He wandered into the wilderness, where a people found him who recognized his royal dress and bearing. They made him king of their new city, Nineveh, where he reigned for some miraculous 500 years.

And so when Jonah came to him, as a new Moses demanding repentance, Pharaoh never hesitated. Once he had led an empire to destruction by defying the will of God; now he leads a new one to forgiveness, a turning back to righteousness. Thus is Pharaoh redeemed. It’s a wonderful midrash, connecting the divine judgment against Egypt with the forgiveness shown to Assyria, illustrating how justice and mercy can both be one and the same, for both of them are truth. What seems to us judgment is in fact God’s mercy; and God’s mercy, of necessity, is just.

This is how I’ve come to read the judgment of our God: not as retributive, not as merciless, but as reparative, restorative, redeeming, resurrecting. He shines the light of truth upon our foolishness and flaws, like a physician diagnosing our disease. And then He cuts it out of us, helping us all to heal, guiding us in His good grace to hale and hearty wholeness. Perfect justice culminates in mercy, and perfect mercy offers opportunity to right our many wrongs, to heal what we have harmed.

So much of Christianity in our own day and age seems to me the selling of “get out of jail free” cards. Oh, God is wrathful and vengeful and hungry for blood—unless! Unless you say the magic word or do the proper work or tithe until the preacher gets his private jet. We want a God who is good to us but wicked toward our enemies, hostile to our outgroups, to all those folks who don’t think or act or smell or vote in ways we would prefer. And so, much of religion is anxiety about joining the proper team, entering the righteous club.

But such is not the way of faith. Faith doesn’t mean that if we check a certain box, then we opt for the mercy package rather than the justice route. No. Faith for us means that in Jesus Christ we have seen the heart of God, God in the flesh. God for us is Jesus. And Jesus, in His teachings, in His life and death and rising, embodies in His humanity the perfect love of God. We must understand: Jesus doesn’t save us from God. He is God!

And everyone here knows, or darn well ought to know, that Jesus’ life was merciful and just, truthful and compassionate, rebuking the sinner and forgiving the repentant. Jesus Christ is not a schizophrenic. He isn’t just one day and merciful the next. Rather, He embodies both, perfectly; for both are true, and He is Truth.

That’s why in faith we do not fear God’s judgment. It isn’t simply because we’ve managed to avoid it while others will have to face it. No, it’s because we have seen in Jesus Christ that the judgment of God is His mercy, and His mercy is His judgment. Whatever befalls us, God is for us. Whatever we suffer, we are loved. God doesn’t make bad things happen. If He could do that, He wouldn’t be God. Rather, He is with us, beside us, within us, suffering all for our sake in the Spirit and Body of Christ.

Goodness can be scary. That much at least we know. “Abashed, the Devil stood and felt how awful goodness is.” Yet such pious fear is the revelation of our own hearts, our own evil, our own need for healing, not of any wickedness in God. Christ is always for us. Christ is always with us. Christ will ever guide us to our home. His Way may not be easy; it leads us to His Cross. Yet beyond the Cross and empty tomb we join in His Resurrection. And there the only pain shall be the burning up of dross.

So much of this world is beyond our understanding; so much of ourselves as well, and all we seem to suffer here. I have no easy answers, save to say it’s a broken world. But we know in Christ that God is good; in Him we have all that we need. Christ is our light in the darkness, our life in the midst of the grave. We surrender to His Spirit. He shall love us until we are human again. He shall love us and make us all whole.

“40 days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” —not in wrath and anguish, but in repentance and rebirth.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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