<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s reading from Jonah is every preacher\u2019s fantasy. We\u2019ve seen Jonah hear God\u2019s call, run away, be hurled into the sea, rescued by God\u2019s hand. He\u2019s changed by the experience. He learns, \u201cDeliverance belongs to the Lord,\u201d and when he\u2019s left on the shore, God again calls him in just the same way to go to Nineveh and announce its destruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The text tells us Nineveh was a great city that would take three days to walk across. Imagine Jonah coming into Nineveh, tired, thirsty after a long trip. He\u2019s determined to finally do what God called him to do. He walks a third of the way into the great city and says, \u201c\u2018Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!\u2019 It\u2019s a one sentence sermon. It doesn\u2019t have an engaging introduction doesn\u2019t have three points, it, it doesn\u2019t have a focus on what the preacher hopes will happen. Just: \u201c\u2026he cried out, \u2018Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!\u201d What do you think he imagined would happen? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What actually happens according to the story is amazing. What happens is that everyone takes him seriously; everyone repents! The king makes repentance a legal duty. I\u2019ve been preaching over 50 years, and I\u2019ve never had a reaction like this. I\u2019ve had people walk out, leave the church, get mad; I\u2019ve had people tell me something I said inspired them or that it was a good sermon, I\u2019ve even had people applaud. Never once in all that time did the whole place rise up and say, \u201cWow!! Jim is right! We need to change our ways right now!\u201d What is going on here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The key is the reaction to the sermon: repentance. Notice Jonah doesn\u2019t preach repentance; he never says, \u201cGod\u2019s going to destroy the city unless you repent.\u201d He just says God\u2019s going to knock it all down. But the response of the people is immediate. The outward signs of repentance are fasting and wearing plain clothes; the text calls it sack cloth. When the King hears about Jonah, he changes his clothes and fasts along with everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nNo human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8<\/sup>Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. [Jonah 3:7bf]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Look how complete this is: not just the king, not just the nobility, not just the peasants, even the animals are going to repent. This is funny, isn\u2019t it? We have a little dog named Ellie. She\u2019s a good dog but once in a while she gets something she shouldn\u2019t have. She likes paper towels; when she gets one, she runs away and hides, she knows she\u2019s being bad. When you get it back, she looks up and is sincerely repentant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Repent\u2019 isn\u2019t a word we commonly use except in cartoons about silly street preachers. What does it mean? At its heart, repentance means two things. One is recognizing you\u2019re wrong; the other is changing your direction. Most of us have had this experience. Maybe you\u2019re driving somewhere you\u2019ve never been; you have directions, but it just doesn\u2019t feel right. Eventually, you admit you\u2019re wrong and stop and ask for directions, you turn and go the right way. The last time this happened to me, I was on the way here. I stopped at the Starbucks over off Market Street shortly after I started here; I knew Locust Grove Road went all the way there. I was feeling good about finding my way in this new place, turned left off Market, right on Locust Grove Road to that place where it splits, and happily followed the yellow line off to the left. Iit took me a few minutes to figure out I\u2019d made a wrong turn, stop, go back and get on the right road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three Repentances<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This story is all about repentance; it\u2019s all about change. Remember where we started?\u2014with Jonah running away. God said, \u201cGo to Nineveh\u201d. But he didn\u2019t; he went to Joppa and got on a ship for Spain, the opposite way. It takes a great, life-threatening crisis to get Jonah to turn around; it takes being in the belly of the fish for three days to get Jonah to repent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now we come to a second story of repentance by the community of Nineveh. The text imagines people hearing the threat of destruction and immediately repenting. Wow! Furthermore, the King gives us the reason: \u201cWho knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.\u2019 [Jonah 3:9] Just like Jonah, the impetus for change comes from a crisis that threatens their very lives. What\u2019s going on here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jonah is pictured as a prophet from about the 700\u2019s up in the north, in the kingdom of Israel. That was a time when Israel\u2019s society had left the justice envisioned by God\u2019s covenant and traded it for systems that produced a few rich people and many poor people. They had left faithful observance of God\u2019s covenant and there are several prophets in the Bible who denounce this. They prophesy a coming judgement but unlike the Ninevites, no one does anything about it. Ultimately, Israel is conquered by people whose capital is Ninevah. What seems to be in the background here is a comedy with a serious thought: look, those awful Gentiles over in Ninevah repented but God\u2019s own people did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why don\u2019t people repent? Why don\u2019t we change? Of course there are institutional reasons: some people benefit and they don\u2019t want to give that benefit up. But I think also the familiar, the customary, gives us a sense of comfort. We like things as they are. Change can feel threatening. One of my churches wanted, so they said, to grow. They called me as their pastor for that precise purpose. Yet one Sunday after church when I was new, one of the ladies in the church took me aside and said, \u201cWe hope you will get new people in the church but we hope you will get our sort of people.\u201d I knew what she meant: don\u2019t change anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a third repentance, a third change in Jonah\u2019s story, although we don\u2019t always see it that way. Remember Jonah\u2019s whole message was \u201cForty days and Nineveh will be destroyed\u201d. But at the very end of this part of the story we have this amazing result: \u201cWhen God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it\u201d. [Jonah 3:10] God changes God\u2019s mind! Is this a little bait and switch? \u201cI\u2019ll threaten them but if they behave, it\u2019s all good.\u201d As someone who grew up hearing, \u201cWait \u2019til your father gets home\u201d as the ultimate threat, this surprises me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Lesson from Dad<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Yet, I also remember one of my dad\u2019s most effective lessons. I was 16, it was winter, and I had the car and had been explicitly told to do whatever errand I was sent on and not to go anywhere else because it was snowing. But I had a girlfriend. I had the car. So stopped at her house. When I left, the wheels spun, the car shifted, and I hit a sign with the back. Not enough to hurt anyone; too much damage to go unnoticed. It was my first accident and it scared me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother was furious when I got home; my dad was out. I was shaken up, and I went to bed, but not to sleep. I knew I was in serious trouble. I heard the door when my dad came home, felt the time when I knew my mother was telling him, heard him come upstairs. I knew I was in for it. The door opened, and I laid there and in a moment, my father, this stern man who had always been the ultimate threat, quietly said, \u201cYour mother told me about the car. Are you ok?\u201d I blubbered and said yes. He nodded and then he said, \u201cThat\u2019s all that matters. Get some sleep.\u201d, and closed the door. That moment of grace and care did more to change me, make me a more careful driver, than any punishment could have done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jonah\u2019s story climaxes with three stories of repentance, three stories of change. Jonah has changed his view of God. He knows now that his own judgement is not enough. He\u2019s answered God\u2019s call. The people of Nineveh, facing a crisis, find the courage to change. Even the king sits in sackcloth, hoping God will repent. And God, whose children these are, whose beloved children, is so pleased, the disaster is averted. God repents. The forty days come and go; the disaster never occurs. Perhaps when our fears don\u2019t happen, there is a lesson to be learned as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years after the comment about bringing in \u201cour sort of people\u201d, that church did begin to grow. It wasn\u2019t easy and it took changes, changes that weren\u2019t always comfortable. But I remember smiling one day, looking at the back of the church, where that same lady was happily chatting with one of the new members, a woman who came to us in desperate straits, whom the church embraced, who had become, like the lady, a deacon, a sister in Christ in the covenant of that church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following Jesus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Change is hard. Repentance is hard. But what does Jesus say? At the beginning of his ministry, the very start, Mark tells us, \u201cJesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, \u2018The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.\u2019 Repentance\u2014change\u2014is the gateway to the gospel. And isn\u2019t our call, all of us, to share that good news, that God\u2019s love, embodied in Jesus Christ, has changed us? Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Third sermon in a series on Jonah, in which Jonah, Ninevah and God all repent. God’s grace and love make the difference<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,352,3,13,2,130],"tags":[355,237,351,356,5],"class_list":["post-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-jonah","category-sermon","category-theology","category-worship","category-year-b","tag-godslove","tag-grace","tag-jonah","tag-repent","tag-sermon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1508,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}