Change we really can believe in
Text: Jonah 3:1-5; 10; Mark 1:14-20
“The time has arrived; the kingdom of God is upon you. Repent, and believe the gospel.” These are Jesus’ words as his begins his public ministry, according to the Gospel of Mark. The book of Jonah also has a theme of repentance - the people of Nineveh, upon hearing Jonah’s warning from God, repent of their evil ways.
Only trouble is, repentance isn’t a word we really like hearing anywhere, including in church. The wonders of the English language have given us the idea that repentance means having to be sorry for what we’ve done wrong. But this isn’t what the Biblical understanding of repentance is at all. Repentance means a change in actions and direction. In short, to repent is to make a substantial, real change in one’s life. It’s not about the guilt, it’s all about real, honest genuine change.
Change your ways is a timely message these days. The message of last year’s US Presidential Election came to fruition this past Tuesday with what really is an extremely profound moment in US history. Of course, this expression of change and hope is more than simply lip service. The inauguration of Barack Obama as President is a symbol of the desire for change, not just for how politics is done, but also on how the United States views itself. Perhaps it really does represent a watershed in how people think in our neighbours to the south. Perhaps this is hope realized. The real test, of course, is how it bears out over the next few years. What is evident, the desire to do things differently was and is met with a tremendously enthusiastic response.
It seems ironic that one of the core messages of the Bible is change, and yet for many generations it has been used to stifle it. Let’s set the record straight: Not only is change allowed, it is greatly encouraged. Just at that moment where we’re getting comfortable or even complacent in our lives, along comes God calling us to change our ways… to change the way we see things… and to change the way we treat one another. That’s an absolutely essential part of our relationship with God, our ability and willingness to change.
Like Jonah, perhaps we’re not keen to see it.
There’s lots of changes, and changes of direction happening in the story of Jonah. You know the basic outline of the story - God calls Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, but Jonah didn’t want these hated enemies of Israel to repent. He wanted God to punish them. So he ran away from God. After ending up in the belly of a fish, Jonah repents (sort of) and finally goes to Nineveh to preach as God had called him to do. The people of Nineveh repent of their evil ways, and they turn to God. And strangely enough, God repents too. God does not destroy the people of Nineveh, as Jonah foretold, but rather has a change of mind. When God sees the repentance of the Ninevites, guess what happens, God changes the decision and has mercy upon them.
What I love about Jonah’s story is how similar it is to our own lives. It reminds me that we all need to make changes from time to time, and that a change in direction is not only allowed, it is are encouraged. Sooner or later, we will all find ourselves in the belly of some great fish, as Jonah did when he tried to run away from God (metaphorically, I would hope). Or we may find ourselves pouting under a bush, as Jonah is here at the end of the story, because God won't let us have our own ways. But that is how we learn (or fail to learn, as seems to be the case with Jonah) how to make real change our lives, and especially how forgiving and loving God is despite our persistent foolishness and stubbornness.
And so, in that light, I’d like to retell you the entire story of Jonah. As I understand it, his tale of change went something like this:
“God spoke to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, “Go to Nineveh, that huge city and tell them that I am disgusted by their behaviour.” Now, this was a very odd command since the Ninevites were the enemy of the rest of the world including Israel. It’s hard to describe, suffice to say that nobody from where Jonah lived liked Nineveh… they were the ultimate bad guys in that day and age.
So Jonah did the only sensible thing. He headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh. He went down to the seacoast at Joppa, down to the shoreline, down into the dark hold of a ship, and finally down into the unconsciousness of sleep. This is clearly a downward slide for Jonah. He was headed for Tarshish, which was the other end of the earth in his day. But his plans were about to be changed.
God caused a storm to break loose on the Mediterranean and, in terror, the sailors began to do something very uncharacteristic for them: they started to pray to their various gods. Sailors are not noted for their piety. For example, you never hear anyone use the phrase, “To pray like a sailor.” But I suppose there are no atheists in storms at sea, just as there are none in foxholes. The captain finally came upon Jonah snoring through the storm and woke him, saying, “Get up and pray to your God. Perhaps we can all be saved yet.”
As in any crisis, someone had to be blamed. The sailors cast lots and the lot fell to Jonah. He confessed that he was trying to escape his God, the same one who had created heaven and earth, and the only remedy was to throw him overboard. The sailors rowed with all their might attempting to return the ship to shore, but to no avail. They finally threw Jonah overboard asking forgiveness for their action. As soon as he hit the water, it became calm and the wind and the rain subsided. Seeing this dramatic turn of events, the ship’s crew got religion and worshipped God. This was only the first of Jonah’s great successes as a prophet and an evangelist.
While the sailors were getting religion, Jonah was getting swallowed by a huge fish. Jonah spent three days in the fish’s stomach, which was a dark, frightening, and smelly place. Jonah put together a prayer out of all the lines from prayers and psalms that he could remember. Finally, God’s water taxi arrived at its destination and vomited Jonah upon the shore.
Once again, God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and what to tell the people there. This time Jonah headed straight for Nineveh. After walking one full day within the city, Jonah preached the shortest sermon on record - which may be the reason it was so effective! He said, “In forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed.” Notice that he left the citizens no way out of their predicament.
Well, the most amazing thing happened. The entire city repented, from the king down to the poorest commoner. They all made real, genuine change in their lives, and even more so they took on the additional symbols of fasting and put on sackcloth and ashes –something that wasn’t even part of their culture!! Everyone living in the city repented in this fashion, even the dogs, cats and cattle… perhaps a bit of literary exaggeration… but the point was made. Everybody wanted real, lasting change that they could really believe in.
All this repenting really irked Jonah. Since he had gone to all the effort to proclaim destruction, he wanted to see the fireworks - an earthquake or raging fire that would consume his enemies as the fish had taken him in. Jonah whines and pouts when the Ninevites do change, when they do exactly what God asks them to do. Jonah is angry that Ninevites don't get what he thinks they deserve. And he assumes that he fully deserves the love and protection God gives him. “This is the very reason I tried to escape you in the first place,” Jonah whined to God.
Then the most successful prophet ever to utter a warning accused God, “I should have known you would pull something like this. After all, it’s just like you to change your mind- you are compassionate, slow to anger, merciful, always ready to forgive and reprieve people from the punishment they deserve. Just kill me right here on the spot. I’d be better off dead than alive anyway.”
And God answered Jonah with this question, “What reason do you have to be so peeved?”
Jonah didn’t answer, but went out to a place east of the city to sulk. Then God caused a castor-oil plant to spring up and shade the pouting prophet - God’s little joke that Jonah was being seriously retentive! The next morning, however, God sent a worm to cut the plant down, and then sent the scorching sun and a hot wind from the east to heat up the situation. Once again Jonah proclaimed, “I would be better off dead than alive.” Ironically, the very one who was proclaiming change was the one who was least willing to do it himself.
To which God replied with the same question that Jonah had refused to answer before, “What reason do you have to be so angry?”
“Every reason,” Jonah snapped.
“You are more concerned about a plant than you are about all my people. But you had nothing to do with the plant’s springing up or its being cut down. It just grew one day and died the next. Shouldn’t I have compassion on this great city with one hundred twenty thousand people who do not even know their right hand from their left, as with the cattle which are too numerous to count?”“[1]
Would God save an entire city, or even an entire world, for the sake of its children, animals, and people of all creeds and colours? The answer is yes - because change we can really believe in is encouraged by our God of love and mercy. Amen.
Sermon preached Sunday, January 25, 2009; Mississauga, Ontario
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church; The Rev. John Crowdis
Adapted from sermon material developed by Sarah Fanning and James Uhrich, plus the following additional resource:
[1]Adapted from the story “A Gourd and a Worm” by Michael E. Williams as found in The Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible: The Prophets II, vol. 7. Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1995. Page 175-177.
“The time has arrived; the kingdom of God is upon you. Repent, and believe the gospel.” These are Jesus’ words as his begins his public ministry, according to the Gospel of Mark. The book of Jonah also has a theme of repentance - the people of Nineveh, upon hearing Jonah’s warning from God, repent of their evil ways.
Only trouble is, repentance isn’t a word we really like hearing anywhere, including in church. The wonders of the English language have given us the idea that repentance means having to be sorry for what we’ve done wrong. But this isn’t what the Biblical understanding of repentance is at all. Repentance means a change in actions and direction. In short, to repent is to make a substantial, real change in one’s life. It’s not about the guilt, it’s all about real, honest genuine change.
Change your ways is a timely message these days. The message of last year’s US Presidential Election came to fruition this past Tuesday with what really is an extremely profound moment in US history. Of course, this expression of change and hope is more than simply lip service. The inauguration of Barack Obama as President is a symbol of the desire for change, not just for how politics is done, but also on how the United States views itself. Perhaps it really does represent a watershed in how people think in our neighbours to the south. Perhaps this is hope realized. The real test, of course, is how it bears out over the next few years. What is evident, the desire to do things differently was and is met with a tremendously enthusiastic response.
It seems ironic that one of the core messages of the Bible is change, and yet for many generations it has been used to stifle it. Let’s set the record straight: Not only is change allowed, it is greatly encouraged. Just at that moment where we’re getting comfortable or even complacent in our lives, along comes God calling us to change our ways… to change the way we see things… and to change the way we treat one another. That’s an absolutely essential part of our relationship with God, our ability and willingness to change.
Like Jonah, perhaps we’re not keen to see it.
There’s lots of changes, and changes of direction happening in the story of Jonah. You know the basic outline of the story - God calls Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, but Jonah didn’t want these hated enemies of Israel to repent. He wanted God to punish them. So he ran away from God. After ending up in the belly of a fish, Jonah repents (sort of) and finally goes to Nineveh to preach as God had called him to do. The people of Nineveh repent of their evil ways, and they turn to God. And strangely enough, God repents too. God does not destroy the people of Nineveh, as Jonah foretold, but rather has a change of mind. When God sees the repentance of the Ninevites, guess what happens, God changes the decision and has mercy upon them.
What I love about Jonah’s story is how similar it is to our own lives. It reminds me that we all need to make changes from time to time, and that a change in direction is not only allowed, it is are encouraged. Sooner or later, we will all find ourselves in the belly of some great fish, as Jonah did when he tried to run away from God (metaphorically, I would hope). Or we may find ourselves pouting under a bush, as Jonah is here at the end of the story, because God won't let us have our own ways. But that is how we learn (or fail to learn, as seems to be the case with Jonah) how to make real change our lives, and especially how forgiving and loving God is despite our persistent foolishness and stubbornness.
And so, in that light, I’d like to retell you the entire story of Jonah. As I understand it, his tale of change went something like this:
“God spoke to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, “Go to Nineveh, that huge city and tell them that I am disgusted by their behaviour.” Now, this was a very odd command since the Ninevites were the enemy of the rest of the world including Israel. It’s hard to describe, suffice to say that nobody from where Jonah lived liked Nineveh… they were the ultimate bad guys in that day and age.
So Jonah did the only sensible thing. He headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh. He went down to the seacoast at Joppa, down to the shoreline, down into the dark hold of a ship, and finally down into the unconsciousness of sleep. This is clearly a downward slide for Jonah. He was headed for Tarshish, which was the other end of the earth in his day. But his plans were about to be changed.
God caused a storm to break loose on the Mediterranean and, in terror, the sailors began to do something very uncharacteristic for them: they started to pray to their various gods. Sailors are not noted for their piety. For example, you never hear anyone use the phrase, “To pray like a sailor.” But I suppose there are no atheists in storms at sea, just as there are none in foxholes. The captain finally came upon Jonah snoring through the storm and woke him, saying, “Get up and pray to your God. Perhaps we can all be saved yet.”
As in any crisis, someone had to be blamed. The sailors cast lots and the lot fell to Jonah. He confessed that he was trying to escape his God, the same one who had created heaven and earth, and the only remedy was to throw him overboard. The sailors rowed with all their might attempting to return the ship to shore, but to no avail. They finally threw Jonah overboard asking forgiveness for their action. As soon as he hit the water, it became calm and the wind and the rain subsided. Seeing this dramatic turn of events, the ship’s crew got religion and worshipped God. This was only the first of Jonah’s great successes as a prophet and an evangelist.
While the sailors were getting religion, Jonah was getting swallowed by a huge fish. Jonah spent three days in the fish’s stomach, which was a dark, frightening, and smelly place. Jonah put together a prayer out of all the lines from prayers and psalms that he could remember. Finally, God’s water taxi arrived at its destination and vomited Jonah upon the shore.
Once again, God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and what to tell the people there. This time Jonah headed straight for Nineveh. After walking one full day within the city, Jonah preached the shortest sermon on record - which may be the reason it was so effective! He said, “In forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed.” Notice that he left the citizens no way out of their predicament.
Well, the most amazing thing happened. The entire city repented, from the king down to the poorest commoner. They all made real, genuine change in their lives, and even more so they took on the additional symbols of fasting and put on sackcloth and ashes –something that wasn’t even part of their culture!! Everyone living in the city repented in this fashion, even the dogs, cats and cattle… perhaps a bit of literary exaggeration… but the point was made. Everybody wanted real, lasting change that they could really believe in.
All this repenting really irked Jonah. Since he had gone to all the effort to proclaim destruction, he wanted to see the fireworks - an earthquake or raging fire that would consume his enemies as the fish had taken him in. Jonah whines and pouts when the Ninevites do change, when they do exactly what God asks them to do. Jonah is angry that Ninevites don't get what he thinks they deserve. And he assumes that he fully deserves the love and protection God gives him. “This is the very reason I tried to escape you in the first place,” Jonah whined to God.
Then the most successful prophet ever to utter a warning accused God, “I should have known you would pull something like this. After all, it’s just like you to change your mind- you are compassionate, slow to anger, merciful, always ready to forgive and reprieve people from the punishment they deserve. Just kill me right here on the spot. I’d be better off dead than alive anyway.”
And God answered Jonah with this question, “What reason do you have to be so peeved?”
Jonah didn’t answer, but went out to a place east of the city to sulk. Then God caused a castor-oil plant to spring up and shade the pouting prophet - God’s little joke that Jonah was being seriously retentive! The next morning, however, God sent a worm to cut the plant down, and then sent the scorching sun and a hot wind from the east to heat up the situation. Once again Jonah proclaimed, “I would be better off dead than alive.” Ironically, the very one who was proclaiming change was the one who was least willing to do it himself.
To which God replied with the same question that Jonah had refused to answer before, “What reason do you have to be so angry?”
“Every reason,” Jonah snapped.
“You are more concerned about a plant than you are about all my people. But you had nothing to do with the plant’s springing up or its being cut down. It just grew one day and died the next. Shouldn’t I have compassion on this great city with one hundred twenty thousand people who do not even know their right hand from their left, as with the cattle which are too numerous to count?”“[1]
Would God save an entire city, or even an entire world, for the sake of its children, animals, and people of all creeds and colours? The answer is yes - because change we can really believe in is encouraged by our God of love and mercy. Amen.
Sermon preached Sunday, January 25, 2009; Mississauga, Ontario
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church; The Rev. John Crowdis
Adapted from sermon material developed by Sarah Fanning and James Uhrich, plus the following additional resource:
[1]Adapted from the story “A Gourd and a Worm” by Michael E. Williams as found in The Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible: The Prophets II, vol. 7. Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1995. Page 175-177.
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