The Power of the Worm

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Jonah 4

November 18, 2012 • Portage First UMC

It always amazes me how so much can come from so little. For instance, someone somewhere, in the last days of winter, plants a small seed, out of which grows a tomato plant that I purchase and put in my garden, and a few weeks later, we begin bringing in juicy red tomatoes. Lots of them. In fact, this year, I was convinced we wouldn’t have anything because of the dry conditions we had early in the summer, but we ended up having more than we’ve ever had. They were slow starting, but in the end we had lots of tomatoes. From small things come big results. Small things can drastically change the way things are. You know that to be true, perhaps in your own life, or in the life of someone you’ve been close to. A small inconsistency, a small spot on an x-ray, a small headache— those small things can tip us off that something much larger is going on. My friend, Pastor Stan Buck, went to the doctor with a headache and has ended up in the battle of his life against brain cancer. Small things, if paid attention to, can make a drastic change in our lives, sometimes for ill and sometimes for good. Of course, “paying attention to” the small things is key, especially if we’re talking about medical things. Like most men, I think I can handle the small things, they won’t take me down, I don’t need no stinkin’ doctor! A couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I both came down with the same respiratory junk that’s been going around, and she took the first sniffle as a warning and asked to go to the doctor. I ignored the small sniffles. The end results? She recovered quickly. I ended up laying in my chair for three days complaining about how sick I was. Ask my wife which she’s rather deal with! The small things can point to much larger things happening in our lives.

Just ask Jonah. For the last month, we’ve been looking at Jonah’s story, and some of you may have thought his story ended last week. In fact, one of our Sunday School classes, two weeks ago after the sermon, came and brought me their storybook about Jonah. And it tells how he ran from God, and didn’t want to preach to Nineveh (the enemies of God’s people), how he was swallowed by a big fish and then spit up on dry land. And the book ends this way: “God spoke to Jonah again and told him to go to Nineveh. This time Jonah obeyed.” The end. That’s the way we usually tell it Sunday School, isn’t it? We usually include the detail that Nineveh repented so his story has a happy Disney-esque ending. I was in college before I knew Jonah has a fourth chapter. Like maybe some of you, I had no idea there’s more to Jonah’s story. You see, it’s only in chapter 4 we learn that Jonah didn’t go to Nineveh joyfully. He went, but under protest, and with the secret hope that Nineveh wouldn’t repent and would still be destroyed.

Can you imagine what kind of preaching Jonah did there in Nineveh? He’s hoping God will still destroy them, so I see him wandering the streets, quietly saying, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (3:4). And yet, as Pastor Deb shared last week, someone heard and the city repented. God chose not to destroy them and chapter four begins with Jonah’s reaction: “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry” (4:1). Literally, the text says, “To Jonah it was a disaster, a great disaster” (Bruckner, NIV Application Commentary: Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, pg. 109). In Jonah’s mind, it was a disaster that they had avoided disaster. And he’s angry. He’s burning mad, the text says. He’s out-of-control angry, and he argues with God about it, but as with anyone who argues with God, he doesn’t get very far. So he goes out to the east side of the city, and he sits down, waiting to see what would happen. Why the east side? Typically, in Biblical imagery, God comes from the east. For instance, Jesus is said to be returning in the eastern sky (cf. Matthew 24:27). So Jonah sits on the eastern side of the city because he wants to be the first to see God sending destruction on this wicked city. He wants a front-row seat to their suffering, because he still hopes that, despite their momentary repentance, God will see through that and destroy them anyway. Jonah thinks he’s got a better plan than God. Even though he knew God would forgive them, he still hopes God will destroy them.

So he sits down and waits. But it’s hot there. It’s hot in the desert. So he builds a booth, made of wood and branches, but that’s only a little shade. Then, we’re told, God causes a plant to grow. It’s probably a caster oil plant, which grows quickly and has large leaves (Ogilvie, Communicator’s Commentary: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, pg. 428), and it gives Jonah better shelter, better shade. That makes him happy. He stays there the night, sleeping in his little booth, but when he wakes up, he notices something. The plant is withered. It’s gone, and more than that, there’s a hot breeze blowing in from the east. He finds that a worm, a grub of some sort, has eaten away at the base of the plant, and it has died as quickly as it sprung up. And so Jonah is back to being angry: “It would be better for me to die than to live” (4:8), he says. Really? That angry because a worm disrupted your comfort, Jonah? Angry because things (once again) didn’t go the way you thought they should? Angry at God because he didn’t destroy your worst enemy? What are you angry about, Jonah? It strikes me that this little worm has incredible power at this moment, because in doing what worms do, it causes Jonah to lose whatever little focus he had. Jonah is shown once again to be all about Jonah and not about the mission God sent him on. The worm has great power over Jonah’s life.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the story of Jonah is that there’s no ending. God shows up and reminds Jonah of his calling, and of God’s great compassion for the whole earth. God reminds Jonah that Jonah is called to share God’s love with everyone, regardless of who they are. And God shows Jonah that Jonah cares more about a vine and his own comfort than he does that there are people in Nineveh who might die in their wickedness. God reminds Jonah that Jonah’s heart is selfish. His heart is cold. His heart is not right. And the book ends with a question: “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?” (4:11). Should I not be concerned? And the question goes unanswered, at least in the book of Jonah. In my own life, that question is largely what has spurred me on in ministry. In 1987, over Christmas break, Cathy and I attended a missions conference at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and the theme of that weekend was this question: “Should I not be concerned?” We heard dynamic speakers like Billy Graham and Tony Campolo and Ajith Fernando, all of whom in different ways challenged us to answer that question with our lives. They asked all 17,000 of us college students to answer God’s call. Should I not be concerned? The question for us was how to live in a way that our lives reflect God’s concern for all of humanity, and all of creation. I heard a distinct call to ministry that night, though it took some time to discern how that would be lived out, but it’s that question that continues to drive me. Should I not be concerned? Our call is the same as Jonah’s—to live out God’s concern for the least, the last and the lost, to make a difference in our world, in our community. If our heart doesn’t reflect God’s concern, we’re left with Jonah, sitting in our little manmade booth, distanced from God and wondering how that happened. For Jonah, it’s always about “me” and never about God, but God calls us to be about his work rather than just our own.

So the question that emerges out of this text for us is this: what is your worm? What’s the thing that distracts you from God’s call on your life? We’re been asking that all throughout this study, and this morning we’re at a place where it’s time to answer the question, and more than that, to deal with the worm, to deal decisively with the thing or things in our lives that distract us from giving all we are to God’s mission rather than to our own pleasure. Do we want to be on Jonah’s team or God’s team?

Most of you are here this morning because you have chosen to fulfill God’s mission for your life through the work and ministry of this church. This church’s mission is to become a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ, and we do that through loving God, loving others and offering Jesus. And so every year for the last several, your church leadership has prayerfully and thoughtfully asked God what are the things we need to be about this coming year to reach more people for Jesus. We don’t want to be like Jonah, where we are so turned inward we can’t see those who yet need to experience God’s love. The day we become more concerned for ourselves and our own comfort is the day we should lock the doors and not come back. The church is the only institution that does not primarily exist for the sake of its own members. The church isn’t here for us. The church is here to equip us so we can reach the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. So what is it we must be about in 2013 to be growing in faithfulness to that calling?

One of our values is “radical hospitality,” and I recently heard our Bishop describe it this way. “Hospitality” is inviting someone over to watch the big game at your house. “Radical Hospitality” is giving them the remote! Now that’s radical! That’s helping someone new feel completely welcome. And while we are much better at hospitality than we were a few years ago, we still have much to do. So part of our aim this year is to do better at the ways we welcome people to this church, and Dan Easter is heading up much of that effort. By the time Advent begins in two weeks, we want to be a place that welcomes everyone well. And for all of us, that involves becoming better at doing that right in our own seats. There is plenty of time for us to visit with our friends during the week. On Sundays, it should be our goal to first welcome those who are new, those who may be giving “the God thing” one last chance. In fact, radical hospitality is so critical when you’re talking about helping people encounter Jesus Christ that if we don’t get it right, there’s no point in holding any of the other values we have. Passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk-taking mission and service and extravagant generosity won’t mean much if we fail to extend radical hospitality.

A second area we’re going to be focusing on this year is the re-launching of our blended worship service. Now, we’re not talking radical changes, but taking advantage of a chance to give that service its own voice and own style rather than simply being a service that borrows from everything else. We want it to be a uniquely passionate worship experience, and we’re going to ask for patience on this one, because, as the saying goes, we’re “flying the airplane as we’re building it.” I’m sure we’ll make some mistakes and have some mishaps, but working together, praying together, I’m confident we’re going to emerge with a stronger worship experience in all three of our services.

Our third goal has to do with Congregational Care, and this will probably involve the most work and the biggest adjustment for us as a congregation. The reality is this: we have grown as a church over the last few years. We currently have 421 members in this church, with an average attendance on Sunday mornings of a little over 300. But we have 792 people listed in our computer who call this church their home. And we have two pastors. Research indicates that most churches stay around 50-75 people because that’s all a single pastor can humanly care for. So, do the math. Two pastors. 792 people who might, at any moment, need pastoral care. It doesn’t add up. There was one day where, literally, three of you were having surgery in three different hospitals from Crown Point to Valpo at the exact same time. And Pastor Deb was on vacation. It becomes a matter of “first come, first serve” at that point, and that’s not the kind of care we want to provide. I know there have been times when we have missed a need, and I apologize for that. I apologize if you’ve been hurt because we haven’t been able to be there at the right moment. But dream with me, will you? Because I dream of an army of congregational caregivers who are trained and deployed and sent out with the blessing of the congregation to care, to visit, to listen, to help, to multiply the ministry of this church. And so this year, we’re evolving our Stephen Ministry, which has served us well these last few years, into something we’re calling Congregational Care. Again, the details of what that will look like aren’t clear yet, but it will mean you might be in the hospital and be visited by a caregiver. The biggest adjustment we’ll have to make as a congregation (and, for some of us, this might be our “worm”) is to realize that person is there to care for you on behalf of Christ and the church. The likelihood that you’ll be visited more often is higher with this dream. And the care you’ll receive will be more long-term and more in-depth. That’s my dream, and I look forward to seeing it come to pass in its infancy this year, as we seek better ways, broader ways to love others.

Fourth, we’re continuing to develop new leadership. In the United Methodist Church, we have a leadership vacuum because we’ve not been the best at raising up new leaders in our local churches. What we tend to do instead is to simply shift the same people from role to role, but the problem is that, eventually, we end up with no one who has been trained to lead. Every leader in this church, every committee chair, every ministry leader should be mentoring someone else, taking them alongside and helping them to develop their own ability to lead. One church puts it this way: that you should always be training a replacement, because none of us will be here forever. So to that end, for the last few years, we’ve sought to diversify our committees and teams so that ⅓ of every leadership group has members who are 60 and above; ⅓ of the group is middle aged, from ages 35-60, and the last ⅓ are young adults, up to age 35. Now, this is not about having a quota. Sometimes we meet that goal and sometimes we don’t. But it’s about all of the church being involved in ministry and in making disciples, not just one particular age group. Honestly, the group we’ve had the hardest time connecting with are young adults, so I just want to say quickly to those of you under 35: we need your leadership. We need your input. You are not the future of the church. You are the “right now,” and we need you.

So that’s where we’re headed in 2013, and all of that is with the understanding that, in the coming year, we will all “step up” our commitment to Christ and his church. We’ll get out from under our shady plant, stop insisting that God follow our plans, cease trying to make up God’s mind about who’s in and who’s out, and get busy following God on his mission. For those of us who are members, that’s what we agreed to when we took those vows. Being part of a church is not just about having a name on the roll so that when you die, your obituary says you were a member of a church. Contrary to American Express, where “membership has its privileges,” the church instead says, “membership has its responsibilities.” Jonah learned that being a prophet isn’t just about having an easy life or being someone people looked up to. Being a prophet meant obeying the word of the Lord, living up to what he had told God he would do. The same is true for us. This morning, when you leave, we have a card to give you. One side has our mission statement on it, and the other side has a list of expectations. You’re invited to take one whether you are an official member or not, because I believe whether we’ve taken formal vows or not, if we’re a Christian, these are expectations God has for us. This card, though, is couched in the terms of the membership vows for the United Methodist Church (prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness). Let me just read it to you. Portage First expects disciples of Jesus “to have a healthy and consistent prayer life, to be present in worship and attend each week unless I am sick or out-of-town, to have presence in a small group and grow my faith through Bible study, to give financial gifts in proportion to my income with my aspiration being to tithe (10% of my income), to use my spiritual gifts in service to God in our church and in our community through missions, outreach and evangelism, and to witness to others by sharing with them how my life has changed because of Jesus.” That’s what God expects of us in this place and time.

So let me ask you: are you up to the challenge? Are you ready to get out from under the vine and get involved in what God is doing in our church and in our community? Or let me ask it another way: how will you fulfill your part in God’s mission for the coming year? We can be like Jonah, and try running the other way, but that didn’t work out so well for him. Or we can do what Jonah should have done: respond to the best of our ability to the word of the Lord.

We have much to do here, in this church, in this community. It’s going to take people of much perseverance, much love and much generosity if we’re going to reach this community for Jesus Christ. At the bottom of our goal list every year is this statement: “Underlying all of this is an understanding of stewardship that calls us all to continue striving toward being a tithing church so that we might use the resources God has given us to impact the community and change the world. Anything less than a worldwide vision is too small for a church like Portage First.” One of our values is extravagant generosity, and it’s not just about money, but it is true that any ministry, any outreach, any worship, any meeting, anything we do requires funding. And when we give to God’s work through the church, we are making an impact that will last far beyond our own walls and even our own lifetimes. For instance, through your giving this last year, you have fed about 80 children who otherwise would have gone hungry on the weekends—and, more than that, you have challenged and inspired an entire community to get on board with doing that. We may never get the credit for that, but God knows, and he is pleased when children are cared for. Through your giving, you enabled a school in Appalachia to stay open when it looked like it might close, and you sent workers to repair homes in that poverty-riddled area. Through your giving, you enabled people in our community to get food when they went to the food pantry. Through your giving, you enable children and adults to learn about Jesus in many different ways here in this place. Through your giving, you’ve helped many families who were in distress. Through your giving, you’ve helped kids come to know Jesus through camp, you’ve helped abused children know they are loved, you’ve provided clean water and hurricane recovery in various parts of the world, and you’ve helped people in need or who are alone know that someone cares. You did that. We did that, all of us, together.

But there is more to do, and that requires the generosity of God’s people. The challenges in our community and in our world are no less in 2013 than they were in 2012. So yes, today is Generosity Sunday, and it’s the time when you are invited to make your commitment of being extravagantly generous in 2013. This is our time to remove the worms that get in the way so we can see the needs that exist and respond. Now, the Biblical expectation for all of God’s people is a tithe, 10% of our income. Actually, that’s where we start; that’s what the Old Testament talks about. Paul, in the New Testament, says we should give as much as we can, not because we have to, but because we want to. He even talks about doing it cheerfully. It’s not just about paying the bills. It’s about the ministry that your giving makes possible. And it’s not just about “giving up” 10%. I always say it’s not amazing that God asks 10% of us; it’s amazing God lets us keep 90%! As Paul asked the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). It all belongs to God anyway; he asks that we give back so that others can know and be touched by his love, just as we have been. Someone gave so that you could come to know God’s love. Now it’s up to us, to resist the urge to be Jonah and instead be who God calls us to be.

And God will be faithful to us as we are faithful to him. I believe that. I’ve experienced that. I’m going to ask the ushers to hand out the Generosity Cards at this point, and I want to talk about them for just a few moments before we fill them out and bring them forward. As they’re handing those out, I invite you to listen to a witness from one of our members about God’s faithfulness.

VIDEO: Jaymee Penrose

God is faithful and calls us to that same faithfulness, to get rid of the worms that stop us and to look for his bigger plan, his mission. So where will you jump into God’s mission here at Portage First? The Generosity Cards you have before you now are based around the five commitments we ask people to make who are in any way a part of this church: prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness.

Go over Generosity Cards…

So, now it’s time to make our commitments to God and to his church here in Portage. We’re going to pray, and then we will ask you to bring your cards forward and lay them on the communion railing. At this moment, we have the same choice Jonah had: do we join God on his mission, and put our all into it, or do we run the other way, telling God we’re just not that interested in what he’s doing? Let’s pray.

Refocused

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Jonah 2; Luke 22:39-46

November 4, 2012 • Portage First UMC

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed what has been happening in the last year or so, but it’s something so dastardly and so horrifying I hesitate even to talk about it in public. I’m referring, of course, to the way more and more things are being printed in smaller and smaller letters these days. It’s terrible! Things I used to be able read easily—like expiration dates on coupons and the small print on flyers—now seem to be blurry and difficult to read. The way I have to hold the coupons out or get more light to be able to read the writing is, I think, the manufacturer’s attempt to get me to give up on couponing altogether. In fact, this summer when I visited my eye doctor, I mentioned this conspiracy to him, and he said, “You know, Dennis, you are getting older. You’re not quite to the bifocal stage yet, but it’s coming.” I think it may be time to find a new eye doctor! It can’t be my eyes. It must be someone else’s fault! Right?

Or maybe it’s my problem after all. The doctor said all my eyes need is something to refocus them, something to help them see the way they once did. Some contacts that are a bit stronger. Maybe some reading glasses until the time comes when I need bifocals. And what is true in the world of optometry is also often true in other areas of life. Sometimes there are things we just aren’t able to see clearly. Maybe it’s because we’re too close. Maybe it’s because we’re too involved. Maybe it’s because we just don’t want to see it any other way than our own. Whatever the situation, there comes into each of our lives times when we, like Jonah, we need a bit of refocusing.

Last week, we began looking at the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet. Actually, he wasn’t that reluctant to be a prophet. He had already preached the word of God for some time before the story that’s in the book bearing his name. What he was reluctant to do, you might remember, is to preach in a particular place, in Nineveh, the capital city of Israel’s worst enemy. And so, you remember from chapter 1, he got on a boat and ran away from the presence or the face of God. God sent a storm, and the sailors had to throw Jonah into the sea to calm the storm. And that’s where we left Jonah last week, floating in the sea, certain to drown. 

Chapter one ends with these words: “Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (1:17). There is probably no other verse in the book of Jonah that has generated more ink than this one, because you basically end up with two camps on the “big fish” issue. One group says this is too incredible an event to have actually happened. And so they end up either thinking this story is a parable, not a true story but a work of fiction to make a point, or they find some other way of explaining it. One of my favorites is the scholar who says what the author really meant here is that Jonah went to an inn called “The Fish” and recuperated for three days and three nights (Alexander, “Jonah,” Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, pg. 111). That’s really stretching the text! Basically, some look for an explanation other than what John Wesley would have called the “plain sense of the text.” The author of Jonah clearly falls in the other camp, which accepts the story as it is. Jonah is swallowed by a big fish. Studies have been done to see if a human could even survive inside a fish, with questionable results, but the author of Jonah doesn’t present it as a natural occurrence. The point of the story is not the big fish. The point of the story is God’s provision. It is, the author says, the Lord who provides the fish. It is the Lord who makes sure Jonah has an all-expense paid “lower-than-steerage class” ride back to the shore. This part of the story of Jonah confronts us with what kind of God we believe in. Do we believe in a God who is powerful enough to suspend the laws of nature and provide a miracle? Do we believe in a God mighty enough to use whatever it will take to get a reluctant prophet’s attention? Whatever you might end up believing about the big fish, here’s the point: God provided for Jonah to be rescued and gave him time to be refocused.

And so, inside the fish, with nothing else to do it seems, Jonah prays. Last week, I mentioned that all throughout the first chapter, Jonah doesn’t once speak to God. God speaks to him, tells him to go and preach to Nineveh, but Jonah never says anything back to God. His actions are what convey his thoughts. He runs away from God’s instructions, and even when the ship is in danger of drowning, Jonah still doesn’t talk to God. He talks about God, but not to God. You sort of wonder what it’s going to take for him to wake up and realize the center of his problem is his broken relationship with God. But then, don’t we do the same thing? It’s awfully easy for us to talk about God more than we talk to God, even if that “talking about God” is how angry we are with God because this has gone wrong or that has fallen apart. What does it take for us to actually talk to God? When things are going fine, we think and believe we can do it on our own, we don’t really need God. And then, when we get sick, or we’re served with legal papers, or our spouse walks out on us, or someone we love dies—then we blame God, talk about how God has mistreated us, and sometimes we walk away from our faith. But what does it take for us to talk to God? Jonah’s lost everything, and he has no guarantee at this point in the story that he isn’t going to be digested by the big fish. And yet, something happens in Jonah’s heart in the belly of the big fish that causes him to pray, to cry out to God.

There are really two movements to Jonah’s prayer, and it might help us to think of them as “down” and “up.” Verse 2 through the first half of verse 6 is the “down” portion, where Jonah prays about how far “down” he has gone. He feels like he’s been in the “realm of the dead” and in the very depths of the sea. Even his stay in the belly of the big fish hints at that as “three days and three nights” was well-known in that time and place as the length of time it took to journey to “the underworld” (Alexander 112). Jonah believes he’s facing death. He’s been banished from God’s sight, surrounded by the waters that threaten to drown him, and “barred in” by the earth forever. In other words, when Jonah was thrown into the sea, he did not expect to survive. He’s gone about as far as one can go from God’s presence—which was his goal in the beginning. So, in some sense, he’s saying he accomplished what he set out to do, and as a prophet, he knows that running from God results only in death. It means going down to the “pit,” to the place of the dead (2:6). Running from God’s presence, Jonah learns, results in spiritual death, bad things.

Jonah comes to see that God will not let us continue forever in our rebellion against him. At some point, we will come to a moment of truth (cf. Olgilvie, Communicator’s Commentary: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, pg. 414). Jonah’s moment of truth came when he was thrown over the side of the ship. He had to face who he was…and who God is. Our moments of truth often come in less dramatic, but no less profound, ways. There came a point in my life, about ten years ago, where I wanted to run away from God, just like Jonah. Some things had happened which had caused me to doubt my calling, even to want to reject that calling. I’d had enough, and I was a bit like Jeremiah, who has the audacity to tell God, “You tricked me.” Actually, Jeremiah says, “You deceived me” or “You allured me” (20:7). I felt that way, and I remember telling God that on several occasions. My “belly of the big fish” moment came one evening when I was just about to quit. I was so low that I actually got the newspaper out and read through the want ads to see if there was anything else I could do. I wanted to run the other way. I wanted to be something other than a pastor. I would guess there are times when you want to run, too. Saints throughout the ages have felt that way. Today, we have remembered some wonderful saints who have impacted our lives in different ways, and today we remember their great faith that challenges or inspires us, and yet I’m fairly certain, if any of them were here to talk to us today, they would tell us about their Jonah moments, the times when they were about as low as they could go. We all have those moments.

There was even a moment in Jesus’ life when he was in the proverbial belly of the big fish. Actually, he was in a garden, struggling in his humanness to do the will of his heavenly father. Knowing what was to come the next day, Jesus prayed like he never prayed before: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me” (Luke 22:42). I don’t want to do this, Father! Now, how that is possible, that the Son of God can, in essence, consider rebelling against the Father? I don’t know. I just know what the text says and what Jesus prayed. There in the garden, Jesus prayed to be allowed to run the other way. And yet, there in the garden, he also found the strength to allow the Father to refocus him. It’s in those times of darkness, the times when we have nothing else to rely on, that we find, amazingly enough, a God who is with us through it all, even through our rebellion or our dark times. One of the most surprising things to come out after Mother Teresa died was a collection of her writings that was later published under the title Come Be My Light. We all know Mother Teresa as a woman of great faith and great action, and yet in those writings, she talked about how often she suffered spiritual dry spells, times when she didn’t “feel” God’s presence, times when it seemed as if God was silent. And yet, she maintained a determination to serve even when she felt as if she was in the belly of the big fish. Mother Teresa put it this way: “Even though I don’t feel his presence, I will seek to love him as he has never been loved” (qtd. in Hybels, The Power of a Whisper, pg. 157).

Jonah comes to that same place in the second half of his prayer, the “up” part. “You, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.” (2:6-7). “The pit” is the place of the dead in Hebrew understanding (Alexander 116), and Jonah recognizes God as the one who is pulling him “up,” away from death, back to life. There are resurrection overtones here, as Jonah comes back to the God he was trying to run away from. “With shouts of grateful praise, I will sacrifice to you” (2:9), and more than that, he says, “What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord’” (2:9). In that moment, Jonah returns to his vocation as a prophet. He’s going to do what God asks him to do. Now, as we will see in a couple of weeks, he’s still not happy about it. But he’s willing to do it. He’s willing to answer the call. Sometimes that is the first step we need to take. Like Mother Teresa said, we continue to love God even when we can’t feel his presence. As John Wesley told a preacher who was concerned that he didn’t have the feelings, “Preach faith until you have it; then preach faith.”

That night I spent with the want ads I learned two things. First, I learned that I have no marketable skills. None of the jobs included things I am capable of doing! And second, I remembered my calling. I remembered that I have been called by God to do what I am doing, that it’s his mission and not just my job. Now, I’d like to say that since that day, everything has been smooth sailing, but I can’t say that. It wouldn’t be true. There are still days, even some very recent days, where I’ve been ready to walk away from it all. And in those moments, in the belly of the big fish, I need God to refocus me, to help me see the bigger picture and to call me back to his mission. Sometimes, I go willingly and sometimes I’m like Jonah where I just do it because I have to. And yet, God uses that. God can work with a heart that is at least willing to go where he leads.

So that brings us to this church—to you and me, for we can be Jonah, too, people who know we are called by God and yet become content to sit by or even run away from that calling, that mission. I hope if you’ve been here any amount of time, you know our mission statement: to become a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ. That is what we’re called to do and who we are called to be, and we believe we do that in three ways: we love God, love others and offer Jesus. Every word in that mission statement is important. We believe that’s the call we’ve received from God, that we become a community (not a group of separate individuals, but people bound together as one) where all people (not just a few, but all) encounter (not just learn more about, but truly come in contact with) Jesus Christ (the one that all this is about). We could be just another social club. We could be just a place where people hang out and feel better about themselves because they’ve been here. We could be just another local business. But we’re not, any more than Jonah was just another guy who lived in Galilee. Jonah was called, and so are we. Peter says we are a “chosen people.” The King James Version of that verse says we are a “peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9). We’re not just another building on the corner. We are called to be God’s people. We’re called to participate in God’s mission to redeem this weary old world, to be leaders in loving God, loving others and offering Jesus.

Imagine with me, for a moment, what the world would look like if God’s people got serious about being part of God’s mission. What would it look like in our homes and our extended families if we seriously aimed at loving each other rather than tearing each other down? What would it look like in our communities if we really focused on practical things we could do to love each other, even the stranger, especially the least, the last and the lost? What might our election this week look like if we were fully committed to loving others completely? What if we were dedicated to introducing everyone we know to Jesus, the one who gave his life for us? If Jesus gave his very life for us, why do we have such a hard time giving our lives for him? It’s not just about “doing nice things.” It’s about doing the things—yes, even the hard things—God asks us to do: to love him by loving others and offering Jesus. Imagine what the world might look like if God’s people got serious about being on mission with him—whether we feel like it today or not? 

There is a story told of a young man who went to a wise teacher to find God. The teacher took him down by a river, and the young man thought maybe there was going to be some sort of ritual cleansing. Instead, the teacher grabbed the young man, pushed his head under water and held him there for a very long time. Just when the young man thought he couldn’t go on any longer, the teacher pulled him up and asked him what he was thinking about while his head was under water. “Air!” the young man gasped. “All I could think about was air.” The teacher nodded and said, “When you want God as much as you wanted air, you will find him” (Ogilvie 416). What will it take for us to want God and God’s mission more than anything else in life? What will it take for us to be refocused like that?

The chapter ends with Jonah being unceremoniously deposited back on land. Verse 10 says, “The Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.” It is quite an image, isn’t it? Don’t you wonder what Jonah looked like when he began the long walk toward Nineveh? How he smelled? I wonder if there was some place for him to stop and take a shower. But, seriously, the scene reminds me of another image that shows up in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. It’s in the letter to the church at Laodicea, a church that is decidedly lukewarm in its approach to and love of God. To that church, God says, “I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). It’s the same image—God will “vomit” Laodicea out of his mouth because they refuse to be who they are called to be. And yet, they still have hope, because that’s the same place in the Bible where that beautiful passage comes about Jesus knocking on the door of our hearts: “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20). There’s always hope. God always calls us back to his mission. Jonah, spit up on the beach, has a choice at this point: will he continue to be lukewarm in his approach or will be follow where God leads? It’s the same choice you and I face in this time and place as well.

And so this week, we leave Jonah on the beach, but as we stand there with him, I want to challenge you to set aside some time for prayer this week, to prayerfully and seriously consider where you are in Jonah’s story so far. What is God calling you to do? How is God calling you to be involved in the mission he has given this church? Maybe Jonah’s prayer would be a helpful place to start, or pray a prayer of your own and ask God to reignite your passion and your devotion to his mission. If we all took an hour this week to pray and reflect, what might God speak to us? Where might God lead us?

We begin that focus and reflection with the sacrament of holy communion. I don’t think there is anything we do in the church that grounds us more than this act of taking bread and drinking juice—this meal reminds us who we are. We are the redeemed. We are the forgiven, but we have been forgiven at great cost. It cost the life of the Son of God. The bread—his body, broken. The cup—his blood, spilled out. We were forgiven at such a great cost. Out of gratitude for all that Jesus has done for us, is what he asks of us so much? Let’s approach the table with that question in our hearts.