Nineveh

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

January 24, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Just for today, help me, God, to remember that my life is a gift,
that my health is a blessing, that this new day is filled with awesome potential,
that I have the capacity to bring something wholly new and unique and good into
this world.

Just for today, help me, God, to remember to be kind and patient to the
people who love me, and to those who work with me too. Teach me to see all the
beauty that I so often ignore, and to listen to the silent longing of my own soul.

Just for today, help me, God, to remember You.

Let this be a good day, God, full of joy and love.

Amen

Jonah 3: 1-10

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

1Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2“Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

3Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

6When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:

“By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

10When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

A Message

“Nineveh”

This week’s lectionary-appointed Hebrew Bible passage takes us through a story that might have been your favorite as a kid in Sunday school. Jonah lends itself very easily to coloring books, plays with funny costumes, and songs about fish. Ironically, for how much we might have heard about this story as kids, a lot of us don’t know much about the actual content of this book as adults, save for the whale part.

This is a very short book, only 4 chapters. I even translated it in Hebrew class in seminary. It’s in the “minor prophet” genre in the Bible, but because of its very quirky content many Biblical scholars believe Jonah may be more of a satire on prophecy than serious prophecy. Nonetheless, we learn wonderful spiritual lessons from this text.

Jonah lives in the Kingdom of Israel, and he is very proud to be a prophet. His job means that when God wants to deliver a message to the people Jonah repeats the words of the Divine—even if no one wants to hear them. Lucky for Jonah, to this point God has only asked him to deliver news to his friends and neighbors. Jonah has the admiration and respect of his kinspeople, and they eagerly receive his prophetic words and react positively to them. All of this means that even though Jonah has a calling that can be very difficult in theory, in practice it has been nothing but smooth sailing for him, and his ego gets puffed up every time he goes to talk to God. Today he converses with God again, and expects to hear about another easy message to deliver to people he likes. Instead, God finally demands that Jonah put on his big boy britches and act like a real prophet. Jonah needs to travel far from his homeland to Nineveh, a busy city full of idol worshippers and Israel’s enemy, to warn them to repent.

Jonah is not interested in being responsible. He tries to flee on a ship to Tarshish, to get as far away from his duties as possible. But God sends a big storm after him, and after Jonah gets tossed into the sea and expects to die God saves him…by having a big stinky fish swallow him. This, of course, is the famous part of the story. The fish swims to Nineveh and barfs Jonah up on the shore.

Left with no choice, Jonah tells the Ninevites to repent. And then they do. All the people, young and old, noble and commoner, men, women, children, and even the animals promise to follow God from now on, and God saves the Ninevites from calamity in return. Meanwhile Jonah broods. How could God love people he hates?

It’s not fun for any of us to confess, but there’s lots of places we may see ourselves in this story and when we catch ourselves identifying with Jonah’s prejudices we must acknowledge it and then repent. What has God called upon us to do that we do not want to act on? I’ve got some bad news for you, if God needs you to carry out the Creator’s will you can either offer yourself up willingly or you can go the smelly fish route. I personally recommend the former. Who are your Ninevites? Who are the people that God has asked you to extend Jesus’ love to that you cannot soften your heart enough to treat with grace? Who are the people that you dislike, and maybe even hate, so strongly that you half expect God will dislike them too? What biases do you need to confront? Take some time to confess to God your racism, your xenophobia, your classism, your sexism, your nationalism, your ableism, your homophobia…anything that stops you from having a heart more like Christ’s. It’s only after we cleanse ourselves of that garbage that we’re truly ready to not just love people we like anyway but to do the heavy lifting of loving those who need love the most.

Amen.

I invite you to receive this benediction: Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard your going out and coming in, from this time on and forevermore. As all of God’s people we say together: Amen.