Sermon by Walter G. Edmonds
Damascus United Methodist Church
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
Third Sunday after Epiphany - January 25, 2009
We touch but once in our three year liturgical cycle the book of Jonah, that is, the famous and perhaps equally infamous story, of the northern prophet who called by God to go to the most vicious and wild enemy city of Nineveh was swallowed by a whale. It is in II Kings 14: verse 25 that this same Jonah, son of the prophet Amittai, is lifted up as the prophet that persuaded Jeroboam II to restore the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, that is, the Dead Sea. Let’s make a review of this timeless story of breaking crippling cycles by God’s action with God’s person.
“Now the word came to Jonah saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh…and cry out against it for their wickedness has come up before me.’ Jonah promptly ran in the opposite direction. Nineveh was a prominent Assyrian city, the capital of the empire noted for its huge library, culture, and the physical beauty of its temples, public gardens, and fortifying walls. The Assyrians were also noted for their ferocity and cruelty in battle; their troops would sweep through villages, killing even infants with a viciousness that left neighboring nations trembling (a very good reason for Jonah to choose the opposite direction). Jonah had no interest in preaching to the people of this city; he felt they deserved to remain in spiritual darkness. (We might observe that Jonah’s condemning judgment was the first crippling cycle in this story.) Jonah went to Joppa on the coast and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish, probably a city on the western coast of the Mediterranean known for trade and metalwork. During the voyage, a storm nearly broke the ship apart. In the face of certain death, the sailors cried out, each to his own god. They pitched cargo into the sea and, in the process, found Jonah, sleeping in the hold. ‘Get up, call on your god!; they cried. ‘Perhaps your god will spare us a thought so we do not perish.’”
“In ancient times, most tragedies were considered punishment for sin. With this perspective, the sailors cast lots to determine the guilty party, and the lot fell to Jonah (it probably seemed fair enough since Jonah had been hiding from the crew ashamedly.) Jonah said they must throw him into the sea because his disobedience was the reason for the storm. (Guilt has its own crippling cycle as well.) Finally, when the storm increased so they could no longer control the ship, the men reluctantly threw him overboard. (Maybe that’s where the famous quote ‘a last ditch effort, comes from’) A great fish swallowed Jonah, and during the three days and nights spent in its belly, Jonah thanked the Lord for having saved him from drowning in the sea. (I do believe that spending 72 hours inside any cavernous place, especially one that moves and breathes, could bring a serious change in cycled thinking, especially about not doing what God had called you to do.) The fish finally spat him onto the shore, only a day’s walk from Nineveh.” (How convenient. More importantly, how precise God can be with actions that put one directly in line for necessarily changing one’s attitude and disposition. A day away for Jonah, is like placing each of us in ‘our own back yard’ with nowhere to run.)
“Again, God instructed Jonah to go to Nineveh, taking the message that if the people did not change their ways, their city would fall in 40 days. (Clearly an impending doom calendar for the Ninevites.) To Jonah’s astonishment and dismay (again a signal of Jonah’s cycle of condemning judgment, which of course, we would never understand), the Ninevites believed (Jonah’s) message and repented. Even the king removed his robe, put on (gray) sackcloth. And covered himself with ashes as a symbol of repentance. The king commanded a citywide fast, saying, ‘Who knows? God may relent and change his mind …so that we do not perish.’” (Even God appears to be able to be persuaded to break God’s cycles, announced or otherwise.)
“Jonah was furious when God did change (God’s) mind and spared the Ninevites. The Book of Jonah records Jonah’s angry conviction that the Ninevites deserved any punishment they received, and instead God had given them forgiveness. (Jonah’s cycle of condemnation for those who did wrong in his sight was completely broken apart by a compassionate Yahweh, and in Jonah’s radical anger he sulked in a deadly stupor.) Jonah said he would rather die than see his enemies receive mercy instead of punishment from God. In (utter) disgust he walked east, outside the city gates, built a small shelter for himself, and waited.” (It is truly overwhelming what we humans will do to hold on to our cycles of judgment and personal opinions and attitudes, in light of the surprises God brings to us in His mercy and in His grace. We can behave in our self-righteousness like Jonah, building our distances, sharpening our tongues, creating our own little domains where no one, including the Almighty, can get too close. Such behavior is particularly endangering when we get older and loose the powers of control we once had.)
“(But) many scholars consider the building of a shelter as a sign that Jonah still hoped or expected God to destroy Nineveh. (Is it not amazing how we can hold on to our wants, when clearly we are being called to give them up.) Jonah found a spot that provided both safety and a view of the city and prepared to wait the appointed 40 days. While waiting he learned a sobering lesson at God’s hands. God made a broad-leaf plant grow to provide shade for Jonah’s grim death watch. Special note is made of Jonah’s appreciation of the protection from the sun. When God sent a worm to kill the plant and remove the shade, Jonah’s sorrow was noted as well. As the hot wind and sun beat down on Jonah’s head, he once again said he would rather die than live. Then God spelled out his lesson in detail, saying, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor…should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left. The words ‘do not know their right hand from their left’ refer to the people’s spiritual darkness, yet God wanted them, and all people, to hear of him and repent. His words rebuke Jonah for having a narrow-minded, nationalistic view that kept him from caring about the people of Nineveh.” (We don’t really hear of Jonah’s breaking with his crippling cycle of judgment and condemnation for the people of Nineveh in the book.) And for that matter we can note that “Nineveh’s repentance seemed to have been short-lived, as the prophets Zephaniah and Nahum later foretold its destruction as punishment for evil. (And yes) the city was destroyed in 612 B.C., and its ruins were found by archaeologists in the late 19th century.”
(This section of the sermon is constructed as a dialogue with the section on Jonah in Who’s Who in the Bible; Contributing Editor: Dietrich Gruen; pp. 168 -169. The parentheses are mine. )
What we can glean from this writing is that God clearly intends for us to allow his teaching, his instruction, his way of doing things to shatter the crippling cycles that we create for ourselves. Even when we are called to minister in Christ’s name, and be the arbiters of his forgiveness and reconciliation, we can still be out of sync with the spirit of love which is at the base of all of God’s action and presence. This story in the Old Testament stands out in its blatant announcement of God’s willingness to change from punishment to mercy, from annihilation to restoration, from death to life. Jesus himself uses the “sign of Jonah,” as a sign of his power, alluding to Jonah’s three days in the fish’s belly, as paralleling his three days in the tomb, and then his resurrection. Surely, this story calls us to break away from our routine cycles of self-judgment and self-limitation that shut us off from growth and greater discipleship, no matter how comfortable they have become. For here we see God breaking in upon Jonah to deliver him from the demise that is certainly his when he refuses to see God’s willingness to forgive and restore.
Again the fishermen, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, in our Gospel lesson from the first chapter of St. Mark were Jewish believers who were looking for something more than just cycles of fishing. Their willingness to leave their nets and boats so quickly must have been prepared for by Jesus’ presence and teaching with them on other occasions. They had experienced his deliverance of mind and heart through his parables, through the beatitudes, through his healing of loved ones. His call came as an invitation to break out of the routine cycles of the fishing trade and its heavy weight upon their personal lives. Jesus’ call to the new vocation of “fishing for men” drew them away from the circular, repetitive paths that so often became the locker they had laid in without even noticing or acknowledging its futile entrapment. The fishermen were “psyched,” as we might say, because, though they would fish again, they would never be contained by a worldly view or function that removed them from the energy and power of the God who had revealed His Son in their midst. The fishermen “signed on” expecting and desiring that any crippling cycles would be broken or left behind.
We need that same hope by what we do in this place. We need to be listening to the greater calls that God through Christ is surely giving to us as we honestly worship and ask for more of God’s presence in the holy community and without. Like Jonah, we must let Christ come in and dissolve and shatter the crippling cycles that still exist, and we still nurture. Like Jonah we must rid ourselves of the judgments and condemnations we make of anyone or anything and let Christ’s light strike the darkness. Like Peter, Andrew, James and John, we must be ready to leave our routine nets, and walk boldly with the Master into His life for us. He is calling. Will we heed His voice and follow?
