Jonah 2:10-3:10

The Worst Sermon in the History of the World

Sermon preached July 19, 2015
Opening - failure
Erin and I were talking after she got back from the Senior High Mission Trip and she was
telling me about how wonderful it was - with the exception of one thing. This one thing
was a devotion conducted by one of the leaders from the organization that put together
the trip. He started the devotion by asking the youth to get real quiet and introspective and then to go through every single failure in their life, one at a time - relive and
remember this and list them out.
I told Erin if I had been there and been asked to do that, I would have ended up curled up
into the fetal position. Can you imagine doing that?
I clipped an article written by a Jewish educator talking about the importance in Jewish
law of acknowledging failure and regrets, especially right before Yom Kippur - the
Jewish Day of Atonement. He asked a whole range of people of all ages to write down
their failures and regrets:
Minor ones:
I did not purchase an exercise bike when it was on a great sale
I was callous in breaking up with a girlfriend.
But then major ones:
I never said thank you to my father.
I gave up on too many dreams.
I could have done more to help my brother when he was despairing and depressed.
Jonahs call and failure
God sent Jonah to help some people - the people of Nineveh - who were lost and had
created a society full of violence and injustice. And he failed. Jonah ran in the other
direction and got on a ship to far-away, exotic Tarshish, God came after him in the storm
and put him in time-out in the belly of a great fish.
And after Jonah repents of his rebellion and racism and self-righteousness God has the
fish vomit Jonah up on the dry land.
Yes, vomit...thats what the Hebrew says. We like to clean the Bible up sometimes, but
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there is pretty gross and graphic language in here...because the Bible is real-to-life, not a
pious book of sweet religious sayings. Actually the Hebrew word is even more graphic
than vomit. Because the writer is hitting us over the head, making sure we understand
Jonah didnt float down to earth in the arms of an angel. The whale hurled the contents
of its stomach, including Jonah, up on the beach.
One of Gary Larsons Far Side cartoons depicts this by showing a bearded man
standing at his front door. He is dripping wet and his clothes are in shreds. His
wife opens the door. She looks at the disheveled, bearded man with disgust and
says, For crying out loud, Jonah! Three days late, covered with slime and
smelling like a fish! And what story do I have to swallow this time?
But God gives Jonah another chance. And so Jonah doesnt go home, he goes to Nineveh
- on a mission to preach repentance, to preach the grace of a second chance. Jonah is a
man on a mission.
Gods Mission
Id like to step back and think about what God is up to here. Jonah is on a mission
because God is on a mission. A rescue mission.
We see the beginning of that mission in Gods call to Abraham to leave his country and
his people and go to a land that God says Ill tell you about later and Ill take your old
worn-out body and Sarahs worn-out infertile body and youll have children and Ill make
a great nation of you, a nation that will be a blessing to the whole earth.
Why? Because were lost...separated from the God who made us and weve plunged the
world into violence and cruelty and suffering. Paul tells us in Romans that the whole
world is groaning, waiting for God to come to the rescue.
So God came to rescue us. In Abraham, supremely in Jesus Christ. And God notices,
God sees and God cares when there is cruelty and injustice. Like there was in Nineveh.
And God sends people like Jonah on a mission, to lead them from cruelty to justice, to
lead them from paganism, to knowing the living God.
Its as if where there is violence and suffering, when people are lost, it in a way
keeps God up at night. It grieves Gods heart.
If youve raised children, you probably had a few or more than a few sleepless
nights when your children were teenagers - waiting for them to come home way
after curfew - or just lying there in despair, praying for them. Man, it hurts, it
aches, doesnt it? Thats something like how God feels when he sees - and he
does see, he is not far-off and disinterested - people lost, people suffering, people
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committing great evil.

Big world. Lots of cities. Lots of people. Lots of lostness and suffering. But each and
every instance of it grieves Gods heart and God is at work to heal and save us and sends
people like Jonah and you and me on a great mission to reclaim the world.
Our part in Gods mission
And so God drafts Jonah into something marvelous, wonderful, world-changing. To save
Nineveh - the biggest city in the world, the capital of the strongest empire in the world.
All of us long to be caught up in something bigger than ourselves, some great adventure,
some grand mission. Something that tests us and pushes us and even involves suffering
and sacrifice.
This is what so many of the great stories are about - Beowulf on a mission to slay the
great monster Grendel; the epic Lord of the Rings - you see it in great movies like Saving
Private Ryan - when I first read the Lord of the Rings decades ago; when I first saw
Saving Private Ryan, I was in tears. There is something deep inside us that craves this;
there is something inside us that tells us that we are built for something greater than the
stunted vision of human life offered by our culture.
On our Alaska trip we took a van tour to the Yukon and our driver/tour guide was
a woman who lived with her husband and daughter way out in the wilderness five
hours from the nearest store. And she races in the Iditarod. She has a pack of her
own sled dogs, she feeds them moose and elk meat that they shoot and butcher
themselves, and every year she races them in the Iditarod. It begins in March still winter up there - and covers 1,150 miles. Our guide told of nights where it
got to 60 below; of storms where she couldnt see her hand in front of her face; of
frostbite. Why do people do things like that? For the adventure. For the testing.
For the challenge.
The Kingdom of God is the greatest adventure you could ever go on. Its Gods mission
to reclaim and heal every square inch of this suffering world. From the slums of Nairobi
where hundreds of thousands live in shacks made of scavenged wood and metal; to the
prison camps of North Korea; to the tribes living in the rain forests of the Amazon and
New Guinea who live in fear of evil spirits; to the increasingly atheistic cities of Europe
where millions are spiritually lost - God has his eye, God has set his heart on every person
in the whole wide earth - and its not just the people - God grieves over the suffering and
cruelty we inflict on animals, over our failure to care for the earth - every child, woman
and man, all creatures great and small, every inch of creation - is claimed by God and he
is at work to bring it all back to him and one day there will be a new creation where God
rules in love and mercy and all shall be well, every manner of things shall be well.
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It was for the Kingdom of God that Jesus came - his first sermon, his mission statement The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news. And as he called the
disciples to follow him and be part of this mission, so he calls us too.
And if we dont...
But we live in a cynical age of radical individualism, where the greatest good is
supposedly self-fulfilment. We used to believe in big dreams, great adventures - putting a
man on the moon - and some of you remember the sixties - where maybe some of you
hoped and believed that you were part of a movement that was going to bring radical
change for good. Thats pretty much all gone. And weve retreated into ourselves.
But if we do that - if we make pursuing our own private good the purpose of life - our
souls will shrivel because we are built for something greater.
Putting ourselves at the center paradoxically does not enlarge us, it diminishes us. We are
meant for so much more. Let me ask - is there anything you are living for besides paying
the mortgage, saving for retirement, improving your putting stroke, advancing your
career, planning the next vacation? In your life is there some kind of cause you are
serving that grips your heart, that when you think about it sometimes you get so excited
you cant fall asleep? If not, why not?
Everyone gets to play a role
Every single one of us is invited into the adventure of Gods mission.
You say, I cant...Ive failed. Well, failure doesnt disqualify us.
Look at Jonah. Would you choose him after he rebelled and ran away? But God
does.
Look at the apostle Peter. No one failed Jesus more completely, besides Judas,
than Peter did. And who does the Lord make the leader of the church? Peter.
Look at the Lord Jesus himself. Rejected by the religious leaders, abandoned by
his closest friends, dies by crucifixion - a method of execution designed
specifically to torture and to shame and humiliate - a mocking sign over his head,
King of the Jews - some king you are.
But in the Kingdom of God, failure makes you useful.
You become more open to following Gods will, not your own; you become more
merciful to those who have also failed; and you operate out of a motivation of
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gratitude to God for giving you new chances. Failure qualifies you for service in
the Kingdom of God.
You say, I cant - Im going through too much suffering. Well, God uses our suffering for
good purposes. Its one of the ways he fulfils the promise in Romans of bringing good
out of the worst we experience.
Tim Keller explained it like this: Many of us buy into the thinking that the world
is basically a fair place and most people really dont suffer that much and those
that do, usually brought it on themselves in some way, their suffering is their fault
in some way.
Well, our suffering knocks that out of us and we learn that suffering can strike
anyone at any time and most often its not any ones fault. And it makes us
compassionate. Motivates us to do something for people who are hurting.
Because weve been there ourselves.
Both failure and suffering can change us for the better. Can. Because suffering and
failure present us with a choice - they can make us more self-absorbed - self-pitying,
bitter, angry - or they can teach us to turn towards other people who have failed, who are
suffering, and show them compassion and love and mercy. Dont waste your suffering,
your failure by turning inward.
Oh...and you may say, I cant, I have nothing to offer. Im not talented, smart, whatever.
Well, take a look at Jonahs sermon. Pretty terrible. No introduction, no
illustrations, no humor. One line - forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed.
This sermon reminds me of the cartoon showing a woman shaking hands
with a pastor as she leaves church. It has the caption of her saying,
Thank you for your sermon. It was like water to a drowning man.
But this terrible sermon - is amazingly effective. The text says that the people of
Nineveh believed God - from the lowest all the way to the King - every level of
society affected - and the whole city - its a huge, sophisticated city- took three
days to walk through. And they all put on sack-cloth - not only a symbol of
repentance - remember, this was a rich city that got rich through conquest and
cruelty - they are renouncing their ill-gotten gains; they fast to demonstrate their
inner emptiness and they throw themselves on Gods mercy. And God forgives
them.
And not because of Jonahs spellbinding preaching. Because the Holy Spirit used
Jonahs lousy preaching to accomplish Gods good purposes. That is a great
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comfort to me. As someone once said, God can land a straight blow with a
crooked stick.
No excuses
God always blesses to make us a blessing, God always heals to make us into healers
We have to get out of our comfort zone - Abraham, Jonah, the disciples, all were called to
do something that made them vulnerable, moved them out of their security zone.
You have to ask yourself, if there is noplace where you can say youre moving out of your
comfort zone, being stretched and challenged and inconvenience, and giving of yourself
and your resources - are you really living for God and his mission?
We cant say I dont have talent or smarts to do this - God doesnt need them, all he needs
is our willingness
The call
All around as there are people who are lost, lonely, despairing, suffering. All around us is
a world where there is darkness and evil. And yet, right in the midst of it, Gods kingdom
is coming to life. You and I are invited, called to be part of something far greater than us,
and yet something where we can make a real difference.
Lets start small - you can help with the Diaper Depot next Saturday, simply by being
here and talking to the people we serve - listening to their stories, showing them love and
acceptance.
Lets start small - you can help with Sunday School - with the new Safe Sanctuary policy,
we need each class to have a helper to assist the teacher. You just have to show up and be
there and be helpful. And let Jesus love the children through you.
Or maybe theres something else stirring inside you - whatever it is, lets talk. You can
use the signup card in your bulletins.
Closing
There is a great scene in the movie Lord of the Rings when Frodo Baggins is told by
Gandalf of the terrible power of the ring that Frodo owns. Frodo learns that he will have
to travel to the dangerous lands of Mordor to get rid of the ring.
As Frodo looks down at the ring in his hand he says that he wishes that the ring had never
come into his possession.
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Wise Gandalf says, So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for
us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
So what are you going to do with the time given you ? Amen.
Endnotes
Eugene Petersons fine book Under the Unpredictable Plant and Tim Kellers sermons on Jonah
were sources for this sermon.