A Tale From a Fish
There she was, obviously in pain. Not physical pain, but emotional wounds that ran deep. I didn’t know why she approached me; I was sitting in the corner of the laundromat, waiting for my clothes to dry, keeping to myself, reading an important book for a class I was in. And she walked in. I ignored her. But she talked to me anyway, told me her troubles. I knew I was supposed to pray with her, but I didn’t necessarily want to. I didn’t even know how to breach that subject. And she left. I hadn’t done my job. I hadn’t done what God told me to. And I repented. I told God, “If I get a second chance, I won’t blow it.” I meant that the next time someone came to me sharing a burden, that I would pray for that person. Out loud. Right then and there.
I asked God – could you let me know when I’m supposed to approach someone? When you want me to pray for them?
I’ve often been skeptical when someone says they’ve heard God speak, but here I was, asking God to speak to me. Today we’re looking at Jonah, who heard the word of God, but probably would have rather not. We don’t know much about Jonah, other than that his father was named Amittai or that the word of the LORD came to him. God gave Jonah a specific task: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2)
God told him to preach. Wow. I can relate to that. Not necessarily with the content, but certainly with the call. You’re probably thinking – of course you can relate to it; you’re a preacher. But if you think sharing God’s good news is limited to the preacher, you haven’t been reading your Bible lately. Jesus’ last words, as recorded by Matthew, are this: "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20)
We have all been called to make disciples. That is part of being a Christian – it’s who we are. Go and make disciples of all nations. God has chosen one means for spreading His good news: the church. Not the church staff, but the church. That means you and me. So we might read Jonah 1:1-2 into our context and say, “The word of the LORD came to the people of the Millersport UMC: Go to…”
Where is God calling us to go? This isn’t a rhetorical question. Where is God calling us to go? I wonder what kind of Nineveh God is calling us to.
Here’s the thing: if you don’t believe God is calling you, there’s only one reason: because you’re not listening to God’s call. Not every call is an overseas call; God did call Jonah to go to a faraway land, but God called Ezekiel to his own people. Go now to the house of Israel and speak my words to them. You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel. Ezekiel 3:4-5. Sometimes missionaries are sent out. But other times missionaries are called to stay home and spread the word here.
I already told you Jesus’ last words as recorded by Matthew, but Luke records an additional encounter. Immediately before Jesus ascended into heaven, he said, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8.
This is cumulative; they were first called to be witnesses in the city where they were. Every one of us is called to this same ministry. You are God’s witnesses. This is why I’ve been pushing you to share your faith story; because we all need practice! When we share our faith, then others share theirs, and pretty soon, the Spirit grows God’s kingdom in mighty ways.
Jesus’ words to his disciples and God’s words to Jonah have something in common. Something bad. Jesus was sending his disciples to be witnesses to Samaria. God sent Jonah to preach to Nineveh. In Jesus’ day, Samaritans were known as heretics. They didn’t worship the right way or in the right place. They were racially mixed. It was so bad that good Jews wouldn’t even walk through Samaria.
I often focus on Jonah’s unwillingness to go where God called him to go; wouldn’t it have been easier had he simply gone to Nineveh? Didn’t God tell him to go there? What kind of jerk does he have to be to refuse? But it was Nineveh. The enemy. If you want to put a face on it, saying “Go to Nineveh” in Jonah’s time would be comparable to saying “Go to the Islamic fundamentalist extremists” in our culture. Nineveh is in current day Iraq, for what that’s worth.
Yet many of us refuse every day, not to go to Islamic fundamentalist extremists. Not to go far away, but to go to those right in our own neighborhoods.
You might wonder how you are supposed to go and to whom you are supposed to go. But don’t let any one of you leave here thinking you’re not called to go. In Galatians 5:16, Paul says: So I say, live by the Spirit… The Holy Spirit is the one who leads us to go, which is fitting, because it is he who gives us power. In Galatians 5:25, Paul goes on to say: Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will be the one who leads us.
Nowhere in the Bible do we see Christians sitting back, listening to a message once a week and doing nothing about it. It’s a shame when this meeting is seen as the totality of Christian life. For many, the goal is to get someone in church, to get them to maybe someday join a church. As United Methodists, we often have thrown our whole weight behind church membership, and we’ve made it easy to become a member of a church. Did you know that most of our UMCs have a membership that’s about twice as many people as actually attend the church? And for many, membership is a revolving door; they join, they hang out for a while, they don’t get connected, and they leave.
This is not biblical Christianity! When we are led by the Spirit, we will do fantastic things. Too often we get into our minds what we want, looking at things based on our own preferences or likes or dislikes, but the Holy Spirit might just have something else in mind for us. This week at Annual Conference, we listened to a story from a gifted speaker, Rev. Janet Wolf. She was appointed to First UMC in Nashville, a church founded in the mid 1800s, a church that had declined for years from their heyday in the 1950s. Now there were only a handful of elderly people, no children, no young families. Over the years, the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood had changed, and now, nobody from the neighborhood was participating in ministry at all. This church didn’t want a pastor to lead them; they wanted a chaplain to be with them as they died. That’s not what they got. As Janet Wolf began leading and praying, the church started thinking about who they were being led to. Where was their Nineveh? Where was their Samaria? They determined that it was right around them. They started praying for children for their congregation, and boy, did God answer that prayer with children. One thing they figured out pretty quickly is that doing Holy Spirit ministry is messy. But it’s absolutely worth it. Does anyone here have a friend or family member who is far from Jesus? What would you sacrifice if it meant that they would clearly hear the Gospel and respond in faith? Would you sacrifice worship style? Would you sacrifice worship time? (don’t worry – I’m saying this to both services) Would you volunteer your time as a servant? Would you get out of the church building?
Going back to Jonah: God called him to Nineveh, the capital city of the enemy power. He didn’t want to go. Why? Jonah 4:1-2 gives us the answer. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." Jonah didn’t want to preach to Nineveh because he knew God’s character. God would spare them. Jonah would have been fine if God had simply gone all Sodom and Gomorrah on Nineveh. Jesus’ disciples once asked if they could call down fire from heaven to destroy a Samaritan town that had denied them hospitality. But Jesus turned and rebuked them (Luke 9:55).
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to call down fire on your enemies? But that’s not God’s style. God is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Jonah didn’t want to go where God called him because, knowing this about God, he knew that God would accept the dreaded Assyrians. God would actually love the enemies of God’s own people. This would mean something profound for God’s people… that they don’t always look like us. They don’t always act like us. And God has called us, his people, to go to them.
What does this mean for us? Doing Holy Spirit work is messy. The people God has called us to reach out to aren’t always well kempt. They don’t always look like us; they don’t always use the same language we do. Some of them would never set foot inside a church building – they think they’ll be struck by lightning if they come in. That’s a common joke, but the serious fact is there are people who feel unwelcome in the Church.
One of the speakers at Annual Conference last week, Jorge Acevado, said this:
Here’s the thing: what would happen if we actually began to intentionally reach out to the kind of people that the Holy Spirit might lead us to? The Ninevites and Samaritans? Who are our Ninevites and Samaritans, who God loves enough that he sent his Son to die for?
How can we a safe place where healing can happen? What kind of processes do we have for messed up people to heal? The fact is, we’re all messed up and in need of God’s healing and grace, but sometimes the processes we have are only the ones that we need, they’re only safe places for us. But everyone needs God’s church.
So where might the Holy Spirit be leading us as a church? This is our task. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, and he didn’t. He went the opposite direction. I think it’s fun that we have the whole VBS thing going on here with the ocean theme – because Jonah jumped in a ship going the opposite direction.
I wonder sometimes if we haven’t gotten in a boat going the wrong direction… or not gotten in a boat at all. Think of it; while Jonah was running away, I get that. But some of us aren’t moving at all. God was able to get to Jonah through a fish. But before he ended up in the fish, do you know what Jonah was doing? All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. Jonah 1:5.
The outsiders were frantic – they were doing everything they could. But Jonah was asleep. And I think this accurately describes most of us. While the world around us is in terrible turmoil, we’re asleep. While there are desperate people all around us, we’ve gone below deck for a little siesta. What will we do? It’s time to wake up, to listen to God’s voice calling us to our Ninevehs, and go to them.
I asked God – could you let me know when I’m supposed to approach someone? When you want me to pray for them?
I’ve often been skeptical when someone says they’ve heard God speak, but here I was, asking God to speak to me. Today we’re looking at Jonah, who heard the word of God, but probably would have rather not. We don’t know much about Jonah, other than that his father was named Amittai or that the word of the LORD came to him. God gave Jonah a specific task: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2)
God told him to preach. Wow. I can relate to that. Not necessarily with the content, but certainly with the call. You’re probably thinking – of course you can relate to it; you’re a preacher. But if you think sharing God’s good news is limited to the preacher, you haven’t been reading your Bible lately. Jesus’ last words, as recorded by Matthew, are this: "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20)
We have all been called to make disciples. That is part of being a Christian – it’s who we are. Go and make disciples of all nations. God has chosen one means for spreading His good news: the church. Not the church staff, but the church. That means you and me. So we might read Jonah 1:1-2 into our context and say, “The word of the LORD came to the people of the Millersport UMC: Go to…”
Where is God calling us to go? This isn’t a rhetorical question. Where is God calling us to go? I wonder what kind of Nineveh God is calling us to.
Here’s the thing: if you don’t believe God is calling you, there’s only one reason: because you’re not listening to God’s call. Not every call is an overseas call; God did call Jonah to go to a faraway land, but God called Ezekiel to his own people. Go now to the house of Israel and speak my words to them. You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel. Ezekiel 3:4-5. Sometimes missionaries are sent out. But other times missionaries are called to stay home and spread the word here.
I already told you Jesus’ last words as recorded by Matthew, but Luke records an additional encounter. Immediately before Jesus ascended into heaven, he said, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8.
This is cumulative; they were first called to be witnesses in the city where they were. Every one of us is called to this same ministry. You are God’s witnesses. This is why I’ve been pushing you to share your faith story; because we all need practice! When we share our faith, then others share theirs, and pretty soon, the Spirit grows God’s kingdom in mighty ways.
Jesus’ words to his disciples and God’s words to Jonah have something in common. Something bad. Jesus was sending his disciples to be witnesses to Samaria. God sent Jonah to preach to Nineveh. In Jesus’ day, Samaritans were known as heretics. They didn’t worship the right way or in the right place. They were racially mixed. It was so bad that good Jews wouldn’t even walk through Samaria.
I often focus on Jonah’s unwillingness to go where God called him to go; wouldn’t it have been easier had he simply gone to Nineveh? Didn’t God tell him to go there? What kind of jerk does he have to be to refuse? But it was Nineveh. The enemy. If you want to put a face on it, saying “Go to Nineveh” in Jonah’s time would be comparable to saying “Go to the Islamic fundamentalist extremists” in our culture. Nineveh is in current day Iraq, for what that’s worth.
Yet many of us refuse every day, not to go to Islamic fundamentalist extremists. Not to go far away, but to go to those right in our own neighborhoods.
You might wonder how you are supposed to go and to whom you are supposed to go. But don’t let any one of you leave here thinking you’re not called to go. In Galatians 5:16, Paul says: So I say, live by the Spirit… The Holy Spirit is the one who leads us to go, which is fitting, because it is he who gives us power. In Galatians 5:25, Paul goes on to say: Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will be the one who leads us.
Nowhere in the Bible do we see Christians sitting back, listening to a message once a week and doing nothing about it. It’s a shame when this meeting is seen as the totality of Christian life. For many, the goal is to get someone in church, to get them to maybe someday join a church. As United Methodists, we often have thrown our whole weight behind church membership, and we’ve made it easy to become a member of a church. Did you know that most of our UMCs have a membership that’s about twice as many people as actually attend the church? And for many, membership is a revolving door; they join, they hang out for a while, they don’t get connected, and they leave.
This is not biblical Christianity! When we are led by the Spirit, we will do fantastic things. Too often we get into our minds what we want, looking at things based on our own preferences or likes or dislikes, but the Holy Spirit might just have something else in mind for us. This week at Annual Conference, we listened to a story from a gifted speaker, Rev. Janet Wolf. She was appointed to First UMC in Nashville, a church founded in the mid 1800s, a church that had declined for years from their heyday in the 1950s. Now there were only a handful of elderly people, no children, no young families. Over the years, the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood had changed, and now, nobody from the neighborhood was participating in ministry at all. This church didn’t want a pastor to lead them; they wanted a chaplain to be with them as they died. That’s not what they got. As Janet Wolf began leading and praying, the church started thinking about who they were being led to. Where was their Nineveh? Where was their Samaria? They determined that it was right around them. They started praying for children for their congregation, and boy, did God answer that prayer with children. One thing they figured out pretty quickly is that doing Holy Spirit ministry is messy. But it’s absolutely worth it. Does anyone here have a friend or family member who is far from Jesus? What would you sacrifice if it meant that they would clearly hear the Gospel and respond in faith? Would you sacrifice worship style? Would you sacrifice worship time? (don’t worry – I’m saying this to both services) Would you volunteer your time as a servant? Would you get out of the church building?
Going back to Jonah: God called him to Nineveh, the capital city of the enemy power. He didn’t want to go. Why? Jonah 4:1-2 gives us the answer. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." Jonah didn’t want to preach to Nineveh because he knew God’s character. God would spare them. Jonah would have been fine if God had simply gone all Sodom and Gomorrah on Nineveh. Jesus’ disciples once asked if they could call down fire from heaven to destroy a Samaritan town that had denied them hospitality. But Jesus turned and rebuked them (Luke 9:55).
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to call down fire on your enemies? But that’s not God’s style. God is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Jonah didn’t want to go where God called him because, knowing this about God, he knew that God would accept the dreaded Assyrians. God would actually love the enemies of God’s own people. This would mean something profound for God’s people… that they don’t always look like us. They don’t always act like us. And God has called us, his people, to go to them.
What does this mean for us? Doing Holy Spirit work is messy. The people God has called us to reach out to aren’t always well kempt. They don’t always look like us; they don’t always use the same language we do. Some of them would never set foot inside a church building – they think they’ll be struck by lightning if they come in. That’s a common joke, but the serious fact is there are people who feel unwelcome in the Church.
One of the speakers at Annual Conference last week, Jorge Acevado, said this:
Spiritual malpractice is offering Jesus as the healer but not offering the safe places, spaces, people, and processes for people to heal.
Here’s the thing: what would happen if we actually began to intentionally reach out to the kind of people that the Holy Spirit might lead us to? The Ninevites and Samaritans? Who are our Ninevites and Samaritans, who God loves enough that he sent his Son to die for?
How can we a safe place where healing can happen? What kind of processes do we have for messed up people to heal? The fact is, we’re all messed up and in need of God’s healing and grace, but sometimes the processes we have are only the ones that we need, they’re only safe places for us. But everyone needs God’s church.
So where might the Holy Spirit be leading us as a church? This is our task. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, and he didn’t. He went the opposite direction. I think it’s fun that we have the whole VBS thing going on here with the ocean theme – because Jonah jumped in a ship going the opposite direction.
I wonder sometimes if we haven’t gotten in a boat going the wrong direction… or not gotten in a boat at all. Think of it; while Jonah was running away, I get that. But some of us aren’t moving at all. God was able to get to Jonah through a fish. But before he ended up in the fish, do you know what Jonah was doing? All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. Jonah 1:5.
The outsiders were frantic – they were doing everything they could. But Jonah was asleep. And I think this accurately describes most of us. While the world around us is in terrible turmoil, we’re asleep. While there are desperate people all around us, we’ve gone below deck for a little siesta. What will we do? It’s time to wake up, to listen to God’s voice calling us to our Ninevehs, and go to them.
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