January 21, 2024 Sermon
Sermon title: "The Story of Jonah"
Scripture: Jonah 3:1-5 and verse 10
(Other lectionary suggestions include Psalm 62:5-12, I Corinthians 7:29-31, and Mark 1:14-20.)
Jonah 3:1-5 and 10
Conversion of Nineveh
1The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
The story of Jonah has always interested me. Why is this "fish story" in the Bible, anyway? In short, it's in there to show that God loves everybody, even Israel's enemies! What we heard from the lectionary doesn't tell us about Jonah being swallowed by a great fish (it doesn't say WHALE, by the way!). I think that part of the story is just to make it interesting! The real point of the story is that God hunts down Jonah - who is a prophet, after all - to do God's Will. And God will go to the ends of the earth to do that, because Jonah was trying to run to the ends of the earth to get away from God!
Here's the story in a nutshell, and you could read it in less than an hour: Jonah is only four chapters long, and those four chapters take up only 2 pages. God wants Jonah to preach repentance to the Assyrians, one of the enemies of Israel. Jonah doesn't WANT the Assyrians, with its capital at Nineveh, to repent, because he wants to see these enemies of Israel SUFFER! That is why Jonah runs from God: he doesn't want them to repent. He wants them to SUFFER! And the book is essentially the story of Jonah running from God until FINALLY he gives in. He preaches for Nineveh to repent, hoping that they WON'T. And what happens, miracle of miracles? They DO repent and they are SAVED - and Jonah is not at all happy about it!
Let me read Chapter 4, the last chapter of Jonah. {Jonah Chapter 4 -- 1But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord and said, "O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." 4And the Lord said, "Is it right for you to be angry?" 5Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. 6The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live." 9But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die." 10Then the Lord said, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"} Do you hear the humor here? "And also much cattle?" I heard a seminary professor of mine read those last few lines with an accent! What kind I don't know. But do you HEAR the humor in this Scripture? It is surprising for some of us Christians to realize that there was HUMOR in the Old Testament. You and I are sometimes caught up in the idea that God in the Old Testament is SO SERIOUS, and He is! But there is also room for humor, and the fact that we have the story of Jonah proves it. Aren't we supposed to get more out of the story than a couple of laughs? Well, of course, and we DO! But don't forget the humor. Even those bearded guys in the Old Testament could laugh on occasion!
What's the point? God loves everybody, and he wants everybody to turn to him. Another point? God is going to have his Will be done, even if he has to chase us across an ocean to get us to do His Will. Another point? There are lots of us, Jonah included, who don't WANT our enemies to repent. We want to see them get what's comin' to them! Jonah finally obeys God, but he isn't happy being obedient. He wants the Assyrians (the Ninevites) to feel the full wrath of God! So, the book ends happily for the Ninevites, but not for Jonah! He still wants Israel's enemies to get what's comin' to them!
Are you and I like Jonah sometimes? Do you and I want only OUR people to feel God's love and mercy? Who said, "Love your enemies"? Jesus, of course. But he wasn't the first to come up with the idea. Here's the book of Jonah written at least 500 years before Jesus ever took his first breath! So, the Old Testament isn't all blood and guts. The book of Jonah gives us an example. And look at that scalawag Jonah! Even at the end of the book he still can't bring himself to the point of loving his enemies. Doesn't matter because GOD does. Thanks be to God for his humorous book and a different way of showing us how much God loves all people. Not just the good guys, but ALL people. Amen.
Pastor Skip
