Okay Lord
January 25, 2009
Jonah 3:1-10
1 The 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." 3 So 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. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish." 10 When 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. Jonah 3:1-10
Today we are continuing to explore what it means to be called by God and different responses to that call. Last week, we explored the story of Samuel's call and today we will spend time with the one of the most unlikely (or at least one of the most reluctant) of the prophets.
If you have not ever read the book of Jonah, I highly recommend it because it is actually a very fun book. The writers of the Bible actually had a very good sense of humor but we often miss the humor in the translation from Hebrew or Greek to English. But Jonah is one of the stories where the humor is obvious. That is why I think that Jonah was such a great choice for a full length Veggie Tales movie. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it-for adults as well as children-because it takes seriously the humor of the story as well as delving into many of the themes of the book.
But for now let's go back to the beginning of the story to get the full sense.
The story begins pretty abruptly. We are introduced to Jonah, who hears the word of the Lord telling him to go to Nineveh and cry out against their wickedness. Nineveh was not only known as "Sin City" to the Israelites but it was the capital of the Assyrian Empire which was both feared and hated by the Israelites. Just to bring it home to us a bit, Nineveh was located near the town of Mosul in Iraq. So God was calling Jonah to leave the comfort of his home, travel to the middle of enemy territory and give them some rather bad news.
So what does Jonah do? He heads as far as he can go in the opposite direction. Nineveh is that way and he heads the other way. And what happens next is the part probably all of you know. God is naturally not too happy with Jonah's response so he tosses a storm in the direction of Jonah's escaping ship. When the crew of the ship begins to fear for their lives, Jonah takes responsibility for the disaster and has them toss him overboard. Then rather than drowning, God sends a big fish who swallows Jonah whole. And for three days, Jonah stews in the stomach of that fish, alternately blaming God for what has happened and begging God for rescue. And rescue is what God provides. At the appropriate time, the fish spits Jonah out on the shore nearest Nineveh. Then God calls Jonah again and this time Jonah, reluctantly and grudgingly, drags himself to Nineveh to do what God has called him to do.
As we mentioned last week, when God calls us to do something, he is persistent. If you don't respond the first time, God will call again and again. Elsewhere in the Bible, God declares that his word will not return empty and in Jonah's case we see the extremes to which God will go at times to ensure that we respond to the call.
In fact, one of the mysterious ways of God is that God rarely calls us to do things we are comfortable doing!
Look at Jonah. He had no desire to go to Nineveh. In fact, I suspect no Israelite would have been eager to accept the job. Nineveh was a dangerous place. This was like walking unarmed into Bin Laden's cave to declare God's judgment on him and his followers! God was calling Jonah to a dangerous mission.
Furthermore, Jonah had a problem. In fact, if I'd been interviewing him for this particular mission, I would have passed him by. Jonah hated the Ninevites. He hated them so much that the reason he gave for resisting God's call was that he knew God was loving and that if the Ninevites actually repented that God would forgive them and he wanted no part of that possibility! Surely God could have found one Israelite with a heart for the Ninevites to send!
However, God rarely works the way we think God should operate. God consistently chooses the most unlikely people for the most unlikely jobs. Just think about it: He wants someone to father a nation so he selects an old man with an old barren wife! God needs a giant killed, so he sends a young boy with a slingshot and five stones. God wants people to help spread Jesus' teachings so he calls uneducated fishermen. God wants someone to take the gospel to the Gentiles, so he calls a hard-headed, hard-hearted Pharisee to do the job.
When Jesus called his disciples, he said, "Follow me." The life of faith is a journey in which we follow the lead of God wherever God leads us-and sometimes-perhaps most times-God leads us places we never dreamed we'd go to do things we never dreamed we'd do.
If you thought signing up to be a disciple of Jesus was going to be an easy, secure job, you haven't spent much time reading the Bible or reading Christian history. Jonah found himself in Nineveh. The good Jewish disciples found themselves in Samaria. Paul found himself in Rome. Wilberforce found himself working to end slavery. Martin Luther King, Jr. found himself leading a movement for civil rights. My friend, Pat, a middle-aged white woman, found herself serving a black church in the midst of the projects. All of them left what was simple, what was comfortable, and what was secure to do what God called them to do.
In fact, this is so true that I often say, "If you think God is calling you to do something and you are comfortable doing it, then it probably isn't God!"
Why does God work this way? Well, I believe the first reason is to remind us that God is God and we are not. If God called us to do the things we are most comfortable doing, the things that everyone recognizes are our strengths, then we might be confused about who should get the credit and the glory. It may sound a bit cliché, but it is very true that "God doesn't call the able. God enables the called." And in enabling the called, God reminds us that we have to continue to abide in God so we can draw from God's strength and wisdom in order to do what God and others are relying on us to do!
I believe another reason that God calls us to do things we aren't comfortable doing is to help us grow in faith and in service. God wants us to learn. God wants us to develop new and better skills for sharing the gospel with the world God so loves. God wants us to grow up to be spiritually mature Christians. And like any good parent, God does that by giving us opportunities to succeed, to make mistakes, and to do new things.
The truth is that God has a long history of calling the unqualified, the misfits, and the downright difficult: Samson, Peter, Paul, Moses, Jonah . . . If God could use them despite themselves then none of us have any excuse for not following God's call! But I think it is the realization of just how unqualified they were that leads the called to struggle.
Very few people who are called simply throw down their nets to follow Christ without a struggle. Moses argued with God. He pointed out that he wasn't a good speaker and even recommended his brother, Aaron, for the job. Gideon hiding in the winepress said, "But I'm the least child of the least tribe." Isaiah reminded God that he was lost-a man with unclean lips from a people with unclean lips. Jeremiah reminded God of his youth. And Jonah just plainly said, "NO!"
But at some point all of them threw up their hands and said, "Okay Lord, Have Your Way!
And God did!
Look at Jonah again, he drags himself through Nineveh giving history's shortest and most effective sermon, "Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!"-a mere five words in Hebrew. And his sermon sounds more like his wish than God's message. Take a look at any of the other prophets and you'll note they don't just preach fire and brimstone, they always offer hope and grace. But not Jonah! He just preaches doom and gloom while hoping for the worst.
Yet God works through his pitiful sermon. The king repents. The people repent. Even the cows repent! God repents. Everyone repents except Jonah!
This leads to another observation about God's calling. Not only does God call us to go to places we never dreamed we'd go to do things we never imagined we could do, but God also calls us to see people in a new way-through God's eyes.
After the entire city of Nineveh repents and God decides not to destroy the city, Jonah gets mad. He says to God, "See, this is why I fled to Tarshish. I knew you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing!" Jonah is so mad, that he tells God he'd rather die than see God forgive Nineveh!
God is calling on Jonah to do one of the most difficult things possible-to start seeing people through God's eyes instead of through his own experience and his own hurt and anger. God wants Jonah to see the Ninevites as his beloved children. God wants Jonah to realize that God's love not only extends beyond Jonah and beyond Jonah's people but he also wants Jonah to realize that his love encompasses the whole of creation: our friends, our enemies, even the cattle! God loves the whole world and we are called to see the whole world in light of that love.
Who are you're Ninevites?
Let's be honest here, all of us can probably identify a person or a group of persons that we aren't quite sure God should forgive. For some of us, it is a person or a group that have personally harmed us. Someone who has betrayed us. Someone who stole from us. Someone who has caused us so much pain that forgiveness seems impossible and in our most honest moments we recognize that we secretly hope that God won't forgive either. For others of us, it is someone or some group that has done something so horrible-something so beyond our imagining-that we are sure they are beyond God's grace. I often hear it when asked the question, "Do you really think God forgives people on death row who ask for forgiveness at the last moment?" For still others of us, it is some group of people that we know so little about and who are so far removed from us that we can't really comprehend that they are beloved children of God just like us. That was Jonah's problem. He so hated the Ninevites for all they were and all they had done that he couldn't see them through God's eyes. And, in fact, he couldn't forgive God for forgiving them.
But as God pointed out to Jonah, God's grace does not depend on our deserving it! The same God who forgave Jonah for running away and rescued him from the belly of the fish is the same God who forgave the Ninevites. The same God that forgives our sins is the same God that is willing to forgive the sins of that person we most want God to condemn. And God is calling us to see these people with his eyes, to reach out to them with his arms, and to love them with an unconditional love.
Now that doesn't mean that they will always repent. Nor does that mean that they will always respond. Nor does that mean that we let them do what they want and hurt who they want. Because the God who is gracious and loving is also the God of justice and righteousness. And I want to be clear that there are some people who are so potentially harmful and unrepentant that we can't necessarily let them back into our lives or our society. But what I am talking about is how we see them! Do we see them as something less than human; somehow less than worthy of the love of God; somehow beyond the reach of Christ's transforming grace? Because if we do, then God calls us-as he called Jonah to repent of our unloving attitude and to learn to see them through God's eyes.
The book of Jonah has a rather odd ending. It ends with God saying, "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?"
I mentioned the Veggie Tales version of Jonah earlier. Let's conclude with their version of the ending of the book. In this scene we find Jonah sitting on the cliff overlooking Nineveh talking to Khalil, the worm who has just eaten and destroyed the plant that was giving him shade during his argument with God.
(Begin Video Clip)
KHALIL: Has it ever occurred to you that maybe God loves everybody! Not just you! That maybe he wants to give everyone a second chance!
JONAH: Uh - well...
KHALIL: He saw that those people needed help - that they didn't know right from wrong - and he wanted to help them! And that is why he sent you!
JONAH: Ah-
KHALIL: And when you told them what they were doing wrong they said they were sorry - they put down their mackerels and their halibuts - and they asked God for a second chance. And by golly, he gave them one!!(Jonah ponders) Don't you see? God wants to give everyone a second chance! And so should we!
(Jonah is initially moved by this truth, but then becomes theatrically pouty - like the spoiled rich kid who isn't getting his way.)
JONAH: Well, if they get a second chance - those fish-slappers - well, then... it would be better if I were dead! (Flops onto the ground)Oh, I wish I were back in that whale!
(Jonah is a basket case. The worm looks at him in disbelief.)
KHALIL: You are pathetic. (Pause) You know, patience runs very deep in my family... but not that deep. I'm out of here!
(Khalil starts to walk off.)
JONAH: What? What are you doing?
KHALIL: (turning back) I wanted to be big and important... just like you! But the world doesn't need more people who are "big and important," the world needs more people who are nice. And compassionate. And merciful. (pause)That's what I want to be. (pause)You can find yourself a new traveling buddy. Goodbye.
JONAH: You can't just leave!
KHALIL: Can and am!
JONAH: But... who will I talk to? You can't just leave me here all alone? (pause)Hello? Reginald? Carlisle? Khowleel? Carleel? Howie? (etc... ad lib)
(Jonah tries to call the worm's name - but can't get the pronunciation right. He tries several times with comical results as the camera cranes higher above him, revealing the worm walking further and further away and Jonah looking smaller and more alone.)
Cut to: int. night - seafood restaurant-- Abrupt cut to shot of Pirates peering over booth.
PA GRAPE: (after a beat) The end!
(Immediately, the Pirates slide the Plexiglas divider shut between the two booths. It shuts with a loud whack, startling the listeners in the next booth who continue staring in disbelief.)
BOB :(confused) Wait a minute... it's over?
PA GRAPE: Yup!
BOB: That's how it ends?!?
PA GRAPE: Yup!
JUNIOR: But what did Jonah learn?
(Lunt opens screen again.)
LUNT:(looking at Junior) The question, my friends, is not "what did Jonah learn." The question is - what did you learn?
(end video clip)
For those of us who seek to follow the call of Christ in our lives that is always our question: What did we learn? Because the God who came to us in Jesus Christ is the God who calls us to go places we never dreamed to do things we never imagined and, perhaps most importantly of all, to see people in a new way-through the eyes of God.
Are you ready to follow that call? Where is God calling you to go next? What new thing is God calling you to do? And who do you need to see in a new way in order to share God's word with the world God so loves?
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