God Taps #5 | "Call me Ishmael"

0:13 for all of the noise that we so often encounter here for the roar of taxi cabs for parades that go roaring on by and God we give you thanks for this space a shelter from the noise and we ask that either through these words or despite these words that are proclaimed today that we might hear you speaking to us In your son's name we always pray. Amen. Well, my friends, our scripture reading comes to us from the prophet Jonah. Jonah, a well-known figure, maybe to most of us, the first chapter.

1:13 Listen for God speaking to you. And now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai, saying, Go at once to Nineveh, the 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 the fare and went on board with them to go 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 up upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. And then the sailors were afraid and each cried to his God.

2:17 They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down below to the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. And so the captain came to Jonah 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. And 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. And so the sailors, they cast lots, and the lots fell on poor old Jonah. And then they said to him, tell us why.

3:11 Why has this come upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people do you belong? And so Jonah replied, I'm a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. And then the men were even more afraid and said to Jonah, What is it that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them so. And so then they said to him, What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? for the sea was growing more and more temptuous. And so Jonah said to them, pick me up, throw me into the sea, and the sea will quiet down for you. For I know that it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you. But nevertheless, the men, they kept rowing hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. So then they cried out to the Lord, please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you? So they picked Jonah up and they threw him into the sea. And immediately the sea ceased its raging. And then the men feared the Lord even more and they offered sacrifice to the Lord and made their vows. But the Lord provided a fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the

5:17 belly of that fish three days and three nights. Saints, this is the word of God for you, the people of God. the word of the Lord came to Jonah.

5:38 What does it mean to hear God's voice? How can you be sure, I mean really sure, that it is God's voice that you are hearing? That moment when all of life's many noises die down, and you hear with clarity the Holy Spirit gently speaking, what does it feel like when the word of the Lord comes to you? See, I'd wager that there are moments, big moments, when we are probably more attuned, when our ears are standing up at the ready, and we are hoping, maybe even begging for a word from God. That in some of life's biggest moments, we can feel least equipped to meet that challenge. And oh, wouldn't it be nice if God would just show up and tell us which road we should take? What do I want to do with my life? Is this the person that I am supposed to spend my life with? Will I be the kind of parent that I so desperately want to be? What values will most guide my living? My friends, it is often in these tectonically important moments when we can feel a sneaking voice of dread. What happens if I take the wrong road? What happens if I make the wrong decision? And so in those moments, maybe those fragile moments, what does it sound like to hear God speaking to you? Well, one of the things that is

7:43 so perplexing about our scriptures is just how easy it makes it sound sometimes. There it is, right in front of us for all to see in the text the word of the Lord, well, it just marched right up to Jonah, and he heard it speaking clearly. And now we Presbyterians, well, we tend to be a critical kind of people. We tend to be a can-it-be-falsified kind of people, and I imagine for some of you, that maybe it is not a daily experience for you to roll over to your partner in the morning exclaiming that the word of the Lord has come to you. And all of the sudden, all of those questions that have been plaguing you, well, you know just what you should do. Maybe that's not an everyday experience for you. You see, one of the requirements for Presbyterian clergy, when you are undergoing the ordination process, is a psychological exam. Maybe you're very glad your pastors have to undergo a psychological exam. And I can remember sitting as a seminarian in a lovely office in Princeton, New Jersey, being peppered with questions about my well-being. Do you feel like you have purpose? Et cetera, et cetera. Maybe you know these questions.

9:14 But then there was a moment when that lovely practitioner simply fell into her next question, maybe even without thinking, and she asked, have you ever heard voices? And almost before she ended the question, she seemed to catch herself and thought out loud for just a moment, well, you're religious, so I guess, well, you know what I mean. I'm not sure I did know what she meant. But what is so easy for Jonah in our scripture turns out to be much more difficult for the rest of us. How can I hear God's voice? How can I be sure that it is God's voice that I am hearing? well here's one of the oldest falsities in the book and it's one that plagues dear old Jonah and it's this that if we just had all of the information at our disposal if we just knew all of the facts on the ground if we could just peer into our crystal ball well then we would know exactly the right path to take, the right decision to make. But here's what we do know, that Jonah did hear the word from God. Jonah knew with certainty his assignment, he knew his purpose, and he still went running in the opposite direction. You see, for Jonah, there was a divide that began to open up within him on one side for what he knew to be the case, and on the other side for what he so wanted to be the case. He knew that he was supposed to go to that city called Nineveh,

11:23 the capital of the time of the Assyrian Empire, and what we now call Iraq, at the time known for its cruel and warmongering ways. And my friends, to be a Jew walking into Nineveh would be like being a hobbit walking into the fires of Mordor. And so upon hearing from the Lord, Jonah, dear Jonah, that observant Jew that he was, he gets up, he packs his things, he heads down to the dock, and he immediately heads the other direction to Tarshish, a wealthy coastal town in the south of Spain. You see, Jonah thinks to himself something must have gotten lost in translation. I'm sure that when God said Nineveh, what God really meant was a beach on the Mediterranean.

12:27 There's an old line from Frederick Buechner, a famous author that sometimes we tell a lot to young folks going out to make their place in the world. And that quote from Buechner goes like this. Buechner says, The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. But I'm not sure if Buechner's words make sense of Jonah. You see, the problem for Jonah is that his hunger and the world's hunger, they never do meet. In fact, they run in opposite directions. God needed Jonah in Nineveh, but his own preference took him to Tarshish.

13:27 So how do we really know that it's God speaking to us? Well, maybe one trademark of hearing God's voice is that it won't ever let you off the hook easily. Jonah gets on the boat and immediately the word which so gently woke him from slumber just a few verses ago well now it becomes a lot more persistent and all of the sudden the waves begin to rise and the winds begin to howl and the integrity of that vessel is threatened and those sailors become terrified. and so when the captain comes down below deck he finds jonah asleep maybe dreaming of that mediterranean beach but my friends what's fascinating about the text though not apparent in the english translation we just read is that the words that that captain uses to wake jonah in the midst of the storm, that they are exactly the same words that God used only verses ago to rise Jonah as well. Arise, get up, call out to Nineveh, cry out to your God.

14:53 In Hebrew, the words are kum, get up, and kara, call out. It's almost like God is reminding Jonah about his appointed work through the mouths of these terrified Gentile sailors. That persistent Holy Spirit that is dead set on finding Jonah out, even when Jonah keeps tripping over himself. That Holy Spirit that first tapped Jonah on the shoulder, well now it slings him to and fro like a child's toy boat in the bathwater. but amidst of all of the fear, here is where the gospel comes thundering through the words of this text, that God can weave even our most egregious mistakes into the story of God's greatest triumph. Sometimes, my friends, the important part of our calling in life isn't just the place that we make it when we have done everything correctly, but sometimes the most important part of who and what we are called to be is how we respond when we have gotten things totally wrong. You see, Jonah's calling, it wasn't just to Nineveh, but Jonah's calling was to become the kind of person who would turn around when he knew that he was in the wrong.

16:42 And so for Jonah, it is often those divinely inspired, maybe not so pleasant to hear words that other people have a way of speaking to us that God uses to correct our trajectory. That maybe that's the second hallmark of what God's voice sounds like, is that it won't always agree with our biases, with the judgments that we have already made in the world. you see recently I've been I've been reading a lot of articles about this phenomenon about how people more and more often are turning to artificial intelligence to help answer some of life's great questions for dating advice for figuring out one's purpose and even for personal companionship that it is more and more often the case that the questions that we used to ask ordinary people, we are now asking to these large language models. But what makes these models so impressionable? It's a word, it's a question that has plagued and haunted researchers.

18:00 And so a bunch wrote for Science Magazine posing one option, sycophancy. that large language models are tuned to be agreeable with human beings, regardless of our behavior or our motivations. Are you in the middle of a family conflict? You aren't in the wrong. Having problems with your boss at work? Don't worry. We are on your side. does your hinge date not want to go on a second date with you well here are five possible character flaws that they might suffer from My friends, these models are tuned towards sycophantic outputs because it is shown to increase the use of individuals and the profits of companies.

19:02 But I think there is something underneath this, that if we aren't careful, we will grow to trust the voices that sound the sweetest. that we will begin to think that the wisest perspectives are the ones that affirm what we already think to be the case.

19:26 But God has no fiduciary responsibility to be agreeable with us. Thanks be to God. And I've often found that the community I needed most, the people I needed most, were ones who offered words not of affirmation, but of correction. And maybe this is why church, why genuine church is so important. Like Jonah found out, there is grace to be known when we are found to be in the wrong. And Lord knows that we need those people that step into our lives at the right moment and help us experience that grace. That we need people who love us enough to let us experience the grace of turning ourselves around and who won't leave our side in the process.

20:26 Those people who find us asleep in the hole of this life and wake us up. My friends, in other words, we need church. So let's end with Buechner. Is your calling in life where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet? I think Buechner's right, but maybe with one clarification.

20:59 That I think our deep gladness is sometimes hidden behind all of those glittering things that only momentarily leave us gratified. That we can sometimes prefer the convenient thing to the courageous thing. and this was Jonah's mistake that he preferred the person he already was to the person that he heard God calling him to be you see God called Jonah to do a hard thing a brave thing and he ran and who can blame him?

21:44 But I believe that it is the same God that spoke to Jonah that still speaks to us today, that God who taps us on the shoulder, who sends the storm, who provides the wrong kind of sailor at just the right time, that God may call you to do something brave, something so brave that you might get scared and run all the way to Tarshish. But know this, that there is grace always to be found in turning around. And wherever you are on the road, none of your journey will be wasted. For the sake of the gospel and the sake of the world, amen. My friends, would you rise in body or in spirit as we say our prayer for the day.

22:43 God who taps, nudges, shoves, God who sends the storm, God who provides the fish, trouble the easy answers that turn us away from hard truths, help move us in the right direction, even when we would rather stand still. Give us your courage even when ours falter.