June 24, 2018 The 23rd Psalm - Enough

In the 11:00 service today I will not be preaching, as music will fill that time.  Because many of the singers and musicians are not available to this service, I am preaching in this service, so you get a bonus message! 

When I was in seminary, back in the early 80s, one of my professors spoke to our class about money.  He told us that at some point in the course of our ministry a good many of us would be earning in six figures (I thought at the time he surely meant to count both sides of the decimal point).  That brought a lot of excitement to the room.  In the early 80s that was a lot of money.  It’s still a lot of money.  It also stirred discussion about how much is enough?  How much money is enough?  $30,000?  $50,000?  $65,000?  $100,000?  $1,000,000? 

The 23^rd psalm is, undoubtedly, one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture.  And this may be a strange thing to say, but sometimes I wonder what it is about the 23^rd psalm that is so beloved.  I wonder because this psalm really challenges us and asks some very difficult things of us.  It challenges us to slow down, and we’re not people who are very good at slowing down.  It asks us to trust God and not ourselves, and we aren’t always very good at trusting anyone beyond ourselves.  It asks us to care for others.  It reminds us of the dangers of life and even of our mortality.  It tells us that God wants to set us down at a dinner table with our enemies.  And, in our focus for today, it asks us to find God to be sufficient – to be enough – for our lives.  So much of what this psalm has to say runs completely counter to how we live in our modern age, but, thankfully, we still love the psalm.

This morning, we will focus on the idea of enough.  The psalm begins with this affirmation – the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  That is phrased as a declaration – I shall not want!  Let me ask you a question – does it seem a bit naïve to say, I shall not want?  How many times a day to we say, or think, of something we want?  Usually, we use the word need rather than want, because if we can convince ourselves that something is a need rather than a want, it’s much easier to justify getting it. But if we are really being honest with ourselves, isn’t it a bit naïve to say I shall not want?  Really.  Who lives that way, saying I shall not want?  Anybody?

What does it mean to say the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want?

1. It means we are the shepherds for others.

Our local Ministerial Alliance ended a few years ago, unfortunately.  Near the end of its lifespan, we spent a long time talking about the difficulty of meeting the many needs surrounding us in our community.  Why didn’t we just say why worry about it?  Because while this psalm gives the image of God as our shepherd, there is something else that is implied.  A shepherd, in Biblical days, most often cared for sheep that belonged to someone else.  This psalm, then, is a call to care for others, as God promises to care for us.  As God is our shepherd, we are called to be a shepherd to others.  We find this call multiple times throughout the Scriptures.

The book of James, which is so practical as to sometimes be painful, says, If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?  (James 2:15-16). 

In Mark 6 we read of the large crowd following Jesus, and Mark records this in verses 34-37 – When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd (underline emphasis mine). And he began to teach them many things.  And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late.  Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.”

Why does it seem, that in spite of their trust, so many people don’t have enough?  Some people ask why God doesn’t do more to help the millions of people in our world who need so much.  I think the better question is why does humanity let such things happen?  Why do I spend my money on unnecessary items when I know that money can make a difference to someone else?  Could it be that God is waiting on us to put to use all of the resources given to us?

This is a very complicated, difficult, task, to be called as shepherd other people. We sometimes want to protest about how complicated it is to be a shepherd to others.  We are tempted, as were the disciples, to push the responsibility off on God, but God’s call is for us to be shepherds and care for others.  The shepherd was in constant danger.  There was the danger of attack by wild animals.  There was the danger of others coming to steal the sheep.  There was danger from the elements.  There was the danger of not having enough food and water.  It is very, very difficult to be called to shepherd other people.  I think God has a pretty good idea of how difficult it is, but he still calls us to the task.

2.  It means we ask “how much is enough?  What do we really need in life?”

Several yeas ago there was a new reality show on TV, called Preachers of LA.  All four of the ministers on the program lived in quite a bit of luxury.  One scene showed one of the ministers and his wife in their garage discussing which car they would each drive that day.  His wife chose a high end Mercedes, and as she backed the Mercedes out of the garage of this grand home, her minister husband said be careful you don’t hit the Bentley.  I can’t tell you how many times Tanya and I have had that exact same conversation.

Is this what the psalmist meant when he said I shall not want?  That we would have so much that we would want for nothing?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s about controlling our wants.  This psalm is in the language of its day.  If we were to put the 23^rd psalm into the language of our own day, the phrase I shall not want might go something like this – Jesus has freed me from thinking I need the latest iPhone or other gadget.  He has helped me to understand that I don’t need a brand new car or rooms piled high with stuff.  He has helped me to understand that I don’t need everything the advertisers say I need.  He has helped me to say “enough.”  

Phone manufacturers and gadget manufacturers and other manufacturers know that because many people feel so compelled to get the latest device they have a ready source of sales for their products.  I hear some people apologize, for instance, for their old technology – oh, mine’s not a smart phone.  It’s just a basic phone.  My computer is really old.  It’s four years old.  Why do we need the latest and greatest gadgets?  Perhaps the deeper question to ask is, why do we accumulate so much?  What spiritual and psychological needs are we attempting to soothe with our incessant buying and accumulating?  Is there some deep, unmet need, or needs, in our lives that drive us to find satisfaction in getting more stuff?  Is a phone representative of the need for communication, a tool to help us in our daily lives, or is it the need to feel we are caught up to and equal with everyone else?

We want to keep up with everyone else.  People will drive themselves to financial ruin trying to look as successful as the next person.  It reminds me of a commercial that ran several years ago.  A man grinned as he said I’ve got a four-bedroom house.  I live in a great neighborhood.  Like my car?  It’s new.  I even belong to the country club.  How do I do it?  I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.  I can barely pay my finance charges.  Someone please help me.

We have to survive.  We need to eat, we need to have shelter and clothing and medical care.  But we also need peace of mind.  We need the ability to step off of the treadmill of earning and accumulating.  What keeps us from saying enough?

3.  Say “enough.”

The image of the 23^rd psalm is one of peace – walking beside a quiet lake and lying down to rest in cool grass.  It strikes me as a call to put aside our striving and rest from all of our hurried and frenzied living.  But why is that so hard to do?  Why are we so driven to live in ways that we know are not good for us?

 The call to us in this psalm is to live a life of trust, which is certainly a very difficult way to live.  We want to accumulate enough to know that we will be secure in our lives.  But can we ever really accumulate enough to guarantee our security?  Plenty of people throughout the course of history have lost vast fortunes, so even immense sums of money are not enough to guarantee us security.  The best medical care may not be enough to keep us from disease.  The most secure home may not keep us secure from the evil and violence of our world.

The 23^rd psalm, written from the viewpoint of a shepherd, is a reminder that while we live in the midst of uncertainty and even danger, God is always watching over us.  Does that guarantee we are always safe from harm?  No.  What it does mean is that ultimately we rest in God’s care.  Need, danger, and even violence never have the final word over our lives.  Whatever may happen to us in life and whatever struggle we may face, we can live with the confidence that our ultimate security is found in God.

Rudyard Kipling, giving a commencement address at McGill University in Montreal, said there was one striking thing that deserves to be remembered about people. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, power, or popularity, he said, some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.

This beautiful psalm, the 23^rd psalm, reminds us of what truly gives us life, and asks us to say, finally, enough.

June 10, 2018 Jonah: The Ministry of Interruption

Some years ago, early in my ministry, a friend of mine one day 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.  I am a compulsive list maker, and at the beginning of each week I make a list of my goals, tasks, meetings, and all the other things I have to do for the week.  That particular week I had not checked many items off my list so I remarked that I could get some ministry done if it weren’t for all of the interruptions.  That was probably not the best way to phrase what I was feeling at the moment, but it is what I said.  In his wisdom he offered me a really great response, saying Dave, maybe the interruptions are the ministry.  That was a great response, even though the truth of it stung me at the time.  In the years since, I have never allowed myself to forget those words, and I have tried to live with the knowledge that much of ministry is not planned, but comes to us in the moment, moments we sometimes think of as interruptions, because they crash into our otherwise carefully planned schedules and lives.

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 (that’s a more polite word than the one the Bible uses) back onto dry land.  This part of the story was a great interruption in the life of Jonah, and it was a much-needed interruption because he has some important lessons to learn.

Follow along as I read our Scripture text for this morning, which is Jonah 2:1-10, and then we will talk about a few of those lessons –

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?

Allow me to ask you two questions this morning to set the tone for my message.  I hope you will think about them.  I hope you will ponder them.  I hope you will let them sink deep into your heart.  First, how many interruptions have you experienced in life? By interruption, I mean some event or experience that triggered a time of questioning, perhaps a moment of suffering or difficulty, or perhaps a moment of conflict. Perhaps it was recent, perhaps a long time ago.  It was a moment that interrupted your otherwise planned out schedule at that moment in your life.  And second, did you see that interruption as an opportunity for ministry?  Those interruptions that we experience in life, those interruptions that we do not welcome and do not want, can become, in God’s hands, what we call a teachable moment.  They are teachable moments because they are opportunities that God can use to bring us to a moment when we can step into a time of ministry, a ministry that can make a tremendous difference in our lives and the lives of others.

I don’t know what was going on in his life when God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, but going to Nineveh was obviously not a part of Jonah’s plan.  Here is the thing about God’s interruptions in our lives – they are often moments we would do not welcome and are moments we would avoid if at all possible, but still they come our way, and they can become opportunities to learn something God desires to teach us.

Jonah had some things he needed to learn in his time of interruption, and the first one is –

1.  Jonah needed to learn his love for others was too limited.

My father was a steelworker.  As he began his work in the mill he moved up to increasingly better jobs, moving from cleaning blast furnaces to eventually a job in the lab.  His job in the lab was to analyze the purity of the steel.  He would test to see not only if the steel was impure, but how impure it was, because those impurities weakened the steel.  Wouldn’t it be great if we had such a test for love?  Wouldn’t it be great if we could perform a test that would tell us how pure our love is and how Christ-like our love is? A test that would tell us what are the impurities that weaken our love.  Our love is, frankly, never as expansive as it needs to be.  Our love is, quite frankly, limited because of the many things in life that keep us from seeing others and loving others as God intends.  It is, unfortunately, a truth about our love that we must acknowledge, and that is that it is never as pure as it needs to be.

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. Upon their return to their homeland they found the Babylonians had populated it with a variety of nationalities and ethnicities, and the returning people did not at all approve of the presence of these people in their land.  Their love was not at all the pure love that God desired it to be.  They were distrustful of those who were not like them.  They were distrustful of people of other nationalities and people of other ethnicities.  They became more tribal in their thinking and this caused them to believe that God confined his love and grace only to them. 

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 and loving of others.  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 not reject the Gentile people.  This is the lesson God sought to teach to Jonah, a lesson Jonah was not open to learning.

And here we are today, in our modern age, still suffering from the same deficiency of heart and mind and the same impurity of love.  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 and impurity 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 favored by God over all others or that God loves them more than he loves others.

When Jesus calls us to love others, he really means it.  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)  I hear a great deal of smugness and arrogance in his voice as he asked Jesus that question.  He was, I believe, seeking to excuse himself from who he was called to love.  It’s tough to love other people.  Some people seem to work really hard to make themselves unlovable, 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 could not see this.  He had erected a border beyond which he did not want to go in terms of loving others.  Is it possible that we erect borders?  Is there a limit beyond which we will not go when it comes to loving others?

2.  Jonah needed to learn that God is relentless in pursuing all people with his love.

C. S. Lewis spoke of God’s relentless pursuit of him.  He wrote that I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued…night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.

Lewis fought against the love of God.  He didn’t believe.  He didn’t want to believe, but he came to understand God’s love and grace and received it, even though he was, at first, reluctant.  God is relentless in his pursuit of us, and of all people.  The time in the great fish was a time of reflection and reorientation for Jonah.  His dire circumstances, as is often the case, 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.

3.  Jonah needed a lesson in grace.

The sad part of the story of Jonah is this – it wasn’t just 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.  Jonah, unfortunately, had no sense of grace for the Ninevites.

There are a lot of interruptions in our world, and some of them are to get our attention, just like God sought to get the attention of Jonah.  Interestingly, however, it’s not always our interruptions he uses to get our attention, but also the interruptions that come in the lives of others.  Those interruptions are reminders that we are called to step into the lives of others and bring God’s grace to them.  We now have a date for the arrival of a refugee family that our church will help to settle.  They are a Burmese family, currently in the country of Malaysia, and the family is comprised of the parents and six children – 4 daughters and 2 sons – ages 3 to 19.  When I think about that family – and the many others like them – I wonder what would it be like to live in a refugee camp?  Some of those families live in the camps not just for weeks and months, but for years.  There are some families who have lived in refugee camps for as long as ten years!  What would that be like?  Imagine that kind of interruption in life.  Imagine trying to provide for your children and trying to keep them safe from the violence, the war, the rape and the other weapons used against those who are so vulnerable.

Here is what is important to remember about interruptions – it is not just the interruptions in our lives we must be concerned about, but also the interruptions in the lives of others.  We live in a world where millions have seen their lives interrupted by war, by famine, by oppression, and by so many other difficulties.  We are called to minister to those lives, just as Jonah was called to minister to the Ninevites.

What are the interruptions in your life?  What might God be trying to teach you with those interruptions?  And what about the interruptions in the lives of others?  What might God be asking us to do to provide ministry in those interruptions?  Remember, don’t see them as interruptions, but as opportunities!

June 3, 2018 Jonah: You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

For much of the summer I am going to offer “summer reruns.”  Over the years of my ministry I have rarely reused messages, but since early in the spring I have considered doing so for the summer months.  Some of the messages may be from earlier in my ministry here at FCC while others may come from previous ministries.  Thinking about this, I realized that a number of people in our congregation have not heard any of my messages even from just a few years ago. 

I begin this morning, and will continue throughout the month of June, with a brief series of messages from the book of Jonah, which is a story that is not as familiar to us as we probably believe.  We all know the part about Jonah and the fish, but the rest of the book – which is the key to the entire story – is not as well known.  I remember when I realized I did not know the story of Jonah as well as I thought.  In the county where I lived at the time was a small community named Nineveh, and in that community was Nineveh Christian Church.  At the time, I thought it was an unfortunate name for a church.  What church wants to be associated with the city of Nineveh, of which God says in the book of Jonah,its wickedness has come up before me.  But, as Paul Harvey used to say, we often do not know, or remember, the rest of the story.  There is a good deal more to the book of Jonah than simply the part about the big fish; there is, without meaning to get too far ahead of myself, the part of the story that tells of the transformation of Nineveh.  The story of transformation is one that we sometimes miss.  Who wants to be known, for instance, as a Scrooge?  And yet, when we remember the end of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge becomes a very different man and is a wonderful example of compassion and generosity.  We should be happy, then, to be called a Scrooge! The same is true of Nineveh.  The city of Nineveh was transformed, so what better name for a community or church than that of Nineveh, which symbolizes a gathering of transformed people!

The entire book of Jonah is comprised of just four short chapters – two pages in total – and because it is so brief we will read chapter one in its entirety for our Scripture text this morning –

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:

2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.  But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.

6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.”  They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.

8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)

11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before.

14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.”

15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.

16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.

17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

The book of Jonah is written in very to-the-point language.  The beginning verses lay it out very starkly – God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and Jonah immediately runs in the opposite direction.  This morning, I want to use the idea of Jonah and his running as an analogy.  I believe we are all running from something.  From what might you be running this morning?

1.  Jonah ran from a call to compassion.

When God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh he is inviting Jonah to be an extension of divine compassion.  To be fair to Jonah, he had at least one good reason to run in the other direction.  Nineveh was a city whose leaders and armies had not been kind to the people of Israel.  Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, under whom ancient Israel had suffered a great deal.  Jonah didn’t want to express compassion to people he would have considered as enemies, and he probably felt that God should consider them enemies as well.  It’s tempting for us to believe that our friends are also God’s friends and our enemies God’s enemies.  There was a good deal of tribalism among the ancient Israelites.  We can find it throughout many of the Old Testament stories.  They were called to be a blessing to others but they were sometimes too inward-focused to be able to demonstrate compassion to others.  God was calling them outward, and they were too often content to look inward.

We are meant to contrast Jonah with the others in the story, and it is an interesting contrast.  This brief story does not portray Jonah in a positive light.  Do not mistake Jonah for any kind of hero, especially a hero of faith.  He is not.  The other characters in the story, compared to Jonah, are presented in a much more sympathetic manner.  The sailors, whose lives are threatened because of Jonah’s actions, possess a level of compassion that is lacking in Jonah.  The sailors, even after learning that Jonah is the reason they are caught up in the dangerous storm, refuse to hold a grudge against Jonah and do not want to take any action against him.  In fact, when Jonah instructs them to throw him into the sea they refuse to do so.  Instead, they did their best to row back to land (verse 13).  Even when they decided to do as Jonah asked and threw him overboard, they did so with great reluctance and asked God for forgiveness.

Jonah was unwilling to demonstrate compassion to the people of Nineveh.  Regardless of God’s command that he should go and preach to the inhabitants of the city, Jonah refused to do so.  Obviously, Jonah felt little or no compassion toward the people of Nineveh.  Compassion is at the heart of our faith (I would add that if you enjoy listening to TED Talks, I would recommend Karen Armstrong’s TED Talk about compassion as a central tenet of faith.  You can view it here –

https://www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_makes_her_ted_prize_wish_the_charter_for_compassion).  The attitude of Jonah, though manifested so many centuries ago, remains alive and well in today’s world.  There are far too many people who refuse to demonstrate compassion towards others, and this is too often true of religious people.  There are too many instances where religious people, tragically, represent the attitude of Jonah, refusing to deal with people even though God gives the command to go to them and demonstrate compassion.  Simply claiming to be religious, obviously, does not make one compassionate.  In fact, I think we could all admit that we have met religious people who are not only lacking in compassion, but are downright mean! 

Perhaps one of the reasons this is so is because it is so difficult for us to accept those who are different from ourselves.  We live in a culture of great variety and diversity, and I believe that the churches who will thrive and prosper in the coming years are the churches that reflect the growing diversity of our society.  I have a friend who tells me of the danger of creating monocultures in agriculture.  A monoculture is one in which a farm produces only one or two agricultural products.  According to my friend – and I believe he knows what he is talking about – a farm does much better when it is a polyculture, that is, a producer of a great many different products.  The same is true, I believe, of humanity.  We shouldn’t want a monoculture, as God has created the wonderful diversity that surrounds us.  That diversity, however, can sometimes frighten us and cause us to be fearful and distrustful of those who are different.

2.  Don’t run from the human condition.

Jonah was a religious man, and yet he demonstrated no interest in the human condition to which he has been called by God to respond.  When the sailors are struggling against the storm he is sleeping down below in the boat.  Have you ever been out on water when a storm hits?  It can be very frightening.  When my mother-in-law lived on a lake in northeast Georgia, and we visited there, I loved to be out on the water.  She had a jet ski that I loved to take out on the water, often out to the main body of the lake.  I would turn it off, jump in the water, and enjoy a swim on a hot day.  I have been out on that part of the lake when a storm suddenly and surprisingly swept across the water.  Out on that portion of the lake, which reaches depths of over 100 feet, and where I was far from the shore, was a very scary place to be when the storm made the water rough and the waves battered that small watercraft.  Several years ago, at the Operation Care Gala, Tori Murden McClure was the speaker.  She is the president of Spalding University in Louisville and is known for two great adventures.  She is the first woman to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat and the first woman and first American to ski to the geographic South Pole.  Her first attempt to row across the Atlantic was ended by a hurricane.  During her second attempt she again encountered a hurricane.  She had a waterproof cabin where she could wait out storms and her boat would right itself when capsized, but when the hurricane struck she faced unbelievable waves.  Upon completing her journey she found that the average wave height at the hurricane eye wall was 70 – 120 feet.  The center of this room is a height of 32 feet.  Can you imagine being in waves of that reach to double or triple the height of this room?  As the waves battered her boat it not only rolled over on its side, but from end to end as well.  It must have been a terrifying experience, and one in which it would be easy to wonder if survival was possible.

It was terrifying when the storm hit the boat in which Jonah had sailed.  The fear of the sailors caused them to suddenly get very religious and they began to pray.  Sometimes we criticize people for turning to God only when life gets difficult, but if they turn to God does it matter what motivated them to do so?  I was in a meeting some years ago, and though I don’t remember the context of the meeting’s conversation, I remember someone making this comment – well, we don’t want people coming to church for the wrong reason.  I’m going to criticize that comment but I’ll be honest – I’ve said it as well, though I don’t know what in the world possessed me to do so and I’m sorry that I did.  When you think about it, that’s a really ridiculous comment, isn’t it?  Is there a wrong reason to go to church?  Can you come up with a wrong reason to go to church?  I can’t.  Even if someone is coming for what they can get out of church, don’t we all do that to some extent?  Don’t we all have a little self-interest in us when it comes to faith?  If someone wants to come to church because they are looking for something for themselves I say come on!  If someone turns to God in the midst of difficulty I say good for them!  That is exactly where they should turn for help!

I find it amazing that Jonah could sleep through such a storm.  I don’t know about you, but I need all the conditions to be just right in order to sleep.  I need the room to be quiet.  I need the temperature to be just right.  I need a comfortable pillow.  I need to be relaxed and not have any worries on my mind.  But Jonah slept like a baby through a terrible storm, which was evidence of his lack of concern about others. As Jonah slept below deck it was evidence of his lack of interest in going to Nineveh to minister to the people who lived there.  Jonah was running from the human condition, be we must not do so.  We can’t avoid the human condition.  We cannot hide from the human condition.  We can’t say when you get your life together, when you meet this list of criteria, then we’ll embrace you.  God asks us to embrace the human condition in all of its mixture of blessing, tragedy, brokenness, and need.

3.  Don’t miss a new beginning.

Not to get ahead in this series, but Nineveh gets a new beginning, but Jonah shows no evidence that he embraced a new beginning.  There is no evidence that Jonah ever developed a sense of compassion for the people of Ninevah.

The beauty of God is the new beginning that is always offered.  At the Operation Care Gala, of which I spoke a few minutes ago, there were two speakers.  One was Tori Murden McClure, as I have already mentioned.  Through her message she spoke more of her failures than her successes, as she learned that we often learn much more from our failure that our successes.  The other speaker was a young lady who was able, with the help of Operation Care, to turn her life around.  She went to Operation Care after losing custody of her children and becoming homeless.  She had no job and no transportation.  She had burned a lot of bridges with her family and friends.  She had a lot going against her, but she was able to turn her life around, and is a shining example of the new beginning that God can bring to our lives.

The city of Nineveh had a new beginning.  Jonah did not.  The city of Nineveh and Jonah represent the two alternatives – those who have the level of self-awareness to realize they need help and those who do not.  Nineveh becomes a success story; Jonah becomes a warning.  Let us embrace the change that God offers to us.