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.
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