Central Family,

This Sunday is Christ the King Sunday! It is the climax of the Church year as we announce that Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings! And then one week later we gather on the First Sunday in Advent and tell the story as if we are hearing it for the very first time. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The story for this Sunday is Jonah.

Here’s the deal: (Probably helpful to take a few minutes and read the story)

Jonah was perfectly happy to preach hellfire and brimstone to the people of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, because frankly, they deserved it. Horrible people. Nasty people who did cruel things. They were Israel’s longtime enemy, and therefore God’s longtime enemy….right? As long as God hit the delete key in the end all would be well for Jonah – the Assyrians deserved to be punished!

They had humiliated and crushed the Israelites, abused, raped, desecrated, destroyed – you name it – they did it! They had terrorized God’s precious people. Surely God would never forgive them! Surely God could not love them! So God assigned Jonah the task of preaching to the abominable heathens. So Jonah bolted! He ran from God’s commission and call. He hid in a boat, ended up inside a huge fish, found himself regurgitated on the sand, and then finally was in a place to hear God’s call a second time. (As I said it is helpful to read the four chapters of Jonah to fill in the details)

So Jonah finally went! He preached a sermon of eight words (four in Hebrew); “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” That’s the sermon! Not a lot of creativity or imagination. And can you picture the delivery? Much to Jonah’s astonishment, the sermon was a rousing success! Repentance occurred! (Again read the story for the details) Jonah should have been having a whale of a time BUT he is ticked, angry and livid. Who is this Jonah?

Jonah reminds us how vulnerable we are in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes we confuse what we hate with what God hates. Do we like Jonah, find pleasure in hating? Joy in our enemy’s misfortune? Do we work for our own self-interests rather than God’s glory and growth of the kingdom?

But Jonah provides a mirror for us to examine ourselves. According to Jonah’s story, God saves even our enemies if they turn from faithlessness to holiness. Jonah reminds us that ‘wickedness’ springs not from the fact that you are not like me, or ‘they’ are not like ‘us.’ Wickedness is born when people are not faithful to God, whether those people happen to be Ninevites, Serbs, Iraqis, Democrats, Republicans or any one of us. God’s point is that the Kingdom must grow, and everybody is invited.

Even the nasty Ninevites!

Even Jonah!

Even us!

God’s plan is that everyone will be saved by turning from away from wickedness and toward the only God, who can free a guy from the belly of a fish, the only God who can transform an entire city of heathens, the only God who can melt hateful hearts.

God is the only one who can change us, too!

Jonah’s story ends with a question. And we never hear the answer. It reminds me of the loving father’s words to the prodigal’s older bother. In both stories we are left without a tidy ending. And there is no tidy ending for us, either.

Together we are on the journey!

Paul
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