Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (Epiphany 3B)
St. John, Galveston 1/21/2024
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Prophet Jonah is unique among the Old Testament Prophets in several respects. Certainly, he was the only Prophet who was swallowed up by a huge sea creature and later vomited out onto the shore. The event was so fanciful and miraculous that many people today wrongly take it as a mere tale with a spiritual meaning. Jesus though spoke of the event as a historic event. In fact, He spoke of it as a foreshadowing of His own death and resurrection. He said, “an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” And so, Jonah, being plunged into the heart of the sea and subsequently raised up again by the power of God, was a type, if you will, or a sign, of the coming death and resurrection of Jesus. 

Jonah is also the only prophet, who, when he was called by God, decided that he would go to a place where God couldn’t find him. In Jonah’s mind, that place was Tarsus, which was a town in Spain, on the far western shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Jonah apparently reasoned that God couldn’t be in Spain! Perhaps in Jonah then, among other things, our own attempts to avoid God or to hide from Him are revealed for what they truly are, namely silliness and vain attempts to flee from He who sees and knows all.

As we turn to chapter 3 of the Book of Jonah, the Old Testament reading for today, we are confronted with yet another unique aspect of Jonah’s life. In this case, he is the only prophet who was called by God to his prophetic office twice. Granted, Eli called Samuel several times, but it was only because Samuel didn’t know it was God calling. Jonah, on the other hand, was called twice because he refused to go the first time he was called. As the reading for today begins, “then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.” Here we’re reminded of the seeking nature of God and of the grace with which he pursues us. We are also reminded of the cleansing, or renewing nature of His forgiveness. Again, the first time God called Jonah, Jonah was completely rebellious, doing everything he could to deny and thwart the call of God on his life. And yet, God came to him a second time, not in vengeance and in wrath, but in mercy. Never once when God called Jonah the second time, did He make mention of Jonah’s former rebellion and disobedience. Such is the nature of God’s grace and forgiveness. That which is forgiven is forgotten. Indeed, “as far as the Easter is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

As we continue our reflection on Jonah and his calling as a prophet, what I’d like to do is consider an important question. The passage doesn’t explicitly state that Jonah repented, that the experience with the sea and the great fish humbled him, or that Yahweh’s salvation prompted his obedience, or that he planned to change his thinking to accommodate God’s desire to save all people, even pagan Gentiles like the Ninevites. And so, the question is this, why, when God called Jonah a second time, did he finally go to Nineveh to do what God called him to do? As we consider that question, I hope you’ll see that it isn’t simply an academic exercise. Rather, it has implications for each one of us as we live out our lives as the baptized children of God, those who, like Jonah, have been plunged into death in the water of our baptisms and who have been raised up again to live in newness of life.  

One answer as to why Jonah went when God called him the second time, might be that he realized that he couldn’t escape from God. God, after all, pursued him from Israel, across the sea, into the depths of the ocean, even to “the belly of Sheol” and “the underworld,” then out onto the land again. Jonah may have simply given in and given up, passively but not joyfully acquiescing to what God wanted him to do.

Another reason Jonah may have gone to Nineveh when called him the second time is that he had hopes that the Ninevites wouldn’t respond to his preaching, in which case they would be destroyed by God. Nothing would be sweeter for Jonah than the destruction of the people of Nineveh! For sure, Jonah knew all about God’s mercy, but he also knew that destruction and death could occur at the hand of God if repentance and faith were not forthcoming. His near-death experience after his own rebellion would have reinforced that. If Jonah is given any freedom in crafting his sermon, we might surmise that he might attempt to steer the Ninevites to destruction by delivering a sermon that contained no call for the Ninevites to repent, a sermon that said nothing about escape or salvation. If he did so, it would be as if he marched off to Nineveh with an explosive briefcase tucked under his arm, presumably packed with pounds of prophetic rhetorical explosives!

Or, perhaps Jonah went to the great city of Nineveh because of his renewed faith in the God of all grace and mercy. After all, God had saved him from the death he surely knew he deserved. Despite his rebellion, God had provided a great fish for his deliverance. He didn’t abandoned him in Sheol, rather, He raised him up to new life, and reinstalled him, if you will, into his prophetic office. God, and more specifically, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, came “to seek and to save what was lost” Just as Paul later urged the baptized members of the congregation in Rome to present themselves to God as people who once were dead but now were alive (Rom 6:1–18), so also Jonah had gone through his own “baptismal” drowning of the old man and resurrection of the new man of faith. He was now empowered to follow Yahweh’s command.

And so, Jonah went to Nineveh and called the people there to repentance. And, all along, he prayed that the people of Nineveh would repent and that God would forgive and restore them, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, when the Ninevites heeded God’s word and repented of their sin, Jonah was depressed about it. And you see, this is where we can all relate to Jonah’s experience with God’s call on his life. Jonah, a new creature in Christ, one who had been brought down in the waters to death, to Sheol, and raised again to new life, even when he decided to follow God’s will and go to Nineveh, remained a sinner saved by God’s grace. He was, as Luther so eloquently put it, simil ustes et peccatur, that is, at the same time a saint and a sinner.

Therein is where our paths cross with Jonah. A man, a Christian, awoke one Sunday morning and said to his wife, “I don’t want to go to church this morning.” His wife said, “why not?” He said, “well, because I’d really rather stay home and sleep in today. Besides, people there don’t like me anyway.” His wife said, “honey, I don’t think that’s really true. People there do like you. At least some of them do. Besides, she said, you have to go to church. You’re the pastor.”

Simil ustes et peccatur, at one and the same time a saint and a sinner. Folks, 
Christ has redeemed you, not because you are better than you were, or because you are finally walking in His ways, or because you are doing what He wants you to do. No, He has redeemed you in spite of the fact that you are the same person you’ve always been, a sinner saved by grace.

Even with all of his failings and his “attitude,” so to speak, Jonah was a new creation of God. Plunged as he was into the depths of the sea, and raised again to newness of life, he was a child of God, in spite of himself.

“Jesus has come! Now see bonds rent asunder!
Fetters of death now dissolve, disappear.
See Him burst through with a voice as of thunder!
He sets us free from our guilt and our fear.
Lifts us from shame to the place of His honor.
Jesus has come! Hear the roll of God’s thunder!

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +