Faithful and Wise Stewards

Northwest Yearly Meeting Keynote Address 2015

Becky Ankeny, General Superintendent

Luke 12:35-38, 41-44:

“Keep your pants on and your flashlights handy, like servants who wait for their employer to return from his honeymoon trip, so that when he comes and knocks, they will open the door immediately.  Blessed are those servants whom the employer finds prepared and watching when he arrives. This is the truth: he will put on his own apron, make them sit down to the table, and come and serve them dinner himself.  And if he comes in the middle of the night or at dawn and finds them watchful, those servants will be happy.” … Peter asked, “Lord, are you speaking this just to us disciples, or to everyone?” And the Lord said, “Who is the faithful and wise steward whom his employer shall put in charge over his household to feed everyone in the house at the appropriate times?  That steward will be happy if he or she is fulfilling that responsibility when the employer comes back.  This is the truth: the employer will make that steward boss of everything” (paraphrased).

There are so many parables about us and God as servants and master. This relationship helps us understand that we are not the ones who call the shots, not the ones who own the house. We are caretakers, we are stewards, we are trustees, we are servants. God has given us responsibilities, and key in that word is the idea of response. Our work is in response to God as our master. This parable helps us ask what is important to God. As the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends, what have we been trusted with by God?  What have we been given to care for? How do we fit into this parable and the various other parables where God leaves people in charge of some aspect of God’s world? 

It helps us answer these queries to look to the Bible to find what God loves and treasures and takes joy in. From there we can infer our own calling in this world and among the human beings God so obviously loves.

Creation

God loves creation and creating.  Genesis tells us of light gathered out of dark (Gen. 1:4), land gathered out of sea (1:9); plants, trees (1:11): sun, moon, stars, universe (1:16); sea monsters, fish, whales, birds (1:21); creepy-crawlies, livestock, wild animals (1:24); procreation itself (1;22); all living creatures, especially including human beings in God’s own image, to whom God entrusted the care of the living earth (1:26). Both male and female human beings, charged with filling and organizing and ruling over the earth (1:27), caring for plants particularly (1:29).  God also gave humans time, marking it off by Sabbaths—time to work, time to rest (Gen. 2:3, Ex. 20:11). And God gave humans choice—the choice to trust and obey God, the possibility of love—both human to human and human to Creator (Gen. 2:16,17; 2:23-25).

We are thus caretakers of God’s creation and creating.  We care for the oceans, the wilderness, the farmland, the gardens, the villages and cities where people live together.  We care for living things—we learn about them and from them, we find their usefulness in God’s grand scheme, we respect their natures and we help life to prosper. We hold the earth in trust for God. This is a human responsibility, not uniquely given to the NWYM Friends, but the widespread concern among us for the earth recognizes a God-given responsibility.

Traditions and Relationship

God loves being in relationship with humans (Ex. 20:6). When God led Israel out of Egypt, using Moses’s gifts and passion as the instrument, God gave the people clear instructions.  Don’t ever forget that I did this for you.  Steward this history, steward the Sabbath rest I require, steward all the feasts I’ve prescribed.  Let everyone see the uniqueness of our relationship.  Embody yourselves the universal pattern I, God, follow: setting slaves free (Ex. 20:2; 21:2; 22:21,22; Lev. 26:13), placing them in a way of life that has a gentle, restorative pace (Ex. 20:11; 23:11-12) and built in moments of festivity and joy (Ex. 23:14-17; Lev. 23), teaching them to remember their source—God—and their deliverer—God—and their shepherd—God—every day.  Treasure this relationship.  It is your inheritance, your heritage.  And remember this also. I have relationships with other peoples as well (Deut. 2; Amos 9:7; John 10:16; 11:52). I am not without a witness throughout the world’s peoples (Acts 17; John 1:9; Romans 1:19; Psalm 19:1-3).

When Jesus came into the world as a Jew, he showed what it means to hold a tradition in trust for God (Matt. 5:17). He reminded everyone continually that the primary purpose of a human being is to enjoy a personal interactive relationship with God (Matt. 6:25-34; 7:11; 10:19-20; 12:50; 18:14; 22:37; 25:40; John 14:23, and so much more). He argued most heatedly with those curators of Judaism who cared most about the tradition—I think he loved the Pharisees so dearly for their commitment—but he saw that they missed the point. They focused on externals (Matt. 23:23-32; Luke 6:6-9). They made slaves to the tradition; they themselves were enslaved (Matt. 23:2-4,13-15). And they curated God instead of living with God in gentle, restorative, festive relationship (Matt. 15:3-6; 22:37-38).

Jesus shocked them—so obviously a teacher, a holy man, a prophet (Luke 7:16)—because he ignored externals and went straight for heart issues, their genuine life before and with God (Luke 7:36-50; Mark 7:1-23)).  He told one curator of tradition, Nicodemus, you’ll never understand unless you are willing to start over, like a newborn infant—without preconceptions of what God wants and instead always a child in relation to God.  God’s spirit, like the wind, goes wherever it pleases, despite your efforts to contain and control it (John 3:1-8).  Don’t make the lethal mistake of attributing the work of God’s free spirit to the devil.  You cannot yourself leave your slavery if you do this (Mark 3:20-29).

Each Other and Our Neighbors

So besides the creation and a relationship with God that our traditions point to, what has God given us to care for as NWYM Friends? God has given us each other and our neighbors (Gen. 4:10; Deut. 15:7-11; 24:14-15, 17-22; Matt. 22:39; 25:34-40; Luke 10:25-37).

We are trustees of our children, holding them in trust for God, trying to keep them alive and making it normal to live honestly and openly before God (Deut. 11:18-19; Matt. 19:13-15; Luke 17:1-3).  We learn about and from the children God has sent us, we help those children find the gifts God has graced them with, we make space for them to take the place God made for them in God’s grand scheme (Luke 2:40-52). We are caretakers of our young people. NWYM Friends established Greenleaf Friends Academy and George Fox University as partial fulfillment of this care for our children. We need to welcome young people onto our YM boards and listen to what God is saying to them.

We care for others by clearing out the debris that prevents them from knowing God personally—knowing God experimentally.  God does not give us the right to control and limit how other people know God (John 4:23-24; 15:16-17; 21:22). God does not ask us to be in charge of who gets to be part of God’s family (John 5:19-30; 6:44-45).  Instead, God asks us to tell everyone everywhere the good news that Jesus is present to teach all of us (John 14:16-17, 26), that we have something in us that yearns toward God and that recognizes good (John 1:4, 12-13), and that God is also yearning toward us and eager to meet us more than halfway (Luke 15).  Friends have traveled the world, beginning in the first generation with the Valiant Sixty, to point people toward God.  NWYM Friends have traveled the whole world to embody and preach the good news—to Alaska, Bolivia, Peru, Palestine, Russia, China. NWYM Friends are also opening their hearts and church buildings to AA, Celebrate Recovery, neighbors from the street, children from around the world.

We are thus caretakers of each other. We listen to and learn from other people, we enrich others’ lives rather than impoverishing them; we make space for others to be in authentic personal relationship with God where God is making them whole and holy, where they can take joy in loving God and other humans. Friends’ heroes such as John Woolman and Elizabeth Gurney Fry, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Lucretia Mott, Hannah Whitall Smith, Herbert Hoover are excellent examples of living well into this kind of caretaking. 

Sadly, Friends’ record of fulfilling our call to care for each other has not been spotless.  Friends held slaves and trafficked in them for over 100 years before coming to recognize that slavery is inherently wrong.  Friends enforced conformity to external standards of dress and forbade marriage to non-Friends with fundamentalist rigidity. Friends disowned young men who fought for the Union against slavery for violating the testimony of non-violence.  Friends who adopted the practice of paying pastors soon fell away from the testimony of equality in ministry for both men and women. Friends are not immune to the currents and prejudices of their social contexts, not above racism or sexism or other prejudices, nor are they immune to the temptation to prefer economic stability to standing against social ills and the temptation to substitute form for living reality. We must acknowledge the truth that each of us has potential for blindness as well as sight, for evil as well as good, for error as well as truth. We need humility and repentance, and sometimes we need to change our minds, not in pursuit of some superficial relevance, but because sometimes we are wrong. And persisting in blindness, evil, and error alienates people from the Jesus we embody. We need to be born again, to start new in every generation and in every day of our individual and communal lives. We need to be born again to care for each other and our neighbors, all of whom God is trusting to our care.

God has also entrusted us with the good news, the Gospel. And we have this entrusted to us not so we can protect it but so we can share it. The dominance of Christianity in the U.S. is waning; we have seekers next door who need the Good News. NWYM has great opportunity to share our relationship with God with spiritual seekers outside the church, and we need to remember how far back to start. Like Paul among the Gentiles, we need to begin with the basics, namely the Creator God who gave humans freedom, is good, and uses human messengers (Acts 14).  Like Paul, Quakers tend to focus on the good God intends toward us.

The heart of the Gospel is Jesus.  We need to teach the history of the Incarnation.   The essentials are in Peter’s sermon to Cornelius (Acts 10):

1)   God anointed Jesus on earth with the Holy Spirit;

2)   Jesus came to bless, heal, and free human beings.

3)   Jesus was killed in Jerusalem;

4)   God raised Jesus from the dead.

5)   Many saw the risen Jesus, even eating and drinking with him.

6)   Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead;

7)   Whoever places his or her confidence and trust in Jesus will receive the remission of sins, release from slavery to error, dishonor, wrong-doing, disobedience

NWYM’s commitment to this Good News positions us well to speak to people who know little about Christianity.

When we care well for our neighbors, we may find that sometimes they bring alien ways into our congregations, creating tension.

Thus Peter’s sermon to insiders (Acts 11) reminds them that no human is common or unclean; that God shows no partiality, accepting any reverent and obedient person; and that God poured out the Holy Spirit on Gentiles, even before any ritual of baptism.

The story of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) represents the continual conflict between established expectations and new membership.

Believers need to learn to be as welcoming as God and to recognize that God’s gift of the Holy Spirit transcends ritual.  We NWYM Friends understand that Jesus has come to teach us himself and that within each person is the potential to respond to that teaching with obedience. We can invite our neighbors to “live up to the light you have.”

James’s response in the council of Jerusalem shows how an established group can welcome outsiders.  “We should not trouble these who are turning to God with our whole religious history.”  They asked new believers to commit to worshiping only God, to having sexual ethics, and to caring for the convictions of others in the fellowship. The Gospel is good news to all.

So let us consider together that we NWYM Friends hold the creation, our relationship with God, and each other and our neighbors in trust for God.  Let’s consider what the limits of our trusteeship are. Let’s be as simply authentic as we can with God, knowing that God will help us move toward wholeness as individuals and as a small part of the church universal, the bride of Christ whom Christ purifies. And let us care for our neighbors who have not yet heard that they can be in a personal authentic relationship with God by sharing the good news and helping them feel welcome among us. Then when our boss, Jesus, shows up, he will find us doing a good job of caring for the other servants and he will put on his apron, sit us down at the table, and serve us dinner. May it be so.

Being a Seed, Following Jesus

From Summit 2014 (a gathering of young Friends from Evangelical Friends Church-North America)

Today I want to talk with you about how Jesus responded to popularity and success.

Right before the text I’ve chosen to focus on from John 12 comes the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This was not the only person Jesus brought back from death, but this one got a lot of attention from the chief priests and Pharisees, the religious establishment. These two groups differed from each other theologically, but they joined forces when a truly disruptive force showed up to seek and save the lost.

The crowds were so excited about Jesus that they welcomed him into Jerusalem with shouts and waved palm branches. A small group of Jews from out of the country asked Philip, a disciple, to introduce them to Jesus. Jesus was a celebrity, the man of the moment, probably the Messiah born to set his people free.

Here’s how Jesus responded, at the high point of his popularity.

This moment has arrived

In order that

The Son of Man, the child of humanity,

May have his worth made known.

Truly, it is true

What I point out to you:

If a grain of wheat does not fall down into the ground

And die alone

It survives alone

But if it dies alone,

It produces many grains

If your first concern is for your own life, your soul, your breath

You will destroy it

If your last concern is for your own life, your soul, your breath

You guard it into unending, absolute life

If you want to minister to me,

Join me, accompany me, walk with me

And wherever I am, you, my minister, will be also

If you want to minister to me, the Father will value and honor you.

At this moment, my own life, my soul, my breath

Is troubled, disquieted, perplexed

And what shall I command?

Father, save me out of this moment?

No, this is why I came into this moment.

Father, make your worth known.

Then a voice came from the universe:

I am making my worth known

And I will make it known again.

At the high point of Jesus’s public career, he sees the hollowness of his popularity and success. He sees that working to maintain them is the opposite of doing what the Father wants. He affirms that his central purpose is to make God’s worth and God’s will known. He empties himself and becomes obedient, even to death on the cross, and burial in the earth, and God in response lifts him up, so that everyone will bow to Jesus. Lifted up on the cross or lifted up in the resurrection, Jesus draws all people to himself.

What I want you to hear is that Jesus invites each of us to join him in this way of walking. We do what God tells us and when success comes, we refuse to love it. We love doing what God tells us instead. When we see our success or our hope for success die, we bury it and wait for God. 

Nearly 90 years ago, Frank Laubach, a missionary to the Philippines, left the seminary he had helped to found in Manila. At the age of 45, he went without his family to live among the Maranao Moro Muslims. He wrote:

August 21,1930

I shall be forty-six in two weeks. I no longer have the sense that life is all before me, as I had a few years ago. Some of it is behind - and a miserable poor part it is, so far below what I had dreamed, that I dare not even think of it. Nor dare I think much of the future. This present, if it is full of God, is the only refuge I have from poisonous disappointment and even almost rebellion against God.

January 20, 1930

Although I have been a minister and a missionary for fifteen years, I have not lived the entire day of every day, minute by minute to follow the will of God. Two years ago a profound dissatisfaction led me to begin trying to line up my actions with the will of God about every fifteen minutes or every half hour. … But this year I have started out to live all my waking moments in conscious listening to the inner voice, asking without ceasing, "What, Father, do you desire said? What, Father, do you desire this minute?"

It is clear that this is exactly what Jesus was doing all day every day.

March 15, 1930

This week a new, and to me marvelous experience, has come out of my loneliness. I have been so desperately lonesome that it was unbearable save by talking with God. And so every waking moment of the week I have been looking toward Him, with perhaps the exception of an hour or two.

Last Thursday night I was listening to a phonograph in Lumbatan and allowing my heart to commune when something broke within me, and I longed to lift my own will up and give it completely to God.

How infinitely richer this direct first hand grasping of God Himself is, than the old method which I used and recommended for years, the reading of endless devotional books. Almost It seems to me now that the very Bible cannot be read as a substitute for meeting God soul to soul and face to face. And yet, how was this new closeness achieved? Ah, I know now that it was by cutting the very heart of my heart and by suffering.  Somebody was telling me this week that nobody can  make a violin speak the last depths of human longing until that soul has been made tender by some great anguish. I do not say it is the only way to the heart of God, but I must witness that It has opened an inner shrine for me which I never entered before.

June 1,1930

Last Monday was the most completely successful day of my life to date, so far as giving my day in complete and continuous surrender to God is concerned - though I shall hope for far better days - and I remember how as I looked at people with a love God gave, they looked back and acted as though they wanted to go with me. I felt then that for a day I saw a little of that marvelous pull that Jesus had as He walked along the road day after day "God-Intoxicated" and radiant with the endless communion of His soul with God.

As he worked on this inner discipline, he took note of the conditions of the lives of those around him, the Maranaos.  He earned their trust by asking them to teach him about the Koran.  He created a curriculum to teach them to read.  As they became literate, they could see the benefits to their lives, and they came to love him.  He founded the program “Each one teach one” that enlisted each newly-literate person as a teacher for someone who still did not read. This literacy work changed the lives of millions of people around the world.

Here’s what Frank Laubach would like to teach us:

"All during the day, in the chinks of time between the things we find ourselves obliged to do, there are the moments when our minds ask: 'What next?' In these chinks of time, ask Him: 'Lord, think Thy thoughts in my mind. What is on Thy mind for me to do now?' When we ask Christ, 'What next?' we tune in and give Him a chance to pour His ideas through our enkindled imagination. If we persist, it becomes a habit."

Can we try this experiment for a week?  Whenever you pause in the day, ask God to think God’s thoughts in your mind.  If you’re organized, do this at regular intervals, maybe at every hour.  If you’re like me, do it when you are collecting your thoughts, or have a moment of forgetfulness, or are well into an anxiety.  And then the key will be to take what we hear from God seriously and obey.  We will be able to tell God’s voice from others by comparing what God says to us with what Jesus showed us about God’s will and priorities in his own life on earth. 

Jesus explained to the religious folks of his day: John 5:17, 19, 20, 21, 30 “My Father is still working, and I also am working. . . . very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; . . . I seek not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

If we are seeking to do God’s will by asking, listening, and then obeying, we will be able to say with Jesus in John 4: 34 “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.”

http://www.soulshepherding.org/2014/08/frank-laubachs-cihu-prayer/

https://apprenticeshiptojesus.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/frank-laubach-quotes/

Jesus and the Miracle of Jonah

Preached at Entiat Friends Church

March 22, 2015

Have you ever noticed that Jesus went out of his way to bring up the story of Jonah? Jonah has to have been the least favorite prophet for Jewish folks who every day thanked God they were not Gentiles.  Jonah shows up running from God’s call to go to Assyria, Israel’s enemy, to the city of Nineveh, to preach to non-Jews.  His efforts to avoid God’s call land him in cold water and then in the belly of a fish.  He personally repents, and God gives him another chance to obey.  When he does, the people of Nineveh repent so thoroughly that even children and animals wear sackcloth and ashes.  Jonah waits for God to destroy Nineveh, and instead God forgives them, to Jonah’s angry dismay.  So when Jesus brings up the sign of Jonah, he is not only talking about disappearing for three days and coming back  (his coming death and resurrection) but also about the idea that God might care for the enemies of the Jews, the Romans, and other Gentiles as well.  No wonder these references made people mad. 

Each time Jesus mentions Jonah, he does so in the context of clarifying what is really important to God. This means that we can look at what comes right before and right after to help us understand what Jesus is clarifying. These clarifications take four or five main directions.

Here are the passages:

Matthew 12, summary of context: After being confronted for “harvesting” grain on Sabbath and healing a man’s hand on Sabbath, Jesus asserts he is Lord of Sabbath.  After being accused of casting out demons by a demon, Jesus asserts his authority over demons and warns against attributing the work of God to the devil. Then he says:

 “How evil and apostate, how faithless to God are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of the prophet Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days and nights in the big fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and nights in the depths of the earth. On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you, because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach, and I tell you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Matthew 12) Following this, his mother and brothers show up and Jesus asserts that his true family are those who hear and obey God. Then he tells the story of the Sower and the Seed and the various kinds of Soil.

Matthew 16, summary of context: After being confronted for eating with unwashed hands, Jesus asserts that uncleanness is a heart condition, not a problem with hands. He heals a Canaanite girl, a Gentile, and feeds a crowd of over 4000 in a Gentile district, Decapolis. The Pharisees and Sadducees ask him for a sign.  Then he says this:

“You can foretell the weather from the sunset or sunrise, but you cannot interpret the signs concerning these times. How evil and godless are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of Jonah.” (Matthew 16) Following this, Jesus warns his disciples against the “yeast” (teaching) of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Luke 11, summary: Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, praises Mary for listening, teaches the disciples to pray.  Jesus heals a demon-possessed boy, and the crowd speculates he is doing so by the power of the devil.  Jesus asserts that the kingdom of God has come among them, and that the blessed ones are those who hear and obey God.  Then Jesus says:

“How evil are the people of this day! They ask for a miracle, but none will be given them except the miracle of Jonah. In the same way that the prophet Jonah was a sign for the people of Nineveh, so the son of Man will be a sign for the people of this day. … On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach; and I assure you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Luke 11) Then Jesus talks about letting  light shine without blocking it, so that others can see by it.  He attends a dinner at a Pharisee’s house and takes the opportunity to confront their emphasis on external piety without caring for cleaning up their hearts.

Although each passage occurs in its own context, threads of meaning tie the contexts together.  Here are those threads.

First, the context teaches us that God cares more about humans and their needs than about the Law. When we look at what precedes and follows these comments by Jesus, we find the following.

Matthew 12 raises the issue of Sabbath-keeping. Several Old Testament prophets condemned Israel to God’s judgment specifically for breaking the laws about Sabbath.  So you can imagine that folks who carefully followed the law like the Pharisees are shocked when Jesus’s disciples “harvest” and eat some grain from fields as they walk along on the Sabbath, and when Jesus heals a man with a paralyzed arm on the Sabbath. These actions and Jesus’s words make the Pharisees so angry they plot to kill him. Jesus reprimands those with a legalistic view of the Sabbath by reminding them of what Hosea the prophet said: God desires goodness, kindness, faithfulness, not sacrifices.  This means that the actions proceeding from a good, kind, faithful heart are what God has as a priority.  Jesus announces to the legalistic folks that even they would pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath, and that doing good to humans on that day is also important and perfectly lawful.  He asserts that he himself, “the Son of Man,” is Lord of the Sabbath. 

Second, Jesus shows that we cannot limit God’s generosity and grace to those who are like us, and that if we limit these for others, we limit them for ourselves.

Jesus heals a man possessed by an evil spirit in both Matthew 12 and Luke 11.  The Pharisees attribute this miracle-working power to the devil rather than to God.  Jesus says that this is first impossible, and second unforgiveable.  Why is it unforgiveable?  Because when the Pharisees refuse to welcome the healing and freeing power of God for others, they set themselves outside it as well.  I can’t be forgiven if I’m not willing for God to forgive others; I can’t be healed if I’m not willing for God to heal others; I can’t be the one God chooses to live in if I won’t allow God to live in others, also. And further, God does all the good we see—every good and perfect gift comes from God.  If the Pharisees had known God, they would have known this truth. When Jesus teaches about prayer in Luke 11, he gives his followers a model prayer and encourages them to persist in praying because God is good and gives good gifts.

Third, Jesus goes on to say that no one gets to sit by and stay neutral. 

Those who meet him have two choices—to gather close like fish in a net, or like folks welcomed into a home, or to run away in terror, to scatter. He also points out that we can tell what is in people’s hearts by what they say; perhaps this is like the psychological tendency to project on others what is actually true (and what we dislike) about ourselves. There is no way to stop this process except to admit the nature of our own hearts and open them for God to change. The gospel of John puts it like this:  this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and people prefer the darkness because they think it hides their evil deeds.  C.S. Lewis puts it this way: God is the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from (Mere Christianity).

Fourth, Jesus warns his listeners to be authentic and make sure the light in them isn’t darkness. He makes that really specific by accusing the Pharisees of hypocrisy—cleaning up their facades while carrying around greed and wickedness; tithing spices while neglecting justice and the love of God; loving status while being dead inside; loading up others with burdens while offering no help to carry them; building monuments for the prophets while planning to kill Jesus.

In Matthew 16 and Luke 11, Jesus warns his followers about the yeast of Pharisees and Sadducees—their teaching and their hypocrisy.  Their teaching is that only by careful obedience to the Law can a person be redeemed, and their hypocrisy is that they teach this while allowing themselves loopholes and justifying their disobediences. God doesn’t like this:  God wants us to repent for own disobedience and to be merciful to others, giving them room for God to work on them without attributing the work of God’s Holy Spirit in them to the devil.

Fifth, Jesus teaches that obedience is the identifying characteristic of the family of God. When Jesus turns around and hears that his mother and brothers have come to see him, he spreads his arms wide to include all his followers and says, “All who do what God wants them to do are my family.” When a woman blesses Jesus’s mother, Jesus in reply blesses those who hear and obey God.

What might keep people from obeying God? The story of the sower and the four kinds of soil illustrates how having hard hearts, being unwilling to suffer, or worrying about money prevents people from hearing and obeying the good news.  But some accept it, let it sink into their hearts and grow, and bring forth the good, kind, faithful actions that show their hearts have changed into good, kind, faithful hearts.

To summarize the threads of meaning in this passage:

Religious hypocrisy separates people from knowing God; authenticity makes knowing God possible.  How can we become more authentic? The way to authenticity is honesty about our neediness before God and obedience to the voice of God’s Holy Spirit.

We can put human needs ahead of rules because God authorizes us to do so.

We have to keep God’s justice for ourselves and distribute God’s mercy on others.

We have to take our light out from under the barrel of politics and legalism and obey the mandate to be a light to the world.

Jesus says that the answer to our fears is to gather with him, to press closer to him, and not to split up and run for it. 

Our stance toward those in need around us is to heal, to give food, to set them free from the evil one.  Our stance toward ourselves is to focus on the inside of the cup, not the outside, and be honest about what’s there. 

What exactly is “the miracle of Jonah”? Is it that he was swallowed by a fish and then vomited up?  That previews the burial and resurrection of Jesus. Is it that he actually did obey God?  Though certainly not his preference, yet he did what God said. Is it that God used Jonah to redeem people who were enemies to the Jews and who did not know God previously? This is a sign that God’s love and redeeming work are for the whole of humanity, not just the Jews.

We are called to listen to God and obey. Jonah eventually did this. Jesus always did this.  Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit, who is voice of God to us, guiding us truly and guiding us closer to truth.  Jesus himself is the Truth.  Like Jesus, we point to a God who cares that all repent and be redeemed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This frees us to live at peace with God, reconciled with God, able to look into God’s eyes and see the love there, and to share that reconciliation with others.