Jonah 3:1-10

Sunday, November 8, 2020
Intern Michael Poeschl

Jonah 3:1-10

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you have ever bought furniture at IKEA you have probably seen the words instructions included. While some of us may take this as a challenge, and ignore the instructions, I have found that taking the time to read the instructions and following them saved time and energy with much better results. Perhaps there have been times when someone asked you to do something a specific way, but you felt that you knew a better way to do it? Instead of following their instructions you attempt to do it your way and you didn’t get the expected results. What if God asked you to do something? Would you follow his instructions? When God asks, we can trust that his message needs to be delivered, even if we don’t like the message, or who it is going to. But sometimes we are not listening, unwilling, or we think we know better than God.

We are told to love one another, but sometimes there are people we choose to hate, whether it be a selfish neighbor, a difficult boss, or even a family member. These are people we choose to judge, rather than trying to understand them. Jonah was a reluctant prophet who tried to ignore the instructions given to him by God. Rather than punishing Jonah, God gives him a second chance and he finally delivers the word of the LORD, but not before taking us on an unexpected adventure that reveals the power of God, where what we expect is not what we discover. We also learn that God is looking out for us. Just saying that we believe in a God of love, whose mercy is greater than his wrath, is incomplete until we follow the instructions to love our enemies.

Jonah is more than a dramatic fish story. He disobeys God’s command to go to Nineveh and cry out against it. He tries to run away by getting on a ship to get as far away as he could, only to have God send up a storm to stop him. The crew prayed to their gods without result and questioned Jonah to find out what was going on. Jonah admits to running from God, even suggesting to them to throw him overboard to stop the storm. The sailors turn to the LORD and pray to be saved and not be guilty of spilling innocent blood. They throw Jonah overboard and the storm ends. A miracle from God that saves the ship and the sailors, but Jonah’s only direction is down, as he sinks to the bottom of the sea. Jonah still has a job to do and God sends a large fish that swallows him. Perhaps shocked by what must be the sticky disgusting insides of the fish Jonah remembers God and he prays a Psalm of Thanksgiving that ends, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord”, which God hears and the large fish spews him on to dry land.

Given another chance will Jonah follow the instructions? The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” Jonah obeys and goes to Nineveh. Echoing the thoughts from a Working Preacher Podcast on this text, “In one of the shortest and most successful prophecies of all time”. Jonah enters Nineveh and cries out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Jonah must have been terrified to go to Israel’s fiercest enemies and expect to be heard, let alone be left alive. This seems to be the prophet that we have been expecting, bringing the call for repentance. Jonah must have been torn to deliver this message, which he avoided the first time. While his hatred for his enemies was burning in him, along with his desire for instant justice; he chose to follow the instructions and deliver the message that gave them forty days to repent.

The short message spread like wildfire and the people’s repentance was immediate. Jonah must have been dumbfounded to see the people repent by putting on sackcloths, sitting in ashes, fasting and crying mightily to God for mercy. Even the Ninevite King put his faith in God saying, “Who Knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” God saw what they did and changed his mind and did not overthrow them. Seeing the mercy of God should bring us joy, but Jonah was unhappy and he thought he had a reason why.

Through selfishness and hypocrisy, we think we are in control and we don’t need God. This prevents us from seeing that something greater is going on here. Jonah tried to run from God, but when he turned to God he was shown mercy. The sailors on the ship going to Tarshish chose to trust God and were shown mercy. The Ninevites immediately believed Jonah’s message from God, and they were shown mercy. God saw what they did and changed his mind from the calamity that he said he would bring on them. Following God’s instructions makes us part of the plan that leads to repentance and mercy.

Jonah teaches us to look beyond ourselves to the other people who we don’t want to see or understand. Have you ever thought you were doing the right thing, only to find out that it was wrong? Perhaps you’ve ignored instructions that you didn’t understand? In chapter 4 Jonah reveals his reason for his unhappiness, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Jonah knew from the beginning what he was supposed to do, yet he tried to run away and do nothing, but God wouldn’t let him get away, there was something bigger going on. The abundance of steadfast love and the readiness to relent from punishing is what God does and the reason why Jonah is unable to see what God has planned. Jonah only sees the Assyrians as enemies, rather than siblings. When we trust that the Lord sees what we cannot see, we will find mercy.

When we make mistakes we can either live with them or learn from them. God is not looking for perfect people; rather people who hear the call to spread the message of mercy and forgiveness to everyone, not just to those people who they like. Taking this message to other people who we disagree with or don’t like is difficult. Our faith binds us to that mission as we are held with compassion, but that doesn’t mean the journey is not without a struggle. Jonah is a reluctant prophet who runs away from delivering a message for God, a message of repentance to people he hated. Jonah doesn’t believe the Ninevites even deserve a warning, anymore than he thinks they will repent. His obedience to the task is where mercy will be found.

For many of us it is difficult to give up the security of what we think we know to a higher power. If we think we can run away from God’s mercy, then our thoughts aren’t on the giver. We are all chosen out of grace and commanded to love our neighbors, seeing them as allies to strengthen each other. View your neighbors not through your eyes, but through what God sees. Remove judgment and what you think would be best for other people. Choose to accept and acknowledge the things you might not understand. Challenge yourself to learn more of their story before acting. God’s plan comes with instructions, to love one another and to show mercy to one another. Trust that God’s plan is at work for you. AMEN

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Jonah 3:1-10

Sunday, November 8, 2020
Intern Michael Poeschl

Jonah 3:1-10

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

About Augustana

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Jonah 3:1-10

Sunday, November 8, 2020 Intern Michael Poeschl

Jonah 3:1-10

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, November 8, 2020
Intern Michael Poeschl

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson