Jonah
3:1-10
I am very pleased to be back this morning, and I am very grateful to
the leadership of Jordan, David, the elders and others while I was away. I have
listened to both sermons and enjoyed them very much; a job very well done, as I
expected. And of course to Racene,
who always keeps everything running smoothly.
Next week ends our series of messages from the book of Jonah.
Generally, I write my sermons according to where I feel led, but I don’t always
know if what I have to say connects with where you are in life or to what you
are thinking. I want to be more
interactive in constructing a series of messages beginning later in the summer,
so here is what I want you to do to help me. You will notice that your programs this morning contain an
insert with a couple of questions.
I would like you to take a few minutes and answer those questions. Don’t write your name on the paper,
because I think anonymity will allow you to answer more freely. Place the paper in the offering plate, hand
it to me as you exit today, mail it to the office, or get it to me in whatever
way you prefer. If you want to
take it home and think about it for a couple of days, that’s fine. I’ll do this over the next couple of
weeks. I’ll take all the information
and compile it into categories and do the best I can to include as much as I
can.
Here are the questions –
1. What do
you wonder about? What do you just
not understand—or wish you did understand—about how life works? Is it
“Why bad things happen to good people?” Or, maybe “Does prayer really
work?” Perhaps you wonder about “What happens when you die?” or “Why do
innocent children suffer?” If more than one thing comes to mind,
write them all down.
2. What do
you worry about? What keeps you up
at night; causes your heart to beat faster, your anxiety to rise? Perhaps
it’s a financial issue. Maybe a relationship gone bad.
Is there realistic hope in your worse case scenario?
3. What do you wish for? If money were no obstacle,
time or other commitments could not stop you, what is your dream? What
would you love to see, or do? Maybe travel somewhere. Have lots of money.
A particular job, or a special relationship? Dreams are powerful
motivators. What’s yours?
Tanya has two brothers.
I first met her brother Mike in May of 1978, a couple of months after
Tanya and I began dating. Mike had
come to help Tanya move her things home for the summer. I was in the lobby of her dorm when he
came walking in. He was, I think,
a senior in high school at the time.
I can still see him walking into the lobby, with all the swagger he
could muster – which was quite a bit – and his long hair swinging as he walked
(it was the 70s – we all had long hair!).
He walked right to me, stood in front of me, and without any other
comment said, So. You’re going to be a minister,
huh? How do you know you’re
called? Did God whisper in your
ear or something? I don’t
remember all my answer, but I think it may have started with the words listen to me, punk.
But it’s a legitimate question – how does one know God has called
them?
We are picking back up with our series of messages from the book of
Jonah, and this morning we come to chapter three –
1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah
a second time:
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and
proclaim to it the message I give you.”
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and
went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go
through it. 4 Jonah
began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and
Nineveh will be overthrown.”
5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was
proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of
Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself
with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.
7 This is the proclamation he issued in
Nineveh:
“By
the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not
let them eat or drink.
8 But let people and animals be covered
with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil
ways and their violence.
9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with
compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did and how they
turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the
destruction he had threatened.
Today I want to talk to you about calling. The book of Jonah covers a lot of themes, and one of them is
the calling that God places upon us.
In one sense, it’s an easy question to answer, how did you know you were called, because everyone is called. I talk to a lot of people who feel they
aren’t doing anything important with their lives. They will say I’m just
a _____. There’s often a sense
of regret in their voice, as though they believe they aren’t doing anything
meaningful with their life.
But it’s not about vocation; it’s about who you are. In America we measure ourselves too
broadly by vocation, but that’s not God’s measurement. He needs us, wherever we are, whatever
we do, to live his love and his kingdom values. Being called by God means far more than occupying a
vocational ministry.
The disciples, called by Jesus, are an interesting example. They had no theological training. We don’t know if they had any kind of
religious training. They probably
attended the synagogue, but we don’t know if they did with any regularity, or
at all.
I think it’s very, very significant that Jesus did not call his closest
followers from the religious class.
Not one of them came from that group. Sometimes, when I sit in minister’s meetings I understand
why. We’re kind of a weird group,
we ministers. One of the reasons
we’re kind of weird is we live in a bubble and while we experience a lot of
reality because of what we do, we’re shielded from a lot of reality as
well. You’re out there living in
the middle of the some very difficult realities, balancing life and work and so
many other matters.
God can use you where you are.
You don’t have to go to seminary.
You don’t have to be ordained.
You don’t have to have a special talent. You don’t have to get up in front of a group of people and
preach. You only have to be who
you are, where you are, and allow God to speak through your life.
When I speak people expect certain things from ministers and often
tune me out. That’s just what he’s supposed to say. Pay no attention to him. But when you speak, or act, it carries a lot of weight. People hear you, or watch you, and
think, there just like me, so if faith is
important to them, maybe I need to take a closer look at it.
It’s really a shame that Jonah could not embrace his calling, and
that it was a source of misery for him.
I think his biggest problem was he was afraid of the people to whom he
was called.
While we were out of town I went to a water park. I love water parks. I was walking around the park and there
was an attraction that caught my attention. Swim with sharks. I don’t know why that intrigued me. Perhaps because I wondered what kind of
people would do such a thing?
There was a park information booth across from the entrance so I walked
over to talk to the guy working.
There was a notebook with pictures and descriptions of the sharks,
stingrays, and other fish in the attraction.
I had to ask the obvious question – there hasn’t been a problem yet, I assume? He said, um, no. What kind of
answer is that? Um, no. It’s like he had to think about it for a moment. If a shark had bitten someone you know
the answer right away. Answering
in that way made me wonder if he was uncertain about answering honestly. So I said, There’s always a first time, right? He didn’t answer that question at all, which didn’t exactly
fill me with confidence. So I made
the wise choice – I decided swimming with those sharks was exactly what I
wanted to do.
I put on my snorkel and got in the water. We were told to swim slowly across the tank, not to kick our
feet, and not to touch any of the creatures in the tank. That seemed like a given to me. So I start swimming slowly across the
tank. About halfway across I
decided to look around a little more.
I looked below me – the water was 10 ½ feet deep – and there were two
sharks swimming right up toward me.
That’s when I realized I had a locker key dangling from my wrist, and I
remembered reading once that marine biologists think one of the things that
attract sharks to people swimming in the ocean is the presence of jewelry or
shiny objects.
They came right up under me, and then leveled off and glided just
below me. It’s hard to breath a
sigh of relief in a snorkel, I’ll tell you that. I tried to stay calm and just kept going, and when I got
close to the other side there was a shallow area of water, about three feet
deep, and there were two sharks right there, where I was supposed to climb
out. Just like they were waiting
on me. But, obviously I made it. I climbed out and thought, I can’t believe I just did that. I was so excited about having made it
through the shark tank you know what I did? I did it again!
I was excited about swimming with those sharks. My family, surprisingly, did not share
my excitement.
How can I get over my panic of creatures that want to eat me for
dinner but struggle to step across an artificial line of demarcation drawn by
our society?
The answer to the question how does one know they are called by God
is simple – because everyone is called by God.
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