Tonetta Landis-Aina: The Annoyingly Lavish Mercy of God

So what I want to do today is to move us into a mini series of sorts, kind of like a postlude you might call it.

Since the beginning of September, we've been focusing somewhat inwardly as a church.

On Sundays, Pastor Anthony and I have been attempting to ground this community in a set of values

that seem fitting for who we are and for who we want to become.

We've talked about these values as holy habits,

radical friendship and revolutionary justice,

relentless curiosity and restorative play and rooted improvisation.

These are the values that we want to embody for this season.

Yet, even with that discerning of the present moment and the future that we are invited

into, we're also in this moment of celebrating our 10th anniversary as a church.

It's appropriate, that's right.

There's 10 years of service of people showing up Sunday after Sunday to serve, 10 years

of multiple places this community has been in.

It's like, what, six locations they said last night?

Ten years of faith formation.

Ten years of ups and downs and joy and pain.

Through all of that, this church has been present

in this city.

It has been witnessing, for sure, through cracked people

and cracked ideas and even cracked homes.

hope, but witnessing nevertheless that has managed for so many of us to let the light

in.

And on top of all that, considering the present moment and considering the past, we're also

embodying our dreams about the future.

Last Sunday, a few of you might have been there when we began the process of relaunching

our Sunday morning service at DC Bilingual Public Charter School.

We sat in this elementary school gym.

I love kind of unformed spaces.

It was an elementary school's gym, a space that, you know, I think is pretty well suited

for learning and unlearning and curiosity and play and creativity.

And we worshipped and we heard the gospel preached and we remember the Lord's death

and resurrection through communion and of course we ate pizza. Celebration of

the past and celebration and consideration of the present. All of

those things considering the future have been mingling in this season in this

extraordinarily delicious way. Yet even as we consider these ten years as we

consider our values in our new location as we've turned inward, it feels right in

this moment. Maybe not to leave this moment, this string of preaching,

this introspective time without us naming one more critical reality of

our current and likely future. It's simple. We're becoming a more

intercultural church. Now let me say something here really clearly and that

is that through the history of this church through various locations,

various expressions, it seems to me that the table has always had what I think

of as like an intercultural edge and there's been deep beauty in that. Even so,

So, I think it's important to name that this church has been and still at this moment is a majority white space by numbers, by cultural expression, even as a lot of that is changing pretty quickly.

Increasingly, we're using this language of centering the margins as we communicate.

And while there are lots of people at different kinds of margins,

because of the way our society is set up,

we have to be talking about the margins of culture and race consistently.

So, as I've been reflecting on these five church values

that we're trying to live into as we become a more intercultural church,

I've realized that there are a few temptations that concern me.

So I'm going to name those two temptations,

and then I'm going to get into our text of today,

which is a fun book, the Book of Jonah.

Yes!

So the first of the temptations that I've realized,

the things that concern me,

is that being clear about the beauty and the joy of this place,

the scriptural example of intercultural community,

In doing all of that, we can prematurely conclude

that we're already embodying what Dr. King calls,

called the beloved community.

We can all too easily minimize the difficulty

of actually achieving the beloved community.

We, though we might be a little bit hesitant to admit it,

can let the framework of racial reconciliation,

a framework that was made extremely popular in the evangelical world by

the Promise Keepers movement, some of y'all might have heard of that,

in the 90s, we can let that framework give us the most concrete images

of what beloved community looks like.

How many of us have sat in Christian conferences or in sanctuaries where

the theater of racial reconciliation always looked,

usually, almost always looked,

like a white person and a black person, almost always men,

dialoguing about mutual feelings of hurt,

and then hugging it out, and a hug it out.

Yet, according to someone who I think is brilliant,

the Dr. Shaniqua Walker Barnes,

In her vision of reconciliation that's grounded in a theology known as womanism,

here's what she says.

"Reconciliation is not a destination or a fixed point in time,

but is rather a developmental process,

a journey that requires, one, confrontational truth-telling,

two, liberation and healing for the oppressed,

Three, repentance and conversion for the oppressor.

And four, building beloved community.

Notice that the building of beloved community

is the very last step in the process.

And it can be really easy to forget that.

Becoming more intercultural as a church,

that is, having more folks

from different cultural backgrounds

see this church as home,

does not mean that we are necessarily moving toward beloved community.

In fact, if we actually are intentionally moving toward beloved community,

I'm starting to think that early on it might actually feel like a curse.

And that's the point that Walker Barnes makes in her commentary

on one of the most famous scenes from the book, The Color Purple.

Now, if you met me, you might know that I'm one of those people

that if you have not read The Color Purple or at least seen the movie,

I might bring you to my house right now.

Like, it is canon. It is high on the list, right?

So, she quotes this moment, this confrontational moment of truth-telling

that forms the turning point in that book of Sealy, or when Sealy tells her abuser Albert this.

Here's what she says, "I curse you, I say." And she's talking to her abuser, she's talking to

somebody who suppressed her. "What that mean, he say? I say, until you do right by me, everything

you touch will crumble. He laugh. Who you think you is, he say. You can't curse

nobody. Look at you. You black, you poor, you ugly, you a woman. Goddamn, he say.

You nothing at all. Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about

will fail. I give it to him straight, just like it come to me. And it seemed to come

from the trees. I'm poor. I'm black. I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to

everything listening, but I'm here. Amen, say Shug. Amen, amen.

What I don't want you to miss is that at the beginning of this road to genuine beloved

community, the kind of community where the predator lays down with the prey, the beginning

of that road can feel like a curse in terms of what we've been taught about security and

well-being and in terms of how it just feels in our bodies.

And so that brings me to the second temptation that concerns me when it comes to becoming an intercultural church.

We do sometimes talk about how the road to beloved community can feel like a curse to white people.

But we don't often talk at least publicly about the ways it can feel like that for people of color.

There's this tendency to talk about intercultural church and the road to

beloved community from the perspective of how white people are affected. And as

in so much else, whoever holds the most power controls the contours of the

conversation. But I'm deeply concerned in this moment about how we, the people of

color in this congregation can more fully frame and be honest about how we

are affected, what we gain, what we lose, what we hope for, what we grieve. You've

heard me talk about this before, but earlier this year I got invited to be on

a panel, in a panel discussion that was to take place after the DC screening of

the film "Pray Away." "Pray Away" is this documentary about the ex-gay movement

told mostly through the perspective of conversion therapy survivors. And after

that film, after the film, after the panel discussion, I was mingling with a number

of people in the room and I found myself in this one group of people, all women of

color from the table church and we talked about the importance of the film

and we talked about the importance of conversion therapy and then someone

definitively said something like this now we need to go have our own

conversation we need to have our own panel discussion see the movie had been

about conversion therapy but it only shown the way that that that was

practiced in these majority white communities. And for most people of color,

the very same thing shows up in very different ways in church spaces. Things

like casting out demons in front of a community. And yet we never get to talk

about that. There never seems to be enough space to talk about that. And I

I feel like I witness the same thing when I go to conferences or visit other churches.

Even when we are explicitly talking about race and justice,

they are never talking to me, they are never talking for me.

I am always overhearing the message that is not intended for me.

They don't have somebody like me in mind.

So I'm concerned that as we become more intercultural as a church, we talk about that,

and we talk about it from the perspective, too, of people of color.

So that's what I'm going to do today, because I think it's so easy to overlook—

we don't talk about this—but to overlook the discipleship needs, even in a church like this,

that consists of lots of different people of people of color.

I think one of the greatest possible tragedies of pursuing this path

is that we only ever allow black people and people of Asian descent

and indigenous people and Latinx folks to be formed secondarily.

In intercultural community, we can allow even their Christian formation

to require more work than it does for everybody else.

So, because of that danger, the preaching team,

we just had a preaching team meeting.

One of the things we're gonna do in the next year

is try to work toward, try to make sure

that our preaching series and the scriptures we choose

are reflective of our congregation

and how all of us need to be formed.

And because of that danger, what I'm gonna do

in the remainder of the time that I have

is to explore some of the challenges of getting

to beloved community, but from the perspective

of the cultural margins.

These are unfinished thoughts that I'm going to share.

They're kind of musings.

And I'm going to go--

it kind of bounce off an odd place in scripture,

and that place is the book of Jonah.

So we're going to go to Jonah 1, 1 through 10.

If you have a Bible, you have a screen,

Let's go there.

So this is Jonah 1, 1 through 10.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai,

saying, "Go at once to Nineveh, that great city,

"and cry out against it,

"for their wickedness has come up before me."

But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish

from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish,

So he paid his fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ships threatened to break up.

Then the sailors were afraid and each cried to his God.

They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of a ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.

The captain came and said to him, "What are you doing sound asleep? Get up! Call on your God!

Perhaps the God will spare us a thought so that we do not perish."

The sailors said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us."

So they cast lots and the lots fell on Jonah.

Then they said to him,

tell us why this calamity has come upon us.

What is your occupation?

Where do you come from?

What is your country?

And of what people are you?

I am a Hebrew, he replied.

I worship the Lord, the God of heaven,

who made the sea and the dry land.

Then the men were even more afraid and said to him,

what is this you have done?

For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them so.

All right.

So let's say what's clear.

Jonah is an odd book.

The thing that probably most of us remember about this book is

the well.

A person, a fully alive human being is swallowed by a well,

is in the well for three days, and then is spit out.

It often reads like a fairy tale,

and for that reason, it's one of those stories

that it gets easily relegated to,

like, this is a children's story,

or this is something we just keep in the back of our minds.

But the Yanktons would have understood this book

is like an extended metaphor that uses hyperbole,

that uses exaggeration to make a point.

And the book is not just odd

because of this like man well situation,

it's also odd because it's a prophetic book

that focuses not on the actual prophecy of a prophet,

but on the prophet's actions,

and actions that are contrary

to what God is actually asking.

It's also odd because it starts in the middle of the action.

And you get this very, like the very beginning,

"Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah,

"go at once to Nineveh and cry out against it,

"but Jonah set out to flee."

Because the book is set in the middle of the action,

it allows the reader though to fill in the gaps,

and that's where this gets extremely interesting,

particularly for people who are traditionally,

who have traditionally been marginalized.

So what do we know here?

Here's a basic story, at least of the first half of the book.

The prophet Jonah is told by God to go to the city of Nineveh

and to cry out against it because it's wicked.

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire,

this incredibly powerful empire of the day

that was known for extreme brutality against its enemies

and those it oppressed.

The book of Zephaniah and Nahum, those two books

lists the sins of Assyria as robbery and as oppression,

which I would argue are often the two main sins of all empires

throughout human history--

robbery and oppression.

But instead of going to this capital city,

Jonah runs in the opposite direction.

God pursues Jonah by creating the storm on the sea,

which he thinks Jonah had thought would be his escape route.

The sailors, who were not Israelites, demonstrate, interestingly,

more allegiance to the God of Israel than Jonah does as they try to survive the storm.

And then at the end, at Jonah's own urging,

the sailors throw Jonah overboard into the sea so that God's anger will pass them by.

And that's when Jonah is swallowed by the well.

And then while inside, he prays this long prayer and the well spits him out.

The last line of that prayer is that deliverance belongs to the Lord and perhaps he spit out

because he knows that or at least he pretends to accept it.

So those are the basic facts from this first book of Jonah.

I encourage you to read chapters one and two this week if you have a chance.

Jonah is expected to preach to his enemies, but in the gaps of the story is what matters.

Jonah seems to know that as any Israelite would, that God is quick to relent from anger.

One of the most important moments of God's self-disclosure in the book of Exodus says

just that.

The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious,

to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love

for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet

by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents

upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth

generation. Now the end of that, while it may be a little disturbing, it's probably

that needs to be the subject of a whole other sermon. The accent there is on

God's forgiveness. God is understood as holding accountable to the fourth

generation but a forgiving to the thousandth. But the next natural

question to ask is why is Jonah so disturbed by God's lavish mercy? Why is

that such a problem? Well, because Jonah is fundamentally about the good of his

people. He's a court prophet, which means he prophesies to the

king directly. Here's how the book of Second Kings helps us fill in the gaps

in the story. In the 15th year, a king, Amaziah son of Joash of Judah, king

"King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel began to reign in Samaria. He reigned for 41 years.

He restored the border of Israel from Loba-Hemath as far as the Sea of Ereba.

According to the word of the Lord the God of Israel which he spoke by his servant Jonah son of Amittai,

the prophet who was from Gath-Hefer."

Jonah is a prophet to the king of Israel.

His prophecies strengthen his people and his nation.

When he is told to go to the most oppressive empire of his day to cry out,

he knows at the end of the story is likely to be the display of God's annoyingly lavish mercy.

Jonah faces the dilemma that is fundamental to so many people of color as they move, as we move

down the road of toward beloved community. The dilemma is how to relate God's lavish mercy

in light of the need for deep accountability. Maybe even more fundamentally, how to square

the need to be faithful to one's own people with the calling to be faithful to the expansive

vision of God's commonwealth of peace.

As Dr. Miguel de la Torre insightfully says, Jonah disobeyed God out of his deeper loyalty

to his own people.

So several years ago I had the privilege of attending the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference,

which is this gathering of black justice-oriented churches from across the country.

And the year I was there, the gathering took place in Birmingham.

On the first night of the conference, we went to the 16th Street Baptist Church by bus,

The church that had been the meeting place of many civil rights leaders and the same

church that was bombed in September of 1963.

It's the church in which the lives of four black girls were lost to the violence of white

supremacist oppression.

So several hundred of us gathered in the pews of that church and there was this moment during

During that meeting when an extremely gifted organist began to play "Lift Every Voice

and Sing," the song that's often known as the Black National Anthem.

During the song, Black faith leaders from all across that church, in this space that

had been made sacred, they began to lift their hands and to form with their hands

the Black Power fist. And my fist shot into the air too. And between the music

and the voices and that united physical expression, I felt this oneness. And it

It wasn't until after that conference, after that night, after that conference,

that I started to begin to name more clearly the tension between

loyalty to my own people and loyalty to the vision of God.

There was nothing in that moment that was inherently disloyal to the vision of God.

Yet, from the part of my faith formation that took place in white churches,

I had gained this conflicted feeling about which identity could or should be primary,

my Christian one or my cultural one.

And this is the dilemma of Jonah.

When asked by the sailors about his background, the first thing he says is, "I am a Hebrew."

Yet God asks of him something that seems to challenge that identity and potentially earn

him the label that far too many of us are familiar with, sellout.

So Jonah flees. Maybe he flees because he knows that any change that comes from

Nineveh as a result of his words will be shallow repentance. Maybe he flees

because he needs to be faithful to his people to depart as many people of color

have had to do from processes of reconciliation that only mask harm.

Next week, Shea Washington, one of our elders, is going to come and talk more about why Jonah

had to flee and she'll talk about Nineveh's repentance and why Jonah becomes angry

when that finally does happen. And after the service next week, I'm specifically inviting

people of color in this community to join for an after-church experience to discuss some of this

among ourselves. And the Asian American Affinity Group and the Black Affinity Group are supporting

that, so mark your calendars, November 5th after church. We're going to talk more about this.

But I want to close with this. The living out of intercultural community

on the road to beloved community is always a flight into a tenuous space of the unknown for people of color.

And we have to say that out loud.

As with Jonah, it's this descent into the belly of the well.

There are unique ways in which it can feel like death for many of us.

For us as people of color, it may often feel unfairly like having to bear a curse.

And yet, the really wonderful thing, the good news, the good news that is central

in the Christian imagination is that descent into the underworld, into the tension, into

the in-betweenness, into the struggle with God always holds the possibility for new life.

So I'm no longer sure that the main issue here with Jonah's behavior is his

initial flight. These days I actually wonder if the greater temptation is to

avoid. It's to go down into the belly of the ship and to fall asleep on the

bottom of the boat. See Jonah does come awake in the midst of the storm and he

further comes awake in the belly of the well. He confronts his dilemma at first

unwillingly because the sailors have to wake him up and then willingly through

his speech and through his action. And what I want for us as people of color

is this, honesty about how hard this can be and wakefulness through the joys and

the sorrows. So here's my closing prayer. May the God of resurrection give us the

strength to be faithful to our own people, our black and brown people of

whatever shade or variety and faithful to the vision of beloved community.