A Second Time

Mark 1:14-20

14Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galileo, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.”

16As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea - for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Jonah 3:1-4:4

1The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2”Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding large city, a three days’ walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 

6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bright upon them them; and he did not do it.

4:1But this was displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the LORD and said, “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. 3And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it better for me to die than to live.” 4And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

That one prophet, the one who runs away, the eaten-by-a-large-fish one. Y’all know the story, we’ve heard it since our preschool Sunday school classes. The LORD tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah boards a boat and heads at quickly as possible in the OPPOSITE direction. There’s a storm, there are some dice, Jonah gets thrown overboard, there’s a fish, there’s a poem, and the LORD tells the fish to vomit his reluctant prophet up on the shore closest to Nineveh. That’s the first half of the book of Jonah.

Our passage this morning picks up as a still-soggy and certainly smelly Jonah hears the command of the LORD for a second time. “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.’ So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD.” The rebellion of the first chapter and the confession and forgiveness of the second do not erase Jonah’s call to preach to the people of Nineveh, that great city. The people we would choose to love and the people God calls us to love are often not the same list. Jonah has emerge from the large fish, but he still has to face Nineveh, that great city.

Jonah’s relationship with Nineveh, that great city, is not a UNC/Duke/Wake Forest/NC State style rivalry. There’s nothing playful or competitive about it. Neither is this a Democrat/Republican divide, where they vilify one another in times of conflict but are neighbors most days. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, an oppressive and violent civilization that is most notable in scripture for destroying the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Jonah is not called to bring the word of the LORD to his cross-town rival, or his political opposition. Nineveh wiped ten of the twelve tribes of Israel off the map. These people are the enemy, and are a threat to the survival of Jonah’s people in a way that the United States has not had in its history.

So it’s no surprise that Jonah does not want to go there. It’s no surprise that Jonah does not want to speak the word of the LORD to those people. It’s no surprise that when Jonah finally does obey God’s word, his sermon is not…exactly…hopeful…

“Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

No grace, no mercy, no slowness to anger, no steadfast love, no relenting from punishing. Just a warning of coming wrath. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, but the eight-word message he carries to Nineveh does not offer a second chance. The people who hear the message immediately go in to mourning. “The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” Nineveh, that great city, was reduced to a portrait of despair. “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” Even the king abandons his throne, and exchanges his royal finery for humiliation and grief.

But we know the LORD, this is not how things are always going to be. Despair and grieving might end the paragraph, but in the story of God’s relationship with God’s people, the final verse is always grace.

The weather this January has been all over the place. We’ve had highs in the low seventies and lows of seven. We’ve had beautiful sunshine and inches of snow. And through it all, Leah and I have negotiated an energetic and often sniffly toddler, and a cat who normally sleeps outside.

We usually like to let William run around in the backyard in the afternoons, we both love the outdoors and want William to grow up that way too. The cat we rescued, and she’s an outdoor cat unless the temperature drops below 20 degrees, in which case she comes inside to a room where she can do minimal damage.

William hates being cooped up inside for days at a time, which has happened because he’s been sick and it’s been cold. Zipporah, our cat, hates that little room we let her stay in, because she’s used to having unfettered access to the great outdoors.

So imagine, if you will, trying to follow the King of Nineveh’s proclamation, and preventing an energetic toddler and a a feisty feline from tasting anything, neither feeding nor drinking water. Now picture trying to put those two irritable, hungry, thirsty creatures in sackcloth. “The shall cry mightily to God” all right. Weeping and gnashing of teeth as it were.

What I’m saying is that parts of this story are meant to be comical. The image of house cats and farm animals clothed for mourning is meant to make us roll our eyes and sigh. “Oh Nineveh, y’all don’t know your right hand from your left.”

As offensive as our evil ways are to the holiness of God, as much as the violence of our hands provokes fierce anger from the LORD, out attempt to make up for it through our own ability is portrayed, in Jonah, as comical. We are quite able to dig ourselves into a hole, but our attempts to dig ourselves out are a joke. But the humor in this story gives away the ending, because when the LORD laughs, it’s not cynical, it’s loving.

So I wonder if the King of Nineveh, that great city, is already starting to feel the presence of a God he doesn’t yet know. Because in the face of all this grief, he’s got enough faith to ask “Who knows?” He’s got enough faith to try, knowing that even if this foreign God of Israel doesn’t relent, apologetic efforts are still in order. “the ‘who knows’ of the King of Nineveh becomes and ongoing question in the very heart of God. How far can God’s love and mercy extend?”

We’ve already seen that God’s love and mercy extend to Jonah a second time, even though he ran as far as he could away from the command of God. We’ve already seen that God’s love and mercy open up room for our ineffective efforts to be seen as funny instead of pathetic. And here, in the very next verse, we see that God’s love and mercy extend even to the violent, evil enemies of God’s chosen people. “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said that he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.”

God’s love and mercy extend farther than we can ever ask, or even imagine. They extend beyond borders, beyond conflicts, beyond denominational divides, beyond political posturing, even beyond basketball rivalries. *gasp* I know, it’s pretty radical stuff, to thing that God can love both Chapel Hill fans and Duke fans, God can show mercy to both the demon deacons and to the wolfpack.

But that’s nothing next to loving both Jonah and Nineveh. Perhaps the most difficult part of following the LORD is that we don’t get to tell God when to stop spreading love and mercy.

But don’t think that means that the violence and the evil ways are tolerated. God sent Jonah to bear a message of judgment, and the message was certainly received. The forgiveness doesn’t find its expression until the evil ways are abandoned. Even Jonah only receives the word of the LORD for the second time after he has repented from his disobedience. The rebellion of the first chapter and the confession and forgiveness of the second do not erase Jonah’s call to preach to the people of Nineveh, that great city. God’s love and mercy extend as far as God chooses, and nobody puts a limit on that, but that doesn’t mean that grace is cheap.

Jonah still had to go to Nineveh, knowing who the LORD is. Jonah knew that he was going to represent the LORD to Israel’s enemies, and when God “changes his mind about the calamity he had said he would bring upon them” Jonah gets mad enough that he doesn’t want to live in a world where the LORD can extend love and mercy even to Nineveh. “…this was displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, ‘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. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it better for me to die than to live.’” Even after all Jonah has seen, even after “the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time,” he is still bitter about what God is doing.

But the LORD doesn’t abandon Jonah to his bitterness. The LORD keeps coming, a second time, a third time, a fourth time, as many time as we need. God has made his disciples into fishers of people, and all of us are caught. The LORD is reeling us in until we know that the ““The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

Between now and then, we’re Ninevah, crying mightily to God, putting aside our evil ways and the violence of our hands, learning about who God is and grasping the faith of the King of Ninevah, “Who knows?” maybe we’ll see God’s love and mercy a second time. We’re also Jonah, called to love and carry the word of the LORD to whomever our particular Nineveh might be. We don’t get to choose to whom God shows love and mercy, but we do get to participate in the spread of that abundance of steadfast love, as disciples of Jesus Christ.

So is it right for us to be angry? Or should we sing with Joy?