There are some jokes that are so bad they bear retelling. [So, if any of you remember me telling this story, keep that in mind.] (1)
It seems there was once a fisherman . . . you already know it’s going to be bad, don’t you? This fisherman and his wife were blessed with twin sons. They loved the children very much, but couldn’t think of what to name them. Finally, after several days, the fisherman said, “Let’s not decide on names right now. If we wait a little while, the names will simply occur to us.”
After several weeks had passed, the fisherman and his wife noticed a peculiar fact. When left alone, one of the boys would turn toward the sea, while the other boy would face inland. It didn’t matter which way the parents positioned the children, the same child always faced the same direction one faced toward the sea and the other faced away. “That’s it,” said the fisherman. “Let’s name the boys Towards and Away since one boy is always looking TOWARDS the sea and the other is always looking AWAY.” His wife agreed, and from that point on, the boys were simply known as TOWARDS and AWAY.
The years passed and the lads grew tall and strong. The day came when the fisherman said to his sons, “Boys, it is time that you learned how to make a living from the sea.” They provisioned their ship, said their goodbyes, and set sail for a three-month voyage.
But something happened. Three whole years passed by. The fisherman’s wife feared that all three of her men had been lost at sea. One day, however, the grieving woman saw a lone man walking toward her house. She recognized him as her husband.
“My goodness! What has happened to my darling boys?” she cried.
The ragged fisherman began to tell his story: “We were just barely one whole day out to sea when Towards hooked into a great fish. Towards fought long and hard, but the fish was more than his equal. For a whole week they wrestled upon the waves without either of them letting up. Eventually the great fish started to win the battle, and Towards was pulled over the side of our ship. He was swallowed whole, and we never saw either of them again.”
“Oh dear, that must have been terrible!” said his wife. “What a huge fish that must of been!”
“Yes, it was,” said the fisherman, “but you should have seen the one that GOT AWAY. . . .”
O.K., it’s bad. But what a great story to prepare us to hear, once again, the old story of Jonah and the big fish.
God came to a man named Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh, a wicked city, and “preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me.” In other words, his assigned task was to proclaim God’s judgment on Nineveh’s sins.
But Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the historic enemy of Israel. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., the Assyrians plundered Palestine, looted and burned its cities and deported its inhabitants. In 722-721 B.C., it was Assyria that destroyed the Northern Kingdom.
Jonah hated the Assyrians, and so when God came to him and told him to preach to the people of Nineveh, Jonah went in the opposite direction. He boarded a ship traveling westward, bound for Tarshish on the coast of Spain, at the opposite end of the known world. He was fleeing from his calling; he was fleeing from the Lord. Of course, Jonah did not understand that Jehovah is a universal God from whom there is no escape.
You have probably heard sermons before from the book of Jonah on the futility of running from God. Yet we all do it at some time in our lives. We don’t board ships. We do it with our minds and hearts. We tune God out. We ignore the voice that calls us to serve our neighbor, serve our church, serve our God.
The immortal philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it like this, “At each man’s birth there comes into being an eternal vocation for him, expressly for him. To be true to himself in relation to this eternal vocation is the highest thing a man can practice.”‘
Well put! Have you discovered your calling from God?
Bishop William Willimon tells an amusing story about a young man named Sam who was quite troubled. Totally irresponsible, he made many mistakes, including flunking out of college. Forced to find a job, he met a woman there and married. They began attending a small church.
As time went on Sam felt a tugging on his heart, as if God were calling him toward the ministry. He dreaded telling his parents. Finally however he did. He explained that even though his life had taken uncertain twist and turns, he now felt he had found his calling.
When he had finished saying this, his mother burst into tears. Then she cried, “I’m so ashamed! I can’t believe this has happened!”
The young man was baffled by her response. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I can’t believe this has happened,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you that before you were born I had had a couple of miscarriages? I didn’t think we would ever have a child. So I promised God that if he would let me have a baby, that I could bring to term, if it were a boy I would name him Samuel and would dedicate him to God, just like Hannah did back in the Old Testament.”
Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked. “You could have saved me a whole lot of trouble if you would have told me about this.”
“We’re Methodists,” the mother replied. “How was I to know something like this would work? I didn’t even know that we even believed in this kind of thing. How was I to know that it would work?” (2)
I suspect many of us would be surprised at how many prayers we’ve prayed over the years have been answered. Sam was destined for the ministry. He would not be content anywhere else.
Jonah tried to flee from his calling and from God. But what happened? You know the story. The ship that he was on encountered a vicious storm and was tossed about on the waves like a toy. The winds and the waves were so fierce that seasoned sailors begged to their gods for mercy. Finally they cast lots in order to determine who the gods were angry with. “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?” they prayed.
The lot, of course, fell upon Jonah. Jonah confessed that he had displeased his God by seeking to flee from God’s presence. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” Jonah replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come.”
To their credit, these men did not want to throw Jonah overboard. They did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the LORD, “Please, LORD, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, LORD, have done as you pleased.”
Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.
And the Bible tells us that the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of that fish for three days and three nights. I believe it was Dwight L. Moody who said that it was perfectly easy for a great fish to swallow Jonah whole. After all, Jonah IS only one of the MINOR prophets.
Anyway, it is interesting to note that Jesus once referred to the story of Jonah. Remember how he told skeptics that the only sign that they would receive would be the sign of Jonah? Christ would emerge from the ground on the third day after his crucifixion just as Jonah had emerged from the belly of the fish.
Now we all should know the story up to this point. The big fish can no longer stomach Jonah after three days and coughs him up on dry land alive and well, and probably well chastened. Here is how one teacher visualizes the prophet Jonah. “I can just picture Jonah sitting on the beach, with a sign hanging around his neck stating, ‘If swallowed, induce vomiting.’”
At this point the Lord came to Jonah a second time and told him again to go preach to Nineveh. And this time Jonah was in no mood to argue. So he went to Nineveh and preached like he had never preached before.
“Forty days,” he cried, “and the Lord will destroy this city. Forty days is all you have to repent.” And something amazing occurred. Says the scripture, “The people of Nineveh believed God.” They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth all of them, from the greatest to the least. Even the king of Nineveh repented. He dressed in sackcloth and issued a decree of total surrender to the will of God. The revival was an astounding success. Every sinner repented. Every heart was changed. You would think that a preacher would rejoice in such a great victory being given to him. But not Jonah. And then the very thing Jonah feared most occurred. God changed His mind and decided not to destroy Nineveh.
Then we come to some of the most fascinating sentences in all of the Bible: “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD, ‘Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.’”
Can you believe that? Jonah had preached to the Ninevites. They had repented. Because they had repented, God had changed His mind about destroying them. Jonah should have been thrilled. Instead Jonah was so upset that God had changed his mind about destroying these people he was so angry that he asked God to take his life. He was so angry that he literally wanted to die.
Then Jonah went out on a hill overlooking the city to see what would happen to Nineveh to see if God would acknowledge Jonah’s displeasure. And, at this point, God decides to have a little fun with His cantankerous prophet. God makes a plant grow up near Jonah to shade him while he sits and pouts. And the plant pleases Jonah immensely. It’s one thing to have a temper tantrum. It’s another thing to sit all day in the hot sun. If he’s going to sit there until he dies, at least he will do it in comfort.
But then dawn comes the next morning and the Lord sends a worm to attack the plant that is shading Jonah so that it withers and dies. Then God sends a hot east wind, and the sun beats down on Jonah’s head. The heat is so intense Jonah faints. The heat makes Jonah so uncomfortable and so angry that again he asks God to let him die.
But then God speaks to Jonah. God asks Jonah if he is angry over the plant dying. Jonah answered that of course he is, angry enough to die. And then God teaches Jonah a lesson. In two of the most important verses in the Bible, God says to Jonah, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
And that is how the book of Jonah ends. One scholar suggests that the figure “120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left” is referring to young children in the city which suggests a total population of 1 million or more.
This is the lesson Jonah learned that day: God’s love is a universal love. God’s love is as certain for the people of Nineveh as it is for the people of Jerusalem or New York or San Francisco or Phoenix or Birmingham or [our town].
God does not respect nations or races or even religions. God loves all people white people, black people, rich people, poor people, old people, young people God isn’t interested in labels, professions or even philosophies. God is only interested in people. “God so loved the world,” states John 3:16. It doesn’t say, God so loved North America, or English speaking people, or capitalists, or liberals, or anything like that. “God so loved the world” that’s the gospel.
We have to learn to live together. We must learn to respect each other as members of a single family of God.
I don’t want to drive this point into the ground. But this is what the book of Jonah is about. God loves everybody: Jews and gentiles, Arabs and Africans, the people of Nineveh and the people of Israel. There is no place in the kingdom of God for any kind of hatred racial, religious, or national. We all belong to one great family, and Christ died for everyone’s sins. Your sins, my sins, but also the sins of our worst enemies.
Robert W. Youngs tells of having lunch at a small inn. Across the bottom of the menu was this notice: ONLY CHRISTIANS SERVED HERE. Being quite naive in those days, he remarked to his table companions that it was refreshing to find a hotel so interested in the Christian life.
“You miss the point,” one of his friends replied. “The hotel means that Jews are not welcome here.” (3)
That means that Jesus wouldn’t have been welcome there. Which of course is the idea. Anyplace where any of God’s children are not welcome, Jesus is not welcome. Thank God we do not see signs like that nowadays. Things have improved a little in our land. But the demand for us to love all people is still with us.
The little children’s song says it best, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”
1. From Dynamic Preaching, 2001. Source: Merry-Hearts@xc.org, Monday, July 13, 1998.
2. http://www.chapel.duke.edu/worship/sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=96.
3. Robert W. Youngs, What It Means To Be a Christian (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1960).