We are in the season of Lent and at Grace we are going to learn from the story of Jonah this year. Some of you might be thinking, Jonah, come on, it’s a kids story, it’s a Sunday school lesson, aren’t there more important things for us to talk about. Maybe you’re thinking that Jonah represents everything that’s wrong with the Bible. How is anyone supposed to believe a myth about someone spending three days in the belly of a fish. It’s a fairytale, and in 2021 we don’t have time for that.

Lent is typically a season of darkness, it starts with Ash Wednesday where we remember we are dust and to dust we will return. During Lent, we repent, we fast, we give things up, all to prepare for Easter, for this promise of resurrection. We have the experience of these 40 days being aware of our grief, loss, and pain so that when Easter arrives we can have the experience of being conscious of resurrection, renewal, restoration and the promise that the worst thing will never be the last thing.

The life of Jesus shows us that we can’t get to resurrection without first going through death. In the early church, Lent was set aside as a somber season to provide contrast to Easter. If you turn the contrast on your screen all the way up, you lose the image, same thing happens if you turn the contrast all the way down.

Without contrast, we can’t see things as they are.

Lent is this season of contrast, of entering into our darkness. Lent is a season of repentance, and of grief, of acknowledging and experiencing the places that scare us, but we’ve been in these waters for more than the 40 days of Lent.

And that’s what brings us to Jonah. Jonah deals with everything that Lent is meant to deal with, but the book of Jonah is a comedy, it’s satire. There are some serious things that we will look at in the story of Jonah, there is a bitterness within this story that is also within us, and the comedy of Jonah is like the cream and sugar that makes a burnt cup of gas station coffee tolerable.

Jonah is hilarious and I hope you will laugh along with me, but I’m not expecting anyone to keel over in laughter. Comedy changes over time, it’s shaped by culture and context so with Jonah being translated between two languages and being roughly three thousand or so years old, I’m going to have to explain most of the jokes to you. That’s never as quite as funny, but it’s still kind of funny.

There are a couple things to know about the book of Jonah before we jump into it. The first thing is that Jonah is a satire, a parable, but that is not to say that the story of Jonah isn’t true. Jonah is profoundly true, there is a depth to the truth of Jonah because it asks over and over again, how far does God’s grace go? If grace is true, what does it mean for us and for everyone else?

I would also say that the story of Jonah is full of truth because Jonah is a prophet. As we will see, Jonah is a very odd kind of prophet, but they are still prophetic, they still show us and challenge us with the message of God’s justice and grace. When it comes to books of prophecy in the Bible, Jonah is unique because the prophetic nature of Jonah comes from the narrative instead of Jonah announcing, “This is the word of the Lord”. Jonah is also a different kind of prophet because most of the prophetic texts in the Bible are related to a very specific time and place in history. In many of the books of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, we read that this prophet makes a statement to this king. Prophets speak truth to power, they hold up a mirror and to remind us who we are and who we can be and with every other prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures, prophecy is set in a certain time and place, but that’s not true of Jonah, probably because the lessons of Jonah are timeless.

Jonah is such a fun book, and I don’t know about you, but for this Lent, I need some fun. Lent is all about prayer, fasting, repentance and mindfulness, and we will see all of that and more in Jonah, so let’s jump in.

“The LORD’s word came to Jonah, Amittai’s son…” In the original Hebrew, just by looking at Jonah’s name, you can tell that the narrator is setting us up for a joke. In Hebrew, Jonah is יוֹנָ֥ה and the meaning of the name Jonah is dove. In the romantic poetry of the Song of Solomon, dove is used to describe their beloved. In Song of Solomon chapter 6:9 it’s written, “…my dove, my perfect one, is one of a kind.” In Psalm 55, the poet writes about longing to be a dove, “I say to myself, I wish I had wings like a dove! I’d fly away and rest.” (Psalm 55:6-8). The prophet Isaiah writes, “Like a swallow I chirp; I moan like a dove. My eyes have grown weary looking to heaven. Lord, I’m overwhelmed; support me!” (Isaiah 38:14). After 40 days on the arch, Noah knows that their fears can fade when the dove returns with an olive branch (Genesis 8:10-11). Jonah, dove, is a symbol of love, of peace, of safety, of finding support and strength in God.

Jonah’s last name, in Hebrew, בֶן־ אֲמִתַּ֖י (ben-Amittai), son of Amittai, in English would be best translated as son of truth.

If you were going to name a prophet, I don’t know if you could come up with a more symbolic name than Dove, child of the truth.

I know I told you not to expect belly laughs, but Jonah’s name is funny.

“The LORD’s word came to Jonah, Amittai’s son: ‘Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come to my attention.”

Nineveh is not in Israel, in fact, Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. Today, the location formerly known as Nineveh is Mosul, Iraq.

Just like you might have complicated feelings about Iraq, in the ancient near east, they had complicated feelings about Nineveh. Nineveh, to the people of Israel, was an emery empire and a threat.

There is something evil, something cruel, something sinful that is taking place in Nineveh, which is why God says to Jonah, in Israel, get up and go to Nineveh and cry out against it, name, protest, bring to the attention of the people this evil and injustice.

רָעָתָ֖ם (rā·’ā·ṯām) is the Hebrew word for evil that’s used in this passage. Whatever this evil in Nineveh is, as Rabbi Steven Bob notes, “This is only the third time in the Bible in which the evil of the people moves God to speak of destroying them. The others are the generation of Noah and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

This evil and injustice is serious, but the Hebrew suggests that this evil and sin and injustice has not completely overwhelmed the people of Nineveh. In Genesis, the evil that brings about the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is violence, cruelty, and greed that have become so entrenched that they are the norm, so much so that kindness, peace, and hospitality are aberrations and anomalies instead of our ideal.

The Hebrew word to describe that kind of entrenched and systemic evil is חָמָס (chamas).

The difference between רָעָתָ֖ם (rā·’ā·ṯām) and חָמָס (chamas) is the difference between being a helper and an enabler.

There was once a woman, we’ll call her Carla, and Carla came to me to see if I could help her get some diapers. So that’s what I did because that’s what church is for. We want to be a place of safety, comfort and care any way we can. Carla told me what size she needed and I told her that I would have diapers and baby food for her by the end of the day.

A couple months later, Carla came back to the church and wanted more diapers. I asked what size she needed, and she said the same size as a couple months before. Even as someone that will never have a baby, I know babies grow, but I didn’t think it was my space to question a mother that was having a hard enough time taking care of herself, let alone a baby, so I got her more diapers and baby food.

Eventually, Carla was coming to me monthly for diapers and baby food. After multiple months of the diaper size never changing, and Carla never brining her baby with her, I started to ask Carla some questions that I should have asked from the start.

That’s when I found out that Carla once had a baby, but when that baby was the size of the diapers she was asking for, the baby was taken away from her because of her addiction and she hadn’t seen her baby in 16 years. Carla didn’t think she would every see her baby again and was taking the diapers and baby food that I was giving her and trading them to feed her addiction.

There was a רָעָתָ֖ם (rā·’ā·ṯām) that I could help Carla with, there were some things that I could name and help Carla with, but I couldn’t do anything about the חָמָס (chamas), the evil that had overtaken her.

God tells Jonah that the people of Nineveh have a רָעָתָ֖ם (rā·’ā·ṯām), a sin, a wrong, an injustice that they can find a way out of. And if we look closely at what God asks of Jonah, God doesn’t say to Jonah, “Go to Nineveh and fix this”, God doesn’t say, “Go to Nineveh and solve their problems”, God says to Jonah, “Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it…” God simply asks Jonah to וּקְרָ֣א (qara), to cry out, to name the evil that is among them.

This is how Jonah responds to God’s call, “So Jonah got up – to flee to Tarshish from the Lord! He went down to Joppa and found a ship headed for Tarshish. He paid the fare and went abroad to go with them to Tarshish away from the Lord.”

With the prophets, there is this pattern we see in the scripture where the word of God comes to them, get up and go, so that’s what Jonah does, Jonah just happens to go in the opposite direction.

Again, funny.

We don’t know for sure where Tarshish was, but it is generally agreed that Tarshish was a coastal city on the Mediterranean Sea, likely in southern Spain. In the ancient world, Tarshish was spoken of like we would speak of going to Cancun, this paradise where we can escape from all the worries of the world and relax.

This is the first of many examples of Jonah’s foolishness, but it’s also a profound moment in the text because Jonah wants to escape from God, who apparently is in Nineveh and to escape from God, Jonah flees to Tarshish.

The best place that Jonah can think of to escape from the creator of the cosmos is to visit a paradise where the beauty of creation is most on display. Jonah flees to Tarshish because in their mind, God is in Nineveh, this city where wickedness, evil, and injustice are on display.

If we were to imagine that there are places in the world where God is present and there are places in the world where God isn’t present, which is not something I actually believe, but let’s just imagine there are places in the world where God is and where God isn’t, where do you think God would most easily be found? In Cancun or in the slumlord apartment complex that is so overrun with crack that Carla can trade diapers for her next fix?

For Jonah, the answer is clear – God would choose Carla over Cancun just like God would choose Nineveh over Tarshish.

It’s as if the narrator in Jonah is saying, if you want to flee God go to paradise but if you want to find God, go into the darkness.

It is in the shadows of our hearts, in the back alleys of our souls, in those places within us that we repress, deny, and are ashamed of where God is most comfortable. It is in the darkness, God is not offended, surprised or shocked, that’s where God is at home.

But let’s be honest, that’s not where we’re the most comfortable, it’s where we feel vulnerable, it’s where we feel afraid, it’s where guilt and shame can overwhelm us. And yet, in Jonah, God is found in the darkness.

There is a simplistic happiness that many of us keep searching for, because we’d rather spend our time in Tarshish than Nineveh and that’s OK. God did not create us for guilt and shame, God did not create you so you could beat yourself up, God says you are very good and God needs you to share that goodness and grace with the world. God does not give us this life so that we can be spectators of it. There is a reason why we seek comfort instead of discomfort. There is a reason why we strive for liberation instead of oppression. And yet, often the comfort that we seek, the happiness that we long for just sits on the surface of this life.

If you have ever get a promotion, you know how good it feels to get that pat on the back. It’s real joy, it’s not counterfeit, it’s a happiness that we should cherish, but that happiness fades if your workload increases and your joy vanishes if your job does too.

We often seek pleasure in things and situations instead of the depths of our souls where God created us to have joy and grace and peace even and especially in Nineveh.

Think about it like this – in the middle of the day you don’t really need to light a candle. It can be nice, a candle can give your space some ambiance, it can make you feel cozy and comfortable, but the light that the candle provides doesn’t make much of a difference during the day. But at night, if your power goes out and you don’t want to stumble your way through the darkness, a candle can make all the difference.

The candle at the middle of the day – that’s a surface joy, it’s nice, it’s good, it matters, but we need that candle during the dark night of the soul, we need a joy even in the midst of pain and shame, we need joy in Nineveh. There is a joy that God has for us that can be found in the darkness. As Jesus says to the woman at the well in the Gospel of John, “…whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.” (John 4:13-14).

The invitation of Lent is to go to Nineveh, to enter into the dark shadows of our soul, not to wallow, not to beat ourselves up, it’s the invitation to find the well of God’s love and light within us.

There is one practice and two questions that I want to share with you today. One practice and two questions that will become the wick of the candle, the water of the well, one practice and two questions that help us find our way into the depths of joy that God wants for us.

The practice is gratitude.

How often do we find ourselves searching for joy because we miss the ways it is already with us? At Grace, every week we have a guide to prayer and study on our website and Facebook page. Each morning on facebook we post a reading, thought, and prayer that all ties back into the service and this week the readings are about gratitude, counting our blessings and being mindful of everything that we have to be thankful for.

It is so easy to complain about how we are stuck inside our homes that we forget how amazing it is to have a home in the first place.

The practice of gratitude does not mean ignoring or minimizing our pain, grief or loss, rather, the practice of gratitude is about not giving our pain, grief and loss the last word. So take the time, each day this week, to practice gratitude, to not simply acknowledge but to cherish what you are grateful for.

Our practice is gratitude and the first of our two questions is this – what is your Tarshish?

In Jonah, Tarshish is a symbol of escape, Tarshish is the eject button that Jonah uses to get away. What is that for you?

We all have them, and they aren’t, necessarily bad.

Is it:

eating,

drinking,

a relationship,

exercise,

volunteering,

‘helping’,

social media?

In and of themselves, those aren’t bad. We can all imagine any number of additions that are used as an escape, but the problem with Tarshish isn’t Tarshish, it’s how Jonah is using Tarshish.

When you ask yourself, “What is my Tarshish” the question is, do I use this to escape from my reality or do I do this to enter into and embrace my reality? Are you fleeing from your life or are you participating in it.

Sometimes exercise is just exercise, a chocolate bar is just a chocolate bar and a drink is just a drink, but every now and then ‘helping’ is meddling and we all know and felt the difference.

I know sermons aren’t intended to be therapy for the preacher, but I’ll tell you my Tarshish. My Tarshish is preaching, it’s this moment we share because this is about the only thing I feel competent in because it’s one of the few things that I have control over. I hope I am not fleeing from the places that scare me, but I know the more I focus on writing, rewriting, filming, editing and posting a service online, the less time I have to think about everything that scares me.

That’s my Tarshish. So what about you? What is your Tarshish, what do you do to avoid the darkness where the divine dwells?

The second question to ask ourselves is this, can you name your Nineveh?

This question is a bit harder than the first because this question is not can you fix your Nineveh.

Don’t rush towards a solution. Don’t try to solve anything. Simply name your Nineveh.

That is all that’s asked of Jonah and this week that is all that’s named of you.

Can you bring into your awareness the things that you would rather deny, hide, and repress? Can you let yourself name and even befriend the dark alley of your soul?

Simply let your Nineveh rise to the surface this week so that it can be fully exposed to the radiant light and love of God, because God is already there, and God is waiting for you to realize that grace and redemption are waiting for you in Nineveh.

The thing about this one practice and these two questions, the thing about living with gratitude and being aware of our Tarshish and our Nineveh is that you begin to see how God is always present in both. Just like Jonah will learn, we learn there is no place to we can go to flee from God.

God is in Tarshish like a wick to a candle and God is in Nineveh like water in a well. When we find God in our Tarshish, these places and things that are used as the surface joy of our life become the spark of the depths of joy that can be found even when we find ourselves in Nineveh.

There is an eternal joy that we can all tap into, a grace and peace that is with us even here, even now, because God is with us, even here, even now.

During this season of Lent, may we all come to terms with our Tarshish as we travel to our Nineveh. If you find yourself in Tarshish or Nineveh, the God of grace and peace is waiting for you. This week, instead of fleeing from your life like Jonah, may you embrace the fullness of your life finding God’s goodness, joy, and redemption everywhere you go.

Through the season of Lent we are exploring from the story of Jonah and this week we will see something that is true of many books of the Bible – we can learn from the silence just as we can learn from what is said. There is a lot of detail that is fit into the first chapter of Jonah, there is a whole lot of information that we learn, but there’s an important detail that the story is silent about.

The book of Jonah begins with the word of the LORD coming to Jonah – Jonah is told by God, get up and go to Nineveh, so Jonah get’s up and goes, in the opposite direction. Jonah decides to take a trip to Tarshish and to get there, Jonah goes to Jappa to find a ship that is headed that direction.

On the way to Tarshish, the ship is stuck in a storm and the crew is terrified, they are throwing cargo overboard to try to make the ship lighter so they can more easily navigate the storm, and this whole time Jonah is asleep. The crew wakes Jonah up, Jonah takes responsibility for the storm that they find themselves in, and just in case you haven’t realized what is missing from this story yet, the narrator clues us in when they write that the crew was, “terrified and said to [Jonah], ‘What have you done?’ (The men knew Jonah was fleeing from the LORD, because he had told them.)”

It seems like there is something Jonah has explicitly told the crew something that Jonah has not told us. We know how Jonah is fleeing from God, we know that they traveled to Jappa to get on a ship headed towards Tarshish, but we don’t know why.

Imagine that I told you the story of Alex and how Alex decided that they needed to flee from their family, leave their old life behind. Alex packed a bag and left their home on NW Aurora and drove east until they turned south on 2nd Ave. Then Alex turned left on Euclid and started to feel hungry, so Alex stopped at KFC to eat one of their Famous Bowls. Alex then drove south on E 14th unit they connected with MLK and then turned onto Fleur to head to the airport. Before getting to the airport, Alex took a detour to stop at Kum and Go. They filled up their car with gas and grabbed a slice of breakfast pizza because Alex wasn’t sure when, if ever, they would enjoy such a meal again.

I can tell you all about how Alex abandoned their family, how they got to the airport, the errands they ran along the way, but I’m guessing you are less interested in how Alex got to the airport and much more curious about why Alex is leaving their family.

We want to know why. The what detail are nice, but it’s the why that matters and in Jonah, why Jonah is fleeing is a mystery.

Before we move on, let me pick on myself a little bit, because can you imagine the kind of sermon I would give if the story of Alex leaving their family was in the Bible?

A reading from the book of Alex, beginning in Chapter 1, from the King James Translation:

And lo, Alex hath decided to fleeth from their family, leaveth life behind. Alex pack’d a container and hath left their home on nw aur’ra and did drive east into the morning sun until they could turnth south on 2nd ave. Further down the road, Alex did turnth left on Euclid and did start to feeleth pangs of hunger. Alex ceased at KFC to consume one of their famous bowls. Alex then did drive south on e 14th unit MLK and then did turn onto Fleur to headeth to the airport. Before getting to the airport, Alex tooketh a detour to sum and go. There Alex did fill up their car with gas and did grab a slice of breakfast pizza because Alex wasn’t sure at which hour, if ‘t be true ev’r, Alex wouldst enjoyeth such a meal again. Alex then, posthaste, continued to the airport where Alex left their car.

Here ends the reading.

It’s important to notice that Alex lived on Aurora because in ancient Greek mythology, Aurora is the goddess of the dawn. The author is obviously telling us that this is a new day and therefore a new beginning for Alex. Whatever stress or struggle that Alex is fleeing from is symbolized in the KFC famous bowl. How else are we to make sense of a meal where everything is piled up on top of everything else so much so that this messy and sloppy bowl is overflowing? The famous bowl is clearly symbolic of the pain and struggle in Alex’s life because nothing is in it’s proper place.

It is also important for us to ponder why Alex, on their way to the airport, fills up their car with gas. Scholars on Alex have wondered if the significance of Alex getting gas on their way to the airport can be found with Alex stopping at Kum and Go. Perhaps the significance of Alex stopping at Kum and Go is found in the Go that is clearly within them, the desire to leave and start over, but maybe, just maybe, Alex wants to return, they want to come home and this is why they are filling their car with gas even though they are going to abandon their car at the airport.

And what are we to think of Alex eating breakfast pizza at Kum and Go? This has to be yet another example of their dis-ordered life. It is obvious in the text that Alex is not having this breakfast pizza for breakfast since they already ate the famous bowl at KFC. Alex’s life is in such disarray that they are having breakfast, but not for breakfast.

Within all of us there is a desire to go, to flee, and we, like Alex, all have things that feel out of place and piled on. We know what it feel like to want to flee, we know the desire to go, but, like Alex, we have the hope of coming back home, of being reunited and renewed, so how can you return to yourself this week? What in your life, like Alex’s gas tank, needs to be filled up, ready for the reunion that brings you home?

I hope you enjoyed that sermon within the sermon as much as I did.

Just like we don’t know why Alex is fleeing, we don’t know why Jonah is fleeing. There are all sorts of details in the text about what Jonah does and how things happen, but when it comes to the why, there is only silence.

It is as if the narrator is reminding us that the human heart is a mystery. Even in our own lives, we don’t always know the why when it comes to what we do.

Have you ever found yourself in an argument, and you stop listening to the other person because you start imagining everything that you could say? It’s as if, in our minds, we know there are all sorts of different buttons we could push, we could drag up this or that because we could really show them if we pushed that button. And among all the buttons that we could push with one another, we know there is that nuclear option, there is that big red button that is just waiting to be pushed, but we know if we do that, there could be no coming back, so we don’t really want to push that big red button, but we also can’t resist.

Our hearts are a mystery. I don’t know about you, but at least for myself, “The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it. I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do.” (Romans 7:19)

Whatever is going on within Jonah is a mystery. Things are not as they should be and no one knows why.

The story of Jonah uproots our expectations because things are not as they should be, we don’t know why, but God’s grace is still there.

Jonah is the prophet of God, the faithful believer, but they are fleeing from the calling of their faith, Jonah is trying to abandon God and their responsibilities, but the sailors, the stereotypical heathens from Joppa that were crying out to anyone that would listen when the storm started are taking responsibility and come to faith in God.

The sailors are risking their lives to try to save Jonah, but Jonah is in so much despair that they want to lose their life, Jonah just wants to get tossed overboard.

As the storm is raging around them, the crew is doing everything they can to stay afloat, and Jonah says, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm around you. I know it’s my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” (Jonah 1:12)

Jonah is giving up, but the crew doesn’t give up, the start rowing, beating their backs against the tide.

Jonah, the prophet has abandoned their faith, while the crew comes to faith.

Jonah is trying to lose his life, and the crew is trying to save him.

Jonah is fleeing from responsibility while the crew is taking responsibility.

Jonah is trying to escape from God, and the crew prays to God, “Please, LORD, don’t let us perish on account of this man’s life.”

There are a couple things about this line that are just brilliant. First, notice that the crew is doing for Jonah what God asked Jonah to do for Nineveh. The crew is crying out against all of the ways that Jonah has tried to flee and escape, this crew is not giving Jonah a free pass for abandoning their responsibility and calling, but the crew isn’t crying out for vengeance, they aren’t crying out for revenge, they are crying out for mercy, for grace. On behalf of Jonah, they are crying out for mercy.

The next thing to notice about this passage is that the crew began the storm crying out to whatever god they could think of. Each one of them is crying to their god and then they wake Jonah up to ask Jonah to do the same. The passage ends with the crew praying to, “the LORD”.

Whenever you see the word LORD in the Bible, written in all capital letters, it is not a translation of God’s name but is instead a reminder of the Jewish tradition of not saying God’s name.

In the Exodus story, God hears the cry of the oppressed and God responds with liberation and love because that’s how God always responds to the cry of the oppressed. There is this moment in Exodus where Moses meets God at the burning bush and Moses is told to lead the people into freedom, that God will liberate them and God will work with Moses to bring about freedom for the people. Moses says to God, I can tell the people about you, I can go to Pharaoh, but people are going to want to know your name and God responds, “I Am Who I Am” (Exodus 3:14).

In Hebrew, that is אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה (’eh·yeh ’ă·šer eh·yeh) which is kind of a name, but not a very personal name. God is, essentially, saying that God is existence itself, that God is the ground of being and the source of all.

God tells Moses to tell the people that the God of their ancestors, the God that is the ground of all being, the God that is the source of existence, is known by the name יְהוָה֙ (YHWY). The name that God gives Moses is consonants and no vowels, it can’t be spoken. But it can be breathed. There is one tradition that sees the letters YHWH as breath, YHWH are all very breathy, almost sigh like letters, so on one hand, God’s name is always with us.

On the other hand, there is a tradition that says this name is so holy, so sacred that we can’t say it, because if we say it we might take it for granted which is why when some Jewish persons read this name of God in Hebrew יְהוָה֙ (YHWY) they say אֲדֹנָי (adonai) my Lord.

Saying Adonai אֲדֹנָי saying LORD connects us to this personal yet profoundly mystical and mysterious God that is the ground of all being, this God that hears the cries of the oppressed and responds with liberation, grace and peace.

When the storm strikes the ship, the crew is crying out to every name they can think of, save us Ellen rescue us Superman, save us Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope. The passage ends with the crew praying to and living out the covenant of the God of Exodus, the God of liberation, justice, mercy, grace and peace.

The book of Jonah reminds us that the movement of God’s grace does not depend on our obedience or faithfulness. God is not like a Scooby Doo villain saying I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.

You are not going to outwit God’s grace. It’s not like we can flee or abandon our responsibilities to grace and peace so much so that God says, “I guess there’s nothing I can do now.” If Jonah doesn’t want to be faithful, if Jonah doesn’t want to cry out against injustices so repentance and renewal can be found, that’s fine, because God’s grace doesn’t depend on Jonah’s faith. If Jonah won’t take responsibility, if Jonah won’t align their life with grace and peace, the sailors will.

In our lives we often have very clear expectations of one another and this can be especially true in the life of faith. We like to think we know who are the sinners and who are the saints, we know who is righteous and who is wicked, we know who’s lost and who is found, we know who’s saved and who isn’t. In the life of faith we can draw very clear and distinct lines about who is in and how is out, but the story of Jonah muddies those waters.

Within ourselves, the line between saint and sinner is never as clear as we wish it was, but the good news is that God’s grace doesn’t depend on what side of the line we find ourselves on, God’s grace doesn’t depend on our faithfulness because God’s grace will find a way with us, just like God’s grace will find a way in spite of us.

The movie, Crash, won best picture at the Academy Awards 15 years ago. I tell you that because I’m going to spoil the end of the movie, so if you haven’t seen it yet, sorry.

There’s a scene, early in the film, where a black couple is pulled over for driving while black. The couple is played by Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton and the racist police office is played by Matt Dillon. Dillion’s character is cruel, there is no other way to put it. While the officer is doing an unnecessary field sobriety test, Thandie Newton’s character comes to the defense of her husband, he’s being accused of drunk driving even though he’s sober and as she keeps trying to say, but is never listened to, he doesn’t even drink at all.

It is a very uncomfortable scene, and it gets worse, because the officer forces the husband to put his hands on top of the car and not move, so the officer can pat down their spouse and make sure she doesn’t have any weapons or drugs. With as cruel as this officer has been so far, you think you know how bad things are going to get, but it’s even worse than that.

The officer assaults and molests this woman while forcing her spouse to watch, both of them knowing that there is nothing they can do to protect themselves let alone protect each other because this officer can do and shown them them that they can say and do whatever they want while their partner silently stands by, watching this crime, this evil and injustice unfold, and doing nothing to stop it.

If it’s not clear yet, Matt Dillon’s character is the villain. In Crash this officer is a bigoted, racist and sexist that is not just cruel, they are evil because they use a position of power and authority to get away with the crimes they are entrusted to stop.

Throughout the movie, clear lines have been drawn and established – these people are good, those people are bad, but not just bad, those people are irredeemable.

At the end of the film, Thandie Newton’s character is in a car crash. She’s trapped in the car, it’s flipped upside down, and gas is leaking all around her. Nearby, another car is engulfed in flames, and the smoke keeps billowing and the flames keep growing.

Can you guess who comes to her rescue?

As soon as Matt Dillon’s character shows up at the scene, everything within you is screaming no! Anyone but him! He can’t do anything right, until he does.

The divisions that we have in our minds about other people, even the divided thoughts that we have about ourselves are never as simple as we want them to be. Sometimes the prophet is the sinner, and the sinners are saints because God’s grace is going to move within us as participate in it, and God’s grace is going to come to us, even when we resist it.

Lent is a season of learning to trust our uncertainty to God. Too often we believe that we have to have everything figured out, that everything depends on us, that if we make a mistake there is no coming back, that if we don’t get this right, all is lost. But how often is that true?

Our thoughts and actions have consequences. We can act in ways that help, just like we can act in ways that hurt, but no matter how we act, God’s grace is going to be there one way or another. With us or in spite of us, God’s grace is going to keep moving forward, working with whomever is willing to accept it and share it.

There’s a moment in the Gospel of Matthew where some religious leaders are asking Jesus sign. They want Jesus to entertain them because they don’t think Jesus has anything to offer for enlightenment.

Jesus responds to them, “An evil and unfaithful generation searches for a sign, but it won’t receive any sign except Jonah’s sign. Just as Jonah was in the whale’s belly for three days and three nights, so the human One will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.” (Matthew 12:39-40)

Jesus says to these religious leaders, you want certainty, you want something to puff up your pride, you want something to build your ego on, but that’s not what you’re going to find in me. The only sign that you are going to get from me is the sign of Jonah, this sign that no matter where you flee to, no matter how low you go, God’s grace will follow you there. It’s not about your certainty, it’s not about your strength, it’s about God’s love that will find you wherever you go.

Maybe there is a situation in your life that you have no certainty about. Can you imagine that? Who among us would have any uncertainty right now? But maybe, just maybe there is some uncertainty in your life. Perhaps there is an ambiguous issue that you are wrestling with. Or is there a relationship that you can’t make sense of? Maybe someone has done something and you simply can’t understand how or why they did what they did.

In your uncertainty you can can you commit yourself to offering your best, to taking responsibility, to rising to the occasion, to even seeking reconciliation, like the sailors in Jonah? Can you, like that crew, try your best, while you trust God with the rest, opening your heart to being surprised by grace.

One way or another God’s grace with be with you, so may we all open our hearts to sharing, receiving, and celebrating this grace everywhere we find it. Amen.

As we enter into this text and talk about the three days that Jonah spends inside the belly of this fish, perhaps you feel a bit like Thomas Paine. Paine writes in ‘Common Sense’, “the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be consider symptoms of its being fabulous.”

Paine had no patience for this extra-ordinary tale and puts an emphasis on fabulous in a much different way that I would.

Some of you might get stuck on this detail of the story – and that’s fair. Most people, if they know anything about Jonah it’s that’s Jonah is swallowed by a fish, but some of us can’t swallow that idea. It doesn’t make sense, the world doesn’t work that way. How are we supposed to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense, it’s like trying to figure out how Hawaii has an interstate highway system that doesn’t connect to another state? Trying to make sense of Jonah being swallowed by a fish is like trying to make sense of why lemonade can be made with artificial flavors but cleaning supplies are made with actual lemon juice.

Just like I believe the parable of the prodigal son is true, I believe that the story of Jonah is true, but if we let ourselves get lost in the details, we might miss the meaning.

Before we get swallowed up by the rest of this story, let’s back up a little bit to add some context to Jonah’s journey.

In chapter 1, verse 3, it’s written, “So Jonah got up – to flee from Tarshish from the LORD! He went down to Joppa and found a ship headed for Tarshish. He paid the fare and went aboard to go with them to Tarshish, away from the LORD.”

The Hebrew word that’s used to say that Jonah ‘paid the fare’ is an interesting one – שְׂכָרָ֜הּ (śə·ḵā·rāh). Fare is a fair translation, but more often than not, שְׂכָרָ֜הּ (śə·ḵā·rāh) is translated as hiring or paying wages which suggests that Jonah didn’t just buy a ticket, they paid for the ship and the crew. The implication is that Jonah chartered the ship and hired the crew to take him to Tarshish.

We don’t know exactly where Tarshish was in the ancient world, but there is a general agreement that Tarhish was likely in southern Spain, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. To sail from Joppa to Tarshish could have taken up to a year not only because of the distance between Joppa and Tarshish but because of the storm seasons that would force the ship into port from time to time.

Jonah charters a ship, hires a crew, and decides to take a year off to travel the world.

What does this tell us about Jonah – it tells us that Jonah is rich, Jonah is wealthy, Jonah has the privilege of being able to purchase another direction for their life because God wants Jonah to goto Nineveh but Jonah has the wealth to say, nah, I’m going to go the other way instead.

At the beginning of chapter 1, Jonah’s wealth gives them all kinds of options, but at the end of chapter 1, everything is stripped away and Jonah is stuck, not really living, but not really dead, trapped in a fish with everything taken away from them.

The storm and the fish have exposed what hides behind all of Jonah’s wealth and privilege and power. It is just Jonah now.

If you were with us last week, you might remember what happened during the storm. Jonah has chartered this ship and paid the crew, Jonah is going on vacation so Jonah is sleeping while the sailors are struggling agains the storm, throwing their cargo overboard to try to lighten the load so they can make their way through the waves.

Cargo is valuable, that’s why it is being transported. Cargo is typically bought and sold with profit in mind. There’s wealth and worth found in cargo, but when the storm strikes, that cargo isn’t worth its weight anymore. All of a sudden this cargo that was worth something is worthless, it’s heavy, it’s in the way, so the crew has to get rid of it. There are moments where we realize that as much a we love our stuff, stuff doesn’t define our worth.

We are, finally, approaching spring. We’re not quite there yet but I have seen people brush the snow off their yard so they could get a glimpse of the plants that are beginning to come up. We know spring is coming, which means spring storms are coming soon too. In Iowa storm season often means when we hear a storm warning we sit on our porch to watch it roll in, but as the lightening strikes and we hear that this thunderstorm has the potential of becoming a tornado, you don’t stop to ask yourself if you remember to move things from the washer to the dryer.

A storm has a way of stripping everything away, when a storm strikes us we know what cargo we need to let go of. In the text, with this storm, with this fish, Jonah can’t buy their way out of this problem. All of Jonah’s power and privilege and wealth is worthless and now it’s just Jonah.

Storms strip everything else away because storms can expose our essence.

When I think of a storm and someone’s essence being exposed, right now I think about Jo Campney. If you have been around Grace for awhile there’s a good chance you know Jo and she was one of the first people at Grace I met.

Before I started at Grace two years ago, I met with the Staff Parish Relations Committee, it’s essentially the HR committee of the church and two years ago Jo was serving on that committee.

Clearly the interview went OK, because I’m here.

When a potential pastor meets with the committee, the pastor is asked to leave the room so the committee can talk in private to decide if they will accept you or not. Some of the walls at Grace are pretty thin, so when the committee was talking in private about me I didn’t just sit outside the room. It would have been really weird if I was just on the other side of the room too, because the room we were meeting in had a glass door and I didn’t think they wanted me to stand there like a sad puppy waiting to be picked.

I walked down the hall and went just around the corner and after a few minutes I heard the door open and I knew someone from the committee was coming to get me. Jo was going to invite me back into the room to hear their decision, but before Jo came to get me, she took out her phone and called someone, who I can only assume was Sue Terry, and Jo called them to say, “Our new pastor is going to be Nate Nims, I’ll call you later, I’ve got to go tell him the good news.”

It was hard to pretend that I didn’t hear Jo’s phone call.

For a number of years now, Jo has lived with ALS and it has reached the stage where her legs are no longer cooperating with her. Jo has lived in a storm, but through it all she’s kept smiling, just like Lou Gehrig I know Jo would say to us that she considers herself one of the luckiest people in the world.

Socially distancing really means physical distancing, but we all know that this year has been socially distant too. Jo is at the health center at Wesley Acres here in Des Moines and for good reason, in a pandemic, the health center is even more distanced than the rest of Wesley Acres. When you can’t see someone, when it’s difficult to talk with on the phone, being socially distant almost becomes social isolation.

In the storm that Jo has lived with, her essence, her love, her faith, has kept shining through, Jo has lived in a storm and never lost her smile. So this week I want to invite you to join me in shining some light and love back to Jo at the health center. Each week I keep encouraging you to reach out and call or send a letter or card to someone, and this week I hope you’ll join me in sending a card to Jo.

Even as Jo’s legs stop working I know she would say to us that God’s love has been with her every step of the way. I can only hope to have that kind of essence exposed when everything else is taken away in the storm. We wouldn’t wish this kind of storm on anyone, and yet, even in the storm we can see something so beautiful, an essence and a love so pure that we are awestruck by it.

Jonah goes from a storm to the belly of a fish, it is from one struggle to another, and Jonah prays, Jonah says, “I called out to the LORD in my distress, and [God] answered me. From the belly of the underworld I cried out for help; you have heard my voice. You had cast me into the depths in the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounds me. All your strong waves and rushing water passed over me. So I said, ‘I have been driven away from your sight. Will I ever again look on your holy temple? Waters have grasped me to the point of death; the deep surrounds me. Seaweed is wrapped around my head at the base of the undersea mountains. I have sunk down to the underworld; its bars held me with no end in sight. But you brought me out of the pit.’ When my endurance was weakening, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, to your holy temple. Those deceived by worthless things lose their chance for mercy. But me, I will offer a sacrifice to you with a voice of thanks. That which I have promised, I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!”

The last time you found yourself in the guts of a fish, were you that eloquent? When you are trapped in the alimentary canal of a marine mammal did you think to yourself, this really stinks, there was one way in so I bet there is only one way out which means things are going to get a lot worse before the get better. If you were in the same place as Jonah, what kind of prayer would you pray?

I hope that none of us ever find ourselves in the same position as Jonah, but when we are stuck, when we think things can’t get any worse than the storm, when we are trapped and there is nothing we can do, the kind of prayer that we pray is a lot like the kind of word that we say when we strike our thumb with a hammer.

It might not even be a coherent word, but we shout because our pain has to be heard.

We don’t really just have five kinds of prayer, but, broadly speaking there are five kinds of prayer in our lives, five ways that we bring awareness to our connection with God – we have prayers of silence, of contemplation and meditation, those prayers where we don’t know what to say so we just sit with it and trust that the Spirit is with us. We have prayers of awe and appreciation, those prayers of wonder that are most often felt in creation, it’s the warmth of the sun the first time you take a walk in the woods after a long winter, for some of you it could be golf, for others gardening, but we all have these moments and these prayers of appreciation and awe in creation. Similar to this, but slightly different are the embodied prayers of our lives – those moments of awe and appreciation can draw us outside of ourselves, but embodied prayers draw us even closer to ourselves. It’s that moment when you’re running and you tell yourself that you hate running, but you keep running anyway because you feel a strength within you. You might have moments of embodied prayer with yoga, with walking, with sitting in silence and noticing how you physically feel, where the tension and peace is in yourself.

Those first three kinds of prayer aren’t often what people think of when they think about prayer and to me that is a tragedy, because I think we are all praying so much more than we give ourselves credit for. Please don’t reduce your life of prayer to bowing your head, closing your eyes, repeating some words with me.

Next, let’s talk about prayers of thanksgiving, we have those prayers of gratitude, it’s the prayer that you share before a meal, it’s that toast that you tell yourself is just a toast but in the moment it feels so sacred to lift a glass together that when a toddler comes to you with apple juice and says cheer-cheer, you say cheer-cheer back and then say amen to yourself because there’s no other way to talk about that joy other than saying it’s holy. The fifth kind of prayer, broadly speaking, that we have are prayers for help, prayers that come from our desperation, prayers that come from the end of our strength.

If you were Jonah, stuck in the gut of a fish, what kind of prayer would you pray? I don’t know about you, but if I’m ever stuck in the gut of a fish I don’t think the first phase to come to mind will be, “I called out to the LORD in my distress, and [God] answered me.”

One of the things that is fascinating about this prayer of Jonah is that it isn’t original to Jonah, almost everything that Jonah says comes from the book of Psalms.

The Psalms is a book of poetry and prayer in the Bible and the poems and prayers fall into two categories – there are the Psalms of gratitude and praise like Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…”, there’s Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and our strength, a help always near in times of great trouble. That’s why we won’t be afraid…”. There are so many wonderful Psalms of praise and hope, but there are also Psalms of desperation, Psalms written when the world is falling apart, when it feels like the mountains are crumbling into the sea and we’re afraid.

There’s Psalm 6, “Heal me, Lord, because my bones are shaking in terror. My whole body is completely terrified…How long will this last?” Or as it’s written in Psalm 38, “My heart pounds; my strength abandons me. Even the light of my eyes is gone. My loved ones and friends keep their distance from me in my sickness; those who were near me now stay far away.”

It was on March 8 of last year that the first positive cases of COVID-19 were found in Iowa and this week marks one year social distancing, masks, shut downs and more. Psalm 38 strikes us a little differently this year and we feel this lament.

Perhaps the most well know Psalm of Lament and grief and loss is Psalm 22 which Jesus quotes on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jonah’s prayer comes, almost word for word from the Psalms, but Jonah’s prayer isn’t forsaken – it’s a prayer of praise and gratitude from the belly of a fish.

“I called out to the Lord in my distress and [God] answered me” comes from Psalms 18 and 120. “You had cast me into the depths in the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounds me. All your strong waves and rushing water passed over me” comes from Psalm 88 and Psalm 42. Nearly every line in Jonah’s prayer is a quote from the Psalms.

We might expect Jonah to quote Psalms of lament and loss and grief and agony, but instead, Jonah quotes from Psalms of peace and gratitude and praise.

Our assumption is that Jonah needs to be rescued from the fish, but in reality, Jonah finds rescue in the fish.

We want to be rescued from storms and fish but how often is our rescue found within the storm, within the belly of the fish?

As the story of Jonah begins, Jonah is a person of power and privilege and wealth. Jonah has all kinds of options available to them and Jonah can decide the direction of their life, so much so that when God invites Jonah to go one way, Jonah decides to go another, chartering a ship, hiring a crew, and taking a year long vacation to paradise because Jonah has the wealth and the privilege and the power to take a trip like that at a moments notice.

God asks Jonah to go one way, and Jonah goes the opposite direction. There is God’s will for Jonah, which is headed this way, but then there is Jonah’s will for their own life, which isn’t going that way. These competing wills can’t coexist and by the time Jonah is in the belly of the fish, after the storm, Jonah has been rescued from themself.

It is as if, before this moment in the belly of a fish, Jonah had been swallowed up with all of their stuff, their wealth, their privilege, their excess, Jonah’s self-centered life had swallowed him whole, but now, with everything else stripped away, Jonah is rescued, Jonah is free, and so Jonah prays with thanks and gratitude.

For a year we have been stuck in a storm. Wherever you are watching this from might feel a bit like the belly of a fish because we want to escape, but we can’t. What would it look like if our prayers shifted from “God, get me out of this” to “God, as long as we are in this, what do I need to be rescued from?”

Jonah’s story keeps questioning the categories that we’re used to. Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh, but then Jonah decides to go the opposite direction and flee to Tarshish. In Jonah’s mind, and in our minds, we often imagine that God is here so God could never be there. And yet, as soon as Jonah decides to flee from God, the narrator keeps showing us how God is with Jonah every step of the way. This is not a story about fleeing from God, it’s a story about God being with us wherever we go.

The narrator sets us up in the story again because Jonah, the prophet of God, boards a ship to sail to Tarshish and here we have another set of categories where we think we know what to expect – there is the prophet of God and the sailors that don’t know about God. We expect the sailors to act like stereotypical sailors, and the first audience to hear the story of Jonah wouldn’t have just thought that these sailors would curse like sailors, the first audience probably thought these sailors would have been cursed because they weren’t following the God of Israel.

But what happens in the story – These sailors come to faith in God, they start to ask questions, they want to learn more, they take vows and commit their lives to the LORD. While Jonah is fleeing from responsibility this crew is taking responsibility even as Jonah tries to escape their life, the crew keeps rescuing Jonah’s life.

We are comfortable with duality, with binaries, with the assumption that there is this side and that side, that there are our people but then there are those people, and yet the narrator of Jonah keeps taking these categories and bursts them like a balloon. A binary that challenges us all right now is that thought that there good times and there are bad times. And there are, some times are good and other times aren’t just bad they are terrible. But how many of our bad times refine us, how many of our bad times show us a strength and an endurance that we never knew we could access. How many of our bad times drew us closer together even when we had to be apart? We wouldn’t wish these bad times on anyone but even in these bad times there is a goodness to be found.

The story of Jonah keeps insisting that even there, even with them, even in the storms and fish of this life, God is with us and with them and over there with grace and peace.

Jonah flees God only to be found by God again and again and again because these simplistic binaries categories are shredded to show that the world is much more complex and complicated than we could ever imagine. Maybe the nice, neat lines that we divide this world with in our minds aren’t nice or neat and when we can open ourselves to the promise that God is there, God is with them, and God’s goodness can even be found here, we can break free and, like Jonah, find ourselves rescued to finally follow God’s dream.

Lent is a season of preparation for resurrection, but let’s be honest, we’re not really sure how to get from death to life. It’s a paradox, it’s a contradiction, death and life are two distinct and different binary categories and one is not found in the other, until, death creates new life.

Perhaps in this season of Lent, as we hope for Easter, as we long for resurrection and renewal, we can bring to Jesus everything that we’re not sure about, all of the contradictions, all of the paradoxes, everything that we can’t make sense of and we simply admit, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this but I’m going to trust that God’s love will find a way forward.

Our guide to prayer and study this week will lead you through the some Psalms and I hope you will take advantage of the words to find hope, healing, and rescue in them, just like Jonah. Some of you are reading ‘The Poetry of Lent’ and if you’d like to find that weekly devotional, it’s available online at gracedesmoines.org

Each week, poems from Mary Oliver’s ‘Devotions’ are connected with this Lenten season and last week, one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems was featured, ‘The Journey’.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice–

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

One day Jonah finally knew what they needed to do, it took a storm and a fish to get there, but Jonah got there. We’ve had our storms and maybe, like Jonah, you feel stuck in a fish, but for all of us, I hope we know what we have to do because we remember where we begin – at this communion table where everyone welcome and everyone has a place at the table.

The table is where we begin, and at Grace we remember that this table isn’t ours. This is Christ’s table and at Christ’s table, everyone is welcome, always. The welcome, the care, the grace of this table is where we get started because on the night that Peter would deny Jesus, Jesus still had a place at the table for Peter. On the night that Judas would betray Jesus, Judas ate too. You are welcome to this table, no matter what.

If you haven’t yet, I’d invite you to grab crackers and grape juice, cookies and milk, a doughnut and coffee, whatever liquid and solid that you want to enjoy at this table because whatever you have to bring with you to the communion table is acceptable because you are accepted by God.

On the night before Jesus was crucified, Jesus gathered with their friends for a meal. Jesus took the bread, broke it, gave thanks to God and shared the bread with their friends saying, take, eat, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

After the meal, Jesus took the cup, gave thanks to God, and shared the cup with their friends and said, drink from this, all of you, this is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

Together we remember all the times, like Christ, we have felt broken and poured out, we remember these mighty acts of Christ’s love and welcome that help to bring back together our broken pieces, this grace and peace that refills us when we feel empty. We offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as holy and living sacrifices in union with Christ’s offering for us. May God pour out their Spirit on us gathered together even while we are apart, that the communion we share may be for us the body and blood of Christ so that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed, renewed, and resurrected.

If you have been with us at Grace for the past few weeks I hope you have enjoyed our expedition into the story of Jonah as much as I have. If you are joining us for the first time at Grace, let me catch you up with where we are in the story:

Jonah is told by God, get up and go to Nineveh and cry out against their evil, point it out to them so they can see it and repent from their sins. So Jonah gets up and goes in the other direction, to Tarshish. Jonah decides they don’t want to do what God has told them to do, so Jonah goes on vacation, they charter a ship, hire a crew, and from there we hear a tale of a fateful trip that started in a tropic port aboard a tiny ship. Jonah goes overboard, spends three nights and days in the belly of a fish. It’s in the fish that Jonah finds a sense of rescue – everything else that has swallowed up Jonah in the past is taken away yet God’s love still.

This is where we pick things up today – the word of the LORD comes to Jonah for a second time, Jonah is told get up and go to Nineveh, and this time Jonah goes to Nineveh, no questions asked.

Sometimes Biblical scholars and commentaries say that this is the moment when Jonah is, finally, faithful, but I think there is something more subversive going on here.

The narrator tells us, “Nineveh was indeed an enormous city, a three days’ walk across” Nineveh is a large city, it’s a metropolis in the ancient world, it’s a city so large that it would take at least three days to walk from one side of the city to another, and then the narrator goes on to tell us that “Jonah started into the city, walking one day, and he cried out, ‘Just forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!’”

Jonah is on the edge of Nineveh, they have barely entered the city and they say the laziest and least helpful prophecy in the Bible. It’s as if Jonah was told by God to come to Des Moines and cry out against us, and so Jonah got to the new flyover bridge by Urbandale and Grimes and Jonah and said, “40 days till you are destroyed, best of luck.”

Does that sound like faithfulness or does that sound like Jonah is trying to do such a terrible job that God never asks Jonah to do anything again?

If you ever want to get out of doing something, if you ever want to make sure that someone never asks you for a favor again, the first time they ask for your help, help, but be terrible at it. When you’re asked to help with the laundry, as you’re washing the lights make sure the water is set to hot and toss in a red towel – everything will come out pink and you probably won’t be asked to help with laundry again.

Technically, Jonah does what God asked of them, but when it comes to prophesy in the Bible, Jonah isn’t doing their job as much as they are trying to get out of every being asked to do this job again.

The prophet Nahum is also told by God to cry out against the evils of the Assyrian empire and we will get more into detail about what those evils are next week, but for now, let’s compare what Nahum says to Jonah’s lazy, ’40 days till destruction’ prophecy.

“An oracle about Nineveh: the scroll containing the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. The LORD is a jealous and vengeful God; the LORD is vengeful and strong in wrath. The LORD is vengeful against his foes; [God] rages against his enemies. The LORD is very patient but great in power; the LORD punishes. [God’s] way is in whirlwind and storm; clouds are the dust of his feet. [God] can blast the sea and make it dry up; [God] can dry up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither; the bud of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake because of [God]; the hills melt away. The earth heaves before [God]— the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before [God’s] indignation? Who can confront the heat of [God’s] fury? [God’s] wrath pours out like fire; the rocks are shattered because of [God]. The LORD is good, a haven in a day of distress. [God] acknowledges those who take refuge in [them]. With a rushing flood, [God] will utterly destroy [Nineveh] and pursue [God’s] enemies into darkness.” (Nahum 1:1-8)

And that’s just Nahum warming up. Nahum chapter three gets really explicit, “Doom, city of bloodshed—all deceit, full of plunder: prey cannot get away. Cracking whip and rumbling wheel, galloping horse and careening chariot! Charging cavalry, flashing sword, and glittering spear; countless slain, masses of corpses, endless dead bodies—they stumble over their dead bodies! Because of the many whorings of the whore, the lovely graces of the mistress of sorceries, the one who sells nations by means of her whorings and peoples by means of her sorceries: Look! I am against you, proclaims the LORD of heavenly forces. I will lift your skirts over your face; I will show nations your nakedness and kingdoms your dishonor. I will throw disgusting things at you; I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. Then all who look at you will recoil from you and say, ‘Nineveh has been devastated! Who will lament for her?’” (Nahum 3:1-7)

Between Nahum and Jonah, whose words are more evocative? Which one of these prophets grabs your attention? And yet, between Nahum and Jonah, who was more successful? Which one of these prophets turned the peoples hearts away from evil and towards grace?

“Jonah started into the city, walking one day, and he cried out, “Just forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God.”

It’s a small detail in the text but it’s so much fun – Jonah is the most successful prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures, an entire city believes what Jonah says and repents, the narrator tells us that “the people of Nineveh believed God”. Did you notice what the narrator doesn’t say? The narrator doesn’t say is that the people of Nineveh believed God because of what Jonah said. The people of Nineveh don’t give Jonah any credit because, frankly, Jonah has done nothing to earn any credit.

“the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and put on mourning clothes, from the greatest of them to the least significant. When word of it reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, stripped himself of his robe, covered himself with mourning clothes, and sat in ashes. Then he announced, “In Nineveh, by decree of the king and his officials: Neither human nor animal, cattle nor flock, will taste anything! No grazing and no drinking water! Let humans and animals alike put on mourning clothes, and let them call upon God forcefully! And let all persons stop their evil behavior and the violence that’s under their control!” He thought, Who knows? God may see this and turn from his wrath, so that we might not perish.”

In the ancient world, people would wear mourning clothes, sometimes called sackcloth, and sackcloth was a coat made of goat hair. Sackcloth was itchy and uncomfortable and the idea was that because our feelings of grief and mourning and repentance are itchy and uncomfortable, what we wear should match what we feel.

Jonah is a satire, Jonah is supposed to be funny, which is why it’s not just the people of Nineveh that fast and wear mourning clothes to symbolize their repentance, all of the animals have to as well, the narrator of Jonah wants us to imagine people wearing goat hair coats trying to put goat hair coats on their goats while watching their flocks and cattle so closely that don’t even lick the grass let alone taste it.

The absurdity of this repentance is supposed to be funny, it’s there for a laugh, but it’s also there to show us how far away from God’s dream we can wander. The evil and injustice that humanity perpetuates doesn’t just affect humans. Our sin has destroyed more than relationships, it’s destroyed forests and rivers and ecosystems. Animals are included in the story of Jonah because God’s redemption has always been about everything. Nothing is separated from God’s grace and if this grace includes everything then our treatment and appreciation of animals and creation has to be included with how we turn from evil and seek to do good.

The text shows us the scale and the scope of this repentance, how the people of Nineveh find hope in God putting all things back together, and in the midst of this repentance there is something that the king says that echos what the sailors said during the storm earlier in the story.

If a phrase is repeated in the Bible, it’s usually something that we should pay attention to. In chapter 3, verse 9, the king says, “Who knows? God may see this and turn from [God’s] wrath, so that we might not perish.” When the storm starts rocking the boat in chapter 1, the sailors say to one another, “Perhaps the god will give some thought to us so that we won’t perish.”

While these are similar phrases, there is a humility in what the sailors say and an audacity in what the king says that we can’t see in the English translation of the original Hebrew words. God never had Jonah cry out against the sailors of the ship like Jonah cried out against the city of Nineveh. The crew simply hopes that God might notice their struggle and take care of them. The king in Nineveh hopes that God might see their repentance and God will repent from God’s wrath. In Hebrew, the king says וְנִחַ֖ם הָאֱלֹהִ֑ים וְשָׁ֛ב יָשׁ֔וּב (ya-Shuv ve-ni-Cham ha-E-lo-him ve-Shav)

The words יָשׁ֔וּב (ya-Shuv) and וְשָׁ֛ב (ve-Shav) both come from the same root word shuv which means to return or to turn back. In Biblical Hebrew, there are words that have a wide semantic range and from the context these words can be translated in a variety of ways. יָשׁ֔וּב (ya-Shuv) and וְשָׁ֛ב (ve-Shav) are examples of this – sometimes it’s translated as answer, other times it’s avert, sometimes it’s return, sometimes it’s to bring back, sometimes it even is translated as repent. Depending on the context, there are a whole bunch of ways that these words can be translated into English from Hebrew due to their wide semantic range.

Other words don’t have a wide range, they don’t have a multitude of meanings and they just mean one thing and always mean one thing. הָאֱלֹהִ֑ים (ha-E-lo-him) is God and it’s always going to be translated as God.

The word וְנִחַ֖ם (ve-ni-Cham) is another Hebrew word with a narrow semantic range. Our translation takes this word וְנִחַ֖ם (ve-ni-Cham) and turns it into God turning from their wrath, and the two words that mean turn are in that passage so the translation makes sense, but a more direct translation of וְנִחַ֖ם (ve-ni-Cham) is to apologize, to be sorry, to repent or to relent.

In the story of Jonah the king says, “who knows, maybe God will repent from their wrath”.

Can you believe that arrogance, that audacity, of this king? What kind of heretic would say to God, “you owe me an apology”?

The king thought, “Who knows? God may repent from [God’s] wrath, so that we might not perish” and the narrator of Jonah tells us, “God saw what they were doing – that they had ceased their evil behavior. So God stopped planning to destroy them, and [God] didn’t do it.

Translators have to make a lot of choices, as we saw just a little bit ago, sometimes a word has a lot of semantic range and it can be translated a few different ways. On top of this, there are also cultural and theological considerations that are a part of translating the Bible. A direct, word for word, a translation could create some phrases that distract from the text instead of share the meaning of it.

Our translation today takes the original Hebrew and turns it into, “God stopped planning to destroy them” and that’s an OK translation, it fits the general feeling of the text and it fits some of our ideas about God. We often imagine that we can be on God’s bad side or we can be on God’s good side. If we’re on God’s bad side, we’re really on God’s bad side and a lighten bolt might strike us down at any moment, but if we repent God will stop planning to destroy us. But the Hebrew in this passage doesn’t say God stopped planning to destroy them, in Hebrew the text says, וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם הָאֱלֹהִ֗ים (ve-ni-Cham ha-E-lo-him).

It’s not just that God stopped, it says God relented, God repented, God apologized.

This isn’t the only time in the Hebrew Scriptures that God relents – it happens in Exodus 32:14, 2 Samuel 24:16, 1 Chronicles 21:15, Psalm 106:45, and Jeremiah 26:19 among others.

Of all the moments to be preaching at a camera instead of with you in person, this is probably the hardest because my hunch is that most of you have never heard of a God who repents and apologizes.

This could be a whole new idea for you and new ideas can be a relief, or they can be shocking, or they can be dangerous. You could be comforted, you could be angry, you could be confused, you could think I’m a false teacher and heretic because what are we supposed to do with a God who repents?

Since I can’t gauge your reactions in realtime, we’re going to talk this through a few ways. Before I tell you a couple ways that I resonate with God repenting I’ll share with you all one way that I disagree with and I’ll try to do it charitably, but with a bit of cynicism here and there.

There are Reformed and Calvinist theologies that focus, primarily, on God’s sovereignty. These theologies have at their center of gravity God’s power, authority, and control. This sovereignty means that everything happens according to God’s plan. These theologies say that from global pandemics to what you ate for breakfast, it’s all a part of God’s plan.

This is my cynicism around Reformed and Calvinist theology talking, but with this sort of theology it is as if we are merely actors following a script that God wrote so that we can be examples of either God’s judgment or God’s redemption.

The reformed theologian and pastor RC Sproul writes, “The biblical narratives in which God appears to repent, or change His mind, are almost always narratives that deal with His threats of judgment and punishment. These threats are then followed by the repentance of the people or by the intercessory petitions of their leaders. God is not talked into ‘changing His mind.’ Out of His gracious heart He only does what He has promised to do all along – not punish sinners who repent and turn from their evil ways. He chooses not to do what He has every right to do.”

I assume this isn’t what RC Sproul had in mind, but when I read that quote I thought of the Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa are on rival hockey teams and they are about to play against one another for the championship. The night before the game, Bart says, “I’m going to swing my arms and if you get hit, it’s your own fault” so Lisa says back, “Well, I’m going to kick air and if you get kicked it’s your own fault”.

For RC Sporul, it’s not just that God is saying I’m kicking air and if you walk into it, it’s your own fault, in this reformed, Calvinist theology, God is a cosmic marionette pulling the springs so you can’t decide if you will be kicked or not.

There are reformed and Calvinist theologies that are much more gracious and generous than this, but at their extreme, these theologies say God planned everything that happens everywhere, all for God’s glory and all for God’s judgment. This theology would say that, because we are predestined but don’t know where our predestination is leading us, it might feel like God is repenting, but God is simply continuing to do what God has always done.

In a variety of Christian theologies, the first thought when it comes to the nature of God is sovereignty. RC Sproul wasn’t a member of some fringe church, they were a Presbyterian, a certain kind of double-predestination Presbyterian, but still within the generous boundaries mainline Christian theology. Personally, I think this theology can be dangerous and destructive because it says that every bad thing to ever happen was caused by God because God didn’t just want it to happen, God made it happen. To me, that God sounds cruel and callous.

Our theological tradition at Grace isn’t reformed or Calvinist, we are in the Wesleyan and Methodist tradition where our first thoughts about the nature of God are love, grace, and peace.

Our theology doesn’t begin with God kicking to cause our wounds, our theology begins with God mending and healing.

This love requires a certain level of freedom and mutuality, even humility.

I am not sure when I will finally feel like I’m an adult, but I did realize I was old when I finally had a favorite travel mug for my coffee. I love my travel mug, it keeps my coffee hot and with all the times I’ve dropped it, it’s never broke or spilled my coffee. I love that travel mug. That travel mug has no capacity to love me back and no matter how many decisions I make on behalf of that mug, it will never love me in return because it can’t.

Mutual love requires freedom and choice, mutual love cannot exist without the option to say yes or no.

Imagine that you are teaching someone that has never cooked before how to chop and onion. You give then an onion, a cutting board, and a chefs knife and tell them that they will need to quarter the onion and then they need to take those quartered sections and slice them crosswise and lengthwise, but then this person that you are explaining the finer points of chopping an onion grabs the knife, puts the onion on the cutting board and they have their thumb resting in a position that you know will require reattachment if you don’t stop them.

In that moment do you politely say, excuse me, if you don’t move your thumb you are probably going to cut it off or do you shout and grab the knife in their hand as fast as you can?

You might apologize for yelling but you would never apologize for stopping them from getting hurt.

That’s one way to think about this passage and the idea of God repenting, and here’s another. When I was in college, a friend and I took a road trip from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa to Bowling Green University in Ohio for Spring Break. Nothing says spring break like a road trip to Ohio. On the way there and on the way back my friend and I took turns driving and this was before cellphones with GPS, but after mapquest was created so we printed off our route and hit the road. On the way back to Iowa from Ohio we were driving late at night, so we took turns being each others chauffeurs, alternating naps in the backseat with driving. When we came into Illinois I was in the back seat trying to rest but I couldn’t sleep, and noticed that my friend missed an exit and I thought to myself, they think I’m asleep, and they also have the printed instructions with them, we might be going the right way for a little bit, but one way or another we’re going home.

About an hour later my friend said, ‘I think we’re lost’ and I said ‘We’re not lost, you just missed a turn an hour ago’. We got home, two hours later than planned, I repented, we traded spots in the car, I drove as they took a nap, and all was well in the end.

Maybe we can think about God repenting like that – of God having a destination in mind, God wants us to get home but God also gives us the freedom to follow our own detours along the way – God doesn’t abandon us when we’re lost, God says “I’m sorry you’re lost, I’ll make sure you’re found.”

Or maybe we can think about God repenting like this – I have a one-year-old nephew in Boston named Oliver that I haven’t been able to meet yet. Even though I haven’t met Oliver, I’ve been able to see them grow over the last year through pictures and videos and there is something interesting that happens when it comes to how we react even with a picture of an infant. If there is a picture of Oliver in the family text group, as soon as you see the expression on their face, you mirror it.

When Oliver is sad because they are teething, you are sad with Oliver. When Oliver is excited and overjoyed eating their first cupcake, you are excited with Oliver. We can’t help but mirror our emotions with one another, that’s what empathy is all about – not just recognizing what someone else is feeling, but feeling it with them.

Too often we want to assume that God has bigger things to deal with, that if God is all powerful and almighty, God can’t be all that interested in us – but what have we seen so far in the story of Jonah?

God has a final destination in mind, God is moving in the lives of Jonah, the sailors, the people of Nineveh, God is with them no matter what so that they might experience, know, and share in God’s grace. There is a continual invitation to be a part of this grace and even when there are detours, the grace and peace that God has in mind is still the final destination.

In our reading today, we see how God responds to our response to be a part of this grace, if the people of Nineveh are going to sit with their cattle and flocks in sackcloth and ashes to show their repentance, God will meet them there, God will go so far as to say I don’t just know how you feel, I am going to feel this with you.

God has always been is incarnational. Often in the church, we save the technical term incarnation for Christmas to say how God is with us in the birth of Christ, but the Bible shows us that God has always been searching for and finding ways to be with you. You’re repenting, God will repent with you, you’re celebrating, God will celebrate with you, you’re grieving, God is grieving with you.

God has never been too almighty to be humbly with you and this passage in Jonah is a foretaste of what we see in Philippians where Paul writes, “Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal to God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross…”(Philippians 2:5-8)

God’s grace is amazing not because of it’s might and power and sovereignty, but because of God’s humility. The king of Nineveh, just like those sailors at sea, wonders if God will notice them, if God cares about them, and God responds by not simply saying I care about you, God says I’m with.

A year ago this weekend we had our first online-only service. I don’t know about you, but in the past year I’ve felt like the king of Nineveh, wondering to myself, “Who knows? Maybe God will notice us?” To all of the fears, all of the loss, all the anxiety and pain that this last year has forced upon us, maybe God is saying, ‘I’m sorry, I am always with you, no matter what you are going through, no matter where you are, you will never be alone.’

If God is not beyond repentance, what does that mean for us? Maybe we can soften our hearts to accept or extend the repentance that we need, with one another, with ourselves, even with and from God.

God is love and this love is with you, even when you wonder if God will notice you. God is with you, even when God repents saying ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t see me and didn’t experience the fullness of grace that is already yours, but if you can sense me know, if you can feel the nearness of the spirit here and now, maybe the next time you wonder if I’m with you, you’ll remember that I never left.’

At Grace, we have been exploring the book of Jonah throughout Lent, learning from the prophetic humor of the Bible. When we started this journey with Jonah five weeks ago, I told you not to expect belly laughs, but this is supposed to be funny so I hope you have found and enjoyed the humor as well as the grace in this story.

If you haven’t been with us, let me catch you up and share some of the punchlines with you.

Jonah is a prophet of God, and God tells Jonah to get up and go to Nineveh, so Jonah gets up and goes in the other direction to Tarshish. Jonah tries to flee from God, and the rest of the Book of Jonah is about how God is with Jonah and everyone else. While on a ship sailing towards Tarshish, the crew comes to faith, believing in God and taking responsibility for one another and Jonah, while Jonah is attempting to abandon faith by refusing to take any responsibility. Jonah ends up going overboard, spends three nights and three days in the belly of a fish and thens ends up on the shoreline just outside of Nineveh. The word of God comes to Jonah a second time and God says to Jonah, get up and go to Nineveh, Jonah clearly doesn’t want to be swallowed by a fish again, so Jonah goes to Nineveh and does what God has asked them to do, but they do a really lazy job. Nineveh is a huge city, it would take three days to walk from one side of town to another, so on the first day, on the edge of town, Jonah says, ’40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown’. That is all Jonah has to say, but it’s more than enough. The people of Nineveh believe God and repent. They turn from evil, the king in Nineveh declares that everyone should cease doing evil and stop every act of violence that is under their control, but not only that, the king says that everyone in Nineveh should pray and fast, but not just the people, also the cows. The king, every citizen, even cows, and goats are wearing sackcloth and ashes, they are in mourning, repenting and praying for forgiveness, hoping that God will show them mercy, and that’s what God does.

More than that, God doesn’t just show the people of Nineveh mercy, in the original Hebrew in Jonah, it’s written that God repents. God apologizes, God is with the people of Nineveh so much that God doesn’t simply know how they feel, God is experiencing this remorse and repentance with them.

The grace and love that we see God extend to the people and the cattle of Nineveh is just one more example in the Bible of what is explicitly written in the letter of 1 Timothy, “This is right and it pleases God our savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

God’s grace is with and for everyone, waiting for us to experience and enter into the fullness of it so that we can extend it to one another and ourselves.

If the book of Jonah was a Disney movie, it would have ended last week. Jonah had an amazing journey, they made a magical animal friend, and Jonah might have done a lazy job, but Jonah did the job that God asked of them. Jonah cried out in Nineveh and the people responded to God’s grace. Everyone can live happily ever after. But in our reading today, Jonah isn’t happy, Jonah is furious.

This is what we read in Jonah today, “Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “Come on, LORD! Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land? This is why I fled to Tarshish earlier! I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy. At this point, LORD, you may as well take my life from me, because it would be better for me to die than to live.” The LORD responded, “Is your anger a good thing?””

Jonah didn’t want the people of Nineveh to receive mercy, Jonah didn’t want them to trust in God’s grace, Jonah is furious while God is merciful.

One of the subtle, but funny, moments in the book of Jonah is in this passage, because Jonah says to God, “Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land?” because the answer is no.

At the start of the story of Jonah, Jonah never gives God a reason for not wanting to go to Nineveh, Jonah just gets up and goes in the other direction without telling God or us why.

If you have been with us from the start of our journey with Jonah, maybe you remember the story of Alex who lived on Aurora and decided they wanted to leave town so they drive to the airport and on the way to the airport they stop at KFC to eat a famous bowl and after that they keep driving to the airport but decide to fill up their car with gas first and since they’re getting gas they might as well get a slice of breakfast pizza because they don’t know the next time they will be back in Iowa to enjoy such a culinary delight.

If you remember that sermon from a few weeks back, hopefully you remember more than the ridiculous amount of time I spent on the story of Alex driving to the airport, at the details of their detours, without saying why Alex was going to the airport or why Alex wanted to leave town and have a fresh start.

For the first three chapters in the story of Jonah, we haven’t known why Jonah wanted to flee, we didn’t know why Jonah was so hesitant to go to Nineveh, we had no idea what could make Jonah want to flee from God, but now, at the start of chapter 4 we know why – Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because Jonah didn’t think the people of Nineveh deserved mercy. Jonah would rather flee from God than see the people of Nineveh experience God’s grace.

In our reading today, Jonah says what the original audience would have felt from the start – how dare God care for those people in Nineveh, because if anyone deserve wrath and vengeance, it’s them.

We’re told in the story of Jonah that Nineveh is an enormous city, that it would take three days to walk across. Nineveh was an enormous city because Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

The Assyrian Empire ruled for nearly 2000 years in the ancient near east. When it comes to empires, kingdoms, and countries, few have lasted longer than the Assyrian Empire and that’s because the rulers of the Assyrian Empire mastered cruelty, not only towards their enemies, but to with own people.

This is what King Ashurnasirpal II wrote about stopping a rebellion in the Assyrian city of Suru, “I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes and others I bound to stakes round the pillar. I cut the limbs off the officers who had rebelled. Many captives I burned with fire and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I consumed with fire. The rest of their warriors I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates.”

That’s what the Assyrians did to their own people. One historian writes about the Assyrian Empire saying they were, “…the most efficient military force in the ancient world … The secret to its success was a professionally trained standing army, iron weapons, advanced engineering skills, effective tactics, and, most importantly, a complete ruthlessness… A phrase oft-repeated by Assyrian kings in their inscriptions regarding military conquests is “I destroyed, devastated, and burned with fire”

For two thousand years, the Assyrians ruled with ruthlessness. There are Assyrian war stories that speak of a devastation that we would associate with a nuclear attack, but they did it by hand. They would completely devastate and overwhelm any city that they attacked because the Assyrians were one of the first cultures to have a professional military, this was one of the first empires to have a standing military that was trained and always equipped for war.

Ashurnasirpal gave us a hint of the devastation that the Assyrians carried out in the ancient world, but there are war stories that talk of the Assyrians killing nearly everyone in a village, and forcing the rest of the village into exile throughout the Assyrian empire. The Assyrian army would then salt the earth and plant thistles, thorns, and weeds to make sure that crops could not grow even if people wanted to return to that area. In some stories it’s said that the Assyrians would even reroute rivers during siege warfare to deprive their enemies of water.

In 721 BC, the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. When the Assyrians conquered an area, they would let the community hold on to some of their culture, and yet, the Assyrians would try to destroy their national identity. The Assyrians would let people keep part of their culture, but they would shift it just enough so that their unity was no longer tied to who they used to be. When the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, they decided to repopulate the capital city in the north, Samaria.

This is what we read about this conquest in 2 Kings 17, “The Assyrian king brought people from Babylon, Cuth, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, resettling them in the cities of Samaria in place of the Israelites. These people took control of Samaria and settled in its cities. But when they began to live there, they didn’t worship the LORD, so the LORD sent lions against them, and the lions began to kill them. Assyria’s king was told about this: “The nations you sent into exile and resettled in the cities of Samaria don’t know the religious practices of the local god. [The LORD] sent lions against them, and the lions are killing them because none of them know the religious practices of the local god.” So Assyria’s king commanded, “Return one of the priests that you exiled from there. He should go back and live there. He should teach them the religious practices of the local god.” So one of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria went back. He lived in Bethel and taught the people how to worship the LORD.” (2 Kings 17:24-28)

There is a lot going on in this passage from 2 Kings, lions, tigers, and gentrification, oh my!

If you have been around a church before, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the city of Samaria, perhaps best known from a parable Jesus tells about a good Samaritan. When the Assyrians took over the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel, Samaria, they populated the city with folks from throughout the Assyrian empire and, to put it politely, the Assyrians forced the remaining Israeli population in Samaria to marry Assyrians and have children with them. This created a new culture and community in northern Israel that was separated, even isolated, from their historical roots.

This is a small detail in the text, but I think it’s interesting that the passage mentions lions, perhaps because the southern kingdom of Israel, at this time in history, was also known as Judah and the animal that represented the southern kingdom, also known as Judah, was the lion. Saying that lions fought back against the Assyrians is like saying eagles won the revolutionary war.

In 2 Kings we read about people from throughout the Assyrian Empire being relocated to Samaria to create a new culture, and to our ears, the multiculturalism of this passage in 2 Kings doesn’t sound all that bad, other than the forced marriages and violent of war that made it possible.

In 2 Kings, the Assyrian king even allows on Israelite priest to go back to Samaria so the locals there can keep their traditions and practices. But a few verses later in 2 Kings the author tells us that the people in northern Israel, “They don’t really worship the LORD. Nor do they follow the regulations, the case laws, the Instruction, or the commandment that the LORD commanded…”

There is a religious purity that the author of 2 Kings has in mind, and those Samaritans don’t measure up. It’s as if the author of 2 Kings is saying, sure, they believe in God, but they only come to church on Christmas Eve and Easter and they really only come on Christmas Eve if the timing works out with their dinner plans.

Or let’s connect things with last week. If you were with us last week, I compared Reformed and Calvinist theology to an episode of the Simpsons where Bart and Lisa get into a fight with one another. I took 500 years of church history and compared it to 30 seconds of a cartoon.

It was as if I spoke with the same authority of 2 Kings saying those reformed and Calvinist Christians don’t really worship God because they don’t think like we do.

Maybe we could even compare what’s happening with the Assyrians and the Samaritans during 2 Kings to what happened in the Catholic church this week.

I often agree with Pope Francis, not always, but I want to believe Frank and I could be friends. Yet last week Pope Francis said something that I deeply disagree with, Pope Francis said something that is is unholy and sinful and dangerous. Every time a prominent religious leader, like the Pope, makes a declaration against LGBTQ persons, suicide hotlines experience a spike in calls. LGBTQ persons are more than 5x more likely to die by suicide, in part, because they are told that the God of love hates them.

I am deeply disappointed in the Pope saying that Catholic priests cannot bless LGBTQ unions. According to the pope, to do so would be giving a blessing to sin. I’m glad the the Pope isn’t God which means the Pope doesn’t get to distribute or dispense God’s grace, but I’m still devastated and, frankly, I want to say to the Pope, like is written in 2 Kings, you don’t really worship the LORD because if you did, you’d be a lot more like Jesus and the Jesus I know loves the people you hate.

There’s a word for crying out against worship that doesn’t lead us to the fullness of God’s grace, there’s a word for protesting against evil and injustice so that we might all experience God’s peace, there’s a word for speaking out against those in power on behalf of those that are bullied and that word is prophetic.

Jonah is a prophet, called by God to cry out against the violence and injustice of the Assyrian Empire, not to just point these sins out in Israel, but to travel to Nineveh, the capital city of this evil empire. At the very beginning of the book of Jonah, Jonah tries to flee from God, Jonah doesn’t go to Nineveh, Jonah goes to Tarshish but at the start we didn’t know why. Jonah didn’t tell us, the narrator doesn’t give us any clues, we are left in the dark. We’ve been wondering the why of Jonah for five weeks now, and here we have finally arrived – Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because Jonah didn’t want to see those people forgiven. Jonah would rather live with self-righteous anger than a divine reconciliation.

Jonah wants revenge, Jonah wants wrath, Jonah wants destruction. In Jonah’s mind those people don’t deserve a second chance, even though while Jonah tried to flee from God, God was always with Jonah, just like Jonah was always with the sailors, always in the big fish, and always with the people, cattle, and even the goats in Nineveh. Jonah has lost count of the chances that God has given them in this story, but Jonah doesn’t want to give any chances to the people of Nineveh.

With Jonah’s anger, their hatred of the Assyrians and all that Nineveh represents, let’s take a closer look at what Jonah says when they cry out and speak their prophecy in Nineveh. Jonah says, “Just 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

Numbers in the Bible are often symbolic – the number 7 usually represents holiness or completion which is why the creation poetry in Genesis 1 takes place over 7 nights and days. The number 12 tends to represent the people of God – there are 12 tribes in Israel just like Jesus had 12 disciples. My favorite example of the number 12 in the Bible comes from the book of Revelation. In Revelation, chapter 7, there is an odd little passage where it’s written that ‘144,000 will be the number of those who are sealed’ or saved. If 12 means all the people of God, what would 12 multiplied by 12 mean? 144 would be a Biblical way of saying, really, all the people of God are loved and saved. Imagine if an author in the Bible wanted to really prove a point, if they wanted to poetic and prophetically say that every is loved by God, they wouldn’t just multiply 12 by 12, they’d take that and raise it by a thousand to say God’s love is with everyone because everyone is is part of the people of God.

40 in the Bible, like the 40 days that Jonah speaks of, is a time of patience and waiting. After Moses and the Israelites are brought into freedom by God in the Exodus, they wander the desert for 40 years. In the ancient world, most people didn’t live more than 40 years. 40 years is a life time.

This season of Lent, in the church calendar is 40 days, connecting us with the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness. The Gospels say that Jesus spent 40 days in the desert without food or water. Can you imagine having 40 days without food and water? That would feel like an eternity.

The message that Jonah is given by God to cry out agains the Assyrians is, “Just 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown!” It’s as if Jonah says to the people of Nineveh, repent, when you have a chance, no rush, no hurry, God’s grace is here for you now, and it will be here for you later too.

Jonah is furious, Jonah wants destruction, Jonah wants vengeance, but wrath is not what God has in mind.

There is a question at the end of our reading today. God says to Jonah, “Is your anger a good thing?”

I don’t know about you, but if I was Jonah, I would say yes, of course my anger is a good thing, look at what the Assyrians have done, look at all the nations and lives they have destroyed, look at the genocide they have left in their wake, anger isn’t just a good thing here, it’s righteous. If I was Jonah, I’d say back to God, “how can you not be angry?”

Last week, we compared Jonah’s 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown prophecy to the words of the prophet Nahum. If you weren’t with us last week, let’s just say that Nahum is a lot more explicit, Nahum is angry, Nahum is furious. It’s not as if God’s anger against evil and injustice isn’t righteous and necessary, better than that God’s anger isn’t the last word.

There’s always another chance, there’s always another opportunity for redemption, there is always grace.

There is no amount of heartbreak that can separate us from God. When our hearts break, we often develop callouses, our wounds become scars, we develop an even stronger tissue that is harder to break. Yet God’s heart is only ever broken open. No matter what we do, no matter how much we get wrong, no matter how we try to flee, God’s grace remains, it’s as if God is saying to us all is forgiven because you know not what you do.

If God can forgive and even love the Assyrians, God’s forgiveness and love is easy when it comes to you. Our first response to this kind of love and forgiveness is often, yeah, but, I can’t really be forgiven, I’ve made too much of a mess of things. We all have our messes, we all need to try to make amends, but the last time it felt like someone was your enemy, did you flay their skin on the city gates? That’s what Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal did. If God can forgive that, God can forgive me for cursing at people that drive under the speed limit and God is forgiving you of whatever you need forgiveness of.

There are times to be angry, but anger isn’t the final word. Our anger can remind us what’s important, anger shows us what’s worth standing up for, and yet our anger against evil and injustice isn’t anger for the sake of anger, it’s anger that, by the grace of God, leads us towards reconciliation and grace.

God is not nearly as interested in punishing us or anyone else as much as we are. God knows how we punish one another, God know how we punish ourselves, and God isn’t interested in keeping that pain in circulation. God’s grace is sufficient, so what does it mean for us to join with God in not only receiving this gift of forgiveness, but in sharing it with others and even ourselves?

When God asks Jonah if their anger is a good thing, the Hebrew word for anger in this passage is חָ֥רָה (charah) and it literally translates as ‘burning with anger’. In this late winter, early spring that we find ourselves in, maybe you can think of this like a campfire. Used well, you will be warmed and welcomed around a campfire, but used poorly, it becomes an unruly and destructive forest fire.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, it doesn’t mean a lack of accountability or justice, it’s like the difference between staying warm around the fire and being burned.

You don’t need to burn this week. If God is not set ablaze with wrath, if God’s last word not just to the Assyrians but to us is not vengeance but grace, how might accept and extend the warmth of this welcome to one another and ourselves?

May we we commit to beginning the long process of forgiveness. You don’t have to complete it, you don’t have to take every step this week, just the first one. Simply take the step that trusts you, like everyone else, are graced by God, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’ve left undone, no matter what you believe and no matter what you can’t believe, you are loved. Amen

We have finally come to the end of the story of Jonah, and I just have to ask, how do you feel about the ending? When it comes to the Bible, there are all sorts of unexpected surprises, but really, did you expect the book of Jonah to end with God saying, “…and also many animals?”

Six weeks ago, if I would have asked you what the story of Jonah is about, you probably would have said, “Duh, Jonah is about a prophet that doesn’t do what God tells them to, so God has a fish swallow Jonah until Jonah decides to do the right thing.”

The way that we often use Jonah as a children’s story is terrifying – obey God, or God is going to get you. But if you’ve been with us over these last six weeks, you know that’s not what Jonah is about – at all.

Somehow Jonah been turned into a cute story about God’s wrath. It’s like we want to think that being swallowed by a fish must be whimsical experience of divine vengeance.

As we start to figure out what it means for the book of Jonah to end with God saying, “…and also many animals” let’s go back to the beginning to see this story in light of the grace and mercy that surrounds Jonah and everything else in this story.

The story begins with Jonah being told by God, get up and go to Nineveh, so Jonah gets up and goes to the opposite direction to Tarshish. At the start of the story Jonah tries to flee God, and the rest of the story is about how God is not just with Jonah, but with everyone else too. While Jonah is trying to escape from God, the first people that Jonah meets are some sailors in Joppa. These sailors don’t know anything about Jonah, they don’t know anything about God or faith, they’re just paid to take Jonah from Joppa to Tarshish. A storm strikes the ship as it sails and the crew starts calling out to anyone that will listen – they don’t care if it’s Superman, Wonder Woman or the Mandalorian, they just want help. As the storm keeps raging around them, these sailors are taking responsibility for Jonah, while Jonah is going to Tarshish to avoid his responsibilities. Through the storm, these sailers come to faith. In the storm, these sailors that knew nothing of God come to see that God is with them. As Jonah is going in the opposite direction of God’s plans, God’s grace is still with Jonah, even as Jonah goes overboard.

The sailors experienced rescue in the storm, and Jonah finds rescue in the fish. Jonah was a person of privilege. They decided, at a moments notice, to go on a vacation to Tarshish, a trip that could have taken up to a year. But in the belly of a fish, Jonah’s wealth and privilege didn’t mean anything. Jonah could not buy his way out of this problem – the wealth, the power, the privilege that had swallowed Jonah’s life no longer mattered and with everything taken away, God’s grace was still there. It seems like Jonah feels a sense of relief and rescue in the belly of the fish because Jonah prays from the Psalms, and Jonah prays Psalms of thanksgiving, of gratitude, because even when Jonah tried to flee from God, God never abandoned Jonah.

Jonah ends up on the shore and the word of the LORD comes to Jonah a second time. God says to Jonah, get up and goto Nineveh, so that’s what Jonah does. Jonah goes to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, it’s a city and an empire built on cruelty and violence, it’s a city with decorated gates that could inspire Ed Gein.

Jonah did not like the Assyrian Empire, which is fair. The Assyrians destroyed and conquered Israel, but we should also admit that even if you were a citizen within the Assyrian Empire, unless you were at the very top, you probably didn’t like it either. It was an empire of cruelty and violence and intimidation. In this empire, cities never knew if or when they would be an example of Assyrian wrath. The Assyrian army didn’t just destroy their enemies at war, they attacked and decimated their own people.

This isn’t to say that the people of Nineveh are all bad, they have many animals after all. In my research this week, I learned something interesting, just a little fact that you can drop into a conversation when you’re not sure what to say – did you know that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, weren’t actually in Babylon?

Archeological evidence has shown that the Hanging Gardens were in Nineveh and an excavation in 2018 found evidence of citywide aqueduct system with an inscription that said, “Sennacherib king of the world…Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh.” The historical confusion around the Hanging Gardens being associated with Babylon is traced back to 689 BC when the Assyrians conquered the Babylonians and started referring to Nineveh as New Babylon.

Here’s another fun fact – The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal built a royal library in Nineveh and it contained over 30,000 clay tablets, included among them the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest surviving pieces of literature in the world.

Not sure how you want to fit any of that into a conversation, but I got my first vaccine shot this week which means I have to start practicing how to talk with people that aren’t Irene or any of our animals. I know how to talk at a camera, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had a conversation, other than the ones I have with Irene, Leo, Oats, Felix and Selina. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting ready to be with one another again and I’m hoping there won’t be too many lulls in the conversation when we do.

Back to the story of Jonah – it’s easy to define our enemies by their worst quality, to reduce them into a caricature. The cruelty of the Assyrian Empire shouldn’t be ignored, the injustice, violence, and evil of any empire has to be reckoned with, but their arts and culture and day to day lives of the citizens that are just trying to get by and do their best, that can’t be ignored either.

We can imagine that when Jonah shows up in Nineveh, they see the beauty of the hanging gardens, they see the splendor or the royal library, and they see people suffering under the boot of the Assyrian Empire, and they also see people caring for their animals, Jonah sees families getting ready for the start of their day, but Jonah doesn’t care. Jonah is on a mission, and just as the reach the outskirts of the city Jonah proclaims to the people, “Just 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

Jonah doesn’t just announce this demolition, Jonah wants a front seat. Our reading for today seems to take place as Jonah is eagerly awaiting the the divine destruction that is coming for the people of Nineveh.

If Jonah is a story about God finding ways to get us back when we disobey, what do we think is going to happen to the people of Nineveh?

Jonah took a detour and ended up in the belly of a fish. When it came to the Assyrian Empire, you were lucky if you survived an experience of them and were only maimed. The cruelty of this Empire was ruthless and their brutality was extreme, even by ancient standards. The Assyrian Army would cut off legs, arms, noses, and tongues of survivors, they left no one unscathed. If they let you survive, you were going to be a living witness to Assyrian violence. Those that didn’t survive were often impaled, flayed alive, or beheaded.

Jonah tries to go on a vacation because he’d rather not stand alone in the city of Nineveh and tell them they need to repent. That’s why Jonah ends up in the belly of a fish. If Jonah believed the story of their life was a lesson on the wrath of God, I think we can understand why Jonah wants a front row seat on the destruction of Nineveh. Those people are finally going to get a taste of their own medicine, the Assyrians are going to be put in their place.

In some commentaries, they imagine that Jonah makes their announcement of destruction, “40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown” and then Jonah sets up camp on the edge of town and waits for those 40 days to pass. Jonah has an appetite for destruction, they had to cancel their plans to go to the paradise city of Tarshish, so why not make the most of seeing Nineveh destroyed? Jonah is camped out on the edge of town, counting down the days, 40 come, and 40 go, and in its own way, Nineveh is overthrown but not in the way that Jonah wanted.

In Hebrew, the word for overthrown is נֶהְפָּֽכֶת׃ (nehpaket) and most often it is translated as to change, transform, or turn and in some context it can even be translated as making your bed. I like to imagine that Jonah was thinking to themself, everyone in Nineveh made their bed and now they have to sleep in it, but that’s when God tidies up the bed and tucks Nineveh in, making sure they know God’s mercy and grace.

Jonah wants wrath, but God wants restoration.

Jonah is pouting in anger, sitting in some sort of shack overlooking Nineveh, and all of a sudden a shrub grows up against it and blocks the sun for Jonah. Biblical Botanist don’t agree about what kind of shrub or gourd or vine the narrator is referring to here, but let’s pass for a second to recognize that people have turned Biblical Botany into a career. Never stop chasing your dreams.

Some sort of gourd from God grew up around Jonah’s shelter and in this shade, as the narrator says, “Jonah was very happy about the shrub.”

This is the first, and only time in the story, that Jonah is happy and the absurdity of Jonah being happy about a shrub and some shade is supposed to be funny.

Let’s think about what kind of story Jonah is and where it fits in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are a few different categories – there’s the Torah, the first five books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Jonah isn’t one of them. Jonah is also not included in what is sometimes called ‘the Writings’, these are the books like Psalms, Proverbs, and the books of history like Kings and Chronicles. That means Jonah is a book of prophecy – it’s a text that shows us the will of God. Prophecy can come as a sharp critique or a soothing comfort. The prophets hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves and society in light of God’s grace and God’s judgment. But what kind of prophetic text is Jonah? Who was the first person that got to the end of the book of Jonah, read, “and also many animals” and thought to themselves, this story is perfect, it has to be in the Bible?

The story of Jonah is about the people of Nineveh needing to be overturned from the evil that surrounds them, and they are overturned from evil, but not with more violence, not with more wrath, but with grace and mercy. Yet the story doesn’t end with any more details about life in Nineveh, it ends with Jonah sitting on the edge of the city, waiting to see it destroyed, when a shrub grows that makes Jonah happy, but then the shrub withers and Jonah is sad. It’s almost as if this story of the shrub at the end of the story of Jonah is there to make sure we can’t miss the point.

A shrub grows, it thrives, it provides shade and comfort, so Jonah is happy, but then a worm gets hungry, it eats some of the shrub and the shrub starts to wither and then the shrub dies. With the shrub gone, Jonah doesn’t have shade, there’s nothing to block the heat of the wind or sun anymore and Jonah is angry, angry to the point of death.

In some Jewish commentaries on the story of Jonah, it’s written that Jonah being angry to the point of death is Jonah condemning himself and that it’s a critique of the prophetic tradition. It is easy to reduce the prophetic tradition in the scriptures to, “turn or burn”. God’s judgment, and therefore the judgment of the prophets, is assumed to be righteous and absolute and almost always based in wrath. Too often we assume that in the first half of the Bible God is really grumpy but then Jesus comes along and God’s mood gets a little better. But the God that we meet in Jonah isn’t filled with wrath or rage.

Jonah experiences God’s mercy in the belly of a fish, so much so that Jonah prays psalms of thanksgiving and praise, but when Jonah sees other people experience that same grace, when Jonah sees the people of Nineveh come to know God’s mercy, Jonah would rather be angry at a dead shrub than be happy for the people of Nineveh. Jonah is a prophet that condemns prophets who would rather rage in judgment than hope in the grace of God. Maybe that’s why Jonah says they are angry to the point of death, maybe Jonah thinks the only way they can let go of their anger is by literally not being around to feel it anymore.

At the end of this story, God says to Jonah what God has made clear the whole time. Just like Jonah is happy when this shrub thrives, God is happy when we thrive, and just like Jonah is grieved when this shrub withers, God grieves when we wither.

The compassion of God is something that Jonah continually experienced, but failed to understand. Jonah wants wrath, they want judgement, they want the people of Nineveh to get what’s coming their way, and when that doesn’t happen Jonah doesn’t understand. Even though Jonah experienced it, Jonah struggles to understand that God’s grace is always wider than God’s judgement.

The ending to the story of Jonah is a bit odd, it feels unresolved, Jonah isn’t given an opportunity to respond to God’s mercy, maybe because we’re the ones that are supposed to answer God’s question.

God says to Jonah, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

The word for pity here is אָח֔וּס (akhoos), it’s compassion, concern, mercy, it’s sympathy, it’s pity, and it’s God heart towards you and everyone else.

It is probably a little too easy for us to say of course God can have compassion on the city of Nineveh and their many animals, because we don’t know the people of Nineveh, we never experienced their evils or injustices, but does God have compassion on your ex? Can God have sympathy for your business partner when they ran up the debts and skipped town when the payments were due? Can God show concern for your neighbor that makes too much noise at night just like God has pity on your neighbor that starts mowing too early in the morning? Is God’s grace with you when you relapse?

We all have our Ninevehs, and God is asking us, “You know that person that just does’t get it, that person that you have no idea what to say nice about them, because you literally can’t think of anything but it seems like their pet gerbil likes them, that person that you want to be destroyed and devastated, my grace is with them too and I’m curious about how you feel about that.”

Today is Palm Sunday, it’s the start of holy week, that last week of Jesus’ life that leads us to the cross, one of the ultimate expressions of God’s mercy being wider than our wrath. The cross was not invented by God, it was an instrument of torture, a method of intimidation and execution created by an empire. From the story of Jonah, it’s clear that God has no need for an eye for an eye, but Jonah wanted that, Jonah needed an eye for an eye, and often we do too. On Good Friday, Jesus hears our cries for wrath, our cries of anger, vengeance, revenge, and instead of taking up a sword against us, Jesus is pierced in the side, saying God forgive them, reveling the depths of our brutality and the boundless compassion of God. We want retribution but Jesus is found in reconciliation.

We’re going to turn now from the story of Jonah to the gospel of Matthew because it’s there that Jesus compares the journey from Good Friday to Easter Sunday to the story of Jonah.

In Matthew, chapter 12, some religious leaders ask for a sign, they want Jesus to put on a show for them, but Jesus responds to them saying, “An evil and unfaithful generation searches for a sign, but it won’t receive any sign except Jonah’s sign. Just as Jonah was in the whale’s belly for three days and tree nights, so the Human One will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The citizens of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it as guilty, because they changed their hearts and lives in response to Jonah’s preaching. And look, someone greater than Jonah is here.”

The pattern of creation is death to resurrection. On a cellular level, everything that we see is made from the atoms of dead stars, even you. Go ahead and call yourself a star this week, you won’t be lying.

In the fall, in September and October, the days start to get a little shorter, the leaves start to change color and fall off the trees, the harvest is brought in, and we see a sort of death settle in and make itself at home in the world. The first snow in November can be endearing and in December we want to have a white Christmas, we can even get angry if there isn’t enough snow on the ground. But in January, that snow starts to get a little bit old, unless we get a fresh layer on top of muddy snow because at least that look pretty and we can tell ourselves that a fresh snow is just like a fresh start so we enter January with resolutions – but by February our love for snow has lasted just as long as our resolutions. When it snows in March we just don’t know what to do with ourselves, how can we be gardening one day but snowplowing on another while also trying to figure out what’s clogging the rain in our gutters.

But then there are those moments where you notice that the sun is shining just a little longer. It’s as if the world is waking up again. Birds and in-laws and grandparents find their way back north after the winter and shrubs start to sprout.

All around us we see signs of death leading to resurrection and Jesus connects their death with the story of Jonah, reminding us, yet again, that there will be new life, but there is going to be a death that gets us there.

Are you like Jonah, with a rage, a frustration, an anger that needs to die?

Jesus is inviting us to stand with the citizens of Nineveh, to recognize all the ways that we don’t deserve mercy, and yet find ourselves with God’s grace anyway. There are things we need to let go of, there are wrongs that we should try to amend, and this week we need to know that to find life, especially the life that God dreams for us and for everyone else, we have to enter into that sign of Jonah, that movement of resurrection that leads us to death and new life.

On Friday, on this Good Friday, as we find ourselves searching for the sign of Jonah, and my hunch is we all have something that needs to be in the belly of a fish, there is something that we need to die to so we can truly live and we’re going to give you an opportunity to bring whatever that is to the sanctuary here at Grace. Whatever you need to let go of, whatever you need to surrender to death so that you can find your way to resurrection, you can bring it to the sanctuary on Friday and put it in this fish. And if you aren’t comfortable coming to the church yet, that’s ok, wherever you are God is with you just like God is with the people of Nineveh and Jonah.

Jesus wants us to know the sign of Jonah, to be a part of this grace of God that is always grander than any wrath or revenge could be. Jesus needs us to remember that even in moments of death we are being led to resurrection, because no matter what you’ve done, no matter what you haven’t been able to do, if you feel like Jonah or the people of Nineveh, even if you feel like one of the goats in the city confused as to why someone is trying to dress you in sackcloth while making sure you don’t eat or drink, wherever you are, whatever has been done to you, not only is God with you, God’s grace will never let you go. God is looking at you with compassion and mercy, now and always. Amen.