Warren Hecht was my narration instructor, the very first semester of college.  It was a small seminar, about 8 students, and we were given our first assignment.  It was simple; the same assignment would be given every single week.  Write a story, at least 5 pages, and read it aloud to the class.  I was seventeen and scared, not ready to read my stories to a group of strangers.  But I was even more scared of getting a bad grade, so I wrote a story, something simple about a woman and her daughter, and putting their dog to sleep.  The next week, I read it with a shaking voice, as the class listened politely.  When it was over, I let out my breath, pleased to have completed that first, terrifying assignment.

            But Warren looked at me, and looked at the class, and said something I would never forget.  “You can write about whatever you want to write about,” he stated.  “But unless you reveal something embarrassing about yourself, your story is probably not worth a whole lot.”

            It wasn’t until I started writing about my experiences of sexual exploitation, losing and finding faith in God, confusion about gender and race, that I started to find my voice in that class.  It was embarrassing and it was hard, but it was more real than anything I had ever written.

            I don’t like to be embarrassed.  I don’t like to be vulnerable.  I don’t like to risk the disapproval of others.  I want people to like me, I want them to think that I am strong and smart and capable and kind.  I don’t want to reveal the darkest parts of my soul. I think most of us are like that.  We resist sharing that which is hard, that which is embarrassing, that which makes us vulnerable, and we create relationships and communities that are not fully real, and sometimes not worth all that much.

            But when we seek to truly follow God, I think we might hear the echo of Warren’s word, “Unless you reveal something embarrassing about yourself, your story may not be worth a whole lot….Unless you risk pain and alienation, your efforts may not be worth a whole lot.”

            You see, God tells embarrassing stories, stories of pain and alienation, and we get to benefit from these narratives.  Today’s story about Jonah is one of those fine, humiliating tales of imperfection and loss.

            Jonah’s fear and faithlessness is evident from the beginning of the story.  As soon as God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, to preach to the Assyrian people, Jonah refuses and heads on out, going the opposite way.  When he gets on a ship and storms threaten to sink the entire boat, Jonah tells the others to throw him over, believing that the storm will cease once he has drowned.  But we know Jonah does not drown, and after some time, he does end up in Nineveh.  This time he obeys and walks through the city, calling the people to repentance, threatening that God will destroy the city if it does not turn from its violent and awful deeds.

            As we arrive at our scripture reading for today, we see that the people do repent, God decides not to destroy the city, and instead of celebrating his own success, Jonah is infuriated.  He says, “God, I knew you were going to do this.  I knew you were going to forgive them and save them, and now, now I would rather just die.  Just kill me, God.  I don’t want to go on living.”      

            God proceeds to offer Jonah a plant, to provide him shelter from the sun, to spare his life.  And just as Jonah is enjoying this lovely shelter, God destroys the plant and Jonah is furious again.  And then God delivers the final message of this book, “How is it that you could care so much for this plant, and not for 120,000 human beings?”

            The book ends there.  That is the end of Jonah.  There is no repentance from him, and we really don’t know what happens to Jonah.  Over the years, he has been portrayed in all sorts of horrible ways.  This faithless coward, this vindictive prophet, this man who did everything, absolutely everything, wrong.  Kind of an embarrassing story for Jonah…

            Was he really a wimp who was just super scared of going to Nineveh? I have heard the stories of the things that happened there. Torture, incredible violence, it really was a dangerous place.  But when you look at this book historically, it is about far more than a man who is afraid and vindictive.  It is about an Israelite who is asked to save his enemies from destruction, when the reality is that these very enemies will later destroy Israel.  It is about an Israelite mad a God for saving a city, and a people, who will proceed to destroy his own city, and his own people.  Jonah is not just trying to protect himself, he is trying to protect the people of his country.

            Those who heard this story when it was originally told would already know that Assyria would go on to destroy Israel in 722 BCE.  The northern kingdom was utterly destroyed by the Assyrians, and for much of the next century Judah and Jerusalem will be firmly under the thumb of Assyria as its vassal. God's mercy for Nineveh, the capitol of Assyria, appears to come at a great cost to Jonah and to Israel.  No wonder Jonah is mad, no wonder he does not want to save Nineveh.  His own people, his own country, will be destroyed because of his actions, because of his faithfulness.

            In the end, Jonah does do what is right.  He goes into Nineveh and he preaches and he brings about the deliverance of the Assyrian people.  Because of his message, the people of Nineveh survive.  And so then Jonah goes out into the desert heat, lies down, and says to God, “Just let me die.  I don’t want to go on living, knowing what I have done to my own people.”  He has saved the enemy and put his own people at risk.

            He works for justice, but at an enormous cost.  And it hurts, and it is humiliating.  Not because he is a spineless wimp, but because he has sold out his own people by following a God who offers very expensive grace.

            Jonah’s story reveals a whole lot about God, and about the costs of following God.  Yes, unless you risk pain and alienation, your efforts may not be worth a whole lot.

           It is not supposed to be easy.  And usually, it is hardest when we work for justice and peace, knowing that our efforts will undermine the comfort of others, and the comfort of those we love.  When we work for peace and justice, we can cause pain to our own community, our own families, our own friends.  This is what Jonah did, and sometimes, we are called to do this, too. 

In his book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, Ron Sider tells the story of Northeast High School in Philadelphia.  It was “famous for its superb academic standards and its brilliant, long-standing athletic triumphs.  The second oldest school in the city, Northeast had excellent teachers and a great tradition.  And it was almost entirely white.  Then in the mid-fifties, the neighborhood began to change.  Black people moved in.  Whites began to flee to the Greater Northeast, a new all-white section of Philadelphia.  A new high school soon became a necessity in this developing, overwhelmingly white area.  

When the excellent new school was completed in 1957, it took the name of the old one, and with the name went the memories and traditions as well as the school’s history of academic excellence and athletic triumph.  The new school also took all the academic and athletic trophies and awards, school colors, songs, as well as the powerful alumni and their treasury.  Worst of all, the teachers were give the option of transferring to the new Northeast High.  Two-thirds of them did.

The inner-city school was renamed Edison High, and the black students attending it had nothing but an old, rapidly deteriorating building, frequent substitute teachers, and no traditions.  The subsequent years have not brought better teachers or adequate teaching materials.  The academic record since 1957 has been terrible.  But Edison High has one national record.  More students from Edison died in the U.S. Army in Vietnam than from any other high school in the United States.”

Who was responsible for this?  Local, state, and federal politicians?  The school board?  Parents?  Christian community leaders?  Where was the Jonah?  Why wasn’t he running around, telling the people to repent of this sin, to resist this structural injustice?  It is because most of us aren’t even as courageous as Jonah.  Most of us don’t want to fight changes that benefit ourselves. Most of us don’t want to alienate our neighbors and our friends, who only want what is good for them, while they ignore, or don’t even see, the injustice that results.  Jonah would have gotten a lot of white people mad at him and he would have been very afraid to say anything. 

            Peace work demands that we tell the embarrassing truth: that most of us in here benefit from the world as it is, and that until we are willing to give up those privileges that we enjoy, justice will never come.  We are wealthier than almost everyone in the world, but we really do enjoy our wealth.  Who is going to come in and tell us we need to be giving more, way more?  Those of us who are white benefit from privilege that often includes access to the best schools, the best houses, the best jobs.  Who is going to come in and tell us that we need to advocate for racial justice, even when it means talking about race?  Most of us have embarrassing, painful secrets about the ways in which we benefit from our privilege, power, and wealth.  And until we start talking about this, and doing something about this, our work for justice is not worth all that much.

            Anne Lamott tells a different story, one that takes place in her church during a time of deep stress over issues of race.  “One of our Sunday school teachers, a blue-eyed blonde, stepped to the pulpit during worship to talk about something that was tearing her up.  She was teaching Sunday school that day, and had to make it quick.  She said that even though she was a progressive and a civil rights activist, she had secret thoughts about race that scared her, that made her feel she did not deserve to be a part of the church anymore.  She’d been watching the news, she told us, and the image of a black man in a T-shirt had flashed on the TV screen, and her first thought had been, ‘What did he do?’  He hadn’t done anything – he was an expert on the law.  She didn’t have a clue where to begin with the old ugly thing inside her, except to stand before us, crying, and say it.  Then she walked down the aisle to go teach, and so she did not see that every single person in the church had stood to applaud her.”

            Jonah was afraid.  But so am I.  So are we all.  When we go to Nineveh, we not only hurt ourselves, we can hurt one another.  When he brings peace to Nineveh, he brings pain to Israel.  And what is the point?  Why should we afflict ourselves?  Should we really afflict the comfortable?

            According to Warren, if I tell a story that doesn’t reveal something embarrassing about myself, it is probably not worth a whole lot.  And according to the Bible, if we work for justice in a way that does not cause any pain, any challenge, any conflict, any loss, it is probably not worth a whole lot.  We are called to give of our time, to give of our money, to give of our privilege, in a way that is hard and sometimes painful.  But I think we can have the courage of Jonah, and that even when we run away from Nineveh, we can turn around, march right on in, and start to tell the painful truth, as embarrassing and hard as that may be.

            Because God is here, in the midst of the challenges.  God is here, in the midst of the pain.  God is here, when we do what is right.  And God will see us through, so we can produce something beautiful, and write some wonderful stories, together.