"The Sign of Nineveh," the senior sermon of Greg Garrett, of the Diocese of Texas, given on February 28, 2007 in Christ Chapel

Good morning, and welcome to Christ Chapel.As someone who has been called to a ministry of the Word, let me say first that it is an amazing and sobering experience to stand in a pulpit where Bishop John Hines, Will Spong, and others of my heroes of the faith have preached.

The sermon this morning is an audience-participation sermon. Don’t worry — I’m not going to ask you to do liturgical dance, the hokey-pokey, or anything else not comporting with your dignity. But we do sometimes forget that all sermons are audience-participation sermons, that even when a preacher speaks in the first person singular — as I tend to do, a lot — he or she is actually called to explore the scriptures on behalf of a community, that sermons are really in first person plural. So at the beginning and end of my sermon today, I’ll say a well-known versicle from today’s Psalm reading and ask for you to give the response.

Lord, open our lips.

And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.

This is a personal story I’ve never told before in public — not in a book, not in a sermon, and maybe not even in conversation. In my experience, there’s no point in telling stories until you can see their entire shape — until then, they are simply puzzling things that happened — like the people of Nineveh putting sackcloth on goats and donkeys.

My friend Dennis Covington writes in Salvation on Sand Mountain, “Endings are the most important part of stories. They grow inevitably from the stories themselves. The ending of a story only seems inevitable, though, after it’s over and you’re looking back, as I am now.” 1 footnote

In the fall of 2000, I was in pretty desperate shape. After several years of life-threatening depression, I’d begun taking anti-depressants and sleep meds on the off chance that life might actually be worth living. The medication kept me alive but had horrible side-effects, my sleep was still sporadic and troubled, and during that time I had some experiences, usually when I was spending the night in my recliner in my office at Baylor, that I can only describe now as visions. Because I’d always thought of myself as a supremely rational person, I was alarmed by these chaotic incursions. And because I’d long thought of myself as somehow post-Christian and some of these visions were seriously religious, I was, as Anne Lamott says about a similar moment in her own life, appalled.

The Desert Fathers, starving, weather-beaten, and sleep-deprived, saw demons and heard voices. And me, tossing and turning in my darkened office, alien chemicals roiling in my brain?

On this occasion I want to tell you of, I heard a Voice. And what the Voice whispered was this: “I want you to go to Nineveh.”

Kathryn Greene-McCreight, a priest and professor who suffers from bipolar disorder and who has also felt brutalized by her medications, writes that she can distinguish between secular hallucinations and holy visions. Me — I’m not so sure I can do that. Some of what I thought might be visions turned out to be selfish telegrams from the Id. This one wasn’t, which is one of the reasons that I tend to give it some credence.

Was it the actual Voice of God, was it the tickling of the Paraclete, was it an edict from my Super-Ego, was it a set of random chemicals firing off neurons in my brain? All that awaited further discernment, and anyway, is not the point of the story.

“I want you to go to Nineveh.”

As many of you know, I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. I had to memorize Bible verses every Sunday. I used to win Bible drills, and as a small person I could name the books of the Bible forward and backward. So in the year 2000, I remembered that Nineveh was the great city of the Assyrians, the great enemies of the people of Israel, and even though I did not yet know the word “exegesis,” I understood that a call to Nineveh meant a call to follow God that would take me out of my comfort zone — wherever that might be — a call that would embarrass and unsettle me, a call to radical faith.

I knew all these things.

And what was my response?

No, and hell no.

“I do not want to go to Nineveh,” I announced to my office. It felt a little strange to be talking to the disordered chemicals in my brain, but I went on. “And anyway, in case you haven’t noticed, I am in no shape to go to Nineveh.”

This conversation did not, as I hope you know, constitute my discernment process for seminary. In fact, I’m not sure this vision or whatever it was ever came up when Greg Rickel began talking with me about a call to teaching, preaching, and service to the church. Just so you know: I am not attached to the idea of this story as record of an authentic holy phenomenon. I would be just as happy to know that those seven words were launched by some bad pepperoni.

Because again, authenticity is not the point. The point is that the story is complete. And now perhaps you will remember the one thing growing out of the story that I can say with any confidence: I have been called to go to Nineveh.

Because we are all called to Nineveh.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of how his generation seeks a sign that will lead them to belief and understanding, but that their only sign will be the Sign of Jonah. What is this sign? It depends on which gospel you’re reading. The writer of Matthew, for example, draws an explicit parallel in his version between the three days Jonah spends in the giant fish and the three days that Jesus spends in the grave — the Resurrection will be the sign for this generation. But we should not reverse-engineer Matthew’s story for our gospel reading. Luke’s Jesus speaks only of Jonah being a sign, just as the Son of Man himself is a sign.

But how so?

I think the sign in this passage refers to faithful proclamation. Jonah’s proclamation is a sign of something greater than he is, a message more important than he is — more important than his fears, more important than his cultural chauvinism, more important than his discomfort. Rabbi Susan Lippe notes that the four chapters of Jonah can be summed up simply in three sentences:

God cares about all the people.

Jonah only cares about himself.

God wins. 2 footnote

We in the Christian tradition tend to turn Jonah into that children’s Bible story with the whale, a fairy tale that we may get mixed up with Pinocchio. In the Jewish tradition, the entire scroll of Jonah is read on the high holy day of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. But for us, Jonah remains a comic figure, and that causes us to devalue his story, which is a tragedy.

Because, you see, for many of us, Jonah’s story is our story, or at least it is a story that sheds light on our story. Comparative anthropologist Joseph Campbell, in laying out the pattern of the universal hero’s journey, noted that in almost every such story there is the possibility that the hero will refuse the call when it comes. And I cannot speak for all of you, but as you’ve heard, I flat out refused to go to Nineveh. Instead, like Jonah, I went down from dark place to darker place, until at last, at the very bottom of the sea, I gave up. I gave in.

I don’t claim any special heroism; I was mostly stubborn and stupid. You should not have to be in the belly of a whale to figure out that God wants your obedience and service. And I certainly don’t want to imply that I could see the shape of what I was being called to do, because like many of my classmates, I didn’t and still don’t. Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” He knew that we’re rarely privileged to see the endings of our stories when we are in them.

To seek to live under the Sign of Jonah is to be flawed but faithful. It is to remember that the message is always more important than the messenger. It is to proclaim that message, even if we don’t understand the complete shape of it, even if we don’t completely agree with it, even if we don’t know God’s purpose within it. But it is also to seek such an understanding of God that, like Jonah, we can be enlightened if we try to limit God’s grace and mercy. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes,

If Jesus’ own example is to be trusted, then following the Word of God may not always mean doing what is in the book. Instead it may mean deviating from what is in the book in order to risk bringing the Word to life. 3 footnote

As we go out into the world to bring the Word to life, the Sign of Jonah goes in front of us to remind us that the message is more important than programs, more important than the physical plant, more important that the approval and acclamation of those we serve. Although we can and should pray that the places where we go to minister will grow in favor with God, we are called first to proclaim the Kingdom, not to produce pledging units. And as hard as it may sometimes be to forget that this is not about us, we must become transparent, so that the message can be seen through us. If we are shining, it is only because we are reflecting God’s glory. We are carriers of a message greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon, and certainly greater than ourselves.

In August of 2004, Charlie Cook preached at our closing Eucharist at MoRanch, at the conclusion of my class’s three-day retreat before we began our seminary training. He talked to us about the difficulty of discerning and accepting God’s call, how in the Bible typically it came to people like me who didn’t want it, like you, who may have wrestled with it, like us, who have questioned it—or who questioned God for sending it.

And, Charlie told us, all that questioning was probably a good thing.

Because, God be praised, the Sign of Jonah is not about whether or not you want to go to Nineveh.

It’s about whether or not you do go.

Lord, open our lips.

And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.

1 footnote -- Dennis Covington, Salvation on Sand Mountain.

2 footnote -- http://www.betham.org/sermons/lippe031006.html

3 footnote -- Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Century (October 18, 2003): 89.