Hilton Head Island, SC – June 8, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Exodus 32:7-14; Jonah 3:1-9
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them cry mightily to God; yea, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands.” - Jonah 3:8 – (RSV)
Moses had a tough time trying to lead the children of Israel in the desert. Again and again they strayed from the straight and narrow in favor of the crooked and wide. It was just one thing after another for forty years.
After the people crossed the Red Sea on dry land, or more likely on moderately damp land, if the story is to be believed as told, they came to the Sinai Desert. To this day, hardly anyone is able to live in the Sinai, so it is not surprising the Israelites were not thrilled to be there. But it was the only way they could get from Egypt to the Promised Land. In order for them to have food, God sent great flocks of quail for them to eat. After a while, however, they became fed up with quail. Therefore God sent them manna from heaven. Each night the manna fell like dew. God commanded them to gather enough to eat for that day, but only for that day. If they took extra manna for the next day, it would spoil overnight, becoming rancid or moldy. The text doesn’t say exactly what manna was, but whatever it was, presumably it sustained them throughout the Wilderness Wandering. Nevertheless they groused mightily about both the quail and the manna, and to both Moses and God. They were equal-opportunity grousers.
When it came time for Moses to be given the Ten Commandments, he went up on Mt. Sinai, and he was there with God for forty days. That is a long time, which is what the number “40” always signifies in Hebrew. After a while, the Israelites concluded that Moses was not coming back to them, so they melted all their gold jewelry and created a golden calf. The calf or bull was the symbol of pagan Canaanite religion, and thus that was a serious offense against God.
While Moses was still on the crest of Mt. Sinai, God told him he was angry at the Israelites for their ungodly behavior down in the valley, the valley so low. Moses interceded for them, reminding God it was He who had freed them from their captivity in Egypt. Moses recalled to God the promise He had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How could God go back on His promise? So, we are told, Moses convinced God to change His mind, which was a significant breakthrough for both God and Moses. But this pattern was to be repeated often during the forty-year schlep through the desert. God again became angry at Israel, wanting to punish them, Moses again interceded, and God again changed His mind.
The first time God really became steamed at the Israelites, He and Moses were on the sacred mountain, which later is also identified as Mt. Horeb. God said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people; now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great nation” (Ex. 32:9-10). I suppose Moses figured God couldn’t make a great nation out of just one man with no progeny, particularly if He consumed all the other Israelites, so he set out to coerce God into rethinking His plan. The Hebrew Bible is a wonderfully rich portrait of a curiously anthropomorphic God. If you want to take the Bible seriously, you must make your peace with it.
Have you ever seen anyone who was stiff-necked? It is a memorable sight: The jaw juts out, the eyes narrow, the teeth grit, and the neck becomes a forward-jutting pillar of defiance. Seven times in the Hebrew Bible the Israelites are described as being stiff-necked. This isn’t the Canaanites we’re talking about, or the Egyptians or Assyrians or Babylonians; we might expect that of them. But these are the Israelites, for crying out loud! God called them stiff-necked; Moses called them stiff-necked; the prophets called them stiff-necked. If they are called that seven separate times, there must be something to it.
But you know, all of us get stiff-necked from time to time. Small children can become defiant, especially those who find themselves advancing into the Terrible Twos. Teenagers can get stiff-necked; so can young adults and middle-aged adults and elderly adults. And our inflexible attitudes are not directed only to one another, they also can be directed to God. Who is God to allow such-and-such to happen to us? Who is God to demand such-and-such of us? We want to do what we want to do, not what God wants us to do! Who does God think He is?
However, it is not only individuals who can become stiff-necked. Entire peoples or nations can also exhibit the same kind of hard-headed behavior.
I read a short news article about a church in Indiana which engaged in an amazing act of communal repentance. This was a church that for decades had chewed up every minister they ever had. I served such a congregation as interim pastor years ago, and experienced a rather thorough chomping myself. A small group of miscreants in both of these churches were the problem, but it badly affected everyone. So the leaders of the Indiana congregation called a service of confession and reconciliation. As part of it, the current pastor, on behalf of the whole congregation, washed the feet of all the former pastors. That is an illustration of communal repentance at its best. I don’t know what the clergy-killers thought; the article didn’t say.
The text of our middle hymn was written by a British historian of diplomacy named John H. B. Masterman. He wrote a number of books in the early part of the 20th century. I wasn’t able to discover why he wrote this particular poem, or for what occasion, but it suggests an antidote to defiance to God, whether individual or communal.
“Life up our hearts, O King of Kings,
To brighter hopes and kindlier things;
To visions of a larger good,
And holier dreams of brotherhood.
Thy world is weary of its pain,
Of selfish greed and fruitless gain;
Of tarnished honor, falsely strong,
And all its ancient deeds of wrong.”
An objective historian of British diplomacy who lived during the zenith of the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century might perceive as few others could how an empirical power could overstep its bounds, simply because it was so powerful. It is when nations are at their strongest that they tend deliberately to flex their muscles, intentionally or unintentionally crushing others in the process. But then what? Then what?
The prophecy of Jonah is one of the strangest books in the Bible. Some time ago I preached a series of sermons on it, one sermon for each of its four chapters. God sent Jonah to tell Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrians, that within forty days it would be overthrown by God. Today I want merely to focus on the response of the Ninevites and their king to this fearful announcement. The text declares that “the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them” (Jonah 3:5).
When the king of the Assyrians heard what Jonah had proclaimed, he too put on sackcloth, which is burlap, for those of you who are old enough to remember burlap, which is nearly all of us. Now we have very strong plastic bags, but in the good old days, up until the late 20th century, the strongest sacks were made of sackcloth, i.e., burlap. Burlap would not be easy to wear. It is scratchy and smelly. So the king decreed, “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything,…but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them cry mightily to God; yea, let everyone turn from his evil way, and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?” (3:7-9)
In biblical times, monarchy was the universal form of government. Every nation everywhere had a king. The only democracy from 2000 BCE to 200 CE was a short-term, sort-of democracy in Greece in the 5th century BCE. So here, according to this odd prophecy, was the king of Assyria, and a Gentile king at that, ordering everyone to fast and put on sackcloth, in order to make amends with the God of Israel. He probably didn’t know precisely why God was so peeved at the Ninevites, but whatever caused it, the king knew they had to repent of it, or they would end up like so much Mesopotamian rubble. And they did repent! Even the livestock!
It is a great story, and it illustrates a great truth. Repentance is not necessary only for individuals; it also is necessary for entire communities and nations. Even a Gentile king could figure that out. Each of us does things we shouldn’t do, but also all of us together do things we shouldn’t do. In communal sins some are surely more guilty than others, but all are guilty to some degree, even infants and little children, if only because they too are citizens of the offending nation, and their innocence does not erase their stain. It is original sin at work without their being personally involved in any of the grievous errors.
Who was guilty for the sin of slavery? Only Americans who lived before 1865? Only Southern Americans? How about the ever-revered Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in 1776 or 1787? Wasn’t the so-called “Three-Fifths Compromise” a reluctant accomodation with and for sin? But surely I am not guilty of the sin of slavery, because none of my forebears or ancestors, to my knowledge, were even in this country in 1865. They all left for Canada by the end of the Revolution, all of them being, as they were, pesky, reactionary United Empire Loyalists. Most of you may be culprits, but not a few of you and also me. Yet we too are Americans, and you are Americans, and whenever and however any of us got here, whatever our nation has done that illustrates sin and guilt, we too are guilty of that sin. We can’t not be stained by the sins of our fathers, and the results of the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, to the third and fourth --- and twentieth --- generations.
No nation anywhere can avoid communal sin. Because all of us live in nations, all of us are participants in the mistakes of those nations, simply by virtue (or the vice) of our citizenship. We can’t escape communal blame, and therefore we must engage in communal repentance. Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we perish not.
It was a terrible thing to bring fellow human beings in chains from Africa to these shores in the 16th and 17th and 18th centuries. It also was terrible what we did to the native peoples already living on these shores prior to the arrival of pale-skinned foreigners. Our diseases and guns and soldiers killed the Indians in the many thousands and few millions. The movement west to the Pacific uprooted and dislocated scores of tribes of people who had been living on the land as relatively peacefully as any of our ancestors had lived in Europe centuries earlier, and possibly even more peaceably - - - though perhaps not.
Blacks and Indians talk about reparations from whites for what we did to their forebears. It is very understandable why they think that, in light of the awful things whites did to them. But if reparations were ever agreed to, how would they be fairly and equitably administered? Would Indians who could prove their ancestors had been here for at least ten thousand years get twice as much as those whose ancestors arrived only five thousand years ago? Would blacks whose people came to Charleston as slaves three hundred years ago get more than those who came two hundred years ago? What about blacks who came to the USA from Africa or South America or Central America or the Caribbean less than a century and a half ago: would they get anything at all? The President of the United States surely would deserve no reparations, would he? After all, he is half-white, and his father came from Kenya, not Kentucky or Kansas.
What is the fair way for nations to repent? Should they do something tangible, like make reparations, or should they merely own up to their historical or contemporary errors of judgment? Are you and I less guilty of what happened to slaves or Indians than people in our lineage who lived two or three or four centuries ago?
A certain person living in Washington, DC has just exercised what he believes are the constitutional prerogatives of his office by decreeing that the Environmental Protection Agency must see to it that by 2030 the level of carbon dioxide from power plants must be 30% less than it was in 2005. By declaring that, in effect he is saying that America needs to repent of its oversized contribution to the level of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. You may have noted , however, that his idea has not met with universal enthusiastic acclaim. Many people are asking, Why should we try to cut down on our carbon dioxide output when every other nation does not necessarily do the same, and many will never do the same?
In the past few years China surpassed the USA as the world’s No. 1 polluter of the air. The Chinese are now producing much more electricity from coal than the Americans. But then, they have four times as many people as we do, and so they need far more energy. Thus on a percentage basis we still have the dubious distinction of being the undisputed No. 1 per capita polluter. We can produce all the energy we need, regardless of what it does to the earth’s atmosphere. Ought we to repent of continuing to do that? And ought we to diminish the rate at which we do it? If you’re No. 1, which in many categories we are, should we concern ourselves with excessive collective behavior? Is God requiring it of us?
When monarchs were the universal rulers of the earthly universe, they could demand repentance of their subjects, like the king of Assyria. In the post-monarchical world, elected rulers may try to do that too, but they have less power and authority to make it stick. Therefore who can convince communal entities to engage in communal repentance? Captains of business, perhaps, like Bill Gates or Tom Steyer, or religious prophets. But religious prophets are few and far between these days. Most religious leaders are working hard just to uphold and strengthen religion rather than to try to do the will of God. So it is likely to be major capitalists or governmental leaders who will lead us in the necessary act of communal repentance.
We think too much about Me and too little about Us. Each of us can do some awful things, but all of together can collectively visit far more devastation upon the earth than any of us individually could ever conceive of doing. Individual repentance is a good thing. Communal repentance is even better. Furthermore, it results in far greater change in the world. Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from His fierce anger. And wouldn’t that be great for everyone?