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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Year B
January 21, 2024
Pastor Mark Ditmanson

Jonah 3: 1-5; 10
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1: 14-20

            I am always excited to share a word from Jonah.  First, something about Jonah, and then something about us.  Jonah is a fascinating prophet.  To me this story tells me that Jonah had a passion.  Sadly it was not God’s Word, but it was his prejudice, his hatred, judgementalism and narrow view of the world.  He was not passionate about his prophetic job. But, as you and I as people of Biblical faith have long known, divided loyalties are dangerous.  Jonah’s prejudicial passion was that which led him to direct disobedience of the known will of God.  We have seen that replayed since.  It was an attitude that endangered the lives of others.  It was a stubbornness that withheld the grace of God to a repentant people.  He knew that Nineveh was the hammer that would someday shatter Israel into oblivion.  Thus, even when God ordered him to preach hellfire and brimstone to Nineveh, he refused.  “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city,” said the Lord to Jonah, “and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”  Jonah was enough of a prophet to know that God’s mercy is given to those who repent.  Jonah was Israelite enough to believe that condemning Ninevites would be a death sentence for himself. Jonah’s life is a parable about how easy it is to become entrenched in our own, parochial point of view, how preconceived judgements dictate what we are willing to believe.  There is a natural, all-too-human reluctance to accept that others – who are different from ourselves - are equal recipients of the grace of God.  And he definitely does not want to share with people so opposed to his idea of how to be acceptable to God. 

The story about Jonah is definitely one that delivers a powerful message.  Quite the opposite kind of story the disciples of Jesus present.  God calls Jonah in the exact opposite direction of what he wants to do, opposite what believes he should do, opposite what he is willing to do.  God calls Jonah to go to the center of the capital city of the axis of evil of his day.  God tells Jonah to go to people’s whose reputations strike fear and anxiety into others.  And it is to such as these that the Lord says go and deliver unto them the privilege of hearing God’s communication - God’s Word.  Yes, God tells Jonah to deliver an ultimatum; and as dire as it would sound, Jonah was wise enough in the ways of God to know that, whenever God speaks to anyone, it is always an invitation to change, to repent, to return, to come home, to be loved.  And so Jonah refused, because he knew God’s heart of love, and Jonah hated those Ninevites!  No way, he won’t go!

            You know the story very well; and what happened? Well, Jonah with his mind made up runs from the God of steadfast mercy and love, and his first encounter was with a group of tough pagan sailors, who end up praying to Jehovah – to Jonah’s God.  These were men who would pray to any god, any god whatever; and now they changed and called out to the one true God ending their prayer with a petition as honestly pious as that of Eli the priest of Shiloh, or Jesus himself in the garden of Gethsemane.  These pagans were converted in the presence of God!  Jonah then spent three nights in the belly of a man-eating-fish until he prayed the way he should.  God then spoke to the fish, and at that Word of God the fish itself changed its mind about digesting Jonah and spewed him out.  Get it?  The fish repented its actions when God spoke.  The story is asking, will Jonah have as much sense as that fish?  And thus this marvelous parable of a story is asking, we will have as much sense as that fish?

            So finally Jonah got the second chance we read about this morning. Jonah went to Nineveh and he went to preach to the people whom he hated.  He entered the evil pagan city with a simple message from God that sparked an absolute national transformation so thorough that from the king to pauper to livestock – everyone, all in the nation repented, and all turned to the one true God they had never before worshipped.  And that was the last thing that Jonah wanted to see – his ultimate enemy, the people he loved to demonize, the people he loved to hate – on them God bestowed mercy; God showed love to Jonah’s enemies.  Yes, everyone in this story repented and changed in the presence of God, or almost everyone. Please note the dramatic point written indelibly into the parable of Jonah, all repent, except Jonah.  Why, even God repented -- because change, possibility, and renewal are warp and weft of the fabric of the reality of God.  Jonah alone did not change, and was left to sulk in the loneliness of his bitterness.  Evidently Jonah’s passion to hold onto his preconceived ideas meant that he just couldn’t hear God saying – “All lives matter!”

            The purpose of Biblical stories is to teach us truths that are higher than the mis-representations we devise in our desires.  We tell these stories on ourselves each time we recognize Jonah in our own responses, each time a parochial bias or opinion seeks to claim authority higher than the truth we receive from God.  We tell these stories on ourselves so that we will remember the response of simple good people willing to follow God into a mission of healing, renewal, compassion, forgiveness, justice, equity, and reconciliation.  These stories show us the paths to avoid and the paths to choose.  These stories invite us to be open to God and to let God’s Word act through us.  And it is so important in these days that we do.  We need these stories because there are other story tellers today who are intent on mis-leading new generations away from the truth of God – away from the grace and ultimacy of love.  There are others, there have always been others, who twist and manipulate truth for evil purpose. 

            We all know of another disciple who heard the call of God and, though he admitted to having some of Jonah’s misgivings, he responded like Peter and Andrew, and James and John.  Martin Luther King Jr. in an Advent sermon in 1967 said how happy he was that Jesus never told him he had to like his enemies. As King preached, “there are people I find pretty difficult to like…I can’t like anybody who would bomb my house.  I can’t like anybody who would exploit me.  I can’t like anybody who would trample me with injustices.  I can’t like them.  I can’t like anyone who threatens to kill me day in and day out.”  But as he preached, he said he could love them! Why? And how is that even possible? Because God told him to, and because he understood what was at stake.  He said “hate is injurious to the hater as well as the hated.”  Whereas to love is to participate in the higher truth that carries with it healing, reconciliation, hope, life.  By loving those who would be much easier to hate, dislike, or avoid, King said “We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.”

            Such a story might ask of us to admit the times we have been more like Jonah and less than a disciple of Christ.  But the joy of this book is hope.  The book of Jonah clearly proclaims that our God is a God of second chances!  And a key verse carries the simple message.  Memorize this “The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.”  God’s Word renews our call every day to live a higher purpose, tread paths more pure than preference, on a road that leads to renewal, on a journey where the light of life abundant shines, to enter the joy of the master whose steadfast love is everlasting. 

Pastor Mark Ditmanson
Pastor Mark Ditmanson
Retired
Grand Marais, MN

Mark Ditmanson is a retired pastor living in the Grand Marais, MN area. Beekeeping,monarch watching, gardening, and planting trees keep him busy these days.

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