How's That Working Out For You? (Preach It Again)

How's That Working Out for You? from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.


Acts 15:5-19
5Some of the believers from among the Pharisees stood up and claimed “The Gentiles must be circumcised. They must be required to keep the law of Moses.”

6The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter. 7After much debate, Peter stood and addressed them, “Fellow believers, you know that, early on, God chose me from among you as the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the word of the Gospel and come to believe. 8God, who know’s people’s deepest thoughts and desires, confirmed this by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. 9He made no distinction between us and them, but purified their deepest thoughts and desires though faith. 10Why then are you placing a burden on the shoulders of these disciples that neither we nor our ancestors could bear? 11On the contrary, we believe that we and they are saved in the same way, by the grace of the Lord Jesus.”

12The entire assembly fell quiet as they listened to Barnabas and Paul describe all the signs and wonders God did among the Gentiles through their activity. 13When Barnabas and Paul also fell silent, James responded, “Fellow believers, listen to me. 14Simon reported how, in his kindness, God came to the Gentiles in the first place, to raise up from them a people of God. 15The prophets agree with this; as it is written,
16After this I will return,
and I will rebuild David’s fallen tent;
I will rebuild what has been torn down.
I will restore it
17so that the rest of humanity will seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who belong to me.
The Lord says this, the one who does these things
18known from earliest times.
19Therefore, I conclude that we shouldn’t create problems for Gentiles who turn to God.

This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God

Jonah 4:1-11
1But Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the LORD, “Come on, LORD! Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land? This is why I fled to Tarshish earlier! I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy. 3At this point, LORD, you may as well take my life from me, because it would be better for me to die than to live.”

4The LORD responded, “Is your anger a good thing?” 5But Jonah went out from the city and sat down east of the city. There he made himself a hut and sat under it, in the shade, to see what would happen to the city.

6Then the LORD God provided a shrub, and it grew up over Jonah, providing shade for his head and saving him from his misery. Jonah was very happy about the shrub. 7But God provided a worm the next day at dawn, and it attacked the shrub so that it died. 8Then as the sun rose God provided a dry east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint. He begged that he might die, saying, “It’s better for me to die than to live.”

9God said to Jonah, “Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?”
Jonah said, “Yes, my anger is good - even to the point of death!”

10But the LORD said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. 11But for my part, can’t I pity Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God


As the early church began to grow, the had to deal with this growing group of Gentile believers. The gentiles knew that the gospel appealed to them, that Christ was the kind of God worth following, but they had no idea where to start. Church leaders gathered in Jerusalem to discuss what to do with this outsider group of eager converts to the faith. “Some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.’” These new people must be held to the same rules as we have held ourselves! They’ve got to fit in with the old traditions, and if the gospel means enough to them, then they will do things the correct way. You know, our way.

That sounds familiar to a 21st century church. We’re here, got a big beautiful building with lots of loving people inside it. Outside that beautiful building is a sign announcing that visitors are welcome. There are greeters at the door, programs for the children, and the seats are even pretty comfortable! Come and find us, we’re a very welcoming church!

So long as you know how to use a hymnal, when to sit down and stand up, what to do when you’re praying, what to do when someone else is praying, and don’t mind someone standing at the front and talking to you for half an hour, we’ll absolutely welcome you among us!

I have every confidence that when people come to the Presbyterian Church of Lowell, they find faithful, loving people. They find a community that is willing to nurture them on their journey. They’ll find that we’re not all that pharisaical or judgmental, and that those stories about people getting kicked out of a little old lady’s pew are more folklore than fact.

Perhaps they’ll even learn to love the tradition that feeds us. Eventually the ritual of saying the Lord’s Prayer together will become as familiar a comfort to them as it is to us. Eventually they may even feel their hearts strangely warmed by the “thee’s” and “thou’s” of the King James Version of the Bible.

Perhaps they may choose to live according to the law of Moses?

Like the Pharisees, we often expect others who come into our home to fit into the patterns that are already in place. It’s the way things are done, and it’s our understanding of how we live out who we are. It’s a very specific formula that perhaps doesn’t involve a codified religious legal system, but does have certain expectations about the way one acts in church. Those who join us are expected to look and act within the margins of appropriateness. If folks push at those margins farther than a community will tolerate, they’ll leave.

It’s only natural then, that churches who want to grow tend to look for people who are a lot like them. Folks who know to come to church at 10:30, who know how to dress for worship, and who know how to carry themselves with an appropriate amount of reverence. Predictably, the people who are likely to adhere to those often unspoken traditions already have a church home. Which means growth is going to come either from new people moving into the community or church members having babies.

But newborns and new residents are not the only people whom God has chosen and called. Christianity is a life lived in response to the free gift of God’s grace, not a birthright of one particular demographic. Belonging in the kingdom of God is based solely on the will of God. God wills for the church to cross boundaries, emerging from our Israelite spiritual heritage into a Gentile world. There are people in this world who know that there is something out there greater than them, who have experienced God, but don’t have the language to articulate that experience. We use ugly words to describe them, like “unchurched,” and they are not us, unless they become just like us. It’s an “us” and “them” division drawn over who belongs in the club. But being chosen by God is not based on whether or not one attends church.

Perhaps we should heed Peter’s words to the inner circle of the church council in our Acts passage, “God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, but purified their deepest thoughts and desires though faith.” The Gentile and Jewish Christians are going to end up doing things differently, but God is not the one who makes the distinction. We are the one’s who point and say “Why can’t you just fit in to what we’re already doing? All of our members are happy with the way we do things now.”

God expands his kingdom without regard to the boundaries we draw for ourselves. The church in Acts sees that God is acting across ethnic and religious boundaries, and chooses to change themselves to unite all of God’s people in Christ. Jonah, likewise, is called out of his homeland to preach to Ninevah, that great city, and goes knowing that God will be as merciful to them as she has been to Israel.

God does not stop with the law of Moses, or at the boundaries of the Holy Land. Neither does God stop with our church traditions, or at the borders of the United States. The LORD is God of all creation, and chooses whomever he will, even people who are not like us.

Sometimes God chooses people who are very not like us. People who look different, sound different, act different, or express themselves differently than we do. I mean, why would God choose to act through someone who has to be up and moving all the time when she could be acting through me, who is perfectly content to sit quietly and reverently.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my preaching career talking about the wondrous works of God. How when we see the amazing things God is doing in the world, we cannot help but sing praises, and be astounded by the Greatness of our Lord.

But to use someone who is doing it wrong? Doesn’t God know he has his wonderful servants here at this church to choose from? For generations this way of being the church has ministered faithfully to God’s people. We’ve grown fond of ordering our worship services the way we do, we’ve considered the preferences of our members in our architecture, and we’re quite comfortable with the kinds of programs we do. Now God is going to use someone who isn’t a part of that system? I mean, God is good all the time, but if this is how it’s going to be, I don’t know that I like it all that much. This kind of radical inclusivity is very displeasing to me.

And so I find myself sitting outside of Ninevah praying with Jonah. “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die that to live.”

God responds with, to paraphrase using that classic southern phrase, “How’s that working out for you?” Jonah pouts, and builds himself a hut to watch the city, hoping that Ninevah will mess up, that Jonah’s view of the world, the view of God as depicted elsewhere in scripture as being unapologetically and exclusively the God of Israel, will be vindicated with a good old fashioned smiting of the sinful citizens of Ninevah.

An unnamed shrub grows up overnight, and provides Jonah with some lush greenery. Scripture tells us that it “[gives] shade over his head [saves] him from his discomfort. So Jonah was very happy about the bush.” Perhaps he interprets this divine providence as a comfort under which he can wait out the coming destruction of Ninevah, that great city. After all, this indicates that God doesn’t intend to take Jonah’s life from him, so surely that means that God has come to his senses and is going to give Ninevah what they deserve. I imagine he smiled smugly to himself right up until “God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.”

The LORD God, who is merciful and compassionate, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy, looked at his petulant prophet sitting outside the city, and through that comforting shrub reminded him of what was really at stake.

The LORD God is very patient even with his crotchety church. Perhaps the decline of mainline protestantism is a like Jonah’s shrub: a reminder that God can choose Ninevah as well as Jonah, God can choose the Gentile Christians as well as the Jewish Christians, that God can choose both us and them.

Though we never hear Jonah’s answer to the question God poses, the third act of this play is staged in our own lives. How will we respond to God’s question: This thing you “are concerned about” was not something for which you worked, it’s not your creation, it was mine, and is fleeting.

“Should I not be concerned about Ninevah, that great city…?” I can’t use these people whom I have created to work my will in the world? I have called them and given them the Holy Spirit, just as I did you, and yet you choose to neglect them? Why then should I not have mercy upon them? They are created by the one God who speaks into being things which do not exist, and exactly as worthy of God’s love as we are.

Because if we are honest with ourselves, we have not done a great job of keeping the commandments we have been given. The fact that the Christian Church is as fragmented as it is testifies to our lack of love for one another across our history. The “good old days” were perhaps not as good as the nostalgic stories we tell indicate.

Peter, who stuck his foot in his mouth consistently throughout the earthy ministry of Jesus, gets it. “Now therefore why are you…placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?” Because if it were up to us to earn the righteousness in which we are wrapped, we would never even get close. We are the dwelling of David, which has fallen, a people given a covenant who simply do not have it in them to hold up their end.

I think we sit with Jonah in stubborn judgement over God’s merciful treatment of Ninevah because we are afraid that maybe if God loves people who are not like us, that means that God has noticed how full of sin we are, and has given up on us. We create and us and them to keep those others separate from God’s blessings in case it might run out and we be left up to our own failing devices. They’ve got to earn it, because we’ve convinced ourselves that we deserve it!

Uh-huh, how’s that working out for you?

“On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” Though they will not live their lives in the same way as we do, though they will not worship in the same way we do, and though God has called them to do things differently than we do, God can, and does, cross all those boundaries, for we are united in the Lord Jesus.

These people are out there, filled with the Holy Spirit, willing to enact the works of God, and who are we to say that because they enact them differently that our churches are not where they can have a home.

We act like Jonah because we have forgotten that we are Gentiles, and a sect of Judaism made room for us within their customs. Choosing not to require us to keep their traditions, but rather allowing God to do a new thing among them through us.

When we look at having to change the way we live as the Church, it’s a scary proposition, and we would perhaps rather that God kept us among our own people, rather than sending us to Ninevah that it might know the graciousness of God. For we are Jonah, and Ninevah, and the dwelling of David, which has fallen, and the Gentiles who belong to God. It is scary to have to change ourselves. So God changes us by putting people who are different from us in our lives. It is our task, then, in gratitude to God who is making a new creation out of us, to seek out those people and invite them in that we may be changed through them, by the power of the Holy Spirit.