Remembering the Past...
        Planning the Future

    Park Christian Church
                                                                    (Disciples of Christ)

January 25, 2009

Scripture:         Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Sermon:           “The Power of God’s Word”

            I love this story.  I really do.  You know it, don’t you?  About a man named Jonah?  Our elders used to pass this down to us in places like Sunday School.  And when you’re only yay big there’s just something about that man getting swallowed up by a big ole fish.

            Starts out when God called out to the son of Amittai.  His name was Jonah.  God said, “Jonah, get up and go to that great city of Nineveh.  I’m going to have you cry out against it.  I cannot stand their wickedness no more.”

            And that was a pretty good thing, you see.  Nineveh was a terrible place.  That’s where those Assyrians breathed out violence and menace all over everybody, carrying folks off into exile.  Ruthless.  Remember what Nahum said about that place.  Ah!  You city of bloodshed.  Utterly deceitful, full of booty—no end to the plunder.  Who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?  Hmmmm.  Yes.  Rotten town, Nineveh.

            So, God had seen enough.  And it was Jonah that was going to go right into that city and tell them what for!  It’s good to know that the God of the universe has a notion or two about justice.  I’d imagine Jonah might just enjoy such a privilege as to lay it on a bunch of people like they were over in Nineveh.

            But, the story doesn’t go like that.  The story says that Jonah hopped on a boat headed to a place called Tarshish.  Now, you know as well as I do that you can’t get from the land of Israel to that city of Nineveh in a boat.  Oh, no.  Jonah wasn’t doing what God told him to do.  In fact, he high tailed in the other direction to go on vacation.  Tarshish!  The Mediterranean coast of Spain.  Might as well have been going to the beach in Florida.

            How are you going to flee away from God like that?

            And when God saw this foolishness there happened up a mighty storm on the water.  Vicious thing.  Water filling up the boat.  The masts just creaking and cracking.  Everybody crying out to this god and that one.  Have mercy.  Have mercy.  Save us.

            Now you and I both know that it didn’t have a thing to do with those other poor souls on Jonah’s boat.  And they figured it out, too.  When Jonah came clean about trying to run away from God and what God had told him to do, they wouldn’t stand for it.  And they plucked him up right there on the deck of the boat, right by the belt, you know.  Tossed ole Jonah into the raging sea.  The winds stilled and those men sailed on away.

            Here’s the part you’ve been waiting for.  I know it.  It’s my favorite part, too.  Jonah could’ve drowned out there.  And you know what happened.  The story goes that God provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah.  And for three days, and for three nights, Jonah was in the belly.  In the belly and praying.  When the time came, God whispered to that big fish, and out came Jonah onto the safety of dry land.

            You can bet that Jonah went straight away on over to Nineveh then.  And it was time to get down to the business of letting those crooked people hear about how God was going to punish them for all they’d done to so many people.  Here’s what the Bible says:

            The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”  So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.  Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.  Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk.  And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth…When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

            Now, you heard it didn’t you?  Said “God changed his mind”.  Get your head around that because most folks don’t think God is in the business of changing his mind.  And it sure wasn’t what ole Jonah wanted.  He went out and sulked under the shade of a broom tree.  Whimpering and all that.  “Oh, great!  I just knew you were slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.  I just knew it.  You’re so ready to relent from punishing.  I’d just rather die.”

            Foolishness that was.

            But, something kind of remarkable took place in that dark place called Nineveh.  Didn’t it?  Jonah just kind of walked into town, mentioned this little prophecy of doom and gloom, and suddenly the whole town was in an uproar.  They were falling all over themselves to show repentance.  Sackcloth.  Ashes.  The whole nine yards.  From the king on down to the fellas in the sanitation department.  Nobody ate for days on end.  Even the animals of the city got in on the act.

            Says something about the power of God’s word, I think.  Just hearing it sometimes will give a person pause to consider what life is truly all about.  Might wake you up, change your ways.  Might lead to a life more fulfilling than the world has presented to you thus far.

            This past week we as a nation inaugurated our 44^th president.  And that’s always an exciting thing.  Pageantry.  New beginnings.  Puts a bit more patriotism in all of us even in the midst of trepidations and hesitations.

            Part of all that was taking place over in Washington was a national prayer service the day after the inauguration.  And you know who was chosen to preach at that?  You do.  You know because I’ve been quite proud of it.  It was our very own General Minister and President Sharon Watkins.  And having met Sharon a few times, I was beaming to see her in such a position.  Imagine that.  Our small denomination was chosen to preach to the incoming president himself.  First woman to ever do this thing, too, I might add.

            Well, she shared this old Cherokee story that I think is worth repeating.  Right there to the president!  Anyhow, it says that one evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.  “There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old man said.  “One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear...The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love.”

            The grandson sat, thinking, then asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?”

            His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

            That’s how the Cherokees said it.  Here in the church we have the very same idea.  We don’t talk about wolves and such.  But, it’s the same thing.  It’s like Paul said to the Romans.  “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to god through Jesus Christ our Lord.

            And Paul goes on to prescribe that folks “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

            An internal battle.

            I’ll tell you something.  Look around and you’ll hear all kinds of folks saying this sort of thing.  Hindus believe that there are many gods and deities.  But at the very top of their understanding is a god they call Brahma who is creating while coexisting with a god they call Shiva who is destroying.  Somewhere in that is a way for Hindus to connect with one or the other.  It sounds an awful lot like two wolves doing battle in the soul.

            Buddhists don’t have a god, really.  Not in the way we understand.  But, they’ve got this same notion.  They say something about how a lotus flower embodies our impulses towards creation or destruction.  Life’s three poisons are like the lower parts of that flower that extend downward into the mud.  They are greed, ill will, and delusion.  But, contrast that to the blooms of generosity, loving-kindness, and wisdom.  Buddhists seek to cultivate one while working to eradicate the other.

            Maybe you’ve seen that Eastern symbol that other people claim.  It’s a twisting together of black and white tear shapes.  The yin and the yang.  Chinese or Korean folks say that it is the coexistence of light and dark within all things.

            Keep looking, too.  There’s more.  You’ll hear a great deal about the word jihad.  And what some folks have done with that notion gives a pretty bad taste for the whole of the religion of Islam.  It’s more historic understanding, however, sounds pretty familiar.  Jihad for a Muslim is a struggle to live in the way God had intended for human beings.

            You’ll find it in just about every flavor of human spirituality.  All of which says to me that this internal struggle within us is one of the most fundamental and ancient quests of human existence.  What’s going on inside of me?  How is it that I’m capable of such outstanding goodness while at the same time capable of such utter destruction?  And why do I choose the destruction when I do?  How can I stop?

            Now, Jonah is a thoroughly Jewish story.  So, I should mention that Jews have a way of talking about this, too.  They say that we are guided by impulses within us.  One is the yetzer ra, and it is the evil impulse.  A consuming thing.  It’s counterpart is the yetzer tov, or the impulse towards the good.  And from what I’ve been told, Jews say that these impulses are a part even of God!

            You might think I’ve wandered away from what happened in Nineveh that day when Jonah showed up.  But, something happened and it’s as old as the hills.  Something that no person has ever escaped in a journey of life.  They faced the challenge of what was winning the battle of their souls.  Filled with greed, anger, bloodlust, one wolf had been fed to its contentment.  And that’s not a story about the ancient ancestors of the people of Iraq, which is where Nineveh could be found, you know.  It’s a story about every man, woman, and child.

            Something happened.  It had to do with an encounter with the God of the universe who creates according to love.  Deep down within them must have been something yearning to love as well.  But, that wolf hadn’t been fed in a long, long time.

            Jonah said something about it to them.  Said God wasn’t going to just sit by idly while that wolf ran roughshod over everybody else in the world.  No.  That business will not last.  That sort of thing cannot stand.  And out of God’s love would come a challenge to the bitterness they harbored inside.  Wouldn’t be pleasant.  But, had to be done.

            Something happened when Jonah said that.  Forty more days.  Forty more days and that’s all God’s going to tolerate.  Even that has the sound of grace, doesn’t it?

            That one little utterance from the mind of God and they decided it was time to start feeding another wolf instead.  And so it is.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)