In the Belly of a Fish
You saw the story of Jonah in the video. Now I will share the story of Jonah with you. (The Message Version and Pastor Lisa’s Version) As I share the story I want you to share some of the story with Jonah who is me.
Pastor Jonah: One day,God’s Word came to me.
WOMEN: “I want you to go to the big city of Nineveh! Preach to them. They’re in a bad way and I can’t ignore it any longer.”
Pastor Jonah: I decided to run away from God. I went down to the port of Joppa and found a ship headed the other direction for Tarshish. I paid the fare and went on board to get as far away fromGodas I could. Then Godsent a storm and the waves were huge. The ship was about to break into pieces. The sailors were terrified. They called out in desperation to their gods. They threw everything they were carrying overboard to lighten the ship. Meanwhile, I was sound asleep. The captain came to me and said,
MEN:“What’s this? Sleeping! Get up! Pray to your god! Maybe your god will see we’re in trouble and rescue us.”
Pastor Jonah: Then the sailors said,
People: “Let’s get to the bottom of this. Let’s draw straws to identify the culprit on this ship who’s responsible for this disaster.”
Pastor Jonah:So they drew straws. I got the short straw.
People: “Confess. Why this disaster? What is your work? Where do you come from? What country? What family?”
Pastor Jonah:I’m a Hebrew. I worshipthe God of heaven who made sea and land. The men were really scared.
People: What on earth have you done?
Pastor Jonah: The sailors realized that I was running away fromGod and the storm was out of control.
People: What are we going to do with you—to get rid of this storm?
Pastor Jonah:Throw me overboard, into the sea. Then the storm will stop. It’s all my fault. I’m the cause of the storm. Get rid of me and you’ll get rid of the storm. The men tried rowing back to shore. The storm only got worse. Then they prayed.
People: God, don’t let us drown because of this man’s life, and don’t blame us for his death. You areGod. Do what you think is best.
Pastor Jonah: They threw me overboard and the storm ended. Then a huge fish swallowed me. I was in the fish’s belly for three stinky days. What could I do but pray? I prayed. ThenGodspoke to the fish, and it spit me out on the seashore. Then God said.
WOMEN:“I want you to go to the big city of Nineveh! Preach to them. They’re in a bad way and I can’t ignore it any longer.”
Pastor Jonah:I wasn’t going to be stupid twice so I walked to Ninevah, thinking the whole way how I still didn’t like those people. Nineveh was a big city, very big. I entered the city and preached, “In forty days Nineveh will be smashed.” I was looking forward to the smashing part. The people of Nineveh listened, and trusted God. They proclaimed a citywide fast and dressed in burlap to show their repentance. Everyone did it—rich and poor, famous and obscure, leaders and followers. The king said.
MEN: Everyone must turn around, turn back from an evil life and the violent ways. Who knows? Maybe God will turn around and change his mind about us, quit being angry with us and let us live!”
Pastor Jonah: God saw what they did. God didchange his mind about them. What he said he would do to them he didn’t do. I was so mad. I lost my temper and yelled, “God! I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were all about grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness! So,God, if you won’t kill them, killme!I’m better off dead!” God said
WOMEN:What do you have to be angry about?”
Pastor Jonah: I stomped out of the city and sat down and pouted and waited to see what would happen. God made a vine grow over me to cool me off in the hot sun. Things were looking up. Then God sent a worm which killed the shade tree. The sun beat down on me. I wished I was dead. Then God said.
WOMEN: What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?
Pastor Jonah: Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!
WOMEN: How is it that you can change your feelings over a shade tree that you neither planted nor watered? It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I change how I feel about the people of Nineveh who I created?
Now that’s a fish story! Is it true? People debate it. But I love this story because it’s so true to our lives. I mean, Jesus called Peter and Andrew, James and John and they threw down their nets and left to follow Jesus, just like that. If we are honest how many of us are more like Jonah?
God could probably have called Jonah anywhere but Nineveh and he would have went off preaching. Where or what is your Nineveh? Who would you most hate to go and share God’s love with? What would you most hate God asking you to do? I know we like to think that we will do anything God asks. I googled 10 most disgusting places to volunteer at and all that came up are 10 good, best places to volunteer at.
Last summer my sister and I took 3 youth from First UCC, Hampton to the National Youth Event. We volunteered one day at a thrift shop. They wanted volunteers to help tear mattresses apart. The thrift store got donations of mattresses from local hotels. You can’t sell used mattresses. If they are decent they give them away. If not they tear them apart and recycle them. They get money for their budget from the metal in the springs. Well, Nick wanted to do that with his brother Cary, Blair and I. They said he was too young. He had to be 14 and he was only 13. We think some boys lied about their ages, but Nick didn’t. So, my sister stuck with Nick. They ended up sorting and organizing hangers that were all a mess in a box. He wasn’t real happy. My sister said, “Let’s make the best of it.” When we finished Nick proudly showed us all he accomplished. Where or what is your Nineveh?
Jonah not only didn’t go there, but he went the opposite way. Why did he do that? He didn’t like the people who lived there. And we say, “Oh, how terrible.” We roll our eyes in disgust. Aren’t there people we don’t like and don’t want anything good to happen to them? Aren’t there a few people that we look at and hope for the vengeance is mine saith the Lord? I think most of us would be glad to help the children in California who were chained up by their parents, but how many of us want to offer help, love and mercy to the parents? That’s why I like Jonah. He’s so real.
And then when God does change his mind, Jonah gets mad and throws a temper tantrum. There are times when God is nudging us to talk to someone, to do something, to reach out to somebody and we are like, “I don’t think so. I’m not hearing you God.” There are times that we see others that we don’t like, changing and becoming better people because of how God is working in their lives and we say, “It won’t last. Just give them a few months. They will be back to their old ways again.” We get mad when someone we don’t really like seems to be getting blessings overflowing from God. It doesn’t seem fair.
What is God calling us to do today in our lives and here at St. John’s UCC? Pastor Jacob Armstrong has his own story about being called to where God leads. When he was in seminary somebody came and talked about Church Planting. Jacob said, “When he heard the presentation it was like God grabbed his heart.” When the presentation over he walked about the campus with a notepad writing down his dreams for his new church. When he went to his next class he asked a couple of his classmates, what is your new church going to look like? They all said, “That is something we’d never want to do.” That was when Jacob realized that maybe church planting was something God was calling him to do. Jacob was getting ready to graduate so he called to set up a meeting with his bishop. He got a meeting the next day to tell his bishop where he was going to be appointed. Jacob sat down and shared his plans and the bishop said, “That’s not the way it works in Tennessee.” The bishop was very affirming and then said that they were not starting any new churches at this time. They had a plan and were working on it. The bishop sent Jacob back to the church he had been serving at for several years. He served the church another year, then another year and started another year. Pastor Jacob loved the church that he was in, but he had a holy restlessness. He felt like he’d never be able to start his new church.
Pastor Jacob and his wife Rachel took a group of college students to an event in Atlanta. The whole week he felt like God was saying to him, “Will you go wherever I want you to go?” Jacob said, “Yes, God I’ll go wherever you want me to go as long as it’s to Mount Juliet to start a new church. You know we talked about this God.” That night when Rachel came back to the hotel room she said, “Jacob, I feel like God has been asking me this question all week. I feel like God is asking us, ‘Will you go wherever I want you to go?’” Jacob and Rachel got down on their knees in the Holiday Inn Express and began to pray about what it would look like for them to go wherever God wanted them to go and to not try to push what they wanted onto God. They began meeting with the District Superintendent and praying about God’s call. Jacob and Rachel began to feel that God was calling them to be missionaries.
During the summer of 2007 Jacob and Rachel were assigned to missionary placements in Mexico. They would go out at night and begin praying over the people in the streets and praying to God saying, “What would you have us to do here. We feel so unqualified, inequipped and yet so open.” Then they began dreaming of what God would have them do there. Then they went home and began to make plans. In the next couple of months with all the things that needed to happen for this placement in Mexico every yes was a no. Every door that needed to be opened was closed. Jacob said, “I don’t know if you’ve ever said, ‘This is where we are going.’ And then you step out and say, ‘This is not where we are going.’” He said that they were frustrated, confused, perplexed and disappointed.
While Pastor Jacob was in that kind of mood, the district superintendent made him go to a church development conference. The first day that Pastor Jacob was there three different pastors came up to him and said, “Have you heard about the new church that we’re starting in Tennessee?” He said, “No, I haven’t heard about it.” Now he was mad.The first minister then said, “Yeah, we’re starting this new church in Mt. Juliet in the Providence area. Have you ever heard of it?” Jacob said, “Yes, I’ve heard of it.” The three pastors took Jacob out to dinner and asked him to pray about being the pastor of the new church. Pastor Jacob was really, really confused. He and Rachel thought they were still going to bust through all the doors and go to Mexico. On Sunday as part of the conference they were all assigned churches to worship at. On his way Pastor Jacob pulled his car over and walked into a field and said, “God, why did you do all this missionary stuff in my heart? Why did you make me think I was going to Monterrey, Mexico? I have a wife back in Nashville that is set on that. Our hearts were set on that and now it looks like you are giving me the dream of my heart that I’ve had for years?” That is when Pastor Jacob felt like God was saying, “I wanted you to have that heart for your hometown. I wanted you to weep over that city. I wanted you to weep over what Jesus could do there.” Pastor Jacob went home. He and his wife Rachel prayed about it. In a conference that hadn’t started a church in a decade, every yes that needed to be a yes for all this to happen became yeses. Jacob was moved right then to go start this new church of his dreams.
Jesus came up to Peter and Andrew, James and John and called them to leave their and follow him. They did it. No questions asked. They left the fish behind. Jonah? He chose to hang out in the belly of the fish. How many times do we hear God saying, “Go sit at the table with that student who nobody else wants to be friends with. Go talk to that co-worker who is rude to everyone. Go take a meal over to your grumpy neighbor.”? And what do we do? We sit on the opposite side of the cafeteria from the student no one else likes. We go the opposite way when we see our rude co-worker coming. We take a meal to the neighbor we like down the street.
Here’s the thing we learn about Jonah and why I like the story of Jonah so much. Jonah teaches us that God is a God of second chances and do-overs. God knows we just get stubborn sometimes. God knows that we just want to do, what we want to do. God keeps nudging us. Things don’t always happen on our time. They happen on God’s times. We are called to pray, to listen and then to act on what we believe God is leading us to do. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we try something and just learn from it. We get frustrated, confused and sometimes even angry. Sometimes we just need to hang out in the belly of the fish praying to God. God doesn’t give up on us. God stands on the beach waiting for the fish to spit us out. Then God can lead us on.