Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
January 26, 2003

"A New Day has Dawned"
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Mark Smutny

Scripture:  Jonah 3:1-5;  II Corinthians 5:16-21

We are creatures of habit.  When I wake up every morning, I have familiar rituals and routines.  I drink a full glass of water, then fix a cup of Chai tea with cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, milk and sugar.  I use the same proportions every morning.  Every morning I pad out to the driveway to get the newspapers, but before I do, I look at the Eastern sky and the silhouette of the San Gabriel Mountains, take a deep breath and say a prayer of thanksgiving for the beauty that surrounds us.

I open the L.A. Times and immediately turn to the sports section to see whether the Lakers won or lost. I mutter another prayer.   I go inside, turn on the computer, check email and let out the dog and pet the cat.  Later, I kiss your other co-pastor good morning and take a shower, brush my teeth, shave, then go off to work.  Every morning is about the same. 

There is a comfort in these daily rituals.  There is something undeniably reassuring about the routine and the sameness of it all.  We call this life and for some of us these rituals are the only thing that keeps us going.  They give our life continuity from one day to the next.

However, there is another life beyond the horizon that may not be as familiar.  There is another life that seeks to dawn in our consciousness -  not a life that we know so well but, nonetheless, a life for which we yearn, a life for which we long.  Periodically we long for a life that is different, more complete, more fulfilling, more imbued with meaning than the ordinary habits and rituals that give our lives rhythm. 

We are creatures of habit.  The ordinary rituals are comforting, but sometimes there is longing for change, for improving, for becoming more of who we really are, more of who we are created to be.  There is a yearning for something other than the thousand compromises whereby we have accommodated ourselves to the arrangements of this world.  We long for a new age. 

Sometimes beyond the habits and ordinary rituals of our lives we grow dissatisfied, restless, anxious.  If we listen, we may get a clue.  We may receive a nudge, a tap on the shoulder, a shout from the mountaintop, an invitation to change.  We receive an invitation to change and we call that invitation a calling, a vocation.  We hear our name called and we step forward and say, "Here, I am Lord, send me" and we begin to change.  The ordinary, ritualistic sameness begins to change.

Jonah had no clue that his life was about to change.  But one day God tapped him on the shoulder and made him a preacher.  It was the last thing on Jonah's mind to have a force greater than himself disrupt his daily rituals.  Even if it had crossed his mind to be a preacher, Jonah certainly had no desire to go and preach to Nineveh.  Nineveh was the worst place in the world you could go.  It was the worst of the worst tyrannies in the ancient Near East.  Yet the voice was unmistakable.  Jonah heard the voice of God telling him to head to Nineveh and preach the Word of God: "Go!"

Jonah in our story later explains that the reason he didn't want to go to Nineveh is that he was afraid his sermons might work. The Ninevites might change. They might listen to the Word of God and turn around, repent, become a new people and a new city rooted in justice and decency, peace and God.  If they changed, Jonah's life would have to change.  His habits and rituals and expectations would have to change. 

• It was like when your mate is healing from childhood trauma, building in confidence, growing in her sense of freedom and you have to change along with her in order to be your best.

• It was like when a church embraces a new identity when the neighborhood changes and instead of being hunkered down in a fading past; reaches out to new people and ways of being.

• It was like when a nation goes through the cleansing struggle and conflict over civil rights and comes out different, better and stronger. 

Jonah would have to change.  The Ninevites had changed.

After three days in the belly of a great fish, Jonah stopped trying to plug his ears or other attempts to insulate himself from his deepest longings and he relents.  He allows God's Word to him to be heard.  From the belly of the great fish, God spews him onto the shore, turns him around, and sends him over the horizon to a new dawn.

"Get up. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you."  Begrudgingly, Jonah does what God commands and goes and preaches to his enemies, all the while hoping that they won't change.  He would have to change. Jonah heads to the edge of town, the great city of Nineveh, a town 70 miles in diameter, and delivers in Hebrew a five word sermon the shortest sermon in the history of the world.  (I know what you are thinking).  "Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!" Jonah preaches.

The response to the world's shortest and worst sermon is that the people of Nineveh repent.  Everyone.  Young and old.  They put on sackcloth, a sign of regret and contrition, of purification and forgiveness.  Everyone turns around.  They forsake their evil ways and begin fashioning a city rooted in God's love, God's justice, God's hospitality, inclusion and peace.

They changed and because they changed, Jonah had to change.  He had to learn how to love his enemies.  He had to allow God to transform his old habits of hatred, suspicion and fear into new habits of understanding and seeking truth amid ambiguities.  Instead of his neat tidy division of the world into "He is right," and "They are wrong", he began to see that he was a sinner.  The images he had inside his head of what his enemies must be like had to change.  He had to change.

The Apostle Paul puts it this way in his second letter to the Corinthian church, "In Christ, from now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view." 

One of my college professors, William Chalker, reminded his students that we all wear some color of glasses.  The lens are always colored in some way.  Whether they are blue or green or rose, we look at the world through the filter of the glasses we wear.  Our picture of what we see is filtered through a complex prism of life experience and parental voices, the damage that has been done, the grace we have experienced; and our socio-demographics lenses.  Throw in birth order, the propaganda we believe and the education we enjoy, and various and sundry other factors and our filters are pretty significant and always unique.  Our prism is a complex stained glass array of all these things and it is unique to ourselves.  Sometimes our prism has taught us to hate.  You have to be taught to hate.  Sometimes its what television tells us to think and believe and fear.  We view the world through these lens.  

"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view" says the Apostle Paul.  We are Christians.  When we pick up Christ's cross and follow him; when we hear the call and follow him; when we choose to give our lives over to him and his purposes, we also begin to see the world from a different point of view, a different set of lenses. 

"If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see, see, everything has become new!"   In Christ, we see with new eyes.  We try faithfully and prayerfully to see with his eyes. We see a different world.  We grow discontented with the familiar habits, rituals and arrangements of this world. 

If you are obsessed with material possessions, get over it.  In Christ, they are not important. 

If you are in anguish over a dramatic change in your household, where an addiction is being named, a dysfunction is being confronted, a new birth of freedom is being birthed and the labor is hard and long and your want to put the baby back, put on a set of new glasses.

It will seem strange at first. Your feet will seem unsteady and the picture blurred, but trust me, you will be transformed to a new vision. In Christ, we see with new eyes.  We regard all things not from a human point of view, but from God's point of view.  We have a new set of lenses. We're different from other people.  We bear the name of Christ.  We're not better, or smarter, or stronger.  We see things differently.  The old world is losing its vise grip over our imaginations.  A new world is being born: 

• The old world where the habits of fear and bigotry seek to dominate is passing away.

• The old world where the preoccupation with things and stuff and attachments is passing away.

• The old world with its lust for power and might makes right is passing away.

• Something new is being born.  It can be painful, but this baby will be born

• A new day has dawned.

In this new world, the old habits and routines are replaced with a new beginning.  In Christ, we enter into the belly of our own discontent, and in critical self examination, we turn over to God all that is painful and aggressive; all that is ashamed and fearful, and we come to discover that in God's grace, we are loved, we are human, only human.  We are set free.

In Christ, we enter into the belly of the church's discontent, and where there is disease, we seek healing; where there is injustice, we work for change; where there are old habits of fear, we find courage, where there is darkness, we see more light.

Because we are new creations in Christ, we look at the world and grow suspicious of the current arrangements.  We regard no one from a human point of view.  We look at the world through the lens of God and God's Christ, and so we no longer look through the lens of only our tribe or nation or class or race or position of power, we look at the world through the lens of Christ. 

Every morning, I have my familiar habits.  I drink a full glass of water, then fix a cup of Chai.  Every morning, as I pick up my newspaper and look at the eastern sky and wait for a new day to dawn, I give thanks to a God for such stunning beauty, the love that fills my life in my family, my congregation and in the church wherever it is found throughout the whole world.  I give thanks for the gift of life, itself.

After I read the Sports section, I turn to the front page headlines filled with wars and rumors of wars, and I remember even in such frightening times, that I am not alone.  The current arrangements of this world are fading away, the past is finished and gone, a new world is coming!  With the lens of Christ firmly placed in my eyes, I look at this new world, and I do not see darkness, but light; I do not see old habits, I see a new creation.  I see a new creation rooted a gracious, generous God.  I see a new creation built on the foundation of a loving God, patterned in the courage and conviction of Jesus who is our Lord and Savior and who gave all that we might have all and have it in abundance.  I see a new creation.

Will you join me?  Will you see what I see?  Will the Word of God come to you as it came to Jonah?   Our Lord says, 'Come follow me."  And we do.   Amen.

(c) Copyright 2003 by Mark K. Smutny.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.