Creekside Church Sermon of January 26, 2003 "Enduring Change " Jonah 3:1-10	Rev. David Bibbee
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As the earth orbits the sun, my father's life revolved around routine. Change did not come easily for him. To me, his life seemed impervious to change. For Lewis Bibbee, order was everything.

Dad woke every morning a 6:00 am. whether he had to work or not. He was at work by 7:00 am. He began working at the Alloy Cast Steel Company at age 17. He became the shipping clerk and then, production manager. He retired from the Alloy 48 years later.

Dad came home for lunch at noon. After he ate he took a 15 minute nap and then watched the soap, "Search for Tomorrow" for which I taunted him incessantly. He was home each night at 5:15 pm. After supper, Dad read the paper while he smoked Lucky Strikes, which I look back upon as rather ironic-- cigarettes named "Lucky." A couple nights a week we visited my grandparents. On Wednesday nights from fall through spring he bowled. He showered and shaved each night at 9:30 and was asleep by 10:00.

Saturday night Dad watched Jackie Gleason and Lawrence Welk. In my teen-age years I taunted his love of Welk's "champaign music." Sunday mornings we picked up my grandparents and went to church. Dad was an usher as long as I can remember. We sat in the Bibbee pew-- fifth from the back on the right-hand side, in front of the Young's and behind the Ballingers. After Sunday dinner he read the Columbus Dispatch and took an extended nap.

My father loved his mom's fried chicken. He like his coffee black. Our refrigerator always contained longhorn cheese, chipped ham, and braunschweiger. He loved char-burgers from the Oakland Grille. He listened to Paul Harvey and country music on WMNI. His clothes came from Jim Dugan's Men's Store. For years Miles Babcock was his barber. Chad Hero was his mechanic. Robert Gray was his doctor. Bill Williams was his dentist. The only reason he stopped going to these men was because they either retired or died. You could say my father was "predictable." He found meaning in routine. My Aunt Grace called him the "consummate creature of habit." As time goes by, the more I know the truth of the saying, "Like father, like son."

Change was not sought by my father. The only times Dad changed was when change caught him, as it catches us all. Change was unbidden... the death of his parents; the death of my sister from which he never recovered; forced retirement; a heart attack; bypass surgery; prostate cancer... these are the things which life placed in my father's path.

A measure by which we are judged is how we deal with change. The quality of our lives is determined by our response to changing circumstances. Do we run, retreat, resist? Do we cave-in and sigh, "Que sera, sera."? Do we face it and embrace it as an opportunity rather than an opponent? Will we lean upon the resources of faith and trust that God works for good through all things?

Let's look at the reluctant preacher Jonah to see how his unique story can be of help in our dealings with change. Our reading begins with God's "second" call to Jonah. It will help to review what happened when God called Jonah the first time. Jonah was like all the others God called into service. As I said last week, God has a way of imposing upon people while they are minding their own business.

God told Jonah to go to the capitol of Asyria, the great city of Nineveh, but Jonah went the other direction to Tarshish. Any self-respecting Jew would have done the same. The Ninevites were ruthless. They had killed Jonah's people by the thousands -- skinned them alive and hung their hides on their walls like a hunter with a moose head above the fireplace. He wasn't going to Nineveh -- no way! Tarshish was his destination.

Tarshish was a much better place to preach. It was a thriving, bustling, exotic seaport -- the closest thing to Shangrila Jonah could find. But Tarshish didn't need Jonah. Nineveh did. God used a storm and a big fish to get him there. The fish swallowed Jonah, but the meal didn't agree with it. Jonah made the fish sick and it barfed him up on a beach, and here is where the story continues.

"Go to Nineveh and preach the message I will give." God said. This time, Jonah got up and went. He obeyed God, but he was obedient in the worst sense of the word. He felt nothing but contempt for Nineveh. He hated their sin "and" the sinners. He ran sermonic scenarios through his mind: "Repent! But you wouldn't want to do that, would you?" "Judgment awaits you that is more terrible than what you did to God's people, but I wouldn't bother repenting if I were you. Besides, you can't teach old Asyrians new tricks."

The sermon God gave Jonah was short -- only one short sentence. "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" It had no title or text. It didn't have interesting stories, quotes, or anecdotes. His delivery was atrocious. He figured it would lessen its effectiveness and the thing he feared most happened. Nineveh repented. Everyone turned to God and fasted... from the littlest kid to the King. The cattle and chickens repented. Dogs and cats wore sackcloth and didn't eat. It was the worst sermon ever preached, and it worked! Not even Jesus could say any of his sermons converted a whole city.

God was so moved that God repented for what he said he would do to Nineveh. Jonah's enemies listened and changed, and Jonah was denied the satisfaction of their destruction.

He wanted to hang on to hatred. He ran because he knew enough about God to know that God was gracious and merciful, and abounding in steadfast love. What kind of crazy world is it where enemies aren't your enemies anymore and you are left holding the hatred with no one to direct it toward? It could only mean one thing... Jonah would have to change too!

Like Jonah, we find ourselves asking what kind of crazy world we're living in. It is a changed world although most of the world doesn't know it yet. There are two worlds co-existing on earth. There is the world of present arrangements where we pay our bills and taxes, and our security is wrapped up in Wall Street, and peace is left up to the Pentagon. It's the world of 20 lb.. Sunday papers, half if it advertisements yelling at us, "Try me, buy me, taste me, eat me, drink me, drive me, use me, play me, wear me." It's the world where what you are is what you have, and every nation wants a nuclear bomb for safety's sake.

Fox News is airing a feature which asks "Is American Culture in Decline?" This answer is, "Of course... and Fox programs are a contributing factor." Historians are noting parallels between our society and the decline of the Roman Empire. The days remaining for the world to do business the way it does business are numbered. "The old world passing away," Paul said, "the new world has come."

The new world came when Christ came. Living the Christian life isn't about trying to be good, but being changed in accordance with the world Jesus has given us.

In May 1991 the Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev traveled to the Russian space station Mir where he spent the next ten months. While he orbited the earth, Communist governments fell like houses of cards. The Soviet Union no longer existed. His hometown of Leningrad was renamed St. Petersburg. The Soviet space program needed subsidies from the United States to stay afloat. Krikalev returned to a world he didn't recognize. Everything had changed.

Jesus came preaching the gospel saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel." The church is a testimony that in Jesus, God is at work to change the world for good. Our vocation is to get the Word out. In Christ, everyone gets a new start. No one has to stay as they are. No one needs to remain captive to what has been.

There was a used car dealership in South bend owned by a Christian businessman. Every week a verse of scripture was on the marquee. One day I drove by and it said, "Good used cars... Behold, I make all things new." Jesus can't refurbish cars, but he can work wonders on lives with lots of wear and tear. His love mends broken lives. His love gives purpose to those who have no direction. his love brings hope to those who see the future as a rerun of a dark past. His love turns enemies into friends. With Jesus, there is always room to grow.

The church is a change agent. But it is so ironic that the institution whose principle message is about changed life works so hard to keep things the same. Committees do what the committees before them did. "We have always worshiped at 9:00 am.. We've always had the same Sunday school classes. We've always worshiped this way. We've always sung these hymns." People are looking for something more than routine living with the present arrangements. They are tired of lifestyles that have hardly any life in them. They're tired of ideas that have run their course. They have had it with solutions that don't solve anything.

I'm afraid that many of them look to the church and find the same old status quo. They look to us for signs of vibrancy and life, but often leave feeling as though they have been on a museum tour. People need to know how to get outside themselves. People need to serve a purpose larger than their self interests. But instead of finding churches doing mission, they see churches doing "maintenance for the membership."

Jesus isn't looking for members! Being a "member" of a church won't change anything!"

Our great need is not for members, but disciples. The word "disciple" means, "One who is on the way." Disciples are on a journey. Their destination is always ahead of where they are. They are willing to change, and they build their lives around actions which create it. We've heard it before, but have equated hearing with doing. There are specific means by which we grow and change -- its called prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, mission, and giving.

Change is not negotiable. It is enduring, and Christians do more than merely endure it. Someone wrote a note to Albert Einstein that said, "Relativity: There is no hitching post in the universe -- as far as we know." Einstein replied, "Read, and found correct." Hitching posts and parking places are our creations.

Everything is in a state of flux. Millions of cells in your body are constantly changing. They are born, live, and die. You are not the same person you were yesterday. The change is so small it is almost imperceptible, but physical change is happening nonetheless. The earth is moving under our feet as the earth's plates scoot across its surface. Earth and the planets of our solar system spin around the sun, and the whole system spins with countless other solar systems around the massive Milky Way which is one of billions of galaxies spinning in the incomprehensible universe where billions of stars are born, live, and die.

Now is a momentous time in history. We are seeing the old world steadily passing away. That leaves one world left. A verse from the hymn "Abide With Me" states it poetically:

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day.
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
O thou who changest not. abide with me.

An old rabbi looked back over his life and shared with his congregation what he had learned along the way. "I was a revolutionary when I was young. I prayed to God, 'Lord, give me the energy to change the world.' When I reached middle age I was sobered by the realization that half of my life was gone and I hadn't changes a single soul. I changed by prayer to, 'Lord, give me the grace to change all those who come into contact with me. Just my family and friends and I'll be satisfied.'

Now I'm an old man. My days are numbered. Now my prayer is, 'Lord, give me the grace to change myself. Let me change the world by changing me.'"

It was a lesson Jonah reluctantly learned. God's grace did not change the Ninevites without also changing Jonah. There is no changing the church without change in each of us. God wants us to be more than members busying ourselves with maintaining what we have. God is after disciples with a desire to be in mission.

We are a work in progress. God is up to something with us. I know it because you are frustrated and excited. You are fretting over the future, and are confident that working at change will create a better present and future. You want a picture of the final product with all the details in place, and you trust things will fall into place when God is ready and we are ready.

Show me a church that is dreaming, discerning, questioning, challenging, risking, and stepping out in faith, and I'll show you a church that is alive.

There is no turning back. We are disciples who are on the way to fulfilling the mission God has prepared for us. Don't be afraid to change. "The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand."

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