June 8,
2014
Jonah
2:1-10
I will be out of the pulpit for the next two
Sundays, as I start vacation tomorrow.
Tanya asked me what I was going to do and I said it begins with an “f” and ends with “ish.” She said, oh, you’re going to finish some things around the house finally? Actually, that was just a joke I told
her I was going to use today, but that was the actual response she had.
Some years ago a friend of mine asked how
things were going. It had been one
of those weeks that became very busy with everything but what I had planned to
do, so I remarked that I could get some
ministry done if it weren’t for all of the interruptions. In his wisdom he offered me a really
great response, saying maybe the
interruptions are the ministry.
I have never allowed myself to forget those
words.
As we continue our study of Jonah this morning
we come to the most familiar part of the story, where Jonah is swallowed by the
great fish and spends three days in the belly of the fish before being expelled
back onto dry land.
1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord
his God.
2 He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered
me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you
listened to my cry.
3 You hurled me into the depths, into
the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves
and breakers swept over me.
4 I said, ‘I have been banished
from your
sight;
yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the
deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank
down; the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my
God, brought my life up from the pit.
7 “When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered
you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
8 “Those who cling to worthless idols turn
away from God’s love for them.
9 But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will
sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”
10 And the Lord commanded the fish, and it
vomited Jonah onto dry land.
That ends on a rather picturesque
image, doesn’t it?
How many interruptions have you experienced in life? By interruption, I mean some event or
experience that triggered a time of questioning, suffering, difficulty,
conflict, or other generally negative event. How many times did you see those experiences as a teachable moment? I’ve always been a bit wary of that
expression – teachable moment –
because it’s generally a euphemism for pain or suffering.
The story of Jonah tells us that
God brings this event upon Jonah in order to get his attention. It’s an interruption. It’s a course correction.
I’m not willing to say that
everything we experience in life is caused by God. I regularly hear people say it was meant to be or everything
happens for a reason. I don’t
look at life that way. Feel free
to believe that if you wish.
Rather than saying everything happens for a reason, my preference is to
say that God can bring a redemptive moment out of everything we
experience. And some of those
moments are ones we would never welcome and ones we would avoid if at all
possible, but still they come our way.
The important question is not so much why do they happen, but what
will they teach us?
Teachable moments
or interruptions, whatever we want to call such life moments, are very
important to us because of the opportunity to learn something God desires to
teach us.
Jonah had some things to learn –
1. Jonah needed to learn to love people.
The story of Jonah dates to the time when the people of Israel were
coming back to their homeland after decades of captivity in Babylon. It was an experience that made them
distrustful of others who were not like them, people of other nationalities,
people of other ethnicities. They
became more tribal in their thinking and caused them to believe that God
confined his love and grace only to them.
They returned to their homeland and they found it populated with all
manner of nationalities and ethnicities, and they didn’t at all approve of
their presence in the land.
When you read the pages of Scripture we find God is, time after
time, seeking to stretch people’s hearts and minds to be accepting of
others. This is the heart of the
story of Jonah. In the Gospels we
find Jesus trying to open the hearts and minds of people to love others. In the letters of Paul we find him
encouraging the churches to not reject the Gentile people.
And here we are today, in our modern age, still suffering from the
same deficiency of heart and mind.
For all of our supposed openness today, so many hearts and minds remain
closed to others. It’s not just
one group of people who suffer from this deficiency of heart and mind, but all
kinds. People of all manner of perspectives
gather in their groups and in various ways assert their pride in their belief
that they are not like those others.
When Jesus called us to love others, he really meant it. He meant it for everyone – everyone is
called to love others. Jesus called
us to love our neighbors. And when
he said to love your neighbor as yourself
(Luke 10:27) one of the teachers of the law asked and who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:29) Can’t you hear the smugness and arrogance in his voice? He was seeking to excuse himself from
who he was called to love. Jesus
said our neighbor is whoever is in need, and he used the example of not just
someone in need but someone who was despised by most people.
It’s tough to love other people. Some people work really hard to make themselves lovable,
don’t they? But we are called to
love them anyway. The Ninevites
were people. They weren’t enemies of
God, but his children. Jonah
couldn’t see beyond the borders of Israel, in terms of mercy. Where do we erect our borders? Where is the limit beyond which we
won’t go?
I think it’s fairly obvious in the Jonah story that Jonah represents
faith and the sailors represent the world at large. There is, far too often, a gap between the two. Sometimes, religious people can be far
too condescending towards the world at large. But the opposite can also be true; sometimes, the world at
large is far too condescending towards religious people. The church too often sees those on the
outside as unrepentant sinners and those outside of the church too often see it
as a place of uptight hypocrites.
Both need each other.
2. Jonah needed to learn that God is relentless in pursuing us.
C. S. Lewis spoke of God’s relentless pursuit
of him.
I like that way of describing God’s love for
us, and for others – God is relentless in his pursuit of us. He doesn’t push himself on us,
certainly, there is free choice, but I believe that God is working always in
the lives of every person in some manner.
It may be very obvious to us or it may not be obvious at all, but he is
there.
The question is, what does it take to get the
attention of some people?
The time in the great fish was a time of reflection and
reorientation for Jonah. His dire
circumstances, as is often true for us, grabbed his attention. Unfortunately, his attention quickly
reverted to his old prejudices as soon as he was back on dry land.
It’s hard to maintain the sense of conviction that often accompanies
our times of struggle, but it is imperative that we learn from those
moments. Richard Rohr says, We seldom go freely into the belly of the
beast. Unless we face a major
disaster like the death of a friend or spouse or loss of a marriage or job, we
usually will not go there. As a
culture, we have to be taught the language of descent. That is the great language of
religion. It teaches us to enter
willingly, trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark periods are good teachers.
Jonah’s experience in the great fish was a great teacher, but he
turned out to be a poor student, quickly forgetting what he had learned in his
time of adversity.
Do not forget that God is pursuing you, and me, at all times. He is pursuing us with his love and his
grace.
3. Jonah needed a lesson in grace.
Jonah somewhat
learns his lesson. I say somewhat because Jonah does not come
around totally to the mission given to him by God.
The sad part of the story of Jonah is this – it
wasn’t his mission that bothered him, but the idea that his mission might
succeed. Jonah did not want to see
the Ninevites repent; he wanted to see them destroyed.
There are many things we need in this world,
but perhaps what we need most is more grace.
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