Texts:

Jonah 4

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, "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 than to live." And the Lord said, "Is it right for you to be angry?" Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die." Then the Lord said, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?

Sermon Text

The title of my sermon this morning plays upon the familiar hymn, "Blest Be the Tie that Binds Our Hearts in Christian Love." As Larry puts it, that's an "old chestnut." We sing it to celebrate our belonging to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ:

"Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love," we sing; "The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above."

In the third stanza we rejoice:

"We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows a sympathizing tear."

It is wonderful to experience such fellowship! One of the psalmists says that the experience of being tied together with kindred spirits is like being anointed. He writes (in Psalm 133): "How very good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes." Oil was precious, you see; so having someone express love for you by pouring oil all over your head and shoulders was by no means a yucky experience, but rather an extravagantly pleasant one.

I'm sure that you cherish with me the tie (singular) that binds our hearts in Christian love. But that's not what I'm going to preach about this morning. You may have noticed that the title of my sermon is: "The Ties That Bind." Notice: ties (plural). By changing the singular of the old hymn (the tie that binds) to the plural (the ties that bind) l invite you to recognize that there are ties (plural) extending beyond our faith community, ties that bind us (or at least ought to bind us) to people unlike ourselves, people who do not think or live as we do, people who may not sympathize with us at all. The Bible sometimes speaks harshly of such people. But in other places the Bible speaks with a different voice, saying very clearly and forcefully that God's chosen people are tethered not just to their friends, not just to people who agree with them and support them, but also to strangers and even enemies.

The book of Jonah is a splendid example of the Bible's compassionate attitude toward outsiders. God tells Jonah to go and preach repentance to the Ninevites--strangers, powerful strangers, threatening strangers. Jonah doesn't want to go there, not so much because he's afraid, but because he resents God's concern for those outsiders. He doesn't want the Ninevites to repent, because he knows if they chose to do that, then God would likely forgive them. And he doesn't want God to forgive them. He wants God to destroy them. So, Jonah runs in the opposite direction. But God halts him and treats him to a three-day ocean cruise and continuing education retreat. Alas, that doesn't do much for Jonah's attitude. He still only reluctantly carries out his mission. And then he sulks, wishing he hadn't. Chapter four of the book, which we read this morning, makes fun of Jonah, and any other person who fails to recognize the spiritual ties which bind each and every one of us to all of God's creatures. Jonah sulks over the death of the weed that temporarily sheltered him from the blazing sun. Then God says--What, you would sulk over the death of this weed, which you neither planted nor tended, but you care nothing at all for those hundred and twenty thousand Ninevites whom you wanted me to destroy, not to mention their innocent livestock?!

Every Sunday we perform a ritual demonstrating that we are tied spiritually to persons outside our circle of faith, as well as to persons inside. Do you know what that ritual is? --Our prayer of corporate confession. I don't know whether you have ever noticed that the shortcomings which we confess in that prayer rather often are not ones which we personally have committed. Sometimes they are, but often they are not. This morning, I deliberately chose a corporate prayer of confession enumerating failings that most people in this congregation do not exhibit. We prayed: "God, your compassion greets us warmly, and yet we greet one another with cold, distant stares. You touch us in mercy, and yet we often refuse to share our grace with anyone." Now, that doesn't sound like Hanover people to me. We do pretty well in the hospitality department. So, why would we pray like that? Because, when we pray the prayer of corporate confession we are not praying just for ourselves; we are praying also for people outside our circle of faith, for the Ninevites of our world as well as for ourselves. Praying for their spiritual welfare demonstrates that we recognize spiritual ties to them. We are responsible to them for what we do, and God holds us responsible for caring for them, whether or not they think like us, live like us, or like us. There are ties that bind us to strangers and enemies; and those ties get illustrated-- (or at least should get illustrated)-- in the way that we pray, every Sunday.

The way of Jesus is a deeply compassionate way. We, the disciples of Jesus, are called to be compassionate not just toward those with whom we share common values and devotions, but to outsiders and enemies too. Paul obviously had the spirit of Jesus in him when he wrote to Christians in Rome (Romans 12: 14ff): "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them . . .Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all . . .Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I fear that we are allowing evil to overcome us these days--and here I speak with the social consciousness that you and I exhibit when we make a corporate confession--I fear that little by little we are allowing evil to overcome us because we have condoned by our silence the torture, the abusing, and the demeaning of our enemies, as if they were not human beings like us, human beings who should be treated with dignity. I fear that little by little we are allowing evil to overcome us because, instead of working to break down dividing walls as Jesus did, we have gone along with powerful people who are building walls higher and higher, stronger and stronger. I fear that little by little we are allowing evil to overcome us because, instead of permitting the good news of Jesus to penetrate our self-defenses and name the evil within us, we have allowed charlatans and narcissists and demagogues to use Christianity as a badge of superiority, and an ideological weapon for subduing opponents. It is high time that we declare, in fidelity to the compassionate voices of our holy scriptures and the example of Jesus, that there are spiritual ties which bind us to outsiders, ties that should bind our behavior toward them, ties which God has established and wants us to respect.

The blessing for respecting these ties is that we will begin to experience the joy of fellowship with persons with whom we have been estranged. In chapter four, Jonah is both a comical and pitiful figure as he sulks outside of Nineveh. He could have been rejoicing with the residents of that city, who had found a whole new life in the light of God's word. But, because of his resentment towards them, he locked himself away from that rejoicing. When we build walls between ourselves and our enemies, thinking only of keeping them away, we don't realize that we also lock ourselves into a pitiful, smothering isolation.

Jesus calls us to reach out, to do everything we can to be reconciled, to respect the spiritual ties that bind us to all of God's creatures. By respecting those ties we begin to be blessed by that peace which surpasses our understanding.