You Can Run but You Can't Hide: A Sermon for the 3rd Week After Epiphany

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you in the name of Christ our Saviour. Amen.

Although I’m sure everyone knows how it goes, Jonah’s story isn’t one we hear very often in our lectionary. The Book of Jonah is only four chapters long, but we only get a few phrases of it this morning. So, I’m going to back up the story a little bit.

 

One day, God said to Jonah, "Go to the city of Nineveh and tell the people who live there that they are a very wicked people and that they need to change their ways." But Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. He didn’t like the people in that city, and maybe he was afraid of them and of the size of the city. So, Jonah decided to run away and hide from God. He caught the first ship out of town and headed in the opposite direction from where God told him to go.

 

Jonah learned a very important lesson that day. He learned that you might run from God, but you cannot hide. Jonah got on that ship and hid way down deep inside. "Surely God won't find me here," Jonah thought. But God sent a big storm and tossed that boat around so much that the other sailors thought they were going to drown.

 

They found Jonah in the bottom of the ship and asked him, "Who are you and what are you doing here?" Jonah answered, "I am a worshiper of the God of heaven, who made the land and the sea." Jonah told the sailors that he was running from God because he didn't want to go to Nineveh as God had told him to do.

 

When the sailors learned that Jonah was running from God, they were even more afraid. "What should we do to stop this terrible storm?" the sailors asked. "Throw me overboard into the sea," Jonah answered, "and the sea will become calm." The sailors picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea and the storm stopped at once.

 

Did Jonah drown in the sea? No! God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he was inside the fish for three days and three nights. Spending all that time inside the great fish gave Jonah plenty of time to think. He prayed to the Lord from inside the fish. He confessed that he had been wrong to run from the Lord and promised to fulfill his promises to God.

 

God caused the fish to spit Jonah out onto the shore. Then the Lord spoke to Jonah again and said, "Get up and go to Nineveh and deliver the message that I have given you." This time Jonah obeyed the Lord's command and went to Nineveh.

 

Unlike some of the other books in the bible, it’s pretty hard to believe that Jonah’s story is historical. More than like it is meant to be taken as satire. But Jonah is more than just a big fish tale. It is a humourous story about a lousy prophet, a story filled with surprise and humor and pokes fun at would-be prophets who are called to proclaim a God of love and acceptance but instead stand on the street corner announcing that God hates everyone who is not like they are.

 

Jonah was called by God to spread the word of God, to be a prophet. But, unlike Simon, Andrew, James, and John, he doesn’t leave what he’s doing and immediately follow God’s call. He jumps on the first boat going in the opposite direction and he hides in the hold of the ship, hoping that somehow God won’t take notice.

 

Imagine if Simon, Andrew, James, and John, upon encountering Jesus, jumped into their fishing boats and rowed like madmen for the opposite shore, as far away from this dangerous itinerant preacher as they could get.

 

That’s what Jonah did.

 

Jonah got as far away from God, and God’s bizarre instructions, as he could get. Go to Nineveh? The capital of the Assyrian Empire, that destroyer of Israel, that brutal occupying force? It was unthinkable.

 

Jonah runs away, but God sends a storm. The sailors are more pious than Jonah but they eventually, reluctantly throw Jonah overboard. The sea calms down immediately and so the sailors accept the existence of God.

 

God then calls on a big fish to swallow Jonah whole, who is then stuck in there for three days and three nights. Jonah, totally immersed in sea water and fish blubber, does end up praying to God. It was a self-serving prayer, with the sole purpose of saving Jonah’s life. God hears Jonah’s prayer. God speaks to the great fish, and the fish spits him out onto dry land.

 

That’s where we enter the story with today’s reading. God, once again, tells Jonah to go to Ninevah to deliver the message to change and repent. And, this time, still covered in sea water and fish saliva, Jonah obeys. He walks into the city and preaches the shortest and most hopeless sermon ever recorded, “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown!” Where was the promise, the hope, the love of God in this sermon?

 

The people of Nineveh believed Jonah without question, just like Simon, Andrew, James, and John believed Jesus without question. The Ninevites believed that God is about to destroy them, spewed acts and words of repentance, and changed their lives so completely that God forgave them and decided to not bring about any punishment regarding their actions.

 

That would make Jonah the most successful prophet in the bible! Every person in Nineveh believed Jonah and turned to God. But instead of celebrating, Jonah storms off and pouts under a tree. Jonah wants God to punish those nasty Ninevites for all of the terrible things they have done. That God did not punish the Ninevites was shocking to Jonah. And the prospect of worshipping in the same pew with a repulsive Ninevite, those newly repentant folk in the city dancing and singing for joy at their newfound faith, fills him with disgust.

 

Jonah’s story ends with God asking Jonah why the Ninevites don’t deserve God’s care, grace, and love but we don’t get to hear Jonah’s answer. We are left hanging.

 

Jonah is a prophet gone bad and, unfortunately, he is alive and well and living among us, and too often, in us.

 

Here’s the thing about following the call of God in and through the waters: God is God and does not act as we think God should act. In good faith, we follow where we hear God’s call, we go to the city, or the suburb, or to the small town, or the rural community, and we are prepared to bring God’s word to that place, and what we find is that God is already there before us. We find that no people, and no place, not even Nineveh, can be called God-forsaken. God is everywhere, even before we get there.

 

Whenever we read the Bible and use it to exclude, deny, and reject living creatures of God, there is Jonah.

 

Whenever we say we will follow God but in fact follow our own desires, our own narrow-minded ways, there is Jonah.

 

Whenever we hope that persons who are not like us, who do not sound like us or think like us or act like us, should be removed from the earth by some edict of God, there is Jonah.

 

Think of a person you find difficult to love. Now consider the fact that the God that loves you, loves them just as much.

 

The same God who gave Jonah a second chance gives the people of Nineveh a second chance, and we can’t begrudge that kind of mercy.

 

God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. May this loving and merciful God quell the Jonahs in our hearts and in our lives.

 

Amen.

Resources:

"Feasting on the Word" edited by David L Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor