The Third Sunday After Epiphany Jonah 3: 1 – 5, 10

Sunday, January 25, 2009 I Corinthians 7; 29 – 31

The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 14 – 20

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Jonah 3: 10

“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you,” God says to Jonah in our Old Testament reading this morning. God uses Jonah to preach a message of destruction to a sinful city and when Jonah does, God changes his mind and spares Nineveh. God uses Jonah and Jonah, we learn in the verse that immediately follows our reading, is not happy. The next verse, which we do not hear this morning, reads: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.”

The book of Jonah is a short story about a prophet called by God to preach a message of destruction to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Assyria was Israel’s enemy and Jonah was understandably reluctant. So Jonah gets on a ship heading in the opposite direction. A storm comes up, the ship is threatened, and the crew tosses Jonah overboard after learning Jonah is running away from God. The seas are calmed, the pagan sailors are brought to faith in the God of the Jews and Jonah ends up inside the belly of a whale. After three days, the whale spits Jonah out and God tells Jonah a second time: Go to Nineveh. And Jonah goes. And Nineveh repents.

And Jonah gets angry. I knew you would spare Nineveh, Jonah says to God. I knew you were a God of love and compassion and would not destroy Nineveh. I knew you would be gracious to these people. What did you need me for? You have used me. I have preached the message of destruction you gave me and now you have changed your mind and destruction has not to pass. How dare you use me! And Jonah goes outside of the city to sulk.

And God makes a great bush, a castor oil plant, to grow to shade Jonah as he sits in the blistering heat and then God makes the bush die, leaving Jonah to sweat and wishing he would die. And God confronts Jonah with the mystery of God’s freedom to do what God will do through us.

The book of Jonah was written late in the history of Israel, probably sometime during the fifth century B.C., on the eve, historically speaking, of the Incarnation. The book of Jonah was written after the Babylonian exile as the Jews were rebuilding a life for themselves as the people of God back in Palestine. The great Persian Empire enabled the Jews to live in relative peace from hostile invaders and this time afforded the Jews with the possibility of grappling with questions of faith – the book of Job, which struggles to understand innocent suffering, was authored around the same time. In the book of Jonah, God’s freedom to do what God will do is pitted against Jonah’s desire to do what Jonah wants to do.

God uses Jonah; God uses Jonah first to bring pagan sailors to the knowledge of the God of the Jews and then God uses Jonah to bring a change of heart to a wicked city. God uses Jonah to accomplish God’s purposes – to bring light to a world floundering in darkness.

But Jonah can only see his own dismay. Jonah knows he has tried to flee God’s call to him and when the lives are others are threatened, Jonah tells the pagan sailors to throw him overboard. And then, when Jonah does finally walk into the enemy city of Nineveh, Jonah is risking, for a second time, his very life. Jonah did what God asked Jonah to do, albeit reluctantly, and Jonah got nothing but grief in return.

Ultimately, Jonah’s call is at risk. When Nineveh repents and is not destroyed, Jonah is faced with a problem – did God really call Jonah to preach a message of doom to Nineveh or was Jonah just hearing voices? And we hear echoes of the snake in the garden of Eden who said to Eve: “Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” What, the serpent asks Eve, exactly did God say?

Old Testament theologian Gerhard Von Rad notes that in the book of Jonah, the “hero” of the story is God, who “is here glorified not through his ambassador, but in spite of his ambassador’s complete refusal. “The ridiculous, stubborn Jonah,” Von Rad continues, “grudging God’s mercy to the heathen, but filled with joy at the shade of the castor oil plant, and then wanting to die when he sees it withering away, is unable to impede God’s saving thoughts – they achieve their goal in spite of everything.” God uses Jonah as a king might a subject, leading pagan sailors to faith and the city of Nineveh to repentance. What we learn through Jonah is that God’s will will be done, in spite of us if necessary.

When we are baptized, we acknowledge the authority of God’s will and are baptized into God’s saving purposes for the whole world. In Baptism, we are called out by God to co-operate with God’s desire to bring the whole world to a knowledge and love of God. In Baptism we take our place in a drama, a drama destined to show forth God’s glory, not ours.

Neither you nor I nor anyone else can ever know fully the mind of God. And as we live out our lives under the shade of God’s love, we will inevitably find ourselves in circumstances that make no sense, caught up into events we wish we could change, confronted with the mystery of God’s will. What we know, and what the book of Jonah bears witness to, is that God’s will is for the salvation of the world and that includes us. That we cannot see God’s loving hand in any given situation does not mean God has given us up to destruction.

To say God uses us is to understand that our life – all of our joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, celebrations and sufferings – are all under the pale of God’s love for the whole world. You and I, because we are human, cannot see beyond our own limited and limiting vision. We cannot see beyond our own frustrations or our own problems or our own accomplishments and even begin to imagine what God may be doing with us and through us. We all pray that God will strengthen us, heal us, mend our broken spirits. How often do we ask God to use us? How often do we pray, God’s will be done, not ours?

Nothing we do is far from the eye of God. Scary thought I know. God sees what we cannot see. God has in the words of the gospel hymn “the whole world in his hands;” you and I have only a little piece. God is not absent when we lose our job or are diagnosed with cancer or lose the money we had planned for retirement or are wholly frustrated with our work or dissatisfied with the way we spend our days. At those times we want to pray: “Heal me hands of Jesus.” Maybe what we should be praying is: “Use me hands of Jesus.”

Jonah felt cheated and in all the ways I would call reasonable, Jonah was cheated. Jonah did what Jonah thought God called him to do and God changed his mind. Jonah was left with a prophecy without fulfillment, a call that went nowhere. Jonah was left holding the bag so to speak and Jonah was angry. Jonah, like us, simply could not know what God was doing.

You and I know God was using Jonah to bring pagan sailors to faith and a whole city to a change of heart but Jonah could not see that. All Jonah could see was that he being used and he did not like that. Jonah of course chose to forget that God had indeed delivered him from the belly of the whale. And we, in the course of our various miseries, are tempted to forget the many ways God has graced us in the past, delivered us, rescued us, kept us from sinking into the very depths of hell. All we can see is our present discomfort and our very real present problem. Most of us never wonder what God is doing and only want to be delivered from our distress.

The last words in the book of Jonah are spoken by God. Jonah is sitting outside of the city gates in despair, wanting to die. Jonah has made his case against God and is now ready to be finished with God and God’s ways. And the last words come from God, reminding Jonah of God’s love for the world which God created and which God, not Jonah, will redeem. God, who spoke the first word, will always have the last word, not just for Jonah but for you and me.