January 17, 2021 – Sermon on Jonah, Part 1: The Unfaithful Prophet

This week and next, I’m going away from the lectionary and exploring the story of Jonah. This sermon dives into the first part of the story of Jonah, talking about sin, forgiveness, and faith.

Today’s reading is Jonah 1 from the CEB translation, and it’s mixed in with the sermon. My February newsletter column covers chapter two of Jonah, then next week’s sermon covers the remain two chapters, Jonah 3-4. 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

For the last few weeks, we’ve been moving basically chronologically through the story of Jesus. We’ve had Jesus’ birth at Christmas, of course, then Bishop DeGroot-Nesdahl preached about Jesus being presented in the temple. I read my grandfather’s creative interpretation of the magi and their three gifts for the baby Jesus, then last week, we talked about Jesus’ baptism. Today’s gospel reading is about Jesus beginning to call disciples to follow him, and in the weeks to come, we’ll hear about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, with stories about his teachings and miracles. 

But for the next two weeks, we’re going to step away from the story of Jesus, and instead jump to an entirely different section of the Bible to explore a famous story about a reluctant prophet who encounters an exceedingly large fish. 

Just from that description, you probably know who I’m talking about: A guy by the name of Jonah. Jonah comes up a lot in Sunday School and VBS, so maybe you remember his story from there. I think it’s in every children’s Bible ever written. Or maybe you saw the VeggieTales Jonah movie from a few years ago—you can rent it on Amazon here—it’s pretty good.

It’s a well-known story, but we rarely talk about Jonah in worship. In fact, in the Revised Common Lectionary our congregation generally follows, only two readings from Jonah show up in the whole three year cycle. But rather than just hearing a few verses next weekend, this time we’re going to go a bit more in-depth on Jonah, and between this week and next week, we’re going to read almost the entire book together, three of the four chapters.

Here’s the first chapter of the book of Jonah: 

The Lord’s word came to Jonah, Amittai’s son: “Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come to my attention.”

So, the first thing we hear about Jonah is that God is giving him a mission. It’s a call story. Jonah is to be a prophet, someone who proclaims a message from God. The message God gives him is addressed to the city of Nineveh, which is the capital of the Assyrian empire, and it’s a message of judgment. It’s doom and gloom, fire-and-brimstone preaching. Jonah is supposed to travel to Nineveh, and proclaim to them that they have sinned and God is going to punish them for their sin.

Now, some Christian traditions today don’t seem to use that word “sin” very much any more. It’s an ugly word. It’s unpleasant thing to think about. It puts a value judgement on things, declaring a difference between right and wrong, and that’s uncomfortable in today’s world, right? It’s easy to misuse the idea of sin, to talk about the sins of others as if they’re somehow worse than our own, or to go too far talking about our own sins as if they are all that defines us.

In our Lutheran tradition, we’re not afraid of sin in the abstract. Often, we begin services by confessing that we’ve all sinned. But we’re still reluctant to talk about particular sins, at least I am. It ought to be uncomfortable to say “we all have sinned and need forgiveness” but it’s a lot easier than saying “I, personally, have sinned by doing this or that. This action I did, this attitude I have, this habit I’m attached to is wrong, and I need to stop it and ask for forgiveness.” Personal confession is hard!

And the idea of telling someone else they are sinning…well, it’s one thing to tell someone on the internet that they’re wrong – many in our culture seem perfectly comfortable doing that – but it’s another thing to go personally and put yourself at risk by telling someone or some group that they’re doing evil and need to repent. It’s a tough balance to call out sin in a loving way, for the benefit of the sinner, rather than just to complain about them or condemn them. 

Jonah has some concerns too. Verse 3:

So Jonah got up—to flee to Tarshish from the Lord! He went down to Joppa and found a ship headed for Tarshish. He paid the fare and went aboard to go with them to Tarshish, away from the Lord. 

Chapter 1 doesn’t say why Jonah runs away to Tarshish, but I think I have a pretty good idea. You can understand why Jonah doesn’t want this call, right? Calling people to repent of their sin is an unpleasant task to start with, but what if they don’t do it? What if they laugh at me? What if they think I’m saying I’m better than them, or they start telling me all my sins? 

And in Jonah’s case, there’s physical danger too! He was going against people with power, in a city not known for its hospitality to outsiders. Ninevah is the capital of the Assyrian empire, the enemy of Israel.  If I suddenly started feeling that God was telling me to go to North Korea and call them to repent, I’d be pretty reluctant to go. I couldn’t see it ending well, so I suspect I’d do whatever else I could to avoid that call.

In fact, if you ever think you’re feeling God calling you to put yourself or others in danger, I hope you’ll hesitate too. There can be a lot of voices out there that sound like God that aren’t God. As Christians, we need to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” as 1st John 4 says, to make sure that the call you’re feeling lines up with Scripture, to discern and pray with other believers. 

Even if you think you feel God calling you to point out the sin of someone you know, I urge you to be cautious. There’s a reason Jesus tells us to notice the log in our own eye before trying to take a speck out of our neighbor’s eye.

But sometimes, sin does need to be called out. In fact, as I think about God’s message of judgement to Nineveh for its sins, I wonder what God’s message of judgment to our own nation would be, what sins God is calling you and me to repent of?

I want to be careful in my wording here, because I too don’t like offending people (I have some sympathy for Jonah) but there’s plenty of sin in our own nation to choose from, and a lot of it’s been on very public display these last few weeks: White supremacy, exploitation of the poor, destruction of God’s good creation, racism, killing of unborn children, valuing power or stuff more than people. 

And you and I have plenty of more individual sins to repent of as well, the times we act out of selfishness, greed, and fear, the times we fail to trust God, when we look past the needs in our world, when we fail to seek justice. Unfaithfulness in relationships, laziness, hoarding our resources, lying, gossiping, and assuming the worst of others, abandoning and ignoring people in need, not living up to the life God calls us to. You can ask the Holy Spirit to send you a prophet to show you what you need to repent of. That’s between you and God. 

If you’re uncomfortable with those lists, if you don’t like when the pastor starts naming particular sins, then you understand a little of how Jonah felt. So he gets on a ship and heads in the opposite direction. He’s running away from God’s call.

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, so that there was a great storm on the sea; the ship looked like it might be broken to pieces. The sailors were terrified, and each one cried out to his god. They hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to make it lighter.

Now Jonah had gone down into the hold of the vessel to lie down and was deep in sleep. The ship’s officer came and said to him, “How can you possibly be sleeping so deeply? Get up! Call on your god! Perhaps the god will give some thought to us so that we won’t perish.”

Two things to notice: First, these are religious sailors, but they’re not followers of Yahweh, the one true God. Like so many people, they’re superstitious, though, and they’ll pray to anyone who might be able to help. It’s sort of a “no atheists in foxholes” kind of thing.

Second, people often blame God for things like floods and hurricanes and earthquakes, and after a disaster, you can usually find articles wondering if God is punishing someone. Usually, I believe the answer is no. Sometimes bad things just happen. Looking for meaning in every weather pattern is a dangerous path to go down. God rarely acts that way, and we’re more likely to just start blaming other people for things that are no one’s fault rather than showing up and living out God’s call to love and serve our neighbors. 

That said, in this story, the superstitious sailors are right. This storm does have a particular purpose, although I don’t know how much comfort that’d be to the people waiting for deliveries when they learned the terrified sailers had cast their packages overboard!

Meanwhile, the sailors said to each other, “Come on, let’s cast lots so that we might learn who is to blame for this evil that’s happening to us.” They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. So they said to him, “Tell us, since you’re the cause of this evil happening to us: What do you do and where are you from? What’s your country and of what people are you?”

He said to them, “I’m a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven—who made the sea and the dry land.”

Jonah lacks faith to follow God, but he does know God. He knows who he belongs to. In fact, he knows God is the one who made the sea and the dry land, which makes his whole attempt to run away seem pretty foolish. He knows what he’s done wrong. Imagine how much guilt he must have been feeling. He’s not courageous enough to come forward on his own, but when he is directly confronted, he confesses.

Then the men were terrified and said to him, “What have you done?” (The men knew that Jonah was fleeing from the Lord, because he had told them.)

They said to him, “What will we do about you so that the sea will become calm around us?” (The sea was continuing to rage.)

He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea! Then the sea will become calm around you. I know it’s my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

It’s hard to say if this is a heroic sacrifice or not, because Jonah doesn’t seem to have many options, but at least he seems to be learning from his mistakes. He’s ready to stop running from God – in fact, he seems to be ready to meet God!

The men rowed to reach dry land, but they couldn’t manage it because the sea continued to rage against them. So they called on the Lord, saying, “Please, Lord, don’t let us perish on account of this man’s life, and don’t blame us for innocent blood! You are the Lord: whatever you want, you can do.” 

You’ve got to love these sailors, right? They’re doing their best in a terrible situation. They’ve done nothing wrong, and again, they’re not followers of God, but they know it’s not a great moral decision to throw their passenger overboard. So they pray to the Lord, whom they’re only just starting to believe in, and they ask for forgiveness. Jonah’s mission of calling people to repent is actually starting to bear fruit, despite his best efforts, not that it does him much good. In fact, the sailors, the foreign heathens in this story, are really more faithful than Jonah!

Then they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased its raging. The men worshipped the Lord with a profound reverence; they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made solemn promises.

Meanwhile, the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.

So, that’s the end of chapter one, and that’s where we’ll leave Jonah’s story for today. Despite Jonah’s disobedience, God hasn’t given up on him, which is good news for him and for us. 

If you want to read the rest of the story, the entire book of Jonah is only four brief chapters. We’ll skip over chapter two, but next weekend we’ll go through chapters three and four, and I do hope you’ll listen next week, because as familiar as the first part of this story with the big fish is, I think the end of the story is much more profound.