Jonah Throws Shade (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

Exodus 34:5-7
Matthew 9:35-38
Jonah 4:1-11

We are concluding our study of Jonah.  As chapter 3 ends we learn that the result of Jonah’s message to Nineveh is that God relents of the disaster that He said He would do to them, and He does not do it.  Now as chapter 4 begins we find out Jonah’s reaction - it displeases him exceedingly and he was angry.  The force of the language is much stronger.  Literally the texts says, “and it was evil to Jonah, a great evil and it was burning to him.”  Jonah, a prophet of God, actually describes God’s action in sparing Nineveh as evil.  

Evil is one of those words that has recurred throughout the book of Jonah.  Jonah is called to go to Nineveh because Nineveh’s evil has risen to God’s presence.  The sailors on the ship Jonah boards to flee Nineveh twice call the storm evil.  The king of Nineveh urges his people to turn from their evil.  The Lord relents of the evil that the Lord said He was going to do to Nineveh.  Now Jonah calls the Lord’s sparing of Nineveh evil and even calls it a great evil.   Nineveh was the great city, the fish that swallows Jonah was a great fish, and now the Lord’s action is called a great evil.  

After the sailors’ actions lead to the sparing of their lives from certain doom, the pagan sailors respond by sacrificing sacrifices and vowing vows the Lord.  By contrast Jonah responds to the sparing of the lives of the inhabitants of Nineveh from certain doom, by calling it evil.  In chapter 3 verse 9, the king of Nineveh hoped the Lord would turn from his fierce anger and now the turning on Nineveh angers Jonah.  

It is here that we finally learn what it was that made Jonah flee to Tarshish.  This information has not been revealed to this point in the story.  In our first sermon in Jonah, I made the point that Jonah fled because the Ninevites were part of the Assyrian Empire which was a very brutal and violent regime.  The Assyrians were the equivalent to the Nazi regime or ISIS and it was understandable that Jonah would be scared and run away.  However, here we learn that while this is true, it is only part of the story. 

In fact, if we look at Jonah with fresh eyes as an ancient Israelite who understand exactly who Jonah was dealing with, we would be sympathetic toward Jonah.  God sends Jonah to Nineveh with a message of doom because God is wrathful.  As an ancient Israelite you would think this wrath is appropriate since you would know it was the Assyrians who destroyed the Northern Kingdom and you knew they were terrible people.  You understand why Jonah would go the other way. Who wouldn’t?   Then you read that God would not let Jonah run away and miraculously intervenes so Jonah can deliver this message of a wrath to Nineveh.  You are not surprised then when you read that the message God gives to Jonah is, “forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”  Here Jonah delivers God’s message of wrath.  So until this point then we have a picture of a scared Jonah and a wrathful God. 

In fact, when we look back into the text, we see Jonah purposely undermining God’s message.  Jonah says yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.  The word yet is ambiguous, you cannot tell if it means during the next forty days or at the end of forty days.  Also, the word for overthrow is also ambiguous it means overturned which could be for good or bad.  In fact Jonah’s whole message breaks the standard pattern. Typically we expect a prophet to begin an announcement of judgment by stating that it is the word of the Lord.  Even though the phrase “the word of the Lord” is found throughout Jonah, Jonah neglects to state it here.  Also the whole point of delaying judgment for forty days is to allow time for repentance.  Jonah’s message does not make this possibility clear at all, to the point where the king of Nineveh says, “Who knows? God may turn and relent” as if there is only an outside chance.  

Breaking the pattern seems to be a trend throughout Jonah.  Jonah receives the standard prophetic commission and does the opposite.  When Jonah composes his song of thanksgiving in the guts of the fish, he uses a standard formula but leaves out the confession of wrongdoing.  Then Jonah breaks the pattern of the judgement prophecy.  Interestingly, in the next section of chapter 4 verses 2 and 3, Jonah prays a prayer that perfectly follows the pattern of a prayer of lament or complaint.  Previously Jonah had avoided prayer, now Jonah rushes to prayer.  Jonah is not good at a lot of things, but one thing Jonah is good at is a complaint prayer.

The most telling part of the whole story about Jonah is found in Jonah’s complaint.  Here we learn that Jonah fled because Jonah knew God was gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.  Jonah suspected that Nineveh just might somehow change God’s mind and Jonah knew God would do so.  

Now we learn that we have it all wrong, God is actually merciful and it is Jonah that is wrathful.  Jonah does not want to go Nineveh because he is afraid.  Rather by announcing doom, there is a small chance that Nineveh might repents and disaster would be avoided.  However, if Jonah does not go then there is no warning and disaster will fall on the people of Nineveh because they will inevitably persist in the violent, evil ways having no chance to reflect on their actions.  

Sharp eared listeners will know that this description of God in verse 2 is not something that Jonah just came up with.  In our first reading, Moses is interceding for the Hebrews after the Hebrews built a golden calf and began to worship it.  The Lord wants to wipe out all the people and start over again with just Moses.  Moses asks for mercy on behalf of the Hebrews and offers his life in their place.  Moses then asks God to show His glory.  God places Moses in the cleft of the rock because if Moses experienced the full depth of God’s glory, Moses would die.  Moses shares with us what he experienced, “the Lord the Lord merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and faithfulness.”  

These are the very words Jonah uses in his complaint before God.  However, unlike Moses, Jonah has not interceded, he asks for death to relieve himself of his anger and not in place of the Ninevites, he does not seek God’s glory but flees.  Shockingly, what Jonah is actually angry about is the very essence and being of what makes God who He is that was revealed to Moses in Exodus 34.  Jonah is angry not because God does something unexpected, but because God does exactly what Jonah expects because God’s actions are perfectly consistent with His character and that character is one that shows grace and mercy.  

Knowing this, we see that Jonah’s complaint is super offensive to God.  Jonah has rejected God for being God and yet look at how God responds.  God responds not with justifiably harsh words and actions as we might expect, but with a question inviting Jonah to examine himself.  God is showing Himself to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness by trying to persuade Jonah of his error rather than condemning Jonah.  God wants Jonah to answer the question, is your anger really so intense that you want to die?  

Jonah never answers the question.  Again he tries to flee from God building a shelter east of Nineveh to shield him from the sun hoping God may change His mind and wipe out Nineveh.  However, God will not leave Jonah alone just as God did not let his flight to Tarshish become the final word.  God still intends to instruct and challenge Jonah but now God does so indirectly as Jesus almost always does in the gospels when instructing others.  In fact we can think of this episode with the vine and the worm as an enacted parable.

The question the parable is trying to address is whether Jonah’s anger over God sparing Nineveh is justified.  Jonah is in the desert and so had constructed a small structure to protect him from the sun.  However, the booth was inadequate because the plant that God caused to grow provided better shade and protected Jonah from discomfort - the word for discomfort is evil.  Rather than being exceedingly angry, now Jonah is exceedingly glad.  That is until a worm God appointed just as God appointed the plant and just as God appointed the great fish, kills the plant.  God then appoints a scorching wind and again Jonah finds himself desiring his death.     Jonah is then asked the same question, do you do well to be angry with the plant?  This time Jonah answers the question.  Jonah feels his anger at the plant is justified.  

What this parable has done, as parables do, is remove the person from his immediate circumstances allowing the subject to examine an issue or question more objectively.  Good literature or film does this all the time.  Huckleberry Finn is on one level an boy’s adventure story but it forces the reader to confront issues about race because it takes the issue out of its normal context.  

So in this parable, the plant is like Nineveh.  God made the plant grow and become big enough to provide adequate shade and protection for Jonah.  Throughout the book of Jonah, Nineveh is described as a great city and in chapter 3, Nineveh is described as a great city to the Lord.  What God has done is helped Jonah see the world through God’s eyes rather than his own.  It makes sense to Jonah to be sad over the destruction of the plant.  What God is trying to explain to Jonah is that destroying Nineveh would anger God just as the death of the plant angered Jonah.  As the creator and the one who is sovereign over His creation, God is connected to His creation and that is why God desires its salvation and not its destruction.  

God specifically asks Jonah is he right to be angry with the plant.  In other words, is Jonah right to be angry with Nineveh?  The question is revealing, because it was God who appointed the plant and God who appointed the worm and God who appointed the scorching wind.  It makes no sense for Jonah to be angry at Nineveh.  What the parable has revealed is that Jonah is actually angry with God and specifically God’s character.  Again we go back to verse 2 when Jonah admits that the reason he fled was because He understood God’s character.  What God is trying to have Jonah understand is the reason for God’s desire for grace and mercy is because God is intimately compassionate for Nineveh and all His creation because He is the creator and He is sovereign. 

That is why their is such an emphasis on animals throughout the book of Jonah and why Jonah ends by mentioning all the cattle saved by not overthrowing Nineveh.  In fact verse 6 uses the name Lord God.  This is actually a pretty unusual way to refer to God usually one or the other is used but not both.  The only other time the Lord God is used together is in Genesis.  So what the book of Jonah is trying to do is again try to connect this story to creation.  

In fact you may notice another connection to Genesis.  God questions Jonah about his anger and is asked if it is good.  In Genesis 4, Cain is also warned about his anger and asked to do good.  After Cain’s murder, Cain lives east of Eden just as Jonah moves east of Nineveh.  Cain builds a city for protection after spurning God’s promise of protection.  Jonah builds a booth to protect himself for shade.  Shade is often used in the Old Testament as an image of God’s protection.  Both Cain and Jonah are upset over God’s acceptance of another.  They both want the other to die.  Cain kills Abel, but Jonah has only the option to kill himself.  Both desire to limit and control God’s favor for their own concerns.  Jonah’s anger, lack of compassion, and self pity have revealed him to fit the mold of Cain the murderer and the great villain of the story of the Old Testament. 

Now one of the great curiosities of Jonah is that the book lacks a conclusion.  We never learn how Jonah responds to God’s argument.  In fact, the book of Jonah exhibits an amazing amount of symmetry.  Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 parallel each other very well with the sailors confessing the Lord as a result of Jonah and are then saved from the storm.  The people of Nineveh also fear the Lord as a result of Jonah and are saved from being overturned.  Chapter 2 and 4 deal with Jonah and his prayers to the Lord.  Many charts have been made outlining these parallels and they show a very neat and ordered book.  Except there is no parallel for verses 5-11 in chapter 4.  So we are already set up for this section to be a little unusual.

There are several examples in the Bible where the conclusion is not supplied.  For example, I recently preached on the book of Ruth and we never learn if the ending led to any sort of change for Naomi who describes her life as bitterness. Mark ends with the Mary and Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus Christ silenced by fear.  We never learn how the older brother reacts after confronting his father over the love he shows his younger brother the prodigal son.  The history of the Old Testament ends with some measure of restoration of Israel but mostly just future promises.  

An incomplete ending often functions as a question for the hearer.  We are meant to insert ourselves in the story and reflect on ourselves.  When confronted with God’s blessing after difficulty will we remain bitter?  Will we be afraid or tell the world about the resurrection?  In the face of grace will we welcome others or will we persist in our anger?  Here the question we are left with is will we have compassion and love for others as God does?  Do we understand that God’s character is about mercy and graciousness?   Do we understand that God is the creator who loves His creation and if we are followers of God then we should love creation as well - including Assyrians and also much cattle.  

The book of Jonah raises the stakes on these questions even further.  Throughout the book of Jonah there are multiple references to the first 11 chapters of Genesis.  For example, in chapter 1 the evil of Nineveh rises up to the presence of the Lord.  In Genesis 11, the tower builders who live in the vicinity of Nineveh build a tower to reach heaven.  God issues judgment against Nineveh and the tower.  Nineveh is central to the story of Jonah especially its reputation for violence. Genesis 10 mentions the founding of Nineveh by the violent warrior Nimrod.  Genesis 6-9 records the story of Noah who survives a watery cataclysm by means of the ark.  Jonah 2 has Jonah surviving the great storm by means of a great fish.  The flood is a form of judgment and last forty days, Nineveh has forty days before judgment is issued.  Lamech brags about his violence, the Ninevites repent of their evil.  Both Jonah and Cain are questioned about their anger toward another and move east to flee God.  Adam and Eve make clothes from leaves to cover their nakedness, but God provides better clothes.  Jonah builds a booth to protect him from the sun, but God provides a plant that does a better job.  Adam and Eve are tested by a tree and a serpent is involved. Jonah is tested by a plant and a worm.  Adam and Eve are sentenced to death for eating from the forbidden tree.  Jonah wants to die after the plant withers.  Genesis has man and beast being created in the same day.  Jonah shows God concerned for his creation, both man and beast.  None of these are probably enough to make a case individually, but added together we can hear a lot of echoes from Genesis 1-11.

The reason I point this is out is because there is a pattern to these Genesis references.  The book of Jonah starts with references to Genesis 11 and ends with references to creation in Genesis 1 & 2.  So in Jonah we have a reversal of the events of Genesis 1- 11.  That means the clock is being wound back because God wants to remind Jonah that He cares about the salvation of His world because He is the creator.  This also means that Jonah’s anger and lack of compassion for others is not just disobedience, but it is the fundamental sin equivalent to Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the garden.  Adam and Eve also decided it was their prerogative to decide what was right and what was wrong as if God was not the creator.  Now Jonah wants to decide who receives compassion and mercy and who does not as if God was not the creator.  This is despite that fact that Jonah has received compassion and mercy in the face of his own disobedience and it even led Jonah to confess that salvation is the Lord’s.

Throughout this sermon series I have reiterated our need to think of Christianity in a bigger way with more imagination than we typically do.  One of the places we are guilty of this is in the gospels.  We usually read the gospels as the story of the incarnation which is really cool but then what’s really important is the crucifixion and resurrection.  All the stuff in the middle with the miracles is just Jesus trying to prove He is God.  However, if we think of the kingdom of God as the big story and one that encompasses more than sending souls to heaven after they die, we will begin to see the gospels stories as more than that.  

If we look at our second reading from Matthew 9 we see that Jesus is going around announcing that the kingdom of God is here.  What Jesus sees when He encounters people are people who are broken and lack any hope and have no teacher who will show them a different way.  In this way they are like the people of Nineveh who God describes as those who do not know their right hand from their left hand.  Jesus’s response then as someone who comes to begin the establishment of the kingdom of God is to have compassion for them.  Jesus heals because He sees that His creation is broken.  Jesus feeds because He see that His creation is in need.  Jesus announces the kingdom because He has compassion for His people.  Jesus then commissions His disciples to make the implementation of the kingdom their mission and right after this passage we have the twelve disciples named who are reconstituting the twelve tribes of Israel.

As God’s people we must have the mind of Christ who loves His creation.  Who looks at others and has compassion.  To understand that Christ’s desire is for everything to be redeemed and restored.  A concern for ourselves and our special relationship with God and lack of concern for others is not just wrong, it is THE fundamental problem.  We should care for our brothers and for our enemies and even the cattle because God cares for all of these and sees them and has compassion. We are not called as ministers of God’s vengeance, but as God’s emissaries delivering God’s message of hope to a broken world that is harassed and helpless and that does not know its right hand from its left hand.  Deliverance is the whole theme of Jonah - deliverance of the sailors from the storm, deliverance of Jonah from the guts of the fish, and deliverance of Nineveh from destruction.  Let us be a people who provide deliverance and proclaim deliverance and demonstrate deliverance - because as Christ tells us the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.  
 

Confronting Empire (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

2 Kings 18:28-35
John 18:33 - 19:16
Jonah 3:1-10

We are continuing our sermon series on Jonah.  Last week we looked at chapter 3 and specifically tried to answer three questions:  why does God send Jonah a second time?  why do the animals need to repent and wear sackcloth? and why does God change his mind?  The answer is that God is working to restore his whole creation, including things like animals, and He has chosen his people to do this and this is so important to God that He will give them second chances and will even condescend to change His mind.  The role of God’s people then is to be mediators bringing God’s message of blessing, hope, and second chances and work toward His mission of restoring creation.  

I want to start todays sermon by telling a story from history.  During the time of the Peloponnessian Wars between the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta, a group of Athenians ask the small island nation of Melos to ally with Athens against their enemy Sparta.  The Melesians ask why should they join Athens.  The Athenian delegation admits that there really is no reason for the Melesians to ally with the Athenians other than out of fear since the Athenians were more powerful than their tiny island city.  The Melesians refuse and Athens attacked Melos, killed all its men and sold its women and children into slavery.  The Green historian Thucydides concludes his description of the incident with the famous line, “The powerful do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”  For most of human history this this statement has been all too true.    

Today we are going to return to chapter 3, but this time I want to look at the chapter from a different perspective.  So you may noticed that each of our readings today is an example of God’s people and a confrontation with empire.  There is a theme that runs throughout the Bible contrasting the communities who follow God with the people who do not.  As those in my Sunday School class know, this division takes place right after the fall when God says that He will place enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.  It will develop first in the Cain and Abel story where Cain kills Abel and this is exiled and builds his own city.   This city develops technology but also develops the seeds of empire which I am defining as the rule of others by economic or violent power for the purpose of its own enrichment.  Such systems are oppressive and exploitative.  As the story of Genesis continues we see this demonstrated by one of the descendants of Cain, named Lamech who boasts that his life is characterized by vengeance and murder.  We see this demonstrated by the violent warrior Nimrod who founds the great cities of the Ancient Near East that will emerge as the seats of empire.

We see this battle in the story of the Hebrews who serve as slaves to the Egyptians.  We see this in the story of the Philistines and Israelites.  We see it in the Assyrians who conquer the Northern Kingdom and the Babylonians who conquer Judea.  We see it again in Daniel, who has visions of the great statue and the four beasts symbolic of the great empires who will oppress God’s people.  We see it again as Jesus subverts the power structure of both the Jewish ruler and the Romans and as Paul bears witness to the Kingdom of God throughout the Roman Empire.   We see it as John uses Babylon and the image of the beast as symbols of all systems that rule through power, violence, and exploitation.  The central message of the gospels is that Jesus is Lord and that means that Caesar or anyone else is not.

Augustine writing as the Roman Empire was falling, famously contrasted these as the City of God and the City of Man.  Throughout this sermon series I have repeatedly pointed out that Nineveh represented the great empire of its day.  The Assyrian empire was really the world’s first empire and ruled mostly through brutality, force, and fear.  I have catalogued many of the gory and brutal details of how Empire was done in Assyria, so I will not repeat them again.   However, my point is that the Assyrian Empire Jonah is facing is an example of the imperial ideology that is set in opposition to the system and ethics of the kingdom of God.

Now as we look at chapter 3 our focus is going to be on Nineveh and how Jonah confronts Nineveh.  The first thing I want us to pay attention to is verse 3, where Nineveh is for the third time in the book of Jonah described as a great city.  For reasons unknown to me, most translations do not include this, but it says Nineveh is a great city to God.  You may have to look for a footnote if you do not read that phrase “to God.”  This means that God is making a couple of claims on Nineveh.  Number one we are to think of Nineveh as belonging to God meaning God’s sovereignty extends to Nineveh.  Nineveh then does not belong to the king of Nineveh or to its chief goddess Ishtar, but to YHWH.  Israel’s God is claiming Nineveh for Himself.  

This phrase great city echoes the words of an Assyrian king named Sennacherib.  Here is how Sennacherib describes Assyria:

    At that time, Nineveh, the great city, the city bemercyed of Ishtar wherein all the
    meeting places of the gods and goddesses .. the eternal foundation, the plan of which
    had been drawn from of old in the heavens… where the kings who went had exercised
    Lordship over Assyria and had received yearly, without interruption, never ending tribute
    from the princes of the four quarters.  

Sennacherib is praising Nineveh because he has just renovated and rededicated the city to Ishtar and is claiming credit for its greatness.  However, Jonah is challenging this view that Nineveh’s greatness is due to Sennacherib or because of Ishtar.  The greatness of Nineveh is because God is sovereign over Nineveh and God has designated it a great city.  

We find this same notion in the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate.  Pilate here represents the imperial face of Rome.  In chapter 19, Jesus stands silent before Pilate’s questions and Pilate asks, “You will not speak to me?  Do you not know that I have the power to release you and power to crucify you?”  Jesus’ reply to Pilate’s claim of power is, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”  In both cases, Assyria and Rome, their leaders believe that their power comes from themselves.  However, God wants us to know that is not the case and that any ruler or empire only exercises dominion if God allows it.  

If you remember by to the sermon I preached during advent on Luke 2, the birth of Jesus makes a mockery of these claims of power.   Caesar in his attempt to tax the whole world is but a pawn that God is using to fulfill the prophecies about the birth of the messiah.  God manipulates the entire Roman imperial system to ensure that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem, the city of David.

When Jonah is dragged, hiding below in the ship, the sailors ask Jonah what he does and where he is from.  Jonah replies by telling the sailors that, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.”  When Jesus rises from the dead after receiving everything terrible the Roman Empire could do to Him, Jesus declares to His disciples, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to Me.”  The point that I want to make is that there is not one piece of the earth no matter its power or its might is not completely subject to God and the authority of Christ and there is not one piece of the earth that does not matter to God.  God claims for Himself Nineveh and Rome and every Empire as His own.  That means we as the church must also claim every piece of the earth.  Jesus sends his disciples out to Jerusalem, and to Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Jesus is asked if it is lawful to pay taxes to Rome and Jesus’ reply is that, we should render unto Caesar what is Caesars and unto God what is God’s”  Often this is seen as a way to achieve a nice, separation of the secular and the sacred, between church and state.  However, the subversive message Jesus is declaring is that everything belongs to God.  

Now the difficulty with this is what about kingdoms like Rome and Assyria that oppress and exploit.  So if we look back at the confrontation between Jesus and Caesar, Jesus tells Caesar that he has no power unless it was given you above.  However, what we might wish Jesus said was, “God is ending your power.”  Jesus does not do this because He acknowledges that God wants His kingdom ordered by human authority.  However, God tells us is that God will hold authority accountable.  In fact that is what is going on when Jonah confronts Nineveh - God is holding authority into account.  

The take home message then is that all the empires of this world with their aspirations of power all receive their power because God allows them too.  God holds them accountable and can remove that power when He chooses.  As the church confronts Rome or Assyria on any other empire this should provide comfort and hope.

The trick here is that because God has allowed human rulers to exercise power, they inevitably abuse that power.  Jesus confronts Rome and Rome crucifies Him.  God does not promise a favorable outcome.  In our first reading, Jerusalem is surrounded by the army of Assyria under Sennacherib.  This takes place about forty or fifty years after the events of Jonah.  Every other city in Judea had been defeated and now only Jerusalem stands.  Sennacherib has sent out one of his officials called the Rabshakeh to try and persuade Jerusalem to surrender.  

One of the arguments the Rabshakeh uses to make Assyria’s case is that Assyria’s success is proof of God’s favor.  The teaching of scripture is never so straightforward.  God often allows the wicked to prosper.  However, we are always reminded that despite appearances, their fate is sealed.  Part of the point of Revelation is to paint a picture of human events from the heavenly perspective.  In heaven, Jesus is sitting on the throne ruling and actively working to bring an end to the forces of evil that lie behind empire.   This is meant to bolster the faith and give hope to those who are presently suffering under Rome’s oppressive might and overwhelmed by its apparent victory.  Assyria and Rome will both fall.   The message for us is to live by faith and not by sight.  That means that we should not be discouraged or lose hope even in the face of the apparent victory of evil.  ISIS will fall.  It also means that the church should not judge itself by its apparent successes or victories.  Success is not not necessarily a sign of God’s approval as suffering is not a sign of God’s disapproval.  Often it is the opposite.  God has reserved the outcomes for Himself.  Jonah succeeds and Assyria repents.  Jesus confronts Rome and Rome has Jesus crucified.  

Jesus says that He has come to bear witness to the truth, but Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and does not wait for the answer.  For the Romans, truth was a simple concept, does the claim correspond to reality?  Jesus’ claim of kingship clearly did not correspond to reality as Pilate understood it.  Jesus though bears witness to a bigger reality that Pilate cannot grasp.  Last week I said our imaginations need to be bigger.  That we need to have dreams of not just salvation and escape, but of resurrection involving all of creation.  The problem with Pilate and his view of truth is that it is not big enough.  There is more to heaven and earth that can be dreamt of in his philosophy.  There is the reality that the book of Revelation describes that shows that the raging and rantings of the empires of this present world are still subject to a larger heavenly reality.  It is this truth that Nineveh was able to recognize that a bigger world existed outside of them and that God would hold them to account.  It this truth that Jesus bears witness to when he announces the coming of the kingdom of God. 

Jesus explains to Pilate that His kingdom is not of the world.  Again like Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees over whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome, we have often taken this to mean that the world is divided.  Caesar has his realm and Jesus has His realm.  However, I think Jesus is making a different point - Jesus says my kingdom is not like your kingdom.  Jesus is making the claim not that His kingship is entirely different than the kingship as Pilate conceives it because right before making this claim Jesus says, “If my kingship were of this world,  my servants would fight that I would I would not be handed over to the Jews.”  Jesus instead is presented a kingdom with a different ethic.  A kingship that renounces violence.  

Again this is what Nineveh grasps that Pilate does not.  When Nineveh repents the people of Nineveh turn away from violence.  The kingdom of God is not of this world and presents a vision of an entirely different ethic.  The kingdom of God is for those who are poor of spirit, who mourn, who are hungry, who are meek, who are pure in heart, who seek peace.  The kingdom that loves their enemies.  The kingdom of God is that does not seek to conquer or exploit but one that seeks to serve.  The kingdom of God is not a nicer version of empire but one that is radically different.  

Again we as the church need to embrace this ethic and not seek to replace the current structures of Empire using the same thinking and same tactics.  We need to present a different picture entirely.  Our imaginations need to be bigger than that.  We need to do what Jonah did and what Jesus did and proclaim that another world is possible.  We need to present an ethic that shatters the idea that the only way to live is by self service and accumulation and exploitation and oppression and violence.  We need to present a world that breaks the current cycle and gives hope to the hopeless.  I will even go one further and say that we need to proclaim that another world is not only possible but inevitable.  

Now let me pause and say that I do not think this is something that can be fully realized in this reality.  Until Christ comes the church cannot achieve this as permanent reality.  However, I do think the church is called to bear witness to this reality.  In this world the church must present this vision and expect persecution and suffering.  That is why Jesus in the sermon on the mount tells those that are peacemakers and meek and mourn are blessed but also says that those that are persecuted and reviled are also blessed.  I want to close by giving two modern examples of when bearing witness to this alternate vision has occurred.

The first occurred shortly after the start of WWI.  Germany had invaded neutral Belgium on its way to conquer France.  A combined French and British army had repulsed the Germans outside of Paris and as the Germans dug in a continuous line of fortified trenches formed from the North Sea to the Swiss alps. Between the two armies was a small stretch of earth called “no man’s land.”  

However, a funny thing happened on Christmas Eve in Ypres, Belgium site of some of the most viscous fighting between the Germans and the British.  The Germans began lighting candles and setting up Christmas trees in their trench.  They began singing carols and the British responded by also singing carols.  Pretty soon the artillery fell silent and men began arising from their trenches and exchanging gifts of food, alcohol, and tobacco in “no man’s land.”  The two sides even played soccer with each other.  It is estimated that 100,000 soldiers participated in the Christmas truce.  

What had happened?  The soldiers had glimpsed another, bigger world that made what they were doing seem unimportant and inconsequential.  For a few days the kingdom of God had broken in and there was love of the enemy and as a result peace.  For a few days there was at least some proof that life could be different.  

The second occurred after the fall of apartheid.  Apartheid was a system a system of racial segregation imposed on black inhabitants of South Africa from 1945 to 1994.  Over 3.5 million non-white South Africans were removed from their homes under threat of force and moved to segregated neighborhoods.  As time went on, the plight of non-white South Africans actually worsened.  In 1970, the right of political representation was taken away and they were actually deprived of citizenship.  Public services were also segregated into two systems and predictably the non-white services were inferior to the white services.  The state enforced this system by becoming more militarized and using violence and repression to answer any hint of unrest.

Eventually, under pressure from the international community and the realization that the apartheid system was unsustainable, non-whites were again allowed to participate in the political process, pro-black parties were no longer banned, freedom of the press was restored and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison.  In 1994 the first truly democratic election was held with Nelson Mandela elected as president.

However, as great an accomplishment as this was, what happened afterwards was absolutely unbelievable.  The new black South African leaders knew that something radical must be done to transition to a full and free democracy and promote unity within the country.  The new government knew that there had to be justice for the victims of apartheid.  At the same time a victor’s justice based on retribution would only lead to more division and violence.   As an alternative, the South African government created a system of courts that focused on restorative justice called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission brought perpetrators of violence before the court to and allowed them to give testimony.  Victims of oppression were also encouraged to tell their story so their voice would be heard.   Remarkably upon confession, the defendants could also request amnesty and the commission was empowered to grant it.  

The ideology of the Truth an Reconciliation Commission was based on Christian concepts and churches played a key role in the commissions.  It was important for the architects of the commissions to break the cycle of violence.  They were able to imagine a bigger reality outside of the one that they had known and demonstrate to the world that a different world was possible.  

I hope these examples give you a concrete picture of what I have been talking about in today’s sermon.  Just as for Jonah and for Jesus, it is our mission at Resurrection church to confront the world with an alternate vision.  We must give hope to a world broken by the corruption of power that it does not have to be this way.  God will hold those in positions of power into account and a new world order is coming that is not a slightly nicer version of the same old structure, but something far more beautiful and perfect than we can imagine.  The creator God is reclaiming sovereignty over His world through the slaughtered lamb and He has entrusted to the church the responsibility of bearing witness to Jesus as the world’s true Lord and to His way of victory which is great than the power of Empire. 
 

Who Knows?: The God of Second Chances (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

John 21:15-19
Genesis 18:16-33
Jonah 3:1-10

We are continuing our study of Jonah.  In chapter 1 we learned how Jonah was not called to preach to a group of people he didn’t like, or that he did not like foreigners, but to an empire equivalent to the Nazi regime or ISIS.  However, we are commanded to love our enemies because God gives us hope that the world can be different and has freed of us from the fear of our enemies. Then we examined the poem Jonah composes in the guts of the fish.  There we saw that the only thing Jonah really gets right is that he belongs to God.   That relationship is God’s goal throughout scripture where God says, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”  Last week we looked at the events of Jonah chapter 2 as Jonah was swallowed by a fish and then vomited back up.  Jonah saw this experience as a journey from death to new life and as a picture of baptism.   Jonah had been subjected to the judgment of God, but God had provided the fish as means for Jonah to safely pass through judgment.  Remember that I pointed out that the gender of the fish changes illustrating that the guts of the fish was actually a womb and that through this experience Jonah was reborn.  Jonah had once been a prophet whose message had been about building walls to keep Assyria out, but now Jonah had a new mission to extend a message of hope to bring Assyria in.  

We pick up our story with Jonah after Jonah has been vomited by the great fish on dry land.  According to our text, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.  The familiar commission that we read in all the prophets, “arise, go and proclaim” that was originally given to Jonah in chapter one is repeated again.  This time Jonah does what we originally expected, he arises and goes to Nineveh and this time, as verse 3 tells us, according to the word of the Lord.  

Nineveh is again described as the great city just as it was in chapter 1.  We are told it takes three days to walk from one side to the other.   That would be a staggering size for a city in the ancient world.  More than likely this is a figure of speech and is probably related to the three days and three nights Jonah spent in the great fish.  If you remember from last week’s sermon, I said the expression “three days and three nights” was thought to be the length of time it took to journey from death to life or back from death to life.  So Jonah has journeyed from death to life in a great fish and now Jonah’s words will move Nineveh from death to life.  

Jonah only makes it one day into Nineveh before he proclaims the words God had given him.  Until this point the story had focused on the command to proclaim the words of the Lord, it is only at this point that we learn the content.  “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”  Only five words in Hebrew.  The phrase “forty days and forty nights” is also significant recalling both the flood of Noah when God’s judgment is brought down on the world for the same reason that God judgment is threatened against Nineveh, because their evil has risen to the presence of God.  Forty days and forty nights was also the time period the Israelites waited after Moses journeyed up to Mount Sinai to intercede for the Israelites after they made the Golden Calf. Here the Israelites were in danger of judgment because of their evil as well.

The crazy thing is this - to our astonishment and to Jonah’s as well, the people of Nineveh believed.  The text uses a different word for believe that rarely found anywhere else.  The word is amen which is where where amen comes from.  It means trust and is derived from truth.  We also find this word used to describe Abraham’s response in Genesis 15 after God makes the covenant with Abraham, “and he believed, and God counted it to him as righteousness.”  So here we have the people of Nineveh imitating the faith of Abraham.  Also, If you will remember, Jonah is introduced in chapter 1 as Jonah the son of Amittai which is another word related to belief.  The people of Nineveh believed God because of the words of Jonah the son of belief.  

In some ways the people of Nineveh behave like the sailors, who also are ready to believe in Jonah’s God.  The sailors feared God but that word does not go quite as far as believing.   The sailors heard Jonah’s confession and were immediate danger.  Only the threat of danger confronted the Ninevites.  There is no indication given in the story as to why the people trusted God so readily.  When details like that are left out we call it a gap.  Gaps are used in a story to pique our interest and make us speculate.  I think that is exactly what is going on here and I want to do more with it.  However, it will fit it a bit better when we get to chapter 4.  For now, I just want to point it out.

One interesting point is the common people are the first to repent and it is only later that the message comes to the king.  In fact, verse 6 tells us the word reaches the king coming to the king indirectly.  The repentance of Nineveh is a true grassroots movement among all levels of society.  The king’s proclamation merely makes official what the people have already spontaneously been doing.  My favorite part is that according to the king’s proclamation, not only do the people have to fast and wear sackcloth, but so do all the animals.  

Jonah’s message did not contain any instruction as to what the people might do to avoid God’s coming judgment.  Even the king’s proclamation contains only a little hope and no certainty.  He says, “Who knows?  God may turn and relent”  Nor is the king and the people’s fasting and sackcloth merely for show.  Everyone is ordered to turn from violence which was the great strength of the Assyrian Empire.  Violence was how Assyria maintained their position of dominance.  

Then another crazy thing happens - God changes His mind.  God said He was going to bring disaster to Nineveh, that He would overthrow Nineveh in forty days, and He relents.  The word relent is nachem in Hebrew and means to be sorry or regret.  God was sorry that He was going to bring disaster on the Ninevites and so He does not do it. 

On the surface this is a pretty straightforward story.  Jonah tells the people of Nineveh that God is going to overthrow their city.  The people of Nineveh feel genuine remorse and change their behavior.  God decides not to overthrow city and so for the people of Nineveh disaster is averted.  Yet amid the simplicity there are some big questions.  Why does God trust this message to someone who had run away from him once and only does what he commands by way of weird, miraculous intervention involving a giant fish?  Why do the animals of Nineveh have to fast and wear sackcloth?  How is God sorry for a decision He made?  It makes us uncomfortable for God to be inconsistent and change His mind. 

So let’s start with the first question.  The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.  If the plan to use Jonah to proclaim a message to Nineveh did not work the first time, why does God try again and even go to such great lengths as having a fish swallow Jonah to have Jonah finally deliver His message?  

I think this illustrates one of the great lessons of the Bible and it is this - Our God is a God of second chances.  A few examples from scripture will illustrate this point.  If you remember the story of Joseph, Joseph is a super annoying little brother who is shown incredible favoritism by his father.  Joseph’s ten older brothers are so bothered by Joseph that they decide to kill him.  However, one of the brother’s named Judah points out if they kill Joseph, then they have to go through all the trouble of covering up a murder and they get nothing.  So instead Judah suggests they sell Joseph into slavery.

Joseph ends up in Egypt and after a lot of bad things happen to him, Joseph becomes second in command of Egypt.  Meanwhile there is a famine in Israel and Judah and his brother have to journey to Egypt to get food.  When the brothers arrive they meet Joseph do not recognize him and Joseph decides to test them by requiring his younger brother Benjamin who is their father’s new favorite son to stay behind.  Judah knows this will crush his father and fears the news may even kill his father.  So Judah decides to stay in Benjamin’s place.  Judah has been given a second chance and as a result God invests the line of Judah with the kingship of Israel and even the messiah.  

Another example is from our reading in John.  After Jesus had been sentenced to crucifixion, Peter famously denies knowing Jesus three times this after promising that he would never betray Jesus and would fight to the death.  Yet, Jesus comes to Peter and after sharing breakfast with him, asks Peter three times if he loves Him.  Peter repeats that He does and Jesus restores the breach in the relationship by commanding Him to feed His sheep.  What Jesus wants Peter to know is that He has not given up on Peter and that He still wants Peter to be part of His mission to restore the world to Him.  Jesus does not just say thats alright Peter, I forgive you, Jesus gives him a job.  Peter has been given a second chance and so after Jesus’ ascension, we find Peter at Pentecost delivering the first sermon in Acts 2.  

Looking back through scripture we can find that the whole history of the Bible is God giving His people second chances.  God’s plan to rescue the world is not thwarted by anyone because He is reconciling the world to Himself and for some reason He has selected His people to carry that out despite their fear, their lack of understanding, or even their disobedience.  Even at the start of the Bible the work of humanity is not ended with the fall, but God continues with Adam and Eve promising that the serpent will defeated and that defeat will come from Eve even though it was Eve who choose to listen to the serpent rather than to God.  

God is a God of second chances because He has chosen His flawed people to be the means He will bring salvation to the world.  In theological terms, God has chosen His people as mediators.  A mediator is a person who works between two groups to reconcile them together.  A mediator has a foot in both camps and work to reconcile both sides to each other like a liaison or an ambassador.  Jonah is sent as a mediator to bring God’s word to Nineveh.  

If we look at our other reading we see another instance in which God selects cities for destruction.  The evil of Sodom and Gomorrah much like Nineveh had reached the point where it had risen to God’s presence and could no longer be ignored. Yet before God issues His judgment He tells Abraham about His plans.   We are told that God decides to consult with Abraham because the Lord is going to bring to Abraham what He promised him.  The promise that God is referring to goes back to Abraham’s call in Genesis 12.  Abraham is commissioned, using language similar to Jonah’s, to arise, and go to the land God would show Him so that God would make Abraham a great nation and Abraham’s name would be great.  However, the point making Abraham a great nation and make Abraham’s name great is so Abraham would bring blessing to all the peoples of the earth.  Abraham is to mediate God’s blessing to the whole world.  

In that capacity, Abraham then argues for God to prevent the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  It is an amazing move and almost does not seem smart to debate with God the way Abraham does.  Yet, God condescends to change His mind repeatedly because this is exactly the role God had called Abraham to fill.  Abraham as God’s representative is to be a mediator.  Moses does the same thing later during the forty days and forty nights on Mt Sinai.  Moses begs that God not destroy His people because of the sin of the golden calf and again God changes His mind.  Delivering God’s message and advocating for others is exactly the job of God’s people.  

Jonah is really bad at this.  At no time does Jonah mediate for Nineveh. Jonah pronounces doom without hope.  Based on prior examples we would expect Jonah when faced with God’s potential destruction to act as Abraham or Moses did.  Yet still God changes his mind because of the actions of the people of Nineveh.  Jonah, despite the fact that he has been given a second chance and despite the fact that he has seen the pagan sailors turn toward God, fails to fulfill this role.  

In the big story of the Old Testament we will see God’s people fail repeatedly at their role just as Jonah did.  Israel was to be a light to the nations and Jesus tells them they have taken their light and hidden it.  Yet God will not be thwarted and so He sends Jesus as the ultimate mediator, both God and man both from Heaven but an Israelite who does what Israel was called to do and sacrifices Himself for others as Israel was called to do.  Who even while being crucified ujustly as a criminal, says “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  

Nor is this salvation that Christ brings about His people alone.  Nothing less than all the nations of the whole world was in view in God’s commission to Abraham.   In Isaiah 49, God says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring them back preserved to Israel; I will make you a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  Yet it does not end there because not only is Jesus a mediator for all the nations of the earth but He is a mediator to bring restoration to all of creation.

When we look at our other example where “forty days and forty nights is found,” Noah passing through the waters of destruction as Jonah did, brings about salvation not just to his family, but to the animals as well.  So when Jonah comes to Nineveh what is in view is not just the people of Nineveh but also the animals.  God’s concern is for His whole creation that He created good and despite sin and the fall, He is working to restore all of it.  

Paul says in Romans 8 that the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Our purpose as followers of Christ and the work of remediation is bigger than just making sure that we go to heaven when we die.  It is much more expansive and cosmic than that.  Last week I said that salvation was not an end, but a beginning.  Jonah was reborn for a purpose to act as an agent of restoration.   What Paul tells is that at least part of that purpose is that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  Paul says that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth.  The imagination of the people of Nineveh was big enough to realize that truth.  

Jonah has not grasped the enormity of God’s plan, but it is ironic that just as the sailors saw something bigger than themselves, the people of Nineveh do as well.   As Jonah confessed in chapter 1, he serves YHWH the God of heaven, who made the sea and dry land - in other words the God of EVERYTHING.  We in the church can also rest in our own salvation and become so myopic that we loose sight in the enormity of God’s plan for the cosmos.  Perhaps it is time for the church’s hopes and dreams to be bigger than what they are because they should be more than about our salvation but about resurrection!

So are you ready for some sauce as Chris Lundberg might say?  I want everyone to find a child near them with a worksheet and look at the upper right corner.  What you are looking at is ancient cuneiform.  If you remember back to high school, cuneiform was the writing system of the ancient Sumerians.  They would use a sharpened stick and make these series of wedges into clay tablets to represent words.  The cuneiform symbol you are looking at means Nineveh.  Notice that it is a box which means house and inside is what looks like a fish. The name Nineveh means “house of fish.”  

So God uses a fish to swallow Jonah giving Jonah a second chance.  Jonah then acts as a mediator to bring salvation to the house of fish giving them a second chance.  He does this incredibly poorly giving them five words with only a hint of hope.  Nineveh does not even know if their actions will work.  The king says, “who knows” just as the captain of the said, “Perhaps we may may not perish?”  ‘Who knows?” Jonah should have known that God was the God of second chances. Actually we will learn in chapter 4 that he did know.   However, imagine this scene, after spending three days and nights in a fish and then being vomiting up on dry land.  Then journeys to Nineveh - by the way if you look on a map Nineveh is a long way from the coast.  Then spending all this time thinking about your weird experience in a fish you arrive at Nineveh and then sees this sign?  Can you imagine the irony was not lost on Jonah?  

Second chances are God’s business and now God is extending that second chance to those outside His people because at verse three tells us, Nineveh is a great city TO GOD.  Nineveh is part of God’s creation as well.  Who knows?  God knows and his people should know and we as the church should know.  It is why we are to serve, to feed, to heal, to bear witness, to sacrifice, and to mediate because it is our responsibility as God’s people to cry, “Father forgive them for they know what they do.”  

We know because God is a God who relents and does not do it.  The whole story of the Bible is a God who gives second chances and who changes His mind.  We are often bothered by this - a omniscient God should be consistent and not change His mind.  This is inconsistent and illogical.  It destroys my rational theology about who God is.  To this charge the answer is - that you have understood correctly.  It makes no sense, but God is a God who fights for His creation over and over again.  Who even condescends to relent and change His mind who sends Christ the ultimate mediator, God and man, to empty Himself and take on the form of a servant, to humble Himself to the point of death even the death on a cross.  

For Resurrection Church and the followers of Christ we are to answer the world that we know that God will save this world.  We are to be mediators of this message.  We are to be a people with dreams of resurrection as wide as big as the whole cosmos.  We are to present a picture of a God who cares about His creation and who works to restore it.  To tell the story of a God who is not bound by logic, but only by love because as Jonah proclaims in his song, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” 

The Baptism of Jonah (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

2 Kings 14:23-25
Matthew 12:38-40
Jonah 2:1-9

Last week we looked at Jonah 2 and we examined the psalm Jonah composed in the guts of the fish.  The sermon made the point that though Jonah realized the seriousness of his situation and called to the Lord for help, Jonah still refused to admit guilt and showed himself to be self righteous.  However, Jonah got one thing right - perhaps the only thing he gets right.  Jonah was confident he belonged to the Lord and this was the basis of Jonah’s hope.  We then looked at how the entire story of the Bible depends on idea that God wants to be our God and to have us as his people.  This relationship between God and humanity is ultimately fulfilled and realized through Jesus Christ.  

The Southern military general Stonewall Jackson was known as a tactical genius.  However, before he became a general in the army of Northern Virginia, he was a teacher at the Virginia Military Institute.   Apparently, though a great general, Jackson was a terrible teacher. He would memorize his lectures and deliver them in straight monotone.  Worse, if it seemed as though his students had not grasped the lecture he would deliver the exact same lecture word for word again.  

So since our sermon text from last week covered the same verses as this week, you may be forgiven for wondering if I am going to deliver the exact same sermon because I have decided that like Stonewall Jackson’s students you have failed to learn last weeks lesson.  Well I assure you that is not the case.  We are simply going to look at this chapter from a different perspective.  Last week our focus was on the poem, but today we are going to zoom out and look at the events that actually happened to Jonah in chapter 2.  The big point I want to make today is that what Jonah experienced was a picture of baptism and by making that point I want to help us understand baptism better.

As we saw last week, Jonah will compare his experience inside the guts of the fish to death.  In verse 2, Jonah cries from Sheol which was the Hebrew term for the place people went after they died.  In verse 6, Jonah states that his life was brought up from the pit.  The pit was another common term used to describe the realm people passed to after death.  Last week we saw that the line, “you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.” was the central message of Jonah’s song.  So to Jonah what has transpired in chapter 2 was not simply that he had been swallowed and then vomited on shore by a fish, but rather he had passed from to death into life.  Jonah has in a way experienced resurrection.  

We are told that Jonah spends three days and three nights in the great fish.  The phrase “three days and three nights” is a common expression.  It does not mean an exact time period the way we might think of it but an indefinitely long period.  However, we do find examples in ancient near eastern literature where “three days and three nights” is related to the time it takes to journey from the realm of life to death or from death to life.  This was likely because of the widespread belief in the ancient world that death was not permanent until a body showed no sign of life for three days.  

There is a Sumerian myth called “The Descent of Inanna” in which the goddess Inanna journeys to the underworld to retrieve her husband Damuzi.  The myth specifically notes the journey to the underworld took Inanna three days and three nights.  We even find one example in the Old Testament where the phrase “three days and three nights” is used to describe a journey from death to life.    In Hosea 6, there is series of verses describing the future restoration of Israel.  “Come let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down and he will bind us up.  After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him.”  Notice here that it takes three days to bring Israel from death to life.  

So if we apply this knowledge to Jonah chapter 2, we begin by finding him dead, in the underworld of Sheol and after three days and three nights Jonah finds himself alive again on dry land. Having said this, I do not think Jonah literally died and rose again.  He is using poetry - it is exaggerated language.  We find David using similar terminology in the Psalms as he describes his pursuit by King Saul.  What Jonah experienced was to him like being dead and becoming alive again and so Jonah describes his time in the guts of the fish as if that was what happened.

I do think this helps us make sense of one of the most enigmatic passages in the Gospels.  Jesus is confronted by the pharisees who demand a great sign to prove that He is the messiah.  This must have been quite exasperating to Jesus since he has been healing people, casting out demons, calming storms, and teaching with authority.  Of course Jesus will not play the Pharisee’s game because He knows if they have been skeptical up to this point one more sign will not make a difference.  So in typical Jesus style, Jesus decides to blow their minds.  Jesus tells them you are going to get one ultimate sign - the sign of the prophet Jonah.  It is kind of strange because it seems odd that Jesus would pick an example from Jonah of all people.  After all Jonah seems mostly a loathsome person and he is end the fish because he disobeyed God.  Last week we looked at how even though this poem in chapter 2 is on the surface pious, Jonah still does not admit any guilt and is even weirdly self-righteous.  

So why does Jesus use this story of all stories to illustrate the one and ultimate sign He will give the Pharisees?  It turns out that the Jews of Jesus days already associated Jonah’s experience in the great fish with death and resurrection.  In fact there is a collection of Jewish tradition called “The Lives of the Prophets” that holds that Jonah was the widow’s son that Elijah raised from the dead.  Matthew tells us that when Jesus says that He will give the Pharisees the sign of Jonah he is referring to His death and resurrection.  

Jesus also calls his death and resurrection a baptism.  For example, in both Mark and Luke Jesus talks about the cross as a baptism.  So the sign of Jonah helps us to understand why Jesus’ death and resurrection is called a baptism.  Jonah passed through the the dangerous waters, but was saved by a fish provided by the Lord.  The passage we read earlier calls the flood of Noah a baptism. Here again a group of people  passed through dangerous waters, but were saved by an ark provided by the Lord.  1 Corinthians 10 calls the Israelite passage through the Red Sea a baptism.  Another group of people pass through dangerous waters, but were saved by a passage provided by the Lord.  

It is a bit perplexing that these three incidents are compared to baptism because we typically think that baptism represents a cleansing.  Water is used to wash off dirt and so baptism represents the removal of sin represented by the dirt.  I do not think this interpretation is incorrect.  However, I want to suggest that the symbolism of baptism is more varied and rich than simply removal of sin. 

For example listen to how John the Baptist, who we might expect would know a thing or two about baptism, describes baptism.  “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear the threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”    

Of course here you need to know something about ancient near easter agricultural practices. When wheat was harvested, it was necessary for the grain to be separated from the indigestible outer coat called the chaff.  Typically the stalk would have been beaten on a rocky surface called a threshing floor which would break the chaff open leaving the grain.  However, the grain and chaff would be all mixed together.  To separate the two a winnowing fork would throw both up in the air.  The heavier grain would fall while the chaff would be blown to the side by the wind.  

So the imagery that John uses here for baptism is very similar to Noah’s flood or the parting of the Red Sea, or Jonah.  In all of these examples a potentially destructive process saves people deemed worthy.

In the ancient world when a case came to trial for judgment it could be difficult to determine guilt or innocence because they could not collect forensic evidence like we might today.   So if you are in charge of administering justice in the ancient world quite often you would have to resort to very different techniques than we would use today.  Think of the case before Solomon where two women who each have a baby but one women loses her baby and claims the other baby is her own.  Solomon’s decision is to cut the baby in half, but before doing so one of the mothers offers to give the baby to the other rather than see the baby split in two.  Solomon of course never intended to carry out the threat, he simply used it as a mean to discover the true mother.  

So one method that would be used in the ancient world to determine guilt or innocence when evidence was lacking was something called the judicial ordeal.  Here is how it worked.  The alleged criminal would be thrown into a raging river and could prove his or her innocence by surviving.  It seems like a bad idea, but the rationale was that the god or gods would prevent the condemnation of an innocent person.  In effect the alleged was placing their fate in the hands of God.  Survival would mean vindication.  

This is exactly what happened during the flood of Noah, the passing of the Red Sea, and in our story of Jonah.  In each case they were subjected to some sort of watery terror that would have resulted in their drowning except for the intervention of the Lord.  At each point God provides a means to survive - in the case of Noah, the Lord provides the ark, in the case of Moses God parts the Red Sea, and with Jonah, God sends a fish.  This is very similar to John’s description of Baptism as a winnowing fork that separates the wheat from the chaff.  

What that means is the when we are baptized, what we are doing is subjecting ourselves to judicial ordeal appealing to God for a verdict.  Baptism then is a statement that we have put our faith and trust entirely in the Lord to save us.  Like Noah, the Israelites fleeing from Pharaoh’s army, and Jonah we depend on God to provide us a way to survive the ordeal.  

The sticky part comes because the truth is we are not innocent no more than Noah, or the Israelites, or Jonah.  A provision must be made and that is where the gospel comes into play.  You see because Jesus was able to face the ultimate ordeal of death and was able to be vindicated in His resurrection.  Colossians says we have been buried with Christ in Baptism.  Christ’s resurrection then proves that He can survive the ordeal, that He has been rendered innocent and the He has been vindicated.  So what Baptism represents in not only an appeal to God for judgment but also an identification with Christ as the One who will bring us through the ordeal as a person declared innocent.   

However, I do not want to stop there because as great as salvation is, the story of Jonah does not stop there.  There is one more point I want to make and I think it is crucial but often neglected one.  Jonah was called to perform a specific task. Jonah had a vocation.  Jonah was commanded to call out against the city of Nineveh and after Jonah is vomited onto dry land we find him journeying to Nineveh to do his job.

Until now I have left out a very important detail about Jonah.  Jonah is actually mentioned one place outside of the book of Jonah.  It was in the passage we read earlier in 2 Kings.  According to this passage, Jonah in his capacity as a prophet spoke the word of the Lord to King Jeroboam II.  We are told the Jeroboam II was a wicked king but in this case at least he listened to what the Lord told Jonah.  The message Jonah had for the king was to restore the borders of Israel from Lebo-Hamath to the Sea of Arabah.  This area is significant because it would be the border between the Kingdom of Israel and the Assyrian Empire.  In fact in Amos 6, we find Amos warning that God would send the Assyrians to oppress Israel from Lebo-Hamath to the Sea of Arabah.  In other words until now Jonah’s call was to be a prophet who was responsible for preparing Israel’s defense against the Assyrians.  Now Jonah’s mission is to go to Assyria and to extend to them a chance to change.  Jonah has gone from building a wall to keep the Assyrians out to crossing the wall and inviting the Assyrians in.  The safety and security Jonah had known had been removed and now rather than establishing a boundary, Jonah was building a bridge.  How does this happen?

There is an important clue in the story.  Like many languages, Hebrew words have gender.  In our story the Hebrew word for fish is dag, which is a masculine.  Something curious happens in chapter 2:2.  The fish is called a daga, which is a female ending.  Interestingly Jewish rabbis explained the gender change by supposing that originally the fish was male but was so roomy that Jonah did not pray so God transferred Jonah to a small female fish provoking his prayer.  

There is another explanation though - remember Jonah is in the belly of the fish which is a general term for the internal organs, not necessarily the stomach. This is why I have been translating it guts.  By tellings us that Jonah was in the belly of a specifically female fish, the text wants us to understand that Jonah is in the womb of the fish.  That means that not only has Jonah passed from death to life, but Jonah has been reborn.  “Truly, truly I say unto you unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  Jonah’s experience is not just a judicial ordeal where he is vindicated.  Jonah’s experience is not just about salvation.  Jonah’s experience is a new birth giving him a new purpose and mission.   

We often think about salvation as an end to itself.  What the book of Jonah wants us to see is the transforming power of salvation that changes and reorients our life.  Salvation takes us from a person who builds wall to a person who crosses them.  Who goes to the enemy he once feared and instead offers his enemy hope. Who moves from an “eye for an eye” to “turn the other cheek.”   Salvation is not an end, salvation is a new beginning, and a new mission.  

Jesus rose on a Sunday the first day of the week because what Christ does is usher in a new creation, a new world, and a new mission.  The Church is the instrument Christ has chosen to begin this work.   So for us at Resurrection Church salvation cannot simply be an end but a new beginning that reorients and realigns our priorities that moves from fear and concern for safety and security to vulnerability and sacrifice just as we see in the story of Jonah.  It is what repentance means - a turning. 

Our new obligation is to the kingdom and what Christ tells us is that our allegiance to the old way of doing things is over because it is dying.  The world where power and wealth dominate is over.  The world where exploitation, oppression, and violence is the rule is over. 

 There is a new world being born and Christ’s kingdom is coming to heal, to feed, to serve, to comfort, to bring peace, to welcome, and to include.  Blessed are we if we join in this work because it is the future and Christ’s survival of the ordeal of death and His vindication at the resurrection show us that future is beautiful and that future is certain and it is not only worth changing our lives for but it overwhelms us compelling us to change because once we experience it the old world no longer makes sense.  May we all be transformed and conformed to the image of Christ.