Read Jonah 3:1-5,10
When I say that we are
going to be talking about Jonah, what’s the first thing that pops into your
mind? The whale of course. Ever since we
were young kids this is one of those stories that we have heard over and over
again, Jonah being swallowed by a big fish. But we so often focus so much on
the incredible story of a human living in the belly of a fish, that we forget
what the whole story is about. Our Scripture for this morning comes from the
third chapter of Jonah, which reminds us that there is much more to this
fascinating story. While we read only a portion of this story earlier this
morning, it is impossible to fully grasp the importance of this story without
knowing the whole story.
So why does Jonah find himself in the belly of a whale?
Well, the book of Jonah begins with God calling Jonah into ministry. Jonah is
called to go to the city of Nineveh and to cry out against it. Jonah is having
none of it however, and so he runs away from the call from God. Now Christians
often love to overreact to this by too quickly applying Jonah’s story to our
own lives in one of two ways. First, some Christians like to look down upon Jonah
for running away from God. How could he do such a thing? I would never run away
if God were calling me to serve. On the other hand some Christians like to act
like their story is exactly like Jonah’s.
“I relate to Jonah, there was a time in my life where I ran away from
God, but I too found my way back to Church.” The problem with us trying to put
ourselves in Jonah’s shoes, or sandals, is that most of us have not been called
to the same extreme that Jonah was. Or maybe more accurately, most of us don’t
realize we have been called to the same extreme that Jonah had.
The thing is, Jonah isn’t just called to go and
evangelize to some city of people he doesn’t know, that’s scary enough for most
of us, but Jonah was called to evangelize to Nineveh. Sometimes because the
cities and countries in the Bible are not familiar to us we lose their
significance in our stories; such is the case with Nineveh. Nineveh isn’t just
some other city, it is the city of the oppressors of the Jewish people at that time the Assyrians.
The Israelites and the Assyrians often had many battles against each other,
with the Israelites facing a lot of destruction and casualties at their hands.
Nineveh is the booming metropolis for these Assyrians, and a city that is proud
in their ways and hostile to the Jewish people.
To put it in perspective, this is like God calling you to go to Bagdad
in Iraq, or Kabul in Afghanistan, and to preach to good news about God. Even
worse, Jonah was called to deliver a message of doom and destruction to these
people; is it any wonder then why he ran away?
And so this is what leads us to the part of the story
that we are more familiar with. Jonah is running away from God and so he takes
a boat heading to Tarshish, which is a city we don’t know much about. Some
speculate that it is Carthage or some
place in Egypt, but the fact that we don’t know much about the city tells us
something; Jonah has no real destination, he’s just trying to get away. But how
do you get away from God? So while he is on this boat, a storm comes and the
seas get rough. All of the other people on the boat are freaking out, they’re
praying to all of their other pagan God’s trying to save their lives. But
Jonah, is calmly asleep. He knows why there is a storm, he knows that it is his
Lord who is doing it, but Jonah is calm and content.
This part of the story reminds me of another story about
a boat. Last week I talked about the founder of Methodism John Wesley coming
over to America, but what I didn’t talk about was how frightening his trip over
really was. While they were at sea, like in Jonah, a huge storm came and tossed
their boat to and fro. Wesley was terrified, until he found a group of
Christians called the Moravians quietly praying throughout all of the chaos.
This stillness and faithfulness spoke to Wesley, and in his writings about that
evening saying,
“In the midst of
the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the
main-sail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if
the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among
the English. The Germans calmly sung on. I asked one of them afterwards, “Was
you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your
women and children afraid?” He replied, mildly, “No; our women and children are
not afraid to die.” From them I went to their crying, trembling neighbours, and
pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial, between him that
feareth God, and him that feareth him not. At twelve the wind fell. This was
the most glorious day which I have hitherto seen.
Just as the
Moravians had a chance to teach Wesley and friends about their faith through
their actions, Jonah also is able to evangelize to the members of this ship
during this terrible storm. Jonah tells them that it is his Lord doing it, and
that he is the reason why. He even offers himself to be thrown into the sea to
save the others, and gives them permission to such. The second that Jonah is
thrown overboard, the sea begins to die down, and this caused the men on the
ship to believe in the Lord. It is funny, the Jonah is running because he
doesn’t want to be an evangelist for the Lord, and in his running, while he is
trying to get as far away as possible, he teaches a group of pagans aboard a
ship about the ways of the Lord.
The scene that follows is the part that we are all
familiar with, and still we often get it confused. We often view Jonah being
swallowed by the fish as punishment, but in reality the fish is sent by God to
save Jonah who had now been cast overboard into the depths of the sea. While in
the belly of the fish, Jonah sings a song to God praising him and giving God
thanks, and after he was done, Jonah was spit out, literally vomited by the
fish.
The Lord calls on Jonah once again to go and evangelize
to Nineveh. This time Jonah knows he better listen. So after that whole ordeal
of running away, Jonah finds himself in the very same position he was in
beforehand, except now he is exhausted, he is further away from Nineveh, and he
is covered in fish vomit. Kind of makes
us want to think very carefully the next time God is calling us to do
something. Jonah finally arrives in Nineveh, he preaches this word of
destruction and what happens, Nineveh repents, they mourn over their ways, and
they believe in God. And so God spares the city from destruction.
Jonah has to be feeling pretty good. I mean, look at the
success rate of all the other prophets in the Bible, Isaiah was unsuccessful,
Amos failed, even Moses could not convince Pharaoh to turn from his ways, but
here is Jonah with the simple words, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown” and all of Nineveh repented. Jonah has to be one of the most
successful evangelists in the Bible, so of course he reacts with joy right? …
Chapter four tells us that Jonah looks at that conversion of Nineveh, and the
sparing of the city and he is upset. He yells to God, I knew this would happen.
This is why I ran in the first place, I knew you were a just and loving God and
that you could spare these people. Why did you make me come to this wretched
city, if you could have done it yourself?
Why did you chase me on a boat, swallow me with a fish, and still call
me to come cover in fish vomit to this God forsaken place? In chapter four we
see Jonah’s true character come out, it is not that he was terrified for his
life that he ran away from the call to Nineveh, he didn’t run because he was
afraid of the thought of failing. He ran because he was afraid of succeed.
Jonah despised the Assyrians, he despised these people of Nineveh, he did not
want to be associated with those who killed his own people. He did not want to
be the one known for bringing these people into the fold of God. And yet God
responds, God reminds Jonah that these people are the works of God’s hand, that
there are over 120,000 people in the
city and countless animals to boot. These people however despicable they may be
in the eyes of Jonah, are God’s creation and worthy of God’s mercy and grace.
Sure God can spare their lives, but who was going to tell them about the
goodness of God, and the need to repent? God wanted a messenger, God wanted a
Jonah.
I believe that more and more of us in the churches are
called to be Jonah’s for the world, but too often our ears and our souls are
not open to hearing the call, and sometimes we like Jonah simply don’t want to
respond. Last week at a conference I attended in Blackstone one of the speakers
spoke about a pastor of a larger church that had been pastor there for about 30
years. One day the speaker was asking this pastor about opportunities to reach
out into the community into maybe some of the poorer areas. The pastor told him
that this community was almost all upper middle class suburban folks, and that
there wasn’t much poverty in the area. Later that day while at lunch just a
quarter mile or so from the church the speaker happened to look out the window
and what did he see, a trailer park right across the road; now that doesn’t
strike me as upper middle class. So he went back to the preacher and asked him
about the trailer park, and the pastor responded, “I had never seen it before.”
This pastor had been in the area for 30 years, had driven past this place daily
and had never seen that park before.
Are there Ninevehs here in our own community, are there
those places that we avoid, that we don’t want to be associated with, are there
people or groups that we would rather not encounter, or are there groups that
we don’t even see.? Are we so caught up in our own circle of friends many whom
are good Christians and upright citizens that we fail to even recognize the
Ninevehs in our own community.? If God is calling us to serve the Ninevehs in
our community then are we running away because we are afraid we may fail, or
like Jonah are we running away because we might actually succeed?
Because as a Church we are certainly running away, and I
don’t mean just this church but as Christians as a whole we are running away
from Nineveh. We say we want new people, we say we want to make disciples for
Christ, but then we only reach out with programs and events to people who
already think and act like us. Think about it, what is that last program or
event you can remember that has brought non-Christian to Christ,
and how long ago was that? The message we as Christians send out is "come be
like us", when over and over again in the Bible we see that evangelism is not
about setting up something for people to come to, but actually going, going out
to Nineveh.
But there is such a fear of Nineveh. Because if there
wasn’t we would be out in the bars all the time talking to people where they
were. We would be out on the other side of the tracks in Altavista where people
live in houses that are about to fall down. We would be in the schools learning
about the needs of the children in our area. We would be with the undocumented
workers, that search each day for work to provide for their families. If we
aren’t afraid of Nineveh then why are we not there? I suspect that deep down,
we are all like Jonah, it’s not that we are afraid to go to those places, which
we may be a little, but we are afraid of what happens if we succeed in reaching
out to them and bringing them to Christ.
Because do we really want that man from the bar who
curses like a sailor in here on Sunday mornings? Do we want welcome and foster the illegal
immigrant and their family? Do we want to be a place where youth who struggle
with addiction or who had been selling drugs on the street can come and work
those problems out within our walls. Are we afraid that if we reach out to the
Ninevehs in our community that they might actually come? That it might disrupt
this nice little thing we have going on here? If we learn anything from Jonah’s
story it is that even if that is our fear, God is still calling us to do it.
God is calling us to reach out to the Ninevehs because like us they too are
created in the image of God. Like us, they too are able to receive God’s mercy
and God’s grace. We may be afraid of Nineveh, but God is calling us to go. And
so we can either go and serve with joy recognizing the sacred worth of the
individuals we serve, or we can run kicking and screaming like Jonah. But if we
decide to go with the latter, if we decide to run like Jonah, then be prepared
to answer this question; How’d that work out for Jonah?
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