Sermon:
January 26, 2003
Sunday Night Alive!  

Scripture:
Jonah 3:1-5      
Jonah 3:10

The story is told of a small girl who had older brothers. Since she was an infant, the child had attended sporting events. Her name was Danielle, and one Sunday evening in worship she was particularly restless. As the congregation prayed, she grabbed her mother’s arm and said, “Mom, is it half-time yet?” I don’t know about half-time in a worship service, but I’m confidant that we will not miss the opening kickoff this evening. (Sunday, January 26 was Super Bowl Sunday. Kickoff was scheduled to be at 6:17.)   

That being said, our reading is from Jonah. We know the story. It’s the story of discipleship, set in three acts. 

1)   God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, to the very ones who had enslaved the people of Israel from the Northern Kingdom. Jonah says, “No way,” and runs. 

2)   Jonah recognizes that God is not relenting. There’s no real place to run from God, so he decides that he might as well go. 

3)   So he goes, proclaiming, “Forty more days and it’s all over.” And to his surprise, the Ninevites repent. They change their evil ways. And God spares them. 

Three acts, one mission. But that’s not the end of the story. 

This evening, we’re in the third act. Jonah has said, “No way!” But God replies, “Yes way!” and finally Jonah has decided to go. After all, if God is going to smack Nineveh upside the head, he might as well be the one to tell them!  

Do you remember how much fun it was in grade school when someone you really didn’t like very much got caught doing the same thing you had just been doing? What would you do? Silently, standing behind the teacher’s back: “Na, Na, Na-na, Na.” A few years later, the words would change, but as Fred and Barney were helping one another, the feeling would be the same: 

“Hey Fred, I don’t think you should do that, Fred.”

“Oh shut up, Barney, can’t you see I’m workin’ here?” 

Then a pebble shifts, a can slides, a ladder topples and Fred falls to the ground—and a rock the size of a small bus knocks him upside the head. Barney, chuckling under his breath, says: “I told you so, Fred, I told you so.” 

Jonah wants to be the one to say “I told you so.” He figures if God is setting these people up, he might as well be in on it. After all, it’s a done deal. God would never forgive the Ninevites after all they’ve done. (Na, Na, Na-na, Na) 

Let’s begin the third act.

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 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.  (Jonah 3:1-5, 10) 

“God doesn’t bring upon them the destruction he promised.” Of the whole story of Jonah, here lies his real issue. Jonah’s chance at vindication—his chance to boast, saying, “I’m good and you’re bad”—is stolen away. Rather than killing the fatted calf and throwing a no-holds-barred party to celebrate what God has accomplished in the lives of the Ninevites, Jonah is disgusted that there’s nothing to gloat over. 

In less than an hour, two teams are going to take the field (or go head-to-head on green painted plastic). Only one is going to leave the winner. Will it be the Raiders with their offense? Will it be the Buccaneers with their defense? Fans are already in place. TV sets are tuned in. Watches are carefully being scrutinized. Yet only half will join in the final jubilant celebration. Only half will come away from this Super Bowl 37 with any sense of victory. We all want to be on the winning side. No matter what the exchange, in the final act, we all want to be able to say: “I was right.”   

In heated conversation late one afternoon (as the story goes), the renowned American philosopher, Dr. Mortimer Adler, stormed out of a discussion group, thoroughly disgusted. He slammed the door on his way out, leaving the room in stunned silence. Trying to relieve the tension, one guest remarked, “Well, he’s gone.” To this the host replied, “No he isn’t. That’s the closet.” 

On the surface, we focus so often on the big fish in Jonah’s story. Or maybe we recognize him as the sole prophet who ran from God. But could it be that, at a much more intimate level, at a level which opens us to a great deal more discomfort, Jonah’s sulking comes from a failure of imagination, a failure of heart that we can too often relate to? He has no idea what God is doing or the largeness of his love, his mercy, his salvation. As translator and pastor Eugene Peterson comments: “He has reduced God’s plan to his own performance. He was in the right place, doing the right thing, but interpreting everything through his own ideas, his own desires.” The danger is that when we do that, all of a sudden we find ourselves preoccupied with our own small box rather than seeking to understand the wideness of God’s grace. 

So in the end, Jonah tells God: “I’d rather die than be forced to acknowledge that I could possibly be wrong.” (4:8) But God doesn’t offer much sympathy. He doesn’t say: “Oh Jonah, it’s all right. You know I love you most. I’m sorry, this is supposed to be about you and your wishes, isn’t it?” No, God is very direct. He makes it clear that his heart is with the Ninevites who have come to know him. And Jonah can either understand the plan or wilt along the road. And that’s where the author leaves us. Jonah’s final chapter is left unwritten. 

I really feel for Jonah. In his mind, the rules have been changed. God is doing something different, something never expected, moving and doing in ways that have never been done before. God is redeeming pagans, the very ones who have given no regard to God or his people. The ones who defeated them, who killed them.

In his box, Jonah had focused himself on “the rules” of conventional wisdom, on what makes sense, what he expected God to be doing. He limited God rather than seeing what God was actually doing and where God’s Spirit was moving. Even when God spoke directly, he still struggled to let go. 

I don’t know if Jonah ever got it. What I do know is that the good news of Jesus Christ and the love of God is experienced in fresh and new ways in every generation, that the Gospel—the good news of how God is working—is for all people, even if it means we have to admit that, well, maybe, God is working in ways and places we never imagined.  

I encourage you to read Jonah this week and let God’s word make its own challenge to each of us, that we may be given eyes to see the Lord’s hands working all around us, and the grace to sing a song welcoming every stranger home.  

Amen.