A Sermon Preached on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany,
January 22, 2012
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (Year B)

By Reed Carlson (These are notes, not a finished product)

1. Like many young American males in high school, a large part of my life revolved around the procurement of a car.

· Cars were a chief element in my life’s 3 biggest goals: going on dates, not having to ride the bus & being awesome.

· I wanted a specific car: A Volkswagen Jetta. I thought that the VW Jetta was the coolest car ever created by humankind.

· My reasons were simple: my dad drove one and my mom drove a minivan: Given an option between the two, the Jetta always won.

· The problem was that I worked 15 hours a week as a bagger boy at Byerly’s and on top of my video game and mountain dew expenses; I couldn’t swing a lease on a brand new Jetta.

· Now, at Byerly’s, I worked with a guy from another high school named Danny. Now, I wouldn’t call Danny my friend, but he was someone I saw all the time at work.

· Danny was the sort of guy who had that great and rare skill of finding clever ways to turn any conversation towards one of two things: his supposed exploits with girl and his car—typically with one leading into the other.

· When we would work together, Danny would talk about how superior his car was to people’s cars—especially my car since it didn’t exist.

· He had a Honda Civic with a lot of custom pieces on it like extra pipes coming out the back, and a big fin on the trunk, and it made a hissing noise when he shifted and I’m sure there were some retractable wings somewhere in there too.

· He talked a lot about horsepower and turbo and torque, but I didn’t know anything about cars—I still didn’t know anything about cars. I just knew that I liked Volkswagens—but my reasons weren’t good enough.

· They were from Europe and as we all know, everything in Europe is better except for customer service and pop music.

· Consequently, Danny often made fun of me mostly because I liked Volkswagens.

· After a few months of putting up with this, God smiled upon me, and had Danny get into a car accident. He was fine but his car was totaled. I didn’t feel bad for Danny. Justice had been done.

· A week later, Danny showed up at work with a brand new, ice white, tinted windows Volkswagen Jetta. It was even a “Wolfsburg Edition.”

· Now, Danny didn’t have the money to buy this car. He called off sick for about as many shifts as he actually worked. His parents had bought him this car.

· I was furious. In my mind, Danny did not deserve this car. I deserved this car. Why? Because I liked it first and he had made fun of me.

· I would’ve fully admitted that I was jealous. But my jealousy was justified, because it was unfair. A grave injustice had been done against the cosmos. Rather than allowing Danny’s car accident to be the disaster it was meant to be. God had allowed Danny to get a new car. My car. And, he was still being a jerk about it.

2.· There are many times in life, when we must face the uncomfortable truth that people do not get what they deserve.

· Thousands of innocent children die every day from hunger. The immature feuds of a few powerful individuals,can create war and destruction for decades. This kind of injustice is unsettling, particularly when we are the innocent party who is suffering.

· What’s more, there are a lot of Danny’s out there who don’t deserve what life gives them. They seem completely immune to the consequences of their stupid decisions. But here’s the thing, we often get a lot more upset about the unearned victories of the guilty than the suffering of the innocent.

  3. This morning we read part of the story of Jonah.

· In my experience, people don’t really take Jonah very seriously after a certain age. Many of you are probably familiar with Jonah and the Big Fish.

· It’s a story we often tell to children because it has animals in it and the lesson seems pretty straightforward: you better do what God tells you or else a fish is going to eat you.

· But in reality, I think Jonah has a very different message and a very different audience.

4. The story opens with God telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and to warn them that if their wickedness continues, their city will be destroyed.

· Historically, Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were a merciless empire, famous for their fierceness in battle, and their lack of mercy for their victims.

· Jonah, for reasons that are not apparent yet, goes in the complete opposite direction—towards the sea where he gets on a ship.

· While sailing away from the coast, the ship encounters a storm and the valiant sailors have to throw all the cargo overboard in order to stay afloat. Meanwhile, Jonah is fast asleep below deck.

· Finally, someone wakes him up. Jonah knows what’s going on, but he keeps his mouth shut. Until the sailors throw some dice and find out that Jonah is the whole reason that this storm has come.

· But when Jonah is confronted, rather than saying, “hey, if we just turn around, and I go to Nineveh, everything will be fine.” He says, “Throw me in the sea”—in other words, “Kill me, and the storm will stop because God can’t make me do something if I’m dead.”

· That’s the irony. Jonah cannot escape God, even in death. The sailors do throw him into the sea, and a great fish swallows him.

· For three days and three nights, Jonah pouts inside the fish. Finally he prays and God has the fish spit him out onto dry land.

· This is where our reading this morning picks up the story. Jonah begrudgingly goes to Nineveh—the largest metropolis on the planet.

· While in Nineveh, Jonah gives, arguably the worst sermon ever delivered in human history: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

· Jonah doesn’t say why, he doesn’t say who, he doesn’t even say that they should repent. But the response to Jonah’s sermon is incredible. The King of the Assyrian empire—the most powerful man in the world—declares a fast and dresses up in sackcloth, like someone at a funeral.

· Further, he tells everyone in the whole kingdom to do the same. Their repentance is so complete, that they even dress up all of their cattle and their dogs and their cats and their hamsters in little sackcloth outfits. And no one—no animal or person—will eat anything.

· God sees this and the city is saved.

·5.  Now, the Book of Jonah in the Bible is a short book buried in a collection of books called the prophets. These are figures whom God called to preach bold messages, often in unfriendly contexts.

· The prophets were rarely successful in their preaching. But they answered the call anyway. Often because they cared about the fates of those people whom they preached to.

· In this context, we see that Jonah is really a satire. Part of this comes from the way the book is written. In Hebrew it is one of the most expertly crafted books in the Bible, everything is tight and many words and phrases have double meanings and poetic placement.

· The whole story is written to the extreme, the Hebrew word for “gread” גדל appears over and over again. It’s a great a storm and a great fish and a great city and a great repentance.

· But we can also see that the story is a satire because of the character Jonah. He is the exact opposite of what a prophet should be.

· In the very next chapter, after he realizes that the city is not going to be destroyed. Jonah complains to God. He says, “I knew you were going to have mercy on the Ninevehites—that’s why I didn’t want to go there in the first place.” You see, Jonah wasn’t scared. He just wanted the Ninevehites to die.

· This fierce people who would eventually be responsible for the destruction and enslavement of his own people—of God’s own people. Jonah wanted them to get what they deserved.

· Jonah was so determined. He would rather die than help save Nineveh.

· He had the sailors throw him in the sea

6.  I think this attitude in Jonah is more familiar than we would like to admit.

· Often it kills us, to see people get grace that they don’t deserve. And yet we claim to serve a God who does just that for us. In fact, as Christians, we like to say that’s one of God’s better features.

· It’s the kind of self-righteous jealousy we can get with coworkers and acquaintances but also with old friends, with our siblings and even with our spouses.

· Like anything else, it’s an attitude that’s easy to pick out in children but when it comes to adults, we get a little better at dressing it up.

· We pretend like we’re standing up for someone else or that there is some violation of a fundamental human right. We say that by allowing this to happen, we’re setting a precedent or that this person will just continue in their bad behavior.

· But I want to be honest with you this morning, sometimes, that stuff just veils the fact that we’re jealous.

· Because here’s the thing and this is what fries me every time. We are right. We are absolutely right. It isn’t fair.

· She doesn’t deserve that promotion. He should go to jail. She’s never going to learn unless she faces the consequences. This is just going to make him think that he’s been right all along—but in reality, he’s so stupid.—all of that is true.

·7.  After the city is spared. Jonah tells God to kill him, because he would rather die than live in a world where God could be so merciful.

· And God answers him with a question. “Should I not care about that city where there are more than 120,000 people, who are so lost and confused, they don’t even know their right hand from their left hand? Should I just not care about those lives?”

· And that’s where the book ends, it’s one of only two books in the Bible that ends with a question, “Should I just not care about them?”

· This is a tough truth for me to face. God cares about even them.

· God is doing stuff in this world, in the lives of other people, that I know about. And God does not need or want my input, as to how that person’s life should go.

8· Now, I hope you’re hearing me well this morning. Because this could easily be taken the wrong way. If you’re a parent or if you’re a leader in some way who has a job to do, justice and fairness is part of the territory and you have responsibility to the people around you. I’m not denying that.

· Nor am I saying that we don’t have a responsibility to stand up for people who cannot defend themselves in society—those are different issues and I’m not talking about that this morning.

· But I am talking about those times in life when we want blood, and God has grace. Because when you’re on the wrong side of that disagreement, the person you hurt the most is yourself. Because part of accepting God’s grace for ourselves is recognizing, supporting and actually celebrating God’s grace for others.

· This is a lesson that Jonah couldn’t learn. And it’s fitting that the story ends with the hero turned into a fool, because many people we know will never learn this lesson either.

9· I would invite you to just take a moment this morning, and ask God if this is something that you’re struggling with in your own life. We’re going to take a few moments now of silence.

· Use this time to allow the Holy Spirit to examine you. Just be honest. It could be that you have a very difficult apology note to write tomorrow.

· It could be that you’re gonna have to make a conscious decision to change your attitude when you’re around a certain person.

· It could be that there is a burden in your life—some old hurt that you’ve been carrying around for years—and you just have to finally let it go this morning.

· If so, believe me that God has grace even for you. Let’s pray.