March 12 , 2008
| Lenten Service | Jonah 2:10 - 4:11 | |
THE DELIVERANCE OF JONAH
The reading is from the book of Jonah beginning in the second chapter verse 10.
-
“ Then the Lord spoke to the fish and it spewed Jonah out on the dry land.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ 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. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 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. 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. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’
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.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’
But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?’ And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ Then the Lord said, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’
The Word of the Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Only the Good Lord would bring deliverance out of a vomiting whale and a busted gourd. But then when you can break open the belly of the earth to raise the dead then just about anything is possible and a lot of it becomes fun.
As the story begins, God is once again raising havoc with the boundaries. You remember Fred’s sermon a couple of weeks ago? God hates fences; he’s offended by them, and so he likes to do whatever he can to tear them down. So he calls Jonah and sends him far beyond the sacred precincts, far beyond the borders of Israel, far beyond the boundaries of election, way out into conquering Assyria, into what is now Iraq, and told him to preach there.
Jesus had the same disposition, you know. He was always flirting with the edges; finding some kind of boundary he could break: gender, ethnicity, you name it, he traipsed across it, and celebrated a little victory there. And now in anticipation Jonah is going to go to Nineveh – at least those are the plans.
But for all of God’s great goodness Jonah is not similarly inclined. He was literally stuck in himself- unable to extricate his head from the fundamental traditions he held, including the exclusive claims of Israel. And so, God took him on – made sport of him - made him a joke – so that in this text the Holy Spirit has his tongue way deep in his cheek. And we can laugh in joy at God’s deliverance of Jonah from his own assumptions.
Of course, finally the joke’s on us, because we’re going down with him. He’s not going to leave us stuck in ourselves, but deliver us as well.
So that is the story here. We have an adventure in two parts, beginning with this vomiting fish – and then Jonah’s bush.
Here’s one place where I really prefer the old King James. It doesn’t happen very often but in the King James this is a gourd. It’s not a bush, but a gourd. And so it’s Jonah’s gourd that’s getting broken which makes it a lot more fun. So, you can bet on this from the beginning that the God who raised Jesus from the dead isn’t going to be stopped, even if Jonah’s own piety and our expectations have to die in the process. So, the fish, and then the gourd. Unlike all of the other prophets, when Jonah hears God’s call he takes off in the other direction, on a dead run. In the Old Testament, of course, there’s no such thing as a volunteering prophet – somebody who offers himself for the job. God chooses every one of them, pressing them into service with his words. So, some of them like Jeremiah, go off griping and complaining, squawking all the way, about the terrible job security and how they’ve been put upon, but in the end they all go, like it or not.
But his time we have an involuntary prophet, who not only refuses duty, but flees and prefers death to filling out his mission. So, as conservative as the prophets generally were, Jonah wants to protect and preserve something sacred. You know, there are lots of Old Testament passages which say the election of Israel was for all the nations of the world. But not everybody in Israel preached that. You know that Isaiah and Ruth and the author of this wonderful book were all convinced that God’s call brings with it mission. But Jonah himself wasn’t at all convinced of that. He was pretty sure that God’s election of Israel was the end of the story and it stopped right there.
And so the notion of going to Nineveh was absolutely contrary to everything he believed. You can imagine what he thought when he heard this call. Nineveh! Is God out of his mind! This can’t be the God of Abraham and Isaac – not the God of Sarah and Leah. This is the god of some idol, who’s seeking me at night and trying to fool me. God is acting against God – in Jonah’s assumption. God is asking something that God would never ask. Just as he once asked old Abraham to take Isaac and put him to the knife. This is the God who’s wild, if not just plain crazy, demanding something that’s completely inappropriate.
So Jonah flees, and takes off. He doesn’t know if that’s God’s voice or some other voice. He doesn’t know who’s speaking to him. He’s scared to death and so he runs.
Now, if you were to handicap this race; I mean you could put the whole pile on one place in expectation of winning. I mean you could give Jonah several miles head start, which the good Lord did, and you could bet that he would lose, huh? So… Jonah takes off, on a dead run… makes the seashore, gets passage, and he’s mid ship before the good Lord comes looking for him… in a great wind. Huh? Scared to death.
He does exactly what my old college roommates used to do in the Moorhead winters -- frozen, --- scared to death - he goes to below ship and goes to sleep. Better to learn to hibernate than to take this one on, huh?
And so then the ship tossing and turning he comes up – it doesn’t take the sailors long to find out that he’s the source of the difficulty, and so he volunteers, “Throw me overboard, I’d rather die than face this voice again.” Playing contrary, wild… this can’t be God… better death than Nineveh. And finally, after some negotiation, they throw him in. Ha ha.
And the good Lord, of course, makes him bait for the whale. You can just imagine this, huh? It’s so much fun – I mean I hope you don’t become like some Missouri Synod theologian and start looking for the whale, for crying out loud! I mean, you should just enjoy the story, ha ha. And here he goes, down the whale’s belly, and then a source of indigestion for the poor whale who heads for the beach as fast as he can run, worshipping at the porcelain altar, heaving, heaving, on to the shore. Good night! What a story! Not fit for preaching, right?
And then we get this second episode which is even more fun. Now old Jonah has finally relented, but apparently with his fingers crossed. So we find him in Nineveh, and he’s walked a third of the way into the city declaring the message that God has given him.
Now a person would have to say, for all of God’s self-contradictions, that there’s nothing particularly appealing about Jonah’s sermon. “In three days you’re all washed up!” I mean, that would get. him about a D minus in Homiletics. But this is the way it is with God’s word. No matter how much the preacher bungles it, it works. I think myself that Jonah probably twisted the message a little bit, just to get the Ninevites. But even with that twist, all of a sudden, the whole city, bottom to top, commoner to king, are in the midst of full-blown repentance.
Now that really makes Jonah mad, haha. Not only has he been sent to Nineveh but it works, hahaha. God is having mercy on whom he will have mercy and Jonah can hardly stand it - Death is still preferable. So he goes up on the mountainside and mopes. You can just see him pacing up there… ticked off… cursing. “I knew that would end in no good!
And so he builds himself a little tent, a little booth, and he sits up there… and if you think God was having fun with that, well you can just think of this gourd. He planted it, he gave it the growth and he withered it; just to make sport of Jonah.
Jonah first of all rejoices in the gourd, and then sits and watches the withering thing –“Oh no oh no OH NO!! And then it’s gone, and he’s in the midst of heat stroke, I mean, good night, huh? This story is just outrageous!
But you know what – Jonah was delivered – and the people of Nineveh as well.
He wasn’t going to be denied. Maybe that’s why Jesus identified himself with Jonah. Do you remember what he said? “This is an evil and adulterous generation. No sign will be given to you but the sign of Jonah. Both Jonah and Jesus saw the same side of God – the side of God that you have seen in the darkness when God has appeared to be as much enemy as deliverer. The God against God. The God who kills and makes alive. Jonah met him in the call to Nineveh - flying out of a whale’s mouth – sitting under a withering gourd – absolutely contrary to everything he’d expected. Jesus met him in the desperate, death-driven cry, a cry of absolute faith and utter unbelief. “MY GOD MY GOD!” Faith itself – “Why have you forsaken me?” Fear taken over…
Here’s the difference. Jonah had to be pursued and driven…compelled and finally broken. Jesus Christ for the glory set before him, freely gave it all - threw himself away. Turning in faith in faith, to faith in the hidden God, in that marvelous confession. What appeared to him to be the end of it all, was in fact the beginning of the new creation.
So… the good Lord ripped the temple curtain right in two. He broke out of the Holy of Holies… intent-- intent on the resurrection – he tore open Christ’s grave, rolled away the stone, opened the new future, to redeem… you… each of us.
You know… reading the scripture… sometimes it appears that the good Lord is having a little trouble with testosterone. Sometimes you could really wonder about his behavior. And if this doesn’t make you ask, nothing will. Crazy, crazy stories. But as St. Paul says, “Though we are faithless, he is faithful. He will never deny himself.”
So listen to these words that you memorized as children sitting in confirmation class. “The good and gracious will of God is truly done without our prayers… but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us.” When does this happen? “The good and gracious will of God is done when he hinders and defeats every evil scheme and purpose of the devil, the world and the sinful self that would prevent the hallowing of his name or oppose the coming of his kingdom. And his will is done when he keeps us firm in his word and in faith to our head.”
God’s peace to each of you. May he hold you through your Lenten repentance, so that on Easter morning you can break forth and enjoy him. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.