Jonah 1:1-10On the Run

Sermon preached June 28, 2015

Opening

If you got a group of children together, and asked them to name their favorite biblestories, chances are that many of them would say, Jonah and the whale. Its a greatstory that has captured the imaginations of young and old alike - the reluctant prophetwho runs away from God and gets swallowed by a whale (though we know its a bigfish). And even as our culture grows less and less familiar with the bible, I would bet thatjust about everybody has still heard about old Jonah.

Trouble is, we in the church dont know what to do with this story.

I am reminded of the preacher who was arguing about the inerrancy of theScriptures with a man in his church. Do you mean to tell me you believe thatstory about Jonah being swallowed by a big fish? the man asked. Yes, I do,the preacher answered. And when I get to heaven I'm going to ask Jonah what iswas like. And what if Jonah is not in heaven? the man asked him. Thepreacher thought for a moment. Then you can ask him! he replied.

Problem is, youve got people trying to prove scientifically that its possible for a man tobe swallowed by a fish and survive inside for three days. What you get is preachers andteachers who are trying to do ichthyology - the science of fish - rather than theology.

As we begin a sermon series on Jonah, first thing I want to say is, its not about the fish! Whom we will meet next week. Its about Gods relentless call to a reluctant prophet topreach salvation to a lost and suffering people. So listen now for the Word of God:

Scripture reading

Jonahs call

On Monday I went over to the home of the Leary family to pray with them as Mara headsto the Air Force Academy in Colorado to begin boot camp as she studies to become anofficer in the Air Force.

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One thing Mara can look forward to in her military career - and all veterans here canrelate to this - is being sent someplace she really doesnt want to go. When youre in themilitary, thats just part of the deal - Alex Shearer told me this week that when he was inthe Air Force, he was sent to a remote outpost in NW Alaska for a very long year.

But, if youre in the military, and you get your orders, you pack your stuff and you go.

One day Jonah the prophet gets a word from the Lord. This happens over and over in theHebrew scriptures - God speaks to a prophet and tells him where to go and what to do. So the LORD give Jonah his orders, to pack up and move out and report for duty. To goto a place Jonah really didnt want to go. The city of Nineveh. Go to Nineveh and preacha word from the Lord that the city must repent of its great evil or be destroyed.

Jonah running from face of God

But Jonah doesnt want to go to Nineveh, and he tries to run away. And not just run awayfrom home, not just run away from his call to go to Nineveh, the text tells us that he triesto run away from the face of the LORD.

Now what does that mean? Well, its kind of like this: when we were infants and wefinally learned how to focus our eyes, we saw our mothers as they held us and fed us, asthey hovered over us as we lay in our cribs. And the face of our mothers looking at usreassured us that we were loved and cared for. The presence of that face meant love andtenderness and care and security. Sometimes a crying baby just needs to see her mothersface, feel her mothers touch, to be calmed.

The face of God in the Hebrew scriptures is something like that. It means Gods hoveringpresence - the face of the One who is over us and around us and who loves us and caresfor us. The personal presence of the Almighty One.

But Jonah no longer wants the face of God looking at him. Jonah wants to terminate hisrelationship with God, surrender his credentials as a prophet and get as far away fromGod as possible. Its like Jonah is breaking up with God. Because God called him to goto Nineveh and preach a message of repentance and mercy.

Jonah tries to break up with God by running away, as far away as he can get. And instead

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of going to the dreaded city of Nineveh, he buys a ticket on a ship to go to Tarshish.

Tarshish

I clipped an article from The New York Times Magazine about a very specialized travelagency. Now, this travel agency doesnt specialize in cruises or exotic travel packages. This agencys speciality is to help people who want to escape their old lives and create anew life for themselves. Most customers book one-way tickets. A typical customer is aperson who wants to leave her or his spouse and run off with someone else, or someonewho is running from the IRS. The travel agency can obtain a whole new identity for itscustomers, and find them homes and jobs in other countries, where they can begin awhole new life.

Thats what Jonah was after in running to Tarshish. Because in Jonahs time, Tarshishwas known for two things:

It was the ends of the earth - present-day Gibraltar - at the end of theMediterranean sea and on the edge of the rumored vastness of then unknownAtlantic Ocean. Nineveh, was as far as you could run away in those days.

But Nineveh was also exciting and exotic. A place of adventure where you couldmake a fresh start. Tarshish is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in the book of FirstKings where we learn that King Solomons fleet sailed to Tarshish and broughtback silver, ivory, monkeys and peacocks.

Nineveh - blech! Tarshish - yes! And so Jonah packs his bags, grabs his passport andhops on a ship to sail away from God. And from Gods call to go to Nineveh.

We try to run from God too

Now the book of Jonah is full of humor and irony, and reading about this runawayprophet trying to get away from God - the God who fills the universe with his presence -is pretty comical.

But - all of us run from God too. And not usually in the big obvious ways, like someonerenouncing their faith.

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Let me start with an example of how people like me do it. Clergy. After all, Jonah was aclergy-person, a man of the cloth. We clergy fancy ourselves specially called by God toserve him. But we dont like it any more than Jonah when God call us to go to someplacewe dont like - like Nineveh.

Nineveh, is a call to small church on the back end of nowhere, where the organ hasntworked for twenty-two years, where the congregation doesnt have enough kids to field asoccer team, where the roof leaks and the soloist on Sunday has a voice that would makea hound howl at the moon.

Nineveh, is a call to a town with no Starbucks, no sushi, no high-speed internet.

Going to Nineveh, we clergy think, is beneath called, educated and credentialed peoplelike me.

We want to go to Tarshish - and be and up-and-coming pastor of a hot church with a greatpraise band that plays in a stage with lights and smoke machines, where you have to putout extra chairs on Sunday, where people hang on your every word when you preach andcant wait to download your podcasts - and where you get noticed because its yourobvious skill and charisma that are making your church grow. We want to go Tarshishwhere there are cool restaurants and craft breweries and hip people and art galleries and amovie theater showing foreign films, with people we like.

But God calls pastors, and all of us, us to do things like go to places like Nineveh, andserve him faithfully.

What might that look like in our lives?

I have a friend who married a beautiful, talented woman. Ill call them Bill and Barbara. We were in seminary together, and Barbara would take the train up to New York andaudition for acting jobs on soap operas and get them and supported the family through heracting. Mind you, she had never acted professionally before.

Bill and Barbara left seminary and they had kids and served various churches and thenBarbara developed a severe mental illness. She has been hospitalized a number of times,takes massive amounts of medication. Some days she is functional, some days she is not.

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And she has shut down emotionally, withdrawn from Bill physically, withdrawn intoherself. She is not the woman Bill married. And frankly, Bill gets nothing out of thismarriage now.

Yet Bill stays married to her. Bill stays faithful to her. Bill cares for her. Bills a highlysuccessful minister, a good-looking man and he would have plenty of women interestedin him should he choose. But Bill has submitted to the call of God he has heard fromPauls words in Ephesians - that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves thechurch - so he has chosen the hard way of staying with Barbara, caring for Barbara,loving Barbara.

Do you see the Nineveh vs. Tarshish there?

Our call to the hard and the ordinary

Ive got something hard you may need to hear. That thing you dont want to do may beprecisely what God wants you to do. Frederick Buechner once defined a call from God aswhere the worlds deep need, and your deep gladness meet. And I think thats a swelldefinition, but sometimes Gods call to us is where the worlds deep need and your deepterror meet. Not everything God calls us to do is going to put a smile on our face and askip in our step. God often calls us to do the hard thing, not the easy thing, the quietthing, not the noticed thing.

But - God didnt want to send Jonah to Nineveh to punish him, but to use him for thesalvation of a whole city. God doesnt call us to do the hard thing, the unwanted thing, inorder to punish or humiliate us. God always uses how we serve him for good. Always,always, always, when God calls us to do something for him, it is for the purpose ofblessing someone, healing someone, helping make the world more like God intends.

Like what weve seen from the congregation of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston. Jesus calls us to love our enemies, forgive our enemies, pray for those who persecute us. Thats the hard way, thats the way to Nineveh. Yet thats exactly what this congregationhas done. Forgiven Dylann Roof for murdering their friends, fathers, grandmothers,friends. Refusing to return evil for evil. Holding on to faith and hope despite theenormous evil they have suffered. Thats the hard way, thats the way of Jesus.

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I frankly dont know if I could do it. I dont know if Id want to do it. But theyre doingit, and what an enormous impact it is having on our country. What a witness to the LordJesus Christ.

Or like this story, told by a pastor named Lynn Bandy. She was attending a meeting ofother church folk and began with a time of sharing, answering the question, How didyou experience God this summer?

Several people in the room told how they had experienced God in nature. At thecottage in the woods, or on the lake, they saw a sunset, heard a loons cry, or felt asummers breeze.

Several other people in the room told how they had experienced God inchildren....A few people in the room told how they had experienced God in music.They had attended a concert, or purchased a new CD, and heard Tchaikovsky asthey has never heard him before.

Finally, it came the turn of a woman who was a newcomer to the group. Shelooked very uncomfortable. She said hesitantly: One morning this summer Iawakened with an incredible compulsion to go see my ex-husband....I dont...likemy ex-husband. We havent spoken in over a year. But I was filled with such acompulsion to see him, that I literally could not resist it. So I gathered up mychildren, dressed hurriedly, and we drove to his house. We found him collapsedon the floor, having experienced a massive heart attack. We called 911 and savedhis life.

You see whats going on? God calls us to do the hard thing, in order to save people -from suffering, pain, death and spiritual lostness. And I would bet a whole bunch of ushave had experiences like that.

And I would bet that some of us here today sense the hand of God on us to do somethingwe dont want to do, like forgive someone we have written off, like help someone whomakes us grind our molars. Something hard, like work on a marriage that youd ratherend, like go and begin a new job, a new ministry, that seems like more than you canhandle. Or maybe you dont want to do it because its hard, but ordinary. Im not talkingabout feeling guilt...Im talking about the persistent sense that God is after us about

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something.

You can try to run from Gods call - Jonah thought maybe in Tarshish, God will leave mealone...but you cant run from God. Because his purpose to use us to heal and bless andcare for others will not be defeated. So save yourself a lot of heartache, and just say, Ok,God, I dont want to but I will. And youll find God use you in amazing ways.

Closing

Like this true story about a woman named Elisabeth Eliot who died two weeks ago at theage of 88.

In January 1956, her husband Jim Eliot and four other missionaries felt called by God tobring the gospel to an unreached tribe in Amazon called the Waorani. After months ofgroundwork, Eliot and the others made friendly contact with three tribe members near themain Waorani village.

Two days later, a group of armed warriors burst out of the rainforest and hacked Jim Eliotand the others to death. The Waorani were terrifically violent and hated outsiders. Themissionaries were armed, but only fired their weapons in the air to try to scare off thewarriors, figuring they were ready to meet God, but the Waorani were not. The storymade headlines all over the world.

Less than two years after her husbands murder, Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, whosebrother had been among those killed, left their homes to live with the tribe that hadmurdered their loved ones. Elliot also brought her daughter, Valerie, a toddler at the time.For most of us, living with the people who killed your spouse and the parent of your childwould be unthinkable. Elliot, who had previously worked in Ecuador as a missionary,saw it as obeying Gods call. She wrote, I must obey God, and I believed this was thething He meant me to do, just as He meant others to be fishermen . . . draftsmen,housewives. The role seemed incidental. The goal was all-important.

Eliot and Saint worked to decipher the tribal language and they shared meals, traditions,and most important, the news of Jesus Christ. The tribe numbers around 2,000peopleup from about 250 in the 1950s when the tribe settled disputes by spearing oneanotherand about a third have become Christians.

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Gods call may be hard. But in the end, its always for good. For others, and for us. Amen.

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