Lesson(s) From Divinity School: Love, God, and Self

Despite the various classes I've taken during my four and a half years in divinity school, I've only learned about three things: love, God, and self.

Love may have been the hardest lesson I've had to learn. And, let's face it, I'm still learning it. Many people make a fuss over how English speakers use the word "love," condemning much usage as flippant. I love my dog. I love justice. I love pizza. I love my friends. I love my parents. I love my partner. I love my neighbor. I love God.

In each of these situations, love is a little different. Nobody loves pizza the same way they love their partner, at least, I hope not. And nobody loves their pet the same way they love God. If I were giving a sermon, this would be the part where I talk about the different kinds of love in biblical Greek and you all groan, because you've heard that sermon numerous times before.

Since this isn't a sermon, I want to let you in on a secret. Ancient Greek doesn't have a word for love, let alone three or four words for it. Greek has four different concepts that we translate as love, which is very different from saying Greek has four different loves. Instead, Greek saw agape, philia, eros, and storge as four different emotions. English, however, sees them as one.

Love is bigger than any of the four Greek loves, because it captures the similarities between my love for pizza and my love for God. And what beautiful similarities they are. How spectacular that we can express and mix our love through actions like the Eucharist, where we love God and food. Through times when we are good samaritans, loving God and neighbor.

Loves mix well together. In fact, I dare say it is an essentialist perspective that heuristically delineates types of love, when it is all one thing. One thing with various permutations. Variations on a theme. Love of God is love of neighbor and love of creation and love of self.

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. The one that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

And thus my lesson about love turned into a lesson about God.

"The one that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." This lesson just keeps getting more and more difficult. As it turns out, knowing God has less to do with the ellusive, illusory line between orthodoxy and heresy and more to do with love, with relationship. And according to 1 John 4, it isn't about loving God, about singing hymns and praise songs about and to God, about going to Sunday school, about evangelism, about listening to Christian speakers and Christian music, about going into church buildings.

It--knowing God--is about loving that which and those whom God loves, which will include church and songs and school for some of us. But individuals tend to express love differently, which is why I make more trips to the recycling center than to church, why I don't read my Bible daily, and why I would rather listen about another person's faith than convince them to think like me.

Well, that last one wasn't completely true, which is why this lesson hasn't completely taken root in my life just yet. There are a few people, OK, a lot of people from whom I have no desire to hear. I want them to think like me and shut their mouths. Or, even if they weren't to think like me, I desire them to think a lot less like they do now.

As some of you may now, the PC-USA denomination recently paved the way for individual presbyteries to ordain homosexuals. I started reading Albert Mohler's thoughts, but I stopped, because I have no clue how to love that man. Loving someone you don't know is always a tricky matter, anyways. I could always pull the ol' "love-the-sinnner-hate-the-sin" trick out of the bag, but that isn't love, that is just something we say to make us feel better about our judgment.

But I don't always know how to love without judgment, no matter how much I praise love and deride judgment. In the face of my advocacy, in the center of my pursuit of God, love, equality, and social justice, I'm a judger. The person I want to be and the person I think I am is deconstructed by the person I am, my ego-ideal deconstructs my ideal-ego.

And thus my lesson about God has turned into a bit of navel-gazing, which isn't surprising to me anymore. When I search myself, I end up seeing and seeking God. When I look for God, my theology turns introspection. Maybe I'm a little ADD or maybe God carries the scars of humanity just as much as humanity carries the image of God.

1 Corinthians left us with faith, hope, and love. I leave you with Love, God, and Self. I'm not sure which is the greatest, because this trinity of lessons exist separately in my mind and in language, but they bleed into each other so much in reality that I cannot separate them systematically, not even enough to create a hierarchy. Perhaps they aren't all that different in the panentheistic interconnectivity that is our existence.

The (Im)possibility of Loving God: A Romance

I was talking with a friend of mine recently. She told me she is only at the "liking stage" with God. "I haven't reached love," she said.

I was taught to love God. Loving God was just something I was supposed to do, like peeing in the potty. At the ripe old age of 5, I asked Jesus to come into my heart. It must have been love, because I had to stay late in the Bible lesson and miss snack time so I could say a prayer with the teacher lady.

Loving God was just something I did. As life went on, I stuck with God for various reasons. Sometimes I loved God to stay out of hell, which was a very real place to me. Looking back, I assume I feared hell more than I loved God. I didn't know what gnashing of teeth was, but it never sounded very pleasant.

I began to realize fear was a poor reason to cling to God. The author of 1 John writes, "We love him, because he first loved us." At some points in my life, I felt some need to be a part of that "we" and convinced myself to love God because God loved me first, not because of fear (1 Jn. 4:18-19). I graduated to loving God because God loved me. I didn't necessarily love God for God's character or personality, but because of God's affection--like adding someone to the Christmas card list because they sent you a card, not because you want to send them a card.

Tonight, I listened to Peter Rollins speaking with Rob Bell at Mars Hill Church up in Michigan (listen here). Bell asked Rollins to speak on love. Rollins said, in effect, you can't love someone you need. You can't have this desire, this longing, this emptiness, this need for someone you don't know, find them, and live happily ever after. Not even God.

If you need something, once you get it, you're fulfilled. Once you get it, you no longer need it. If I desire a glass of water, I drink and then I'm good (until I thirst again, of course). I don't need or desire it anymore. Neither do I love my faucet, because it gives me water. I don't love God because God gives me eternal life or gives me a sense of meaning or because I am supposed to. I don't love God because of any previous need I had, not even a need for God.

"Love is like this: [...] with people, you cannot desire or love someone you've never met, because you've never met them. [...] The romantic truth is this: I never needed you until I met you. But when I met you, I now realize I always needed you. The need is retroactively given" (Peter Rollins).

I've "loved" God for many reasons. I've "needed" God for just as many reasons. But it wasn't until I loved God that I needed God. It wasn't until I was able to conceive of meaning without God that I truly realized God makes sense. It wasn't until I could see beauty and truth in eternal life through progeny that I could receive eternal life from God. When I thought I might not need God for meaning or for eternal life, when I thought I couldn't love God, then I could love God and began to need God. When I began to struggle with loving God, when I began to get mad and reconsider my relationship with God--then I began to love God.

It has been touch and go since. I meet God often and a need for this God is retroactively given. Then I meet God again, realizing the God I met earlier is not the God I am now meeting and a new need is given. I continually realize the God is not the God I thought I knew. I guess that's what happens when you love someone: you begin to know them, again and again, and they always seem new to you and you always need that person.

I'm not always happy with the God I meet. God's not always happy with the me God meets. Now we need each other, because we once didn't need each other. If not for the possibility that one day we could meet anew and no longer need and no longer desire--if not for the possibility of divorce--then we wouldn't be bound so tightly together in a dynamic relationship.

Agape Isn't Love: Translation & Loving God

Ancient Greek doesn't have a word for love.

Your Greek textbook and a zillion preachers will disagree, but despite the odds, I stand firm: Greek doesn't have a word for love.

Certainly, Greek has a number of words we translate as love, but none of them are words for love. Greek existed well before any form of English. How foolish to say Greek would have any words "for love," as if a group of people sat around inventing the language and decided to create a number of words "for love."

As English speakers, it is easy to understand "love" as one complex emotion, no matter how often we differentiate between different sorts of love. The vast permutations of love are just that: variations on a theme, not different emotions.

I cannot imagine the Ancient Greeks had any concept of what we call "love," which is not to say the didn't love, they just didn't understand what we call love. They had concepts of agape, philia, eros, and sturge. They may have even sensed similarities between these emotions, much in the way we understand similarities between like, love, passion, and hate. At the end of the Gospel According to John, Jesus asks Peter, "Do you agape me more than these?" (I'm not conjugating these verbs, for simplicity's sake).

Peter answers, "Yes, Lord, you know I philia you."

Jesus asks the question again, but differently. "Do you agape me?" Peter answers the same.

Then a third time Jesus asks the question, except not the same question. This time Jesus asks, "Do you philia me?" When Peter responds, he still uses the word philia.

Some connection exists here between philia and agape, a connection preachers make much ado over. Perhaps some of the ado is warranted, perhaps some of it isn't. I'm not concerned so much with what preachers make of this passage.

I'm concerned with us thinking Jesus and Peter were talking about two different kinds of love. John didn't simply switch between words "for love" for variety's sake. When you write, do you sometimes switch between the phrase "he fell" and "he has fallen," since both are phrases for the word "nafal" in Hebrew? I know I often use the following phrases nearly interchangeably when making subtle points like John 21: "He will remember," "He remembers," and "He used to remember." After all, they are all phrases for "yizcor" in Hebrew.

I'm not just making some unnecessary point. OK, you understand how self-centered our language regarding translation is, which is great. Precision is a good aim in communication, no matter how impossible it is.

Marva Dawn mentions a few words in Greek we translate as "love." The last word she lists is agape. "This last love, of course, is the richest of all." But agape isn't love. To adapt a saying from Dr. Gerald Keown, "Agape is agape." Agape is not love, because it is nothing else but agape. We misunderstand the biblical authors if we think they had a hierarchy of love with agape at the top and eros or some other love at the bottom.

We misunderstand love and agape if we think the Greek language outshines English because it has multiple nuances "for love." The point is getting closer, my friends. In our station, living thousands of years after the Greeks, we are blessed to enrich our understanding of the overarching concept of love. For us, love does encompass agape, philia, eros, and storge. Love is not agape, because agape is too narrow. However, we understand agape is a part of love. It is love as much as philia and eros are love.

Instead of picking up on the many differences between them, we can love doritos, love pets, love justice, love family, love friends, love through sex, love neighbor, love earth, and love God. Instead of focusing on the differences, our language helps us focus on the similarities. Sometimes we even confuse ourselves, replacing a desire for sexual love with a love for doritos, a desire for familial love with an unholy love for sex (which is different than love through sex).

Sometimes, we can purposefully and beautifully confuse these loves, expressing our love for God through our love for food in Eucharist, through our love of our neighbors, through our love of our families, through our love for God's creation, through our love of sexual language, through our love of humor, through our love for ourselves.

When we spend too much time on permutating love, we think we can only love God by some abstract concept of "agape-ing" God: through singing praises to God, through thanking God for things, through praying to God, through attending events centered on talking about God, through attending Christian schools, through going to church.

Certainly, the Greeks have aided us with the beauty of their language and their different words for what we call love. The concept of agape is also a great gift. It is a word I treasure, but not in the isolated (non)sense listed above where we forsake love for the sake of a mistaken agape.

Let us not forget the beauty of our own language. Let us love God by loving, something no biblical author could communicate, because of the limitations of their language. If we get too wrapped up in "agape-ing" God, we don't love God. If we intend to love God, we need to do it through loving everyone and everything else, too.

Love Always Falls Through the Cracks: A Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28

Preached @ Fayetteville Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, WV June 6, 2010

I want to tell you a story about my mum. She is a darling woman and so precious. We've always had a special relationship, my mum and I. She knew I would never be the one to stay close to home and take over the family business, but she loved me nonetheless, hesitatingly awaiting the day when I would leave her and get married.

But something happened and my mum began to fear I would leave her sooner than expected and it wouldn't be to get married, but rather to die. It started slowly. One day I tried standing up from a seated position and I just plopped right back down in my sweat. My muscles ached from straining. I was a little confused. When I talked to my mom about it, we decided it must be growing pains, like my older brother had when he was my age. He had some knee problems when he was growing up and the doctor said his body was just having some problems catching up with how fast he was growing.

This sort of thing began to happen more often. Then I began losing weight. And I wasn't working to lose it. I lost so much weight that my uncle thought I might be anorexic.

One morning I couldn't get out of bed. I could move, but just not enough to pick myself up. I called to my parents who rushed to help me. It was pretty embarrassing. I couldn't even get out of bed to use the bathroom. My parents had to take me. As the day went on, I got worse. Whereas I could move when I woke up, by mid afternoon I could no longer move my legs or feet and my arms and hands were getting weaker by the hour. You could almost tell the time of day by how many fingers I had the strength to straighten.

Breathing became hard. My speech became slurred. My heart was racing.

Mum was scared. Dad wanted to get the local doctor. Ever the logical Greek, he assumed the doctor could figure things out. I had been to the doctor earlier that week and he thought I might have some rare disease called thyrotoxic periodic paralysis. My mother was skeptical. She had never fully bought into Greco-Roman philosophy and medicine like Dad had. She was still true to her Canaanite roots and all its mysticism. She thought something else was at foot, something beyond the physical realm.

She asked Dad not to go to the doctor. She tried to whisper in the other room so I couldn't hear her, but whatever was going on with my body wasn't effecting my ability to hear. To this day, I remember exactly what she said. She said every word with care, as if they were the most important words she would ever speak. "Dougie," that's my dad's name. "Dougie, please don't go, not to the doctor. I hear there is a man in town, a man who can heal people ... a man who can," and the next bit she said sotto voce, "who can exorcise demons." And then she began to sound rushed, as if my father was leaving. "Please, Dougie, oh please, go to him. He'll be able to help our daughter."

All I heard before my mother came back to me was her tears. She looked torn when she entered the room again, torn between trusting her husband, trusting her intuition, and fearing for my life. She looked at me through her tears and I watched her countenance change to something I didn't understand at the time. She closed her teary eyes and moved her lips as if she was speaking, but no sounds came from her mouth. Then I lost consciousness.

Everything else that transpired I know only through the words of others. Mom opened her eyes when I let out a blood-curtling scream. She looked and I was wreathing and wrenching on the floor. My back arched up from the ground and I spewed blood from my mouth. I started to make noises she couldn't comprehend. She swears they sounded like words, as if I were speaking a language neither she nor I knew.

She had to take all of our clean drinking water to put out the fire we had going for supper, because I had rolled through it. Her tears stopped and she gained a strength beyond herself. Throwing herself upon me, she screamed for help, a scream heard by the neighbors.

Three of the neighbors came by, all of them brothers in their late twenties. They came in and were immediately dumbstruck. Mom yelled to them with authority, telling them to take hold of me and bind me. I bit one of them and to this day he crudely jokes that I should wear a muzzle. These guys were never the friendliest. They never listen to women, but I guess a mother in duress carries an authority that subverts patriarchy.

Once I was bound, she commanded the oldest brother to tend to the youngest brother's wound. And then she ran off, faster than any chariot those brothers had ever seen. My mother did not care that it would likely be dark when she was returning, which was a dangerous time for anyone to be out, let alone a woman. She did not care what people would think about a married woman running through town at that time of day, even though she was running to another man.

You might have heard of this man to whom she was running, he has quite the reputation. Mostly you hear good things about him, well, good and strange things, but he is certainly not beyond reproach in many a persons' eyes.

He was a Israelite man in his thirties, a sort of teacher in their culture, a rabbi. His name was Yeshua, or Jesus as you all call him. Apparently he wandered around a lot and people followed him. Some of them he asked to follow him. Others he sent away. He is said to make the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the mute to speak, and the lame to walk. He healed many maladies and exorcised demons.

Most people said he had great compassion, which is not something I would ever expect of an Israelite. My people used to live in his land until his people came in and committed heinous acts of genocide, leaving barely any of us left. My family is one of the few Canaanite families remaining in the area. To imagine, my mother going to this man. His people hated ours! And I heard this man spent a lot of time with less-than-reputable people: tax collectors, beggars, lepers, and prostitutes. What might he do to my mother?

My mother found him and while she was still a ways away, she cried out with a strange confidence, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David, my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed!" I barely believe she had enough wind to yell and still be polite enough to call this man "Lord." And she didn't beat around the bush at all, she wanted him to know she knew who he was, so she called upon his ancestry, calling him a son of David, an Israelite.

Despite his reputation, this man was not so compassionate and ready to help my mother. He said nothing to her! She repeated herself as she got closer and he continued ignoring her. She said it again, lowering her voice when she was a polite distance from him. He remained silent, as if she were imploring one of our human-made idols. My mother had come so far and she believed he could and would help. Had it been me there, I would have wondered if this character only had compassion on his own people or if he was waiting for some sort of "advance," either monetary or sexual, before he would respond. Lots of miracle workers are only out for money and favors.

My mother says none of these thoughts crossed her mind. She remained hopeful and repeated herself, her voice never breaking with tears: "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David, my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed."

The men around him began to stir. They could no longer stand my mother to be in their midst. To them she was nothing but a sweaty, mad, terribly annoying Canaanite woman. Those dolts. One of them had the gall to say, "Jesus, please. Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us."

So he did: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Although he said no, my mother wasn't ready to give up. She rose and boldly got in front of him to bow before him. "Lord, help me!"

Perhaps he misunderstood my mother. She was still begging for mercy. She says her voice wreaked of desperation, but I wonder if he thought she was commanding him [in v. 22 her imperative is aorist active, in v. 25 it is present active, emphasizing the need]. Whatever he thought, his answer was far from polite: "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs" [the Greek here is the diminutive form of dog, perhaps meaning "puppy"].

My father was none to happy when mother told him that part of the story. Jesus had completely dismissed her and rudely. He may have used the cutesy, diminutive word for dog, but a female dog is a female dog, puppy or not.

Any normal woman's spirit would have been broken. Certainly any sane person, woman or not would have given up and gone home, tail between her legs. Perhaps my father had come back with the doctor. He would worry about my mother. Maybe he would be mad. Maybe the doctor could heal me. Maybe the doctor had already healed me. Was I even still alive? Were those pesky neighbors still keeping watch over me? All kinds of thoughts could have been going through her head, beating her hopes to a pulp.

Not my mum. She was not broken. She admits she was confused, but her love for her daughter created an unbreakable faith. She continued hoping she could change his mind, hoping she could convince him that all people deserve mercy, not just Israelites. Without missing a beat, my mother replied, "Yes, Lord; but even the little dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."

I wish I could have seen his face. I can only imagine it was shock. He had sat around like one of our deaf idols as she prayed to him. But he could sit deaf no longer when her persistence began to annoy him and his friends. So he made that snide remark about my mother, hoping she would go away and seek some other miracle worker. Little did he know, my mother wasn't seeking out some miracle worker, she was seeking out the wisdom and power of the God of Israel.

Even though we were Canaanites, we heard those rumors about Jesus that circulated about him being a messiah and a man of God. We knew some of Israel's stories, especially since they had killed so many of our ancestors. We knew their God made a covenant with a man named Abraham and that covenant was not only to bless Abraham, but to make Abraham and his descendants a blessing to all nations. Now, certainly some of his descendants weren't much of a blessing to us, but my mother knew this Jesus could redeem their mistakes and be a blessing, if he were, indeed, a man of God and savior to his people.

She wasn't part of God's Israel and Jesus said he was only sent to Isael. But for what purpose? ln that moment she was confident that Israel was chosen in order to bless everyone. First the blessing would go to Israel and next to the Gentile, even the Canaanite, even if she had to call herself a female dog eating Israel's small, leftover blessings.

I don't know what his face looked like, but she convinced him. "O lady," he said, "your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." He didn't ask her to become part of Israel. He didn't tell her she needed to born again. He didn't command her to leave her family and follow him. He didn't tell her to sell her possessions and give the money to the poor. He didn't even examine her faith, but he admired it. "Your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." Before my mother could thank him or exchange other pleasantries like names and what-not, my mother sprang to her feet with joy and grace. She sprinted home even faster than she had run away.

When I came to, I saw those three men standing in the corner of our house, cowering. I hurt all over. My arm was broken, my nose was bleeding, and my legs were badly burnt, among other atrocious pains. I tried to move when I realized I was all tied up. I began to panic. Why was I tied up and what had those three brothers done to me. Where were my parents? What was happening?

I was struggling to free myself when my mother ran up to me and kissed me. She ran her hands through my dirty, tangled hair and whispered, "It's OK, my love. It's all over."

I began to cry. I still didn't know exactly what was going on, but I knew I could move again. My breathing and heart beat normalized as fear left my body. Mom was untying me and the three bothers scuttled away hurriedly, although they still deny how cowardly they acted throughout the whole event.

My mother freed me. With her hands she untied the ropes that bound me, but it was her faith that healed me--her faith, her hope, her love, that man Jesus, and his God.

I don't know where I would be today if my mum had not convinced Jesus to break bread and give her some crumbs. Ever since then, no one in my family has ever been quiet around inequality and oppression, no matter how different someone might be from us and no matter how much we might disagree with their ideology or disapprove of their actions. We know all blessings are meant to be shared. Miraculously, no matter how many times we share this bread Jesus broke for us, it never runs out, whether we enthusiastically share large pieces or reluctantly allow crumbs to fall onto the ground.

Love always falls through the cracks, sustaining every despised or oppressed person until all are sustained with the same food, and brought up to share at the same table, none of them as dogs, all of them as children of God.

My Canon within the Canon: Sermon Preparation on Gen. 17

If you place more emphasis on one part of the Bible over another, it is said you have a canon within the canon. In general, I read the Old Testament more carefully than the new. I read the Gospels more than anything. Above all, I believe God is love (1 John 4:8).

While doing some homework today, I had to "prepare a sermon" on Genesis 17:1-14. I didn't actually have to write the sermon, I just needed to do some sermon preparation based on my professor's requirements.

Genesis 17:1-14 talks of God's covenant with Abraham and the sign of circumcision. I was concerned with the women not mentioned. After v. 14, Sarah is mentioned, but not any other women. What is their part in the covenant? Why don't they get to have the sign of the covenant?

And how is circumcision a sign of the covenant when so many other people had circumcisions? Claus Westermann noted many of the peoples surrounding Israel practiced circumcision. The Egyptians did it. The peoples of Canaan did it (except the Philistines). If anything, circumcision made the Hebrew people blend in, not stand apart (until the exile).

If the people of Canaan also bore the sign of the covenant, then why was God giving their land to the Hebrew? According to Amos, God called the Philistines to the land, so why kick them out for the Hebrews? Earlier in Genesis, God made a covenant with all creation, so why make a covenant only with Abraham and his descendants? And why does Ishmael get such a bad deal? He is a son of the covenant, but his people are ignored in the rest of the Bible. And why does God further limit the covenant between Jacob and Esau? Why is God limiting divine love?

The last question on this worksheet asked how I would preach the sermon. After thinking about this passage and other parts of the Bible, I yielded to 1 John 4:8. I figured this passage of Genesis must have been one interpretation of God's love, which was influenced by a people in exile (assuming the text was written while in exile).

And I figure the interpretation of God's love was too narrow, too bound by its time and culture. In a large moment of pride, I figure my interpretation is better. In the tradition of scripture, I look at history and life around me and I look for God's involvement and God's love. I simply do not know a God who limits divine love. I could be wrong, but I hope and pray I'm not.

And so my sermon would say. It would deconstruct the traditional interpretation of God's love, an interpretation ignoring women, Ishmael, Esau and any part of reality that is not Israel. It would portray scripture as interpretation of history, a search for God. It would learn to search for God in this life, seeking inspiration to be scripture, to be God's love today--including a love beyond gender, genealogy, and religion. A love not giving way to supersessionism, but inclusion.

The Sign of Jonah (Sermon 10/04/09)

Matthew 12:38-42, 16:1-4; Luke 11:29-32

The Sign of Jonah?

We're not talking political-rally signs. No signs saying "Vote for so-and-so for such-and-such."

We're not talking ASL.

We're talking a signifier signifying a signified. A reader interacting with a signifier to see how and what can be signified. The process of meaning, however (im)possible.

Words are signs. The word "sign" means different things, as just shown. Consider the word "literally," too. If I tell you all I "literally" ate a whole pie last night, you'll understand the signifier "literally" to mean I actually ate a whole pie. On the other hand, If I say, "I literally ate 20 million pies last night," then you're going to understand "literally" to mean quite the opposite of what it signified in the previous example. Signs don't always mean one thing. Sometimes they mean one thing or another. Sometimes they mean multiple things at the same time to different people.

Three times in the gospels, Jesus mentions the "sign of Jonah." And as the gospels are wont to do, none of these stories are the same. In two of these instances, Jesus is asked for a sign--something to point to Jesus' identity and mission. Each time the sign of Jonah is mentioned, it is surrounded by stories of a compassionate and teaching Jesus and stories evoking questions of Jesus' identity--is he of God or the devil?

The sign of Jonah is juxtaposed with these other signs, signs that reveal his glory, as the Gospel of John puts it (2:11). Although the sign of Jonah points to the same things these other signs point to, it is a different sort of sign as it specifically alludes to a book of the Bible whereas the other signs are provisions of food for the hungry, the healing of the lame and sick, the exorcism of the demon possessed, and such.

In Matthew 12, Jesus explains the sign of Jonah as foreshadowing his death and resurrection: "just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the son of man will be in the heart of the earth" (v. 40). But the sign of Jonah is not just about the fish.

In Luke, Jesus describes the sign a little differently. Jesus says, "just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the son of man will be to this generation" (11:30). Whereas Jesus actually explained the sign in Matthew, in Luke, he only complicates the matter further, comparing the sign of Jonah to the sign of the son of man.

Here and in Matthew, the sign of Jonah is somehow wrapped up with the people from Nineveh and their repentance. Jesus isn't telling us everything, expecting us to know more about the story of Jonah. So, let's take a deeper look by reading the whole story--it's short. Feel free to read along if you like. It's one of those small books near the end of the Old Testament: "... Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, ..." Don't be ashamed to look in the table of contents to help you find it.

As I read, pay attention to things that are weird. Jonah is a weird story, I think. I think we are drawn into the story of Jonah by being forced to explain things the story leaves unexplained--what I call filling in the gaps.

Read Jonah.

We've already heard an explanation from Matthew about the sign from the first half of Jonah's story, so I'm going to focus on the latter part of the story, which is just as fishy as the first if you ask me.

Why did Jonah deliver such a short, harsh message? The message in the book leaves a little bit to be desired. Did Jonah really deliver the whole message and nothing but the message that God gave him? Or does the book give us a summary of what Jonah said?

"Forty days and Nineveh is overturned!" Not really the most eloquent of sermons. No hope. No call to repentance. Why even deliver the message? Why give them a timeline? Since when is the God of Israel--Jonah's God and our God--a sadist? Certainly God didn't want the Ninevites to run around town panicking for forty days as they await their ineluctable doom.

I just can't imagine God sent Jonah only to bring news of destruction. Maybe Jonah didn't learn his lesson after the fish and doesn't say what God wants, or maybe the book emphasizes or summarizes Jonah's message. I don't know. But, whatever Jonah said, I doubt it was all rainbows and butterflies, but in spite of Jonah's message, God still held out hope for the Ninevites.

And so did the Ninevites. After one day of a depressing message, the whole city somehow manages to repent. I have no clue how word got to the whole town without someone tweeting, updating their facebook status, or taking the story to the weekend update. What exactly compelled them to believe? What compelled them to fast and wear sackcloth? Did their discomfort and hunger grab God's attention by proving their genuineness? Did it prove genuineness to the community, thus holding each other accountable? Maybe a little of both?

Here's a better question: Why did they make the animals fast and wear sackcloth? Was their too much gossip going on in the barnyard? Too much oppression? Maybe the white sheep were treating the black sheep according to some poor stereotypes. Maybe the bulls wouldn't associate with the steers. And surely the ostriches were ostracized.

Cheesy puns aside, God's reaction is crazier than animals being forced to fast and wear sackcloth because of a message of destruction from an angry prophet who probably smells like fish guts.

According to Hebrew scripture, repentance involves sacrifices and in order to be in God's favor you have to obey the law, be circumcised, and engage in worship at the temple. The Ninevites likely had little knowledge of Israel's covenant relationship with God and likely stayed ignorant of that relationship and the subsequent laws. And God still accepted their repentance. And boy did it make Jonah mad.

God wasn't bound by how Jonah read scripture, even the straightforward parts. Regardless of what Jonah thought, God knew about God's love. God knows everyone is redeemable. Despite God's love wasn't emphasized in Jonah's message, it was still given away freely and in abundance. It seems our God is a God who refrains from destroying the penitent, even when the penitent aren't even completely sure what they are repenting from and how to repent from it.

While Jonah preached hellfire and brimstone, God was singing, "Come just as you are." And brothers and sisters, let me tell you Jonah didn't like that hymn one bit. He was irate. He wanted Nineveh to be destroyed or at least to have to respond to God the same way Israel did. He didn't want to hear "come just as you are," he wanted to hear, "come just the way I asked Jonah and Israel to come."

In all this anger and bitterness, what kind of sign was Jonah to Nineveh? A sign of human judgment and nonacceptance? A sign of trying to put God into a theological box? A sign of reluctance to accept God's actions?

I hope not.

There must be more.

Yes, Jonah had a grudge against Nineveh, a grudge that somehow put him in an awkward situation. Nineveh was part of this empire that bullied Israel and eventually took them over, forcing the people to leave their homes. I don't think we can completely understand that sort of grudge today. Nations, empires, nationalism, and patriotism operate too differently for us to understand Jonah by comparing Israel to the US. For Jonah, his ethnicity was his citizenship and his religion. Being Hebrew meant being Israelite and being in a covenant with God. For us, ethnicity does not necessarily mean you're from the US and neither does it mean you are Christian. We have to get at Jonah another way.

I think Jonah was called to minister to those who had wronged both him and those he loved. And not just those who wronged him and those he loved. He was called also to those he associated with them--people who did nothing wrong but be born who Ninevites. Jonah was sent to those who validated a stereotype and those who simply wore the label.

It's like God calling us to minister to any group of people we judge based on a stereotype. Since I don't know any of you, I can't say who is your Nineveh. And even if I knew you, it isn't my place to judge. But knowing qualities of Nineveh, I can give a few possibilities.

For some of us, it could be another race, nationality, or skin tone. For others, it could be those affiliated with a certain political party. Maybe it is people who dress a certain way or listen to certain music. People who use words we might not use. It could be people with a certain amount of money--rich or poor. Perhaps it is anyone whose ever been to jail--thieves, murderers, sexual offenders. It might be people who believe things you don't believe, do things you don't do, or approve of things you don't approve of.

Part of the message of Jonah's story is the redeemability of all humanity. No matter what we do, we still carry the image of God. That, my friends, is what I see as the sign of Jonah and the sign that Jonah became to Nineveh. He walked in despising those around him, preaching hellfire and brimstone, but found out God loves the people Jonah doesn't. And no matter what Jonah did, no matter what he said, God still showed mercy to a whole city of people outside of God's covenant relationship with Israel.

And so did Jesus, praise God. Without him, we may never have realized how far God's love extends and we wouldn't be part of a different covenant relationship with the of God Israel. Jesus ministered to those who were the sores on Israel's society: the tax collectors who cheated and lied; the prostitutes, adulterers, and others sexually different from the norm; the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and the other elite who thought they knew everything about God; the Samaritans, Romans, and other Gentiles who, according to much of the Old Testament, had no earthly right to be loved by God; and Jesus also went to the ever ambiguous "the sinners," which, as we know, is everyone. Everyone. Not just people who respond to God the way we expect them to. Everyone. Literally.

Now, as Jesus says in Luke, "something greater than Jonah is here" (11:32) and the story of the Ninevites bears witness to it. God loves whom God loves and we can't do a thing about it, no matter how much we pout and misunderstand.

Jesus referred to himself as the something greater than Jonah. After his ascension, another thing greater than Jonah came: the Spirit who dwells within us.

The Spirit dwells within us, Church. Because of that indwelling, today, we are the something greater than Jonah. We embody Jesus the Christ. We are called to be filled with the spirit: to die to ourselves and be raised from the belly of a sea monster, to love--to really love with our actions--the Ninevites wherever they be and whoever they are, which is everybody, everywhere.

We can judge however we want,
but God's love isn't bound by us.
Our judgments destroy,
but the Spirit heals all.
No matter how we judge them,
Jesus still loves them.

Urinals & Church

I was at the Broad River Coffee Company this evening. Sometimes I feel like I will do more homework if I get out of my apartment, because I let my mind wander and my emotions wallow if I stay in my apartment, my safe place. The coffee shop helps, sometimes.

About halfway through my second cup of coffee, I got up to use the restroom, probably for the third time. The floor in the bathroom had just been mopped and I was pleased to stand near the urinal thinking all the pee splatter had been mopped up, which means it was mixed with soap and water and then spread all over the floor. And I began to think about the various reasons pee could get all over a men's-room floor.

I think it has little to do with aim, because the stream sometimes comes out in unexpected directions. Other times it is partly the fault of the guy. Maybe he stands too far away from the urinal and drips a little directly onto the floor. Sometimes an attempt to shake out the last few drops can send a drop of urine on the pants, shoes, or floor. You've got to be careful with the shake. And since urine is a liquid flowing with force from a small hole, physics dictates that the liquid will splatter after hitting its destination, be it the urinal cake, the wall of the urinal, or the puddle of toilet water near the drain.

I bet splatter is the main cause of urine on men's-room floors and I also bet a lot of study has gone into this issue. You might even say there are different urinal theories based on the many styles of urinals you see. It isn't as if urinals are designed to be aesthetically pleasing. No, they are designed in order to catch as much splatter as possible while also taking up as little space as possible. Or, so I presume. I haven't taken a class in urinalology ... yet.

And then I thought of the urinal fly, which is a great idea. I was at an airport once and noticed a fly in the urinal. Naturally, I aimed for it. It didn't move, though. I was pretty sure any live fly would either fly away or fall after being hit with the force of a stream of pee. Then I wondered if the fly was dead and squished against the urinal wall. Who would squish a fly inside of a urinal? Like any man would do, I changed my aim a little, thinking some indirect pressure might free the dead creature from the wall to the drain below. As I was investigating the fly with my pee, I decided it must be some sort of sticker or image printed on the porcelain, this decision made as any more investigatory urinating would require more ammo and result in me playing with myself (I hear it falls of if you do that and I certainly didn't want it to come off, especially not in an airport urinal). When finished, a few drops shaken onto the floor, another falling on on my thigh, I noticed similar fly images in each of empty urinals.

When I got back from the bathroom and returned to my studying--we're back in the coffee shop now, not the airport--I read about the Church. I'm sure I could make a lot of cheesy connections between urinals, the Church, and aim, but I'm afraid of being struck by lightning (or ignorance). The following sentences caught my eye:

"Throughout most of the church's history its empirical state has been deplorable. This was already true of Jesus' first circle of disciples and has not really changed since. We may have been fairly good at orthodoxy, at 'faith,' but we have been poor in respect of orthopraxis, of love. Van der Aalst reminds us that there have been countless councils on right believing; yet no council has ever been called to work out the implications of the greatest commandment--to love one another."

Bosch, the author of the text, and Van der Aalst with him probably aren't suggesting we--here come the puns--toss faith and belief down the pisser or flush the fly out with the toilet water (I couldn't resist). But can you imagine what would have been the result of a bunch of Evangelicals getting together and not writing a manifesto and worrying about identity, but rather making a plan of how to change the world, letting anyone and everyone help them. What if the Pope called for a council that was only concerned with enacting love and embodying Christ, that is, agape? What if we didn't hear sermons about doctrine, but about how we could love and these sermons were followed by groups of people--you and me included--flocking outside the church walls instead of being concerned about what goes on inside those damned boundaries--groups of people who didn't change things inside the church so that people would come, but went out and just loved on some people.

Love. Period.

You. Me.

Imagine.

That's fly.