|
This past week, I spent five days with 450 senior high school students
at Lakeview Conference Center near Palestine, Texas. It was a
fantastic and exhausting week. Church camp is a place to meet new
friends and to reunite with old friends. I enjoyed introducing my
friends to each other and telling their stories, “This is my friend,
Reggie, several years ago he came to sing at a worship service where I
was preaching about the power of God and the small whisper of God.
The power went out during his song, ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow,’
but Reggie and the pianist never missed a beat. They sang through the
quietness of that sanctuary and when the song was over, we all knew
that God had whispered to us that day.” As I told these stories of
friends, I thought a lot about the friends who I have the privilege of
introducing to you this summer. We are preaching about old
friends you may have never met. Today I wanted to introduce
you to my friend, Jonah. Next month we hope to have one hundred
children help to tell this story in the Music Makers presentation, but
I wanted the chance to tell you this story is a more relaxed setting.
Every night during camp I would gather with ten teenagers, my small
group, and share stories of how the day went. It was a peaceful and
special time, right after our midnight snack. That’s the setting I
envision today as we come together to hear a good story - the story of
a reluctant missionary.
The story of Jonah is really a story about us and
them. It can be told in two acts, each with two scenes.
Allow me to outline the story for you:
Act I: God is Great
Scene 1:
A.W.O.L.
Scene 2:
A Whale
Act II: God is Good
Scene 1: A Sermon
Scene 2: A Sour Man
God is great. God is good. Now on with the story.
It’s a great story and it begins as all great stories do – “Once
upon a time…”
Once
upon a time there was a man named Jonah, the son of Amittai. His story
is found in the book that bears his name in the Old Testament. Hear
the beginning of the story. Hear now the word of the Lord:
1Now the word of the Lord came to
Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2“Go at once to Nineveh, that
great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up
before me.” 3But 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 his fare and went on
board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the
Lord.
This is the Word of God
for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Now a
few things about what was just read. First of all, Jonah was
the prophet who prophesied to Jeroboam in 2 Kings 14:25, that the Lord
would be with the king of this new nation to establish its borders.
This was after the death of Solomon and the division of ancient Israel
into the southern nation of Judah and the northern nation of Israel.
Second, Nineveh was a city to the northeast of Israel, near
modern day Mosul, Iraq (the country’s third largest city). It was
about 500 miles from Joppa. Nineveh was the capital city of the
Assyrian Empire, a ruthless nation that threatened the newly formed
nation of Israel. Third, Tarshish is a city in southern Spain
about 2,500 miles southwest of Joppa. It is safe to say that the
story of Jonah begins with Jonah going the wrong way. Deborah Proctor
is here today and was asking me earlier this week how I was going to
tie the story of Jonah into Father’s Day. I assured her that once dads
heard about a guy who was told to go 500 miles northeast and instead
headed 2,500 miles southwest, the connection would be quite apparent
(no pun intended). You can almost imagine God saying, “Did you hear
what I said? Do you want me to turn this boat around? I am going to
stop this boat if you don’t mind me right now!” But you see, this is a
story about us and them. Jonah was one of us.
Nineveh was filled with lots of them. Jonah was trying to get
as far away from them as possible.
Act I: God is Great:
Scene 1 – A.W.O.L.
Jonah
went A.W.O.L. – absent without leave. The boat left
Joppa headed for Tarshish. The weather started getting rough. The
tiny ship was tossed. The crew and the captain were fearless men, yet
feared they would be lost. Yet feared they would be lost. It was a
cosmopolitan crew, so they each prayed to their own god hoping one of
them would hit the right spot. All of them
were quite silly, because all of us know their gods are
empty notions. But just where is our sole
representative—the prophet of the Lord: You know, one of us?
Where’s Jonah?
There he is,
way down below deck. The captain found him while giving orders of what
to throw off the ship to lighten the load. One of us,
the only one of us on board was asleep, while all of
them were praying. That captain told Jonah to pray, but he
did not. A person trying to run away from God usually
doesn’t feel like praying.
Meanwhile,
the sailors broke out their voting stones, an ancient game of casting
lots, sort of an “eeny, meeny, miney, moe” method of
determining responsibility. Guess what? It’s one of us.
The sailors begin to hurl their questions at him, “Tell us about
yourself! Who are you? What do you do? Where do you come from? What’s
your country? Who are your people?” And finally, “What should we do
with you?”
“I’m a Hebrew. I worship the Lord God who made the
sea and the dry land. Throw me over,” he said. “The Lord is angry with
me.”
“I’m sure!”
they replied. “If we throw you over, the Lord may be angry with us!”
But as things got worse and all their rowing got them nowhere
they prayed. Then they threw Jonah overboard. And when the sea
grew calm, they were just as afraid, if not more, than they were
during the storm. Right then and there all of them
worshipped our Lord.
This is a
story about us and them, and it’s full of
surprises. The first surprise is the representative for us.
He is despicable, disobedient, rebellious, irreverent, and self
centered--an embarrassment to all of us. He hasn’t even
prayed yet. What kind of prophet is this!? The second surprise is that
all of them act like all of us should.
They turn to God, to the best of their knowledge, and end up
worshipping the maker of heaven and earth.
Act I: God
is Great; Scene 1 – A.W.O.L. closes with the reluctant missionary
sinking to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Just before the
curtain closes, we see verse 17 of chapter one declare, “But the
Lord provided a large fish to swallow up
Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three
nights.”
Act I: God is Great:
Scene 2 – A Whale
Finally, from inside the fish, Jonah prayed. In fact, he composed a
poem while in that fish and he recited that poem to God as a prayer.
I’ve taken the liberty to rewrite that poem to fit
our expectations of poetry. It ought to rhyme. I’ve entitled it “A
Whale of a Prayer” by Jonah:
I cried for help from this mess that I’ve made
God heard my voice and the prayer that I prayed.
You placed me deep in the abyss of the storm
Yet you were there, Lord, in some kind of form.
I confess I’ve done wrong, I’ve made you mad
I recall the temple, times weren’t so bad.
The waters are deep, I’m sinking like lead
To make matters worse, there’s seaweed on my head.
All was hopeless, I began to despair
I thought of you, Lord, I prayed another prayer.
This time you heard and helped me out
So I will shout what you want me to shout.
Salvation comes from the Lord!
Then the fish hurled me to shore.
The
curtain closes on Act I:
God is Great, with Jonah back on dry land, which he
prefers. He needs a bath and a change of clothes. So let’s drink some
lemonade.
Act II: God is Good:
Scene 1 – A Sermon
The
curtain rises and the Word of the Lord comes once more to Jonah.
“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the
message that I tell you.” This story is full of surprises. What
will happen next?
Jonah goes
to Nineveh, the epitome of all that is bad in this world. Nineveh is
arrogant, godless, greedy, cruel, violent, oppressive, aggressive, and
very, very strong. Plus, it was really big, causing Jonah to feel
really small. What could he do in this huge metropolis? He preached
one of the shortest sermons ever recorded. Five words in Hebrew; eight
when translated into English. It is found in Jonah 3:4, “Forty
days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That’s it. No three
points. No poem. No altar call. No action plan. I guarantee you this
sermon would have gotten Jonah an ‘F’ in any preaching course in any
seminary. Eight words does not a sermon make. However, my Dad told me
just the other day that my niece’s graduation was wonderful. “There
were no long-winded speeches!” he remarked with much gratitude. I
assured him that this is always a comfort for his son, the preacher,
to hear. My father measures the merit of a speech by the time it
takes to be delivered. Jonah would have been all right in Dad’s
book.
And yet this very short sermon has the effect of picking up a
small rock on the side of a mountain and creating a landslide. Those
people listened to Jonah. All of them heard one of
us and started to do penance - sackcloth, ashes, fasting.
Then they started repentance - turning away from their evil and
violence. All of them changed.
Yet surely
God will see this as foxhole religion that will soon go away. Surely
God has the wisdom to know once a Ninevite always a Ninevite, and who
wants to be a Ninevite—who wants to be one of them?! But
God is good. God
withdraws judgment in response to Nineveh’s repentance, just like God
heard Jonah’s prayer and sent a fish to take him to shore. God seems
to like them as much as God likes us.
That’s what Jonah was afraid of.
Act II: God is Good:
Scene 2 – A Sour Man
Jonah is a sour man.
He prays again only this time there is no poem, just raw, irreverent
anger. “Dad gum it! I knew this would happen. I pray it at every meal.
God is great. God is good…That’s why I headed toward
Tarshish. I’m not going to stand for this. Nineveh spared! Over my
dead body! I can’t live in this kind of a world! I’m better off dead
than trying to live in a world where grace is given to all of
them at the slightest hint of repentance.”
God asked
Jonah why he was such a sour man.
Jonah just sat outside the city and waited and
fumed and waited and fumed. He made a little shelter and the Lord
looked at that little man who just never got it. The Lord caused a
vine with big shady leaves to grow on that makeshift shelter. That
vine provided enough shade to cool Jonah’s hot head, but just as he
got comfortable a wretched worm chewed the vine to death. The Lord God
of heaven and earth just wouldn’t stop. He brought storms on the sea,
fish in the water, mercy on them, worms to eat vines,
and a scorching east wind on top of all that. Jonah was fit to be
tied. He was indeed a sour man.
Once again
God asked Jonah why he was such a sour man. “I’m so mad I could die,”
Jonah fumed.
The Lord
said, “Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. Look at you. You’re all worked up over a
vine. You didn’t plant it. You didn’t water it. You did nothing for
it. Now think for a moment how a gardener would feel. A gardener does
plant it, water it, tend to it. That’s how I feel toward Nineveh. All
those people and animals—I made them, just like I made
you. Your pain is nothing compared to how it hurts me to contemplate
destruction on any of you. (Drink lemonade)
So that’s
the story. That’s how it ends. It’s a good story. It’s a story about
us and them told in two acts.
God is great. God is good.
God delivers us from our stubbornness, arrogance, and
prejudice. God delivers them from their blindness, fear,
and degradation.
Now I can
imagine a rather dubious listener confronting the storyteller. “Did
that really happen? A storm out of nowhere and a guy sleeping
through it; a big fish serving as a houseboat for three days, a huge
city repenting as a response to a beached prophet’s message, an
eight word sermon, a vine, a worm, and scorching wind. Did that
really happen?”
The
storyteller looks at the inquisitor for a while and says, “Jesus
seemed to think so.” He mentioned Jonah in Matthew 12, Matthew 16, and
Luke 11. However, the more important question is, “Does that really
happen?” Do some of us deplore the idea of some of
them being given grace? Are we reluctant missionaries?
Would we be any more ready to go to modern day Mosul, Iraq as
missionaries, than Jonah was to go to Nineveh,?
Another
listener might ask, “Did Jonah ever get it? Did he ever understand how
the heart of God beats for both us and them?”
As with all good stories, some of that is left to the listener.
God is great. God is good.
It’s a story about us and them. Amen.
|
