Epiphany 4 2019

Jonah 1:1-17

February 3, 2019

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

How do you react when you are told to do something that you really just don’t want to do?  Maybe you procrastinate.  Some people may just not do it at all and then make excuses. Or maybe either out of spite or stubbornness you do just the opposite.  That’s what Jonah did.  When God told him to do something that he had no interest in doing, he didn’t complain or make excuses, he ran.  God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire and call out against it because the evil it was doing.  That would be like going to the New York and Virginia today and marching up to the governor and legislators over their evil acts.

Jonah didn’t want to do this, and who could blame him. So instead of going east to Nineveh in what is now Iraq, he went west.  We are told, “But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.”  He got out of town as fast as he could and he went in the opposite direction from where God had told him to go.

Jonah’s main problem isn’t with Nineveh, it is with God and His merciful nature. He is a Hebrew who fears the Lord, the God of heaven, and confesses Him to be the creator of the sea and dry land. He knows that the Lord forgives those who repent of their evil. The word that Jonah was bringing to the Ninevites was not simply a word of condemnation for their sin.  It was a word of hope.  They were being called by God to repentance and God had promised them forgiveness for confessing their sin.  Jonah’s problem is with the Gospel. He thinks the Gospel is for himself and other Israelites, not for pagan foreigners. He would rather die than see God’s grace and mercy freely extended to Gentiles. Nineveh is the epitome of evil and moral poverty. They don’t deserve God’s forgiveness in any way, and Jonah doesn’t like the idea that maybe God would relent of the punishment that they deserve. He is unwilling to let God be God.  As a result, he is unable to be the person whom God intends and unable to see others as God sees them.

In our text we see that God confronts sin.  He speaks a word of Law and He punishes sin in order to lead people to repentance.  He does this with Jonah when he sends the storm that causes Jonah to be thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish.  He does this with Nineveh as he sends Jonah into the city to tell them to turn away from their evil or else they will be destroyed.  Call to repentance and confession is a messy business.  Who among us would rather not run and hide instead of openly admitting your sin?  Who among us would rather skip out on the nasty business of telling someone they were wrong, of calling out sin when and where it raising its evil head?

Except Jesus.  We remember Jonah not as an example of what will happen to us if we run away from God or try to hide from His calling.  It is about the God whose mercy refused to let the Ninevites die without the Law and Gospel being proclaimed to them.  It’s about Christ, in whom the mercy of God is found. Jesus did not run from His mission of mercy but welcomed the gracious will of the Father He was to fulfill.  He knew it would mean suffering and death.  He would spend His three days in the belly of the beast but the consequence of His obedience was not His own justification but our redemption.

The large fish is not a punishment for Jonah, but it is the means of salvation for him, to preserve him in the deep for three days. God appoints a great fish to swallow him up, not as a punishment, but as means of rescue. You see on the cover of our bulletin this morning an icon of Jonah in the mouth the fish.  The scroll in his hand is from the first verse of Jonah 2 when he prayed while still inside the fish, “I cried in my affliction unto the Lord.” The verse goes on, “and He answered me; out of the belly of Sheol – out of the belly of the grave – I cried and You heard my voice…” Jonah ends, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” (John 2:1, 9).

Jonah isn’t the lesson. He is the sign. The sign pointing to Jesus. It is interesting to note that Jonah is the only Old Testament prophet to whom Jesus directly compares Himself. In Matthew 12, some of the scribes and Pharisees want to see a sign from Jesus. They want some miracle to prove that Jesus is who He says He says, no matter that by this time in His ministry He has already performed many miracles revealing that He is the Son God.  He answers them by saying that no sign will be given except the sing 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.  The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (Matt 12:39-41).  

In our Gospel reading, it’s not that just another great storm comes up. Both Jonah and Jesus asleep in the middle of it.  Jesus calms the storm by His very Word, He is the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land of whom Jonah confesses.  We do not perish, but because of Jesus’ life, because of His innocent blood, our cries, “save us!” are answered. It is Jesus who is thrown into the belly of grave for three days, who calms the great storm of sin so that we are not overcome by the wind and waves of this fallen creation, who is then spit out from the grave, who is the messenger and the message of repentance and faith.

The other sailors have come to believe that Israel’s God is the one and only God over the universe, and the only God who can save them. Jonah’s confession has led them to saving faith. Likewise, the people of Nineveh repent and believe in God.  And the disciples marvel at Jesus’ command over creation and their faith in Him is strengthened.  And we hear this same Law and Gospel, calling us out on our sin and directing us to the Lord, shaping who we are in Christ and seeing others as God sees them.  All unbelievers are potential recipients of God’s grace and holiness. The love of Christians is to extend out even to our enemies. You belong to a royal priesthood, meant to use your access to God and your life in Christ seeking to reconcile lost humanity to God, by the power of the Spirit.