by Cecilia Kingman Miller, Guest Preacher

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Reading

“Prophet”  by Carl Dennis

You’ll never be much of a prophet if, when the call comes

To preach to Nineveh, you flee on the ship for Tarshish

That Jonah fled on, afraid like him of the people’s outrage

Were they to hear the edict that in forty days

Their city in all its glory will be overthrown.

The sea storm that harried Jonah won’t harry you.

No big fish will be waiting to swallow you whole

And keep you down in the dark till your mood

Shifts from fear to thankfulness and you want to serve.

No.  You’ll land safe at Tarshish and learn the language

And get a job in a countinghouse by the harbor

And raise a family you can be proud of

In a neighborhood not too rowdy for comfort.

If you’re going to be a prophet, you must listen the first time.

Setting off at sunrise, you can’t be disheartened

If you arrive at Nineveh long past midnight

On foot, your donkey having run off with your baggage.

You’ll have to settle for a room in the cheapest hotel

And toss all night on the lice-ridden mattress

That Jonah is spared.  In the space of three sentences

He jumps from his donkey, speaks out, and is heeded, while you,

Preaching the next day in the rain on a noisy corner,

Are likely to be ignored, outshouted by old-clothes dealers

And fishwives, mocked by schoolboys for your accent.

And then it’s a week in jail for disturbing the peace.

There you’ll have time, as you sing in a dungeon

Darker than a whale’s belly, to ask if the trip

Is a big mistake, the heavenly voice mere mood,

The mission a fancy.  Jonah’s biggest complaint

Is that God, when the people repent and ask forgiveness,

Is glad to forgive them and cancels the doomsday

Specified in the prophecy, leaving his prophet

To look like a fool. So God takes time to explain

How it’s wrong to want a city like this one to burn,

How a prophet’s supposed to redeem the future,

Not predict it.  But you’ll be left with the question

Why your city’s been spared when nobody’s different,

Nobody in the soup kitchen you open,

Though one or two of the hungriest

May be grateful enough for the soup to listen

When you talk about turning their lives around.

It will be hard to believe these are the saving remnant

Kin to the ten just men that would have sufficed

To save Gomorrah if Abraham could have found them.

You’ll have to tell them frankly you can’t explain

Why Nineveh is still standing though you hope to learn

At the feet of a prophet who for all you know

May be turning his donkey toward Nineveh even now.

Sermon

As happy as I am to be in this pulpit this morning, I would have been much happier to see our partner minister, József Kászoni, preaching today.  He is a man of great wisdom and integrity, who is a model of ministry to me, and I am sorry that he could not be with us. 

Last summer, our group from Portland visited a remarkable museum in Budapest: the Museum of the Secret Police. It is called the TerrorHaza, or Terror House, and it is located in the former headquarters of the state security forces. 

This is not an easy museum to visit.  It documents forty years of terror inflicted upon the population of Hungary by the Nazis and Communists.   Many of the rooms are still intact, including the torture chambers deep in the basement.  We can only guess at the fear which permeated the daily lives of our brothers and sisters in faith.

The security forces employed an army of informers, on factory lines, in editorial offices, at universities and theaters and businesses, and in churches.  “Nothing and no one could feel protected against them.”  At the Terror House’s entrance, there is a vast wall with photographs of all those killed by these regimes.

József reluctantly agreed to accompany us to this painful monument.  He said to me quietly, “I have never been there before.  I don’t need to go there.  I lived those years.”

On that same trip, a few of us from Portland were sitting on a restaurant terrace, out in the countryside, on a hill overlooking a ruined cathedral.  As we ate our lunch, we were telling our host families about the Patriot Acts—about how our government can now track our library books, gain access to our medical and financial records, can search homes without notification, can place wiretaps on our phones without a search warrant—and can perform all of these acts without the Constitutional requirement of probable cause. 

I said to our hosts, “I am afraid.”

And they said, “This is how it begins.”

They told us about the years under communist rule—how the government used “national security” as a reason to erode freedoms.  How, fearing reprisal, people had to learn to “keep two faces,” one at home, and one in public.  They told their children not to ever, ever share what was spoken about at home. 

Our hosts urged us to protect our democracy from this rising threat.  “This must not happen in America,” one young woman said.  “Now is when you must act.  Now.”

You heard Cathy tell the children the story of Jonah earlier.  First, for you truth-minded Unitarian Universalists, let me just say, there was no Jonah.  The story is a satirical allegory.  Like all good satire, like my favorite modern satirist John Stewart of “The Daily Show,” this story turns things upside down, turns it on its head to make a point.

Now, Jonah is a most reluctant prophet.  God tells Jonah to go to the distant city of Nineveh and tell the people that if they do not cease their wicked ways, the city will be destroyed. Jonah doesn’t want to do this.  Who would?  He heads for the safety and comfort of Tarshish instead.  The scripture says that Jonah flees “from the presence of God.”  He not only refuses to listen, but he hardens his heart against the Sacred; wills himself not to be touched by truth.

Jonah gets on that ship and heads straight for comfort and ease.  When the winds rise, Jonah knows that their cause is his unwillingness to act as God’s servant.  He is thrown overboard, thereby sparing the sailors.

Cathy’s version of the story, told for small children, omits the terrifying time Jonah spends at the bottom of the sea.  In Biblical times, the ocean’s depths were linked to Sheol, the underworld, a place of death and non-being. 

Jonah descends to these depths, is terrified, and calls to God for aid. God sends a large fish to swallow him up. 

This might seem to be an act of mercy, but the Hebrew verb “swallowed up” always carries a negative meaning in the Bible.  The fish is not meant to be deliverance, but more penance.  And Jonah’s next prayer, promising to do better, is full of words that connote a false piety.  Jonah is basically whining in the belly of the whale, not submitting, and still not listening.

When Jonah is done praying, the whale spits him out on the shore near Nineveh.  The scripture actually says it “vomits” him on dry land.  (Who knew the Bible had a sense of humor?!)

You see, the God of this story is not saying to Jonah, “Ah, you’ve repented and now you are saved.”  Instead, God is saying, “You have no choice.  It doesn’t matter if you are willing. You will be my prophet. There’s Nineveh. Start walking.”

Jonah goes into the big city of Nineveh, full of wicked people.  And he tells them what God has said.  He walks the streets calling out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be transformed!” 

Surprisingly, the people of Nineveh repent, immediately, and God forgives them and does not destroy them.  In the rest of the story, Jonah is actually angry about this, feeling that God has made him a fool.  And God explains to Jonah that he should not be angry, for God’s love for the people of Nineveh triumphs over their initial wrong-doings. The point is transformation, not destruction. 

Jonah’s story has many lessons, but I am curious: As satire, what does Jonah’s story tell us in our times? 

The church is always called to prophesy.  Our time is no different; in fact, we are in desperate need of prophets now. We are at a crucial point in history.  Lest you think I overstate the case, let me share with you some words from Bill Moyers:

“For years now, the corporate, political, and religious right […] has been joined in an axis of influence whose purpose is to […] restore America to a rule of the elites that maintain their privilege and their power at the expense of everyone else.

“For years now, a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life.

“Take note,” Moyers continues. “The corporate, political, and religious conservatives are achieving a vast transformation of America that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. […]They are systematically stripping government of all its functions, except rewarding the rich and waging war.”

“We are experiencing a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that [protect against] the excesses of private power.”

Larry Kramer, the founder of ACTUP, comments on Moyers’ speech:

“In other words, our country has been taken away from us by a cabal […] These people make the rules. They are rarely elected officials. […] They have several things in common. They are very rich or have strong connections to money or power. They are in agreement on what they do not want. They believe fervently in their God. And that they are doing all this for Him. And they stay in constant touch.”

Sobering news.  Makes me want to turn away.  Makes me want to head for Tarshish.  Anyone else want to come?

And, just in case any of you are thinking, “This can’t happen in America,” I have two things to tell you.  First: Weimar Germany had a constitution too.  And second: it’s already happening—in America.  The question is only whether we will ignore it.

In his new book God’s Politics, Jim Wallis makes a passionate appeal to people of faith in our times.  He tells us that churches have a unique role in countering repression.  We are called in history to prophesy—to name evil and call for reform.  In fact, this is our sacred task—to be the political conscience of society. 

Wallis says there are two elements of prophecy: to cry out against injustice and, equally important, to cast a new vision before the people.  Now, we on the Religious Left are not so good at doing this.  We are very good at saying what we are against, but not so good at saying what we are for, what kind of world we’d like to build.  Prophets must be instructive, Wallis says, and not just destructive.  We must show the way for personal and social transformation.  That’s the word Jonah used: “In forty days, Nineveh will be transformed!”  That’s our business, that’s the business churches are in: the business of transformation!

Wallis offers another Biblical saying, familiar to many of you: “Without a vision, the people perish,” and points out a different translation: “Without prophecy, the people cast off restraint.”  Without prophecy, the people cast off restraint.

Isn’t that what’s wrong today in our society?  We have cast off restraint.  We are fully absorbed by the getting and spending of money, caught on the hamster wheel of consumer life.  We are enslaved by the very system we abhor. 

We may find it hard to be prophets, for we are safe in Tarshish.  We are living in a neighborhood not too rowdy for comfort.  We are raising families and buying houses, making grocery lists and cleaning out the fridge and doing all the daily tasks we have always done. 

But my friends, this is no ordinary time.  There is a crucial challenge before us.  And our struggle to be faithful is much harder than Jonah’s.  Terrified and nearly dead in the belly of the whale, he is vomited up on the shores of Nineveh and forced to begin his work.  There’s no escape. 

We have an escape—far too many of them, really.  Our busy, busy lives, our daily concerns—we barely have time to keep abreast of the issues of the day, let alone organize ourselves.  But there is too much at stake now.  If you are going to be a prophet, the poet says, you must listen the first time.

Like Jonah, we must repent.  Yes, even we progressive types—we have dwelt too long in complicity.  We have lived in comfort, partaken of the pleasures of this society, been seduced by its entertainments, lulled to sleep by Trader Joe’s and “The Sopranos”—the modern equivalent of bread and circuses. 

But the thing is, our Tarshish might as well be Sheol.  Maybe it looks different, but it is a place of death as well—death of our souls, of our democracy, of our planet.

The danger is at hand, my friends.  Nineveh will be transformed.  It is only a question of how.

Take heart, though, for in every age the people have listened to the call of truth and reclaimed their countries.  Over and over again ordinary people have had to wrest their rights back from the rich and powerful.  And churches have always led the way.  Think of all the times—in recent history alone—when religious people have led movements against oppression and destruction:

Think of South Africa, where the churches, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu, spoke courageously for political change.   Or in Latin America, where Archbishop Oscar Romero and numerous other priests and nuns were martyred for their prophetic stands.

In Romania, where a simple Hungarian minister ignited the revolution against Ceausescu. In the Philippines against Marcos, with the Solidarity movement of Poland, over and over again religious people have cried out like the prophets of old, saying, “Enough!  Stop the repression!  This is not how God wants us to live!”

Wallis writes, “Even in democracies, churches have responded to that same prophetic vocation.  In New Zealand during the 1990s, when conservative forces ripped that society’s long-standing social safety net to pieces, it was the churches in partnership with the indigenous Maori people who led marches, [kindled] public protest, and emboldened a wobbly Labour party to recapture the government […]

“And of course, it was in the United States that black churches, under the leadership of Baptist ministers such as […] Martin Luther King, Jr., provided the moral foundation and social infrastructure for a powerful civil rights movement that reminded the nation of its expressed ideals and changed us forever.”

They provided the moral foundation.  We have a moral foundation—the religious values of compassion, mercy, peace and justice—which we share with so many other people of faith.  And we have the values for which our own Unitarian martyrs died—the right of conscience, and freedom of religious belief and expression.  Over four hundred years ago, Francis David, founder of the Unitarian faith, said these words: “Conscience will not be quieted by anything less than truth and justice.”  He died in a cold prison for those very beliefs.  And we are the ones who come after him.

Grounded in our history, we Unitarian Universalists can play a crucial role in the move to restore integrity to our nation.  It is our task, as religious people, to cast a vision—a vision of hope, not terror.  Of a world where every person is fed, and is free.  Where children have warm homes to sleep in and do not have to wear two faces.  Where we are not devoured by our material desires, but instead are busy building up the common good.

It will take a long time, perhaps, but we will get there.  It will require of us the kind of devotion and commitment that the powerful have used over these last forty years.  They have given years of their lives and billions of dollars to the shredding of our Constitution. We must be as committed to protecting liberty as they have been to destroying her. 

But never doubt that our task is possible.  For we are the prophets who are, even now, turning toward Nineveh.

May it be so, my friends.  Amen.

PRAYER

God of Life and Love, we come before you each week needing strength for the times in which we live.  We long to be your servants, to build a world of peace, and mercy, and love.  We ask for courage and hope, that we might be faithful in this struggle.  And we give thanks for the embrace of this community, secure in the love we find here.  Amen.