October 6 Sermon Bones (just the skeleton of the message)

·         Scripture: Jonah 1:1-16

·         Message/Theme: God is incorrigible in His mercy

Intro:

A Christmas Story is a movie about the many challenges of a boy named Ralphie. All adults, including Santa Claus, seem to conspire against Ralphie's desire to acquire a Red Ryder B-B gun. His father is constantly irritable. And the school bully torments him almost daily.

After one particularly trying day at school, Ralphie runs into the bully while walking home from school. Tired of being teased, Ralphie lets his rage get the best of him; he pummels the bully and bursts out into a string of obscenities.

Unbeknownst to Ralphie, his mother hears his tirade. She walks Ralphie home and sends him up to his room. As Ralphie waits fearfully for his dad to come home, he lies in his darkened room, staring at the ceiling with tears streaming down his cheeks. Ralphie anticipates the worst punishment.

Ralphie's mother finds the younger brother, Randy, hiding under the sink crying. She asks, "Randy, what's the matter? What are you crying for?"

Randy sobs, "Daddy's gonna kill Ralphie!" Even little Randy is terrified of the impending wrath that awaits Ralphie. Mom assures Randy that everything is going to work out, but he continues to whimper. As Mom walks about the kitchen trying to prepare supper, she too seems to be fretting about what may come.

Still locked in his room, Ralphie continues pondering his fate: I heard the car pull up the driveway, and a wave of terror broke over me. He'll know what I said—the awful things I said!

Hearing his dad's voice, Ralphie walks downstairs to meet his fate. After some small talk, Dad asks, "What happened today?" Ralphie realizes it's all about to come out. He looks at his mother with a pained expression.

Surprisingly, his mother responds, "Nothing much. Ralphie had a fight."

Tension rises as Dad puts down the paper and looks at Ralphie with a stern gaze. "A fight? What kind of fight?"

Mom replies, "Oh, you know how boys are. I gave him a talking to. Oh, I see the Bears are playing the Packers Sunday."

It dawns on Ralphie that he has just experienced a modern-day Passover. The doom of which he was so certain passed over him as his mother poured out mercy. A smile breaks across Ralphie's face, and he beams at his mother. Ralphie says to himself, I slowly realized that I was not about to be destroyed. From then on, things were different between me and my mother."

·         Compassion and  mercy change everything. He was expecting one thing but received another - Jonah is full of this.

I) The "Insteads"

·         The element of surprise and the unexpected turns in the story are integral to the book. It is hard to hear these because we are so familiar with the story, but think of it from the point of a first time reader.  The almost humorous surprises communicate the message.

·         I call it "the Insteads" because you expect one thing but instead...

·         God tells Jonah to "go" but instead the prophet flees...

·         Instead of reaching their destination the boat is halted by a storm...

·         When told to throw Jonah over, the sailors instead start to row harder...

·         Instead of drowning/dying - a big fish swallows and saves Jonah...

The "insteads" just get bigger...

·         The city/King do not throw Jonah out but instead repent...

·         Instead of being happy/shaded Jonah is upset and gets heatstroke....

·         Instead of punishment God shows compassion through mercy...

·         The insteads teach us where our ways differ from God's ways - which is always our pint of learning.  There is not a bigger plot twist than God showing compassion such wicked people.

II) Compassion as an Agent of Change

·         Funny story of Helen and Rob Drake.  Helen was raised in a loving/verbally affirming family.  Rob was raised in loving family who did not outwardly show affection. Who do you think changed who?

·         What is God's ultimate goal in promising punishment for the wicked Ninevites?  To satisfy God's anger?  The same promise of punishment delivered by the prophets hangs over Israel's head and for a similar purpose - to bring repentance and a change in heart.

·         God gives Jonah second chance so he might have opportunity again to complete God's purposes for him - preach to Ninevah.  Similarly we remember that after denying Christ three times Peter is reinstated in John 21

·         Surprisingly the King of Ninevah hears Jonah's message and is moved to immediate action.  The King abdicates his high position in the face of the sovereign power of God, his throne and royal robes are exchanged for sackcloth and ashes (traditional mourning/remorse attire)

·         Note how people stereotypically think of the prophets and their message as just doom/gloom but Jonah lived at that time did not think that way about God at all.  He first runs from God because he believes God to be merciful and compassionate (and does not want Ninevah to be the recipients of such grace)

·         Justice is better served by reformed character instead of corpses.  Compassion/mercy does that.

·         God's deepest intent achieved through compassion and mercy, for "He does not want any to perish, but wants all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9)... and I would say, does not want any to perish, but instead to come to repentance.

·         Remember Matthew 9

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

·         This is straight from Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." That's what is pleasing to God. God is saying through the prophet Hosea s he does through his Son that the core of the God's strategy is mercy.

·         God knows how to put mercy and wrath together but most of us struggle with it. We have churches that are either happy God churches or angry God churches. Happy God churches are churches that speak only blessing, not curses. They airbrush truth and reality out of the Bible (there is a Hell as well as a Heaven). Angry God churches make you think God is up in heaven with a Louisville Slugger ready to pound you as soon as you do something wrong.

·                     The gospel knows how to put mercy and God's anger together to bring about  repentance. In fact, it is harder to understand God's mercy apart from God's anger and intolerance of sin. God is broken over Israel's sin, yet he's being gracious in the process. It is a strategy for change.

III) Judging God - Jonah's Complaints in chapter 4

·         Bad behavior should lead to a bad end.  This is most people's mindset, including that of Jonah who receives grace in chapter 2 deplores it in chapter 4. 

·         In the Old Testament Hebrew there is a wordplay in Jonah that is very hard or impossible to reproduce in the English.  The word for "wicked" or rendered wickedness when used to describe Ninevah, is also translated as "punishment" in other verses. The two translations from the same word makes a kind of sense to us because wickedness and punishment go together.  In fact, we tend to support the punishment of the wicked - and the sooner the better! 

·         Remember Luke 9 - the disciples are rejected by the Samaritans: "the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" ad behavior should lead to a bad end. Jonah applies that concept to himself so that when the boat is sinking and he is in the wrong, he assumes death - "Throw me overboard."

·         When we cast judgment on others we are chastised for "playing God" and thinking we know what is right and just.  But what we are actually doing when we judge others is judging God.  When our anger shows through for God not acting punishing wickedness we complain to God - God is wrong not to bring the fire down on them.

·         Throughout his story, Jonah sets himself up as the judge of God. He thinks he knows very well what God should do and how to handle the affairs of the world. God commands Jonah to preach to Nineveh, but Jonah believes this city should not be forgiven. By his actions, Jonah criticizes God and judges the God's plan to be wrong.

·         Jonah displays his anger at God in chapter 4, he then goes out to the east to the city and sits down to see if maybe God has gotten the point of his criticism and will destroy the Assyrians after all. Surely God will realize his mistake, accept Jonah's assessment of the situation, and bring destruction on the evil Assyrians. After all, evil people should get what they deserve.

·         But God does not let himself be instructed by this proud and angry prophet, and God instead exhibits his sovereignty in little teaching moments: a castor oil plant, a worm, a stout wind.  Jonah wants to die

·         God is incorrigible. He won't learn a thing. Jonah believes God can't get it through his head that evil should be punished, and so there is no structure to God's justice/judgment in the world (or so he believes). If the wicked do not get there just reward, then there's no logics to God's strategy.  God is totally free. He can grant mercy in life to whom he will, to disobedient Jonah and even to the wicked Ninevah. God is not coerced by goodness or obedience, by repentance or piety, or even by evil and disobedience.  In great mercy God wants to save.

Conclusion: Transition to Communion

Jonah wants to live as if God does not exist.  He wants to escape God... Forget about God.

·         Tarshish is mentioned three times when the actual place is not important at all, except that it emphasizes Jonah's desire to  get as far away as possible from God... to a place where God is not known or worshiped...

·         The spatial language in the story does the same: Jonah goes down to Joppa, down in the hold of the ship, down to the bottom of the sea, down to Sheol... as far from God as he can.  

·         Jonah wants to live as thought God does not exist, is not there - to forget about God.

            When the Scriptures talk about sin, they often talk about forgetting. When psalms 78 and 106 recap the history of Israel's sin, they do so by saying that Israel "forgot" what God had done (Psalm 78:11), or she "did not remember" the abundance of God's steadfast love (Psalm 106:7), or "They forgot His works" (Psalm 106 13), or "they forgot God, their Savior" (Psalm 106:21). They lived as though God were absent.

            Thus, Jesus can ask his disciples, "do you remember?" (Mark 8:18), and the angel of the empty tomb can tell the women, "remember how I told you..." (Luke 24:6. "Remember the word that I said to you," Jesus admonishes (John 15:20), and the author of second Timothy commands, "remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead" (2:8). In short, do not live with spiritual amnesia, but in the communal remembrance that is given to you to you in song, scripture and prayer, Sacrament and Christian practice.

·         God's ultimate goal in promising the punishment for sin is to offer mercy through our repentance.  Punishment is not to satisfy God's anger, God's wrath was satisfied by the sacrifice Jesus made and we remember in Communion. 

·         The Israelite's chosen form of rejecting God is through a lack of memory. They forget the greatness of God. In communion fellowship we will share stories of what God has done for us (and thus ‘remember’), because in remembering and giving thanks we exalt God's goodness and gracious nature.