Micah 6:1-8
March 28, 2010
Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.
‘O my people, what have I done to you?
I
n what have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.’
‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah is my man. Over the past number of weeks we’ve been focusing on many of the other minor prophets (fyi: minor prophets are called that only because their books tend to be so small—7-14 chapters—as opposed to the major prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, whose books can go on for 67 chapters). Often they were speaking to people who had been engaging in the worship of Ba’al in order to appease the Assyrians, whose armies were ready to attack if the nations of Israel and Judah didn’t pay tributes to maintain their independence and worship the Assyrian gods. Micah, though, is different from many of those prophets. In many ways he is closer to Isaiah and Jeremiah because he wasn’t just worried about armies poised to attack. He was worried about people who said they were God’s chosen, but were acting like people who had abandoned God.
You know Micah much better than you think because you’ve heard him quoted before. For instance, you recognize this:
“they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
Also, Micah is responsible for a prophecy that is traditionally read on Christmas Eve:
“But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
from ancient days.
Therefore he shall give them up until the time
when she who is in labor has brought forth;
then the rest of his kindred shall return
to the people of Israel.
And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth;
and he shall be the one of peace.”
Micah is certainly the most quoted of all the prophets, if you look at the ratio of quotes to a book. At least three chapters of Micah are quoted regularly by Christians and Jews, which isn’t bad considering that there are only seven chapters in his book. So who is this Micah, and why is he so remembered?
We only know a little bit about Micah. We know that he was from the small village of Moresheth, which is several miles from Jerusalem. He lived at about the same time as our prophet from last week, Hosea, meaning that he was a prophet in the last two decades of Israel’s existence. The difference was that Hosea was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel, while Micah was primarily in Judah, prophesying in Jerusalem, although he did periodically preach in Israel’s capitol city of Samaria. The southern kingdom of Judah would last another 180 years before the Babylonians destroyed it. Since Micah was not preaching to people about to be attacked by the Assyrians, his message was different. He still preached a message that the Assyrians would be God’s hand if the people didn’t keep their focus on God, but Micah was more concerned with something else. He was concerned with how the people of Judah applied their faith to life.
Micah looked at the nation of Judah, and he saw injustice all around. And there were three primary sources of injustice. First, he saw the wealthy as acting unjustly to the poor. A system had been growing in Judah in which wealthy landowners found ways to unjustly take more of their neighbor’s land illegally, but because of their wealth they could get away with it. They would find ways to obtain small pieces of land, throwing the poor owners off it, and often leaving them in poverty. The poor, having no land to make a living off of, were often reduced to becoming servants or slaves to the rich. Micah made himself very unpopular by speaking out against the rich, saying that they were going against God’s will by oppressing the poor in order to make their wealth.
Micah didn’t just go after the rich, but he went after the courts because they were working in conjunction with the rich. The courts had stopped being fair in their justice by siding with the rich because the rich would give them bribes, especially when it came to land being taken illegally. Also, in something that is reminiscent of our justice system today, the rich were not as accountable to the law as the poor. Today the rich get off because they can afford better attorneys, but back then they got off by offering bribes. Basically, Isaiah said the judges were hating what is good and loving what is evil.
Judges in ancient Israel and Judah were held to a much higher standard. The tradition of judges went back a seven-hundred years, while the tradition of kings only went back three-hundred years. Originally, judges governed the lands of Israel. People learned to naturally get along, and the judges were there to settle disputes. Judges were to be people of impeccable faith and integrity. It was only with the advent of King Saul that people turned to a king and his court to rule them. But judges were still to be people of faith and integrity who settled disputes as God’s hand in the world. The judges of Micah’s day, with some exceptions, had forgotten about God’s will and were focused on their own wallets.
Meanwhile, Micah also had devastating words for his fellow prophets. He complained that too many of them were prophesying for money, prophesying only what the wealthy wanted them to say. They pretended to be God’s prophets, but instead were only prophets for profit. For Micah, the rich were the problem because they were oppressing the poor and leading the people away from God.
This gets right to the heart of what I really love and respect about Micah—he was a prophet who spoke truth despite the political and economical beliefs of his time. What’s fascinating about Micah is that he managed to preach in such a way that he ticked off both the liberals and the conservatives of his day. How? By being irritatingly liberal and conservative both. In other words, his preaching wasn’t confined to a political ideology. It was faithful to God. He was very much like Jesus, who had a similar talent in ticking off liberals and conservatives.
Do you know who the conservatives and the liberals were in Jesus’ time? Take a guess before answering. The conservatives were the Sadducees. They were conservative because they were trying to preserve the old ways. For them, the center of all worship was the Temple in Jerusalem. Also, they were literalists when it came to scripture. They believed that there could be no interpretation of the law, only literal observance. The Pharisees were the liberals. What made them liberal? The fact that they believed in interpreting the law and applying it in new ways to fit life. The center of their worship wasn’t the Temple, but the synagogue. In fact, did you know that the Pharisees were the ancestors of all modern Jewish worship? The Sadducees lost their power and their raison d’etre when the Romans destroyed the Temple around 65 A.D. Since Temple worship and sacrifice was no longer possible, their influence was no longer needed, and they died as a movement. Jewish worship shifted to synagogue worship, which is also the grounding of Christian worship and serves as the template for the Christian worship service. Again, Jesus, during his time, managed to outrage both the Sadducees and the Pharisees so much that they agreed on one thing, which was the Jesus should be killed.
Micah had the same approach. His message was both liberal and conservative. If you listen to his basic message and applied it to today, you would find that he would appeal to both modern liberals and conservatives. Like modern-day evangelicals citing that we are a Christian nation, he had a message that Israel was a Jewish nation first, and that the people needed to be grounded in God. He also supported a message of personal morality and responsibility, much in the way that modern evangelicals do. Yet Micah also sounded very liberal when he preached against the wealthy and for the poor. Like modern-day progressives, he would have supported a very anti-poverty message, including doing anything to relieve the plight of the poor, including land redistribution. Sounds kind of socialist to me. Actually, sounds very much like God to me. Micah wasn’t the only prophet to sound this kind of message. Most of the other prophets spoke like this.
You can see Micah’s emphases in our passage for this morning, for Micah gives a basic message that cuts right to the core. He says,
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah makes three powerful points that we need to pay attention to. He makes his points by telling the people what God really wants. He tells them that God doesn’t want all the sacrifices of animals and oil that they had been offering for thousands of years as much as God wants a sacrifice of their hearts. He asks, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?” In other words, do we think that what God wants is for us to keep doing what is wrong and then offer animals and oil to pay for our sins? What God wants is for us to transform our hearts and our actions in three ways.
First, he says that we should do justice. This does not mean merely putting bad people into prison. When Micah speaks of justice, he’s talking about social justice. He’s talking about being a people who do what’s right for the poor. He’s talking about being a people who allow for the creation of wealth, but do so in a way that makes all people equal, giving everyone equal opportunity. He’s not against rich people, per se. He’s against poverty and policies of wealth that depend upon the poor for the rich to become richer. He is telling us today that we have to be about social justice in caring about the poor, the disadvantaged, and doing whatever we can to raise the poor up to the point at which they can live good lives.
He also tells us to love kindness. He’s not just saying that we should be nicey-nice. He’s talking about a fundamental way of living based on love in which we act in love even to our enemies. Jesus is more direct about this when he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” This is the kind of kindness Micah is talking about. He is saying that we should not just be kind, but love it so much that it becomes foundational. I think that Micah would look at our culture today, at its’ way of discourse in which people who disagree political threaten each other and throw bricks through windows, and say that we have fallen far away from God. He would look at our culture and say, “Why do you call yourselves a Christian nation, and then hate to act like Christians?” Micah is advocating a way of living in which we treat each other with love and respect, no matter what.
Finally, he says that we should walk humbly. He does not mean that we should be weak. He means that we should walk in a way in which we seek God’s way and God’s will above all else. Humble people are strong people because they do what God wants regardless of the pressure they feel from others. They resist ideologies, and instead follow God’s will. Humble people have one goal in mind: to do and speak what God wants. Micah is telling us today that we have to get off our own beliefs so that we can follow God’s beliefs. That we need to get off of our own will to do what God’s will.
Micah was a powerful prophet in his time, but I also think that he is a powerful prophet in our time. The question is whether we are still listening.
Amen.
Discovering the Prophets: Hosea
Hosea 3:1-5
March 21, 2010
The Lord said to me again, ‘Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.’ So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine. And I said to her, ‘You must remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the whore, you shall not have intercourse with a man, nor I with you.’ For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterwards the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.
I need to apologize to all of you this morning. I have to apologize because several weeks ago, when I talked about the prophet Jeremiah, I said that he was the strangest prophet of all of them. I now realize that I was wrong. After having spent the past week studying Hosea, I now realize that Hosea was much stranger. Jeremiah was plenty strange, but not when you compare him to our prophet for today. Hosea is a weirdly fascinating prophet.
Unlike most prophets, who are known for what they say, Hosea was known as much for what he did. You see, he used his life as a grand metaphor for what was going on in the nation of Israel, and what he did shocked people, as you can tell from our passage above.
Let me give some background to Hosea to help you get a sense of his life and ministry. Hosea lived and prophesied in the last two decades of Israel’s existence. Again, let me review what I’ve spoken about several times in talking about the prophets. If you remember, Ancient Israel was one nation under kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but after Solomon’s death it became divided in two. Around 922 B.C., the northern half became a nation called Israel, while the southern half became a nation called Judah. The capital of Judah was Jerusalem, and the capital of Israel was Samaria. The northern nation of Israel lasted almost exactly 200 years until the Assyrians attacked it and destroyed it in 722 B.C. The nation of Judah lasted until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 597 B.C. Hosea was a prophet of the northern nation of Israel in its last days, and he preached a message that the Assyrians were going to destroy Israel according to God’s will.
The funny thing about Hosea is that he had a funny way of prophesying. He didn’t start his ministry by going out and preaching. Instead, he let his life become a metaphor for Israel, and then later he preached to Israel, using his own life as an allegory for the state of Israel’s relationship with God. The primary problem for Israel was that the kings and the people, afraid of the Assyrians who demanded that they worship the Assyrian fertility god, Ba’al, as their price for independence, were now worshiping Ba’al. And the worship of Ba’al was diametrically opposed to the worship of Yahweh, or God. While the worship of Yahweh centered around making sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem, or one in Samaria, there was also an emphasis that real worship meant living according to the law. The focus of Jewish life was faithfulness in all things to Yahweh. The worship of Ba’al was different. The focus was on fertility rituals, which meant worship where priests and priestesses copulating in worship services was the center of worship. What the Israelites tended to do, in order to hedge their bets, was to worship Yahweh throughout the year, and then to engage in the fertility rituals of Ba’al in the spring. Hosea stood against the worship of Ba’al, so his life became a metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel, and their fascination with Ba’al—what Hosea called Israel’s adultery.
Hosea was instructed by God to find a prostitute and marry her. At least that’s what our modern translations of Hosea says—that she was a prostitute. The translation isn’t quite accurate. Hosea didn’t just go out and find a prostitute. He married a woman named Gomer, who was a particular kind of prostitute. She was employed in the service of the temple of Ba’al in Samaria. Her role was to be available to act out the fertility rites of Ba’al. She was sort of a temple concubine whose role it was to be available to men chosen to engage with her sexually in order to entice Ba’al to bring fertilizing spring rains.
Hosea marries her and instructs her to no longer be in the employ of Ba’al. This is an allegory for the fact that Israel has been unfaithful to God, but God is willing to call them back and love them, as long as they stay faithful. Apparently Hosea loves Gomer very much, and they have three children. Hosea is led by God to give the three children very strange names. The first boy is named Jezreel. That doesn’t seem so strange, but you’ll see why it is in a moment. The first girl is named Lo-Ruhamah, which means “Not Pited.” The second boy is named Lo-Ammi, which means “Not My People.” What odd names to give them, but there’s a reason.
He names the first boy Jezreel because it was in the village of Jezreel that great violence took place 100 years earlier. Israel had been ruled by King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel. Both had driven the nation of Israel to worship Ba’al, and the great prophet Elijah, had challenged them by showing up the priests of Ba’al in a duel. The duel took place on the top of Mt. Horeb, where Elijah built a fire and had the priests of Ba’al build a fire. All 400 priest called on Ba’al to magically light their stack of logs, but nothing happened. Elijah poured buckets of water on his stack of logs, and then called on Yahweh to light his fire. The fire roared to life. This angered Jezebel and Ahab, who tried to kill Elijah, and intensified their persecution of Jews who insisted on worship of Yahweh alone.
The grip of the house of Ahab was broken at the village of Jezreel. God anointed a new king to rise up. His name was Jehu, and he was a leading commander in the army of Ahab’s son, Ahaziah. At Jezreel, Ahaziah was killed, and Jehu went on to kill Jezebel and all of her 70 sons. Jehu restored a worship of Yahweh alone, and for many years afterwards Israel was faithful. But over time Jehu’s descendents moved back to a worship of Ba’al. By calling his son Jezreel, Hosea was saying that a massacre of Israel was coming.
He named his daughter Not Pitied as a way of saying to the people of Israel that when the massacre comes, they will not be pitied. They will suffer for their infidelity, and God won’t pay attention to their wailing.
Finally, he named his other son Not My People as a way of telling them that while he had chosen the Jews to be God’s people, they would no longer be the chosen ones. God would choose another people, and they would be left to suffer life without God’s blessings.
Over time Hosea used his family as an example of Israel, showing that God had taken back Israel after its infidelity under Ahab and Jezebel, but they had persisted in pursuing other gods. He preached about how the Assyrians would be God’s sword, how God would turn away from them as they suffered. This is what we think of as the classic Old Testament wrathful God who is willing to destroy people who have been sinful or unfaithful.
The problem with this view is that it really isn’t complete. Yes, God often speaks through the prophets as the wrathful, vengeful God, but in the end the prophets almost always return to speaking of God as a softie. God may judge us, but in the end God always turns around and treats us with gentleness and compassion.
As the Assyrians stand poised on the border ready to destroy Israel, God has Hosea speak a new message. He tells him to say that Jezreel no longer means a coming massacre, but now means a restoration of the relationship between the Israelites and God, just as Jehu restored Israel to a worship of God. The name “Not Pitied” will now mean “Pitied,” for God will look upon the people of Israel and love them. And the name “Not My People” will now mean “My People,” for God will always look upon the Israelites as God’s chosen.
Then we get to our passage for this morning where God has Hosea demonstrate the love God will show them. We are left to understand that Gomer has gone back into the employ of the temple of Ba’al. She does so not because she is hungry or poor. Hosea has provided for her. But she misses the finery of the temple. There she wore beautiful robes. She had sparkling jewelry. And she loved the taste of the sweet raisin cakes. Those raisin were an especial abomination to the faithful of Israel because they were baked in the shape of a phallus. Hosea goes to the temple and actually purchases his wife back by paying the price for a slave, which was fifteen shekels. He also adds a barrel of wine and a bushel of grain. When he brings her home he tells her that she is not to be sexually active with other men or with him. He will love her, but she has to prove that she is trustworthy. Much like Israel shall be without a king, she will be without someone to love her. But if she proves she is trustworthy, then she will be loved again. This becomes an allegory of God with Israel. They will be tested, but in the end God will love them. This leads Hosea to say the following right before the nation is attacked and destroyed by the Assyrians:
I will heal their disloyalty;
I will love them freely,
for my anger has turned from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
he shall blossom like the lily,
he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.
His shoots shall spread out;
his beauty shall be like the olive tree,
and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
They shall again live beneath my shadow,
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine,
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
The story of Hosea is a story of judgment, but also a story of love. Hosea we get three basic messages from Hosea. First is a message of love. No matter what we do, including our rejectingGod, God will always love us. That is fundamental. Even when we think that God is going to turn away from us, or we believe that God has turned away from us because of the life we are living, God hasn’t. God will always turn back. I’m not sure we always believe that. There are many among us who believe that they’ve done terrible things in their lives that God will never forgive. Hosea reminds us that, yes, we’ve all done terrible things that deserve God’s judgment, but God always has a soft heart. God will always be there to love us, if we are willing to return to God. And even though God will allow us to suffer the consequences of our actions, God will always work to redeem our lives
A second message is that the worship of other gods is always the path to ruin. This isn’t only a message from Hosea, but also one from most of the other prophets. And you see it in life today. The difference is that today the other gods we worship aren’t Ba’al. Our gods are things like money, possessions, power, politics, fame, celebrities, and sports. You can see how powerful the worship of money and power is. We all have dreams that if we can just live the lottery we would finally be happy. But if that’s the case, why do the majority of people who win the lottery end up unhappy? They get all their possessions, and they become miserable. You can see how powerful the worship of fame and celebrity are by the most popular magazines out there. They are magazines like People and Us. Millions of these magazines are sold each week, magazines that profile the rich and famous. And we can’t get enough. But reading them is also a shallow affair. It’s mindless while killing the spirit. Also, we worship sports, devoting so much of our lives to games that in the end don’t mean anything. Don’t get me wrong, I love sports. I cheer on the Steelers and Penguins as they win championships, and I take pity on the Pirates. I love Pitt football and basketball. I love sports, but not to the point at which they rule my life. We let sports now rule our lives. Think about when you were a kid. It used to be that sports didn’t start until after church. Now you have to fight your kids over whether to go to church or to a practice or game on Sunday morning. And too often sports win. We worship these gods, and just as the worhip of Ba’al led people away from God, these modern false gods lead us away from God.
Finallly, Hosea has a message of commitment. By taking his wife back he is telling us that ultimately commitment is the path to both God and happiness. This is a tough message for modern lives. We are an incredibly commitment-phobic people, and we are getting worse every year. For example, look at the state of community service organizations such as Kiwanis, the Elks, Boy and Girl Scouts, and many others. They all have suffered major losses in membership over the years because no one wants to make a commitment to organizations. Look at the state of marriage. At present, 57% of all marriages will end in divorce. So what do people do to prevent the potential of divorce? They move in together. The problem with that is that 80% of all relationships where couples move in together end up in a split, and that includes those who end up marrying each other. They have an 80% chance of divorce. We see the fear of commitment in the church. When I started as a pastor over twenty years ago, if a person visited a church six times, she or he would join. Now, people don’t join until they’ve been visiting for over three years, and many never join. Heck, you’ve experienced this lack of commitment whenever you’ve invited people to a party. How many of you have asked people to rsvp, only to find that very few do. Why don’t they rsvp? Because they don’t want to make a commitment to your party in case something else comes along. We are commitment-shy.
This lack of commitment kills us spiritually, but being willing to make a commitment is the path back to God. Hosea reminds us that God has made a commitment to us, and that God will always honor God’s commitment. The question is to what extent will we make the same kind of commitment to God?
Hosea has a lot of messages for us, but three stand out. If we are willing to return to God, no matter what we’ve done, God has a soft heart for us. But we have to be willing to give up all those other gods that we worship—false gods like money, possessions, power, celebrity, and sports. And the path back to God comes from our commitment to God. When we make a commitment to God, our lives become blessed with love.
Amen.
March 21, 2010
The Lord said to me again, ‘Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.’ So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine. And I said to her, ‘You must remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the whore, you shall not have intercourse with a man, nor I with you.’ For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterwards the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.
I need to apologize to all of you this morning. I have to apologize because several weeks ago, when I talked about the prophet Jeremiah, I said that he was the strangest prophet of all of them. I now realize that I was wrong. After having spent the past week studying Hosea, I now realize that Hosea was much stranger. Jeremiah was plenty strange, but not when you compare him to our prophet for today. Hosea is a weirdly fascinating prophet.
Unlike most prophets, who are known for what they say, Hosea was known as much for what he did. You see, he used his life as a grand metaphor for what was going on in the nation of Israel, and what he did shocked people, as you can tell from our passage above.
Let me give some background to Hosea to help you get a sense of his life and ministry. Hosea lived and prophesied in the last two decades of Israel’s existence. Again, let me review what I’ve spoken about several times in talking about the prophets. If you remember, Ancient Israel was one nation under kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but after Solomon’s death it became divided in two. Around 922 B.C., the northern half became a nation called Israel, while the southern half became a nation called Judah. The capital of Judah was Jerusalem, and the capital of Israel was Samaria. The northern nation of Israel lasted almost exactly 200 years until the Assyrians attacked it and destroyed it in 722 B.C. The nation of Judah lasted until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 597 B.C. Hosea was a prophet of the northern nation of Israel in its last days, and he preached a message that the Assyrians were going to destroy Israel according to God’s will.
The funny thing about Hosea is that he had a funny way of prophesying. He didn’t start his ministry by going out and preaching. Instead, he let his life become a metaphor for Israel, and then later he preached to Israel, using his own life as an allegory for the state of Israel’s relationship with God. The primary problem for Israel was that the kings and the people, afraid of the Assyrians who demanded that they worship the Assyrian fertility god, Ba’al, as their price for independence, were now worshiping Ba’al. And the worship of Ba’al was diametrically opposed to the worship of Yahweh, or God. While the worship of Yahweh centered around making sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem, or one in Samaria, there was also an emphasis that real worship meant living according to the law. The focus of Jewish life was faithfulness in all things to Yahweh. The worship of Ba’al was different. The focus was on fertility rituals, which meant worship where priests and priestesses copulating in worship services was the center of worship. What the Israelites tended to do, in order to hedge their bets, was to worship Yahweh throughout the year, and then to engage in the fertility rituals of Ba’al in the spring. Hosea stood against the worship of Ba’al, so his life became a metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel, and their fascination with Ba’al—what Hosea called Israel’s adultery.
Hosea was instructed by God to find a prostitute and marry her. At least that’s what our modern translations of Hosea says—that she was a prostitute. The translation isn’t quite accurate. Hosea didn’t just go out and find a prostitute. He married a woman named Gomer, who was a particular kind of prostitute. She was employed in the service of the temple of Ba’al in Samaria. Her role was to be available to act out the fertility rites of Ba’al. She was sort of a temple concubine whose role it was to be available to men chosen to engage with her sexually in order to entice Ba’al to bring fertilizing spring rains.
Hosea marries her and instructs her to no longer be in the employ of Ba’al. This is an allegory for the fact that Israel has been unfaithful to God, but God is willing to call them back and love them, as long as they stay faithful. Apparently Hosea loves Gomer very much, and they have three children. Hosea is led by God to give the three children very strange names. The first boy is named Jezreel. That doesn’t seem so strange, but you’ll see why it is in a moment. The first girl is named Lo-Ruhamah, which means “Not Pited.” The second boy is named Lo-Ammi, which means “Not My People.” What odd names to give them, but there’s a reason.
He names the first boy Jezreel because it was in the village of Jezreel that great violence took place 100 years earlier. Israel had been ruled by King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel. Both had driven the nation of Israel to worship Ba’al, and the great prophet Elijah, had challenged them by showing up the priests of Ba’al in a duel. The duel took place on the top of Mt. Horeb, where Elijah built a fire and had the priests of Ba’al build a fire. All 400 priest called on Ba’al to magically light their stack of logs, but nothing happened. Elijah poured buckets of water on his stack of logs, and then called on Yahweh to light his fire. The fire roared to life. This angered Jezebel and Ahab, who tried to kill Elijah, and intensified their persecution of Jews who insisted on worship of Yahweh alone.
The grip of the house of Ahab was broken at the village of Jezreel. God anointed a new king to rise up. His name was Jehu, and he was a leading commander in the army of Ahab’s son, Ahaziah. At Jezreel, Ahaziah was killed, and Jehu went on to kill Jezebel and all of her 70 sons. Jehu restored a worship of Yahweh alone, and for many years afterwards Israel was faithful. But over time Jehu’s descendents moved back to a worship of Ba’al. By calling his son Jezreel, Hosea was saying that a massacre of Israel was coming.
He named his daughter Not Pitied as a way of saying to the people of Israel that when the massacre comes, they will not be pitied. They will suffer for their infidelity, and God won’t pay attention to their wailing.
Finally, he named his other son Not My People as a way of telling them that while he had chosen the Jews to be God’s people, they would no longer be the chosen ones. God would choose another people, and they would be left to suffer life without God’s blessings.
Over time Hosea used his family as an example of Israel, showing that God had taken back Israel after its infidelity under Ahab and Jezebel, but they had persisted in pursuing other gods. He preached about how the Assyrians would be God’s sword, how God would turn away from them as they suffered. This is what we think of as the classic Old Testament wrathful God who is willing to destroy people who have been sinful or unfaithful.
The problem with this view is that it really isn’t complete. Yes, God often speaks through the prophets as the wrathful, vengeful God, but in the end the prophets almost always return to speaking of God as a softie. God may judge us, but in the end God always turns around and treats us with gentleness and compassion.
As the Assyrians stand poised on the border ready to destroy Israel, God has Hosea speak a new message. He tells him to say that Jezreel no longer means a coming massacre, but now means a restoration of the relationship between the Israelites and God, just as Jehu restored Israel to a worship of God. The name “Not Pitied” will now mean “Pitied,” for God will look upon the people of Israel and love them. And the name “Not My People” will now mean “My People,” for God will always look upon the Israelites as God’s chosen.
Then we get to our passage for this morning where God has Hosea demonstrate the love God will show them. We are left to understand that Gomer has gone back into the employ of the temple of Ba’al. She does so not because she is hungry or poor. Hosea has provided for her. But she misses the finery of the temple. There she wore beautiful robes. She had sparkling jewelry. And she loved the taste of the sweet raisin cakes. Those raisin were an especial abomination to the faithful of Israel because they were baked in the shape of a phallus. Hosea goes to the temple and actually purchases his wife back by paying the price for a slave, which was fifteen shekels. He also adds a barrel of wine and a bushel of grain. When he brings her home he tells her that she is not to be sexually active with other men or with him. He will love her, but she has to prove that she is trustworthy. Much like Israel shall be without a king, she will be without someone to love her. But if she proves she is trustworthy, then she will be loved again. This becomes an allegory of God with Israel. They will be tested, but in the end God will love them. This leads Hosea to say the following right before the nation is attacked and destroyed by the Assyrians:
I will heal their disloyalty;
I will love them freely,
for my anger has turned from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
he shall blossom like the lily,
he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.
His shoots shall spread out;
his beauty shall be like the olive tree,
and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
They shall again live beneath my shadow,
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine,
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
The story of Hosea is a story of judgment, but also a story of love. Hosea we get three basic messages from Hosea. First is a message of love. No matter what we do, including our rejectingGod, God will always love us. That is fundamental. Even when we think that God is going to turn away from us, or we believe that God has turned away from us because of the life we are living, God hasn’t. God will always turn back. I’m not sure we always believe that. There are many among us who believe that they’ve done terrible things in their lives that God will never forgive. Hosea reminds us that, yes, we’ve all done terrible things that deserve God’s judgment, but God always has a soft heart. God will always be there to love us, if we are willing to return to God. And even though God will allow us to suffer the consequences of our actions, God will always work to redeem our lives
A second message is that the worship of other gods is always the path to ruin. This isn’t only a message from Hosea, but also one from most of the other prophets. And you see it in life today. The difference is that today the other gods we worship aren’t Ba’al. Our gods are things like money, possessions, power, politics, fame, celebrities, and sports. You can see how powerful the worship of money and power is. We all have dreams that if we can just live the lottery we would finally be happy. But if that’s the case, why do the majority of people who win the lottery end up unhappy? They get all their possessions, and they become miserable. You can see how powerful the worship of fame and celebrity are by the most popular magazines out there. They are magazines like People and Us. Millions of these magazines are sold each week, magazines that profile the rich and famous. And we can’t get enough. But reading them is also a shallow affair. It’s mindless while killing the spirit. Also, we worship sports, devoting so much of our lives to games that in the end don’t mean anything. Don’t get me wrong, I love sports. I cheer on the Steelers and Penguins as they win championships, and I take pity on the Pirates. I love Pitt football and basketball. I love sports, but not to the point at which they rule my life. We let sports now rule our lives. Think about when you were a kid. It used to be that sports didn’t start until after church. Now you have to fight your kids over whether to go to church or to a practice or game on Sunday morning. And too often sports win. We worship these gods, and just as the worhip of Ba’al led people away from God, these modern false gods lead us away from God.
Finallly, Hosea has a message of commitment. By taking his wife back he is telling us that ultimately commitment is the path to both God and happiness. This is a tough message for modern lives. We are an incredibly commitment-phobic people, and we are getting worse every year. For example, look at the state of community service organizations such as Kiwanis, the Elks, Boy and Girl Scouts, and many others. They all have suffered major losses in membership over the years because no one wants to make a commitment to organizations. Look at the state of marriage. At present, 57% of all marriages will end in divorce. So what do people do to prevent the potential of divorce? They move in together. The problem with that is that 80% of all relationships where couples move in together end up in a split, and that includes those who end up marrying each other. They have an 80% chance of divorce. We see the fear of commitment in the church. When I started as a pastor over twenty years ago, if a person visited a church six times, she or he would join. Now, people don’t join until they’ve been visiting for over three years, and many never join. Heck, you’ve experienced this lack of commitment whenever you’ve invited people to a party. How many of you have asked people to rsvp, only to find that very few do. Why don’t they rsvp? Because they don’t want to make a commitment to your party in case something else comes along. We are commitment-shy.
This lack of commitment kills us spiritually, but being willing to make a commitment is the path back to God. Hosea reminds us that God has made a commitment to us, and that God will always honor God’s commitment. The question is to what extent will we make the same kind of commitment to God?
Hosea has a lot of messages for us, but three stand out. If we are willing to return to God, no matter what we’ve done, God has a soft heart for us. But we have to be willing to give up all those other gods that we worship—false gods like money, possessions, power, celebrity, and sports. And the path back to God comes from our commitment to God. When we make a commitment to God, our lives become blessed with love.
Amen.
Discovering the Prophets: Jonah
Jonah 1:1-17
March 7, 2010
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’
The sailors said to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.’ So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, ‘Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he replied. ‘I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.’ Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, ‘What is this that you have done!’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
Then they said to him, ‘What shall we do to you, that the sea may quieten down for us?’ For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, ‘Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quieten down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.’ Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord, ‘Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.’ So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
You know, there’s a funny thing about the Book of Jonah. Pretty much everyone knows who the prophet Jonah was and knows the basic story, but very few people really know what the story means and why its so important. So this morning I want to introduce you to Jonah so that you can learn why the story of Jonah was considered to be a major part of the Old Testament.
So let’s begin with who Jonah was. The fact is that we don’t know much about Jonah. What little we do know doesn’t tell us much. We know that Jonah did not write the book of Jonah, and we know it for a very simple reason. The story is told in a biographical way, not an autobiographical way. Also, it’s language uses words and phrases common to the 6th century B.C., yet the prophet Jonah lived during the 8th century B.C. in the northern kingdom of Israel. Last week I mentioned that after the reign of Solomon, the nation of Israel was split in two, with the southern kingdom of Judah (which contained Jerusalem) being led by descendants of Solomon, and the northern kingdom, Israel, being led by non-descendant kings. The Assyrians, who would eventually take over and destroy the northern kingdom in the 7th century, were constantly attacking it. Other than what the Book of Jonah says, we don’t know much about him, although Isaiah says that he was a great prophet.
The story begins with God calling on Jonah to travel east to the city of Ninevah to tell it’s citizens that unless they change their ways, God was going to destroy them. Jonah is a man who has spent his life listening for and following God’s call. So what does he do? He immediately gets up and heads west to the city of Tarshish. We really don’t know where that city was, although it probably was in what is today Spain, or on the island of Sardinia. Either way, he was trying to get as far away from Ninevah as possible. Why did Jonah head toward Tarshish? Simply put, he didn’t want to preach to the Ninevites lest God save them. He wanted God to destroy them.
You see, Ninevah was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, the same empire that was constantly sending armies to attack Israel. They were the sworn enemies of the northern kingdom, and for good reason. Within a hundred years they would sack the kingdom and disperse the population throughout their empire as slaves. Unlike with the Babylonian exile two-hundred years later, when the Babylonians destroyed Judea, took their population into exile, and let them return fifty years later, those enslaved by the Assyrians never returned. We have a name for these people. We call them the “Lost Tribes of Israel.” The Mormons believe that these dispersed Jews eventually became the Indians of North America. That belief seems ludicrous to most of us Christians and also to Jews, but hey,… we’re not Mormons. At any rate, Jonah knew what the Assyrians could do to Israel, and he wanted to prevent it by having God destroy Ninevah. To ensure Ninevah’s destruction, Jonah promptly headed west.
Finding a ship in the port city of Joppa, he set sail westward. This is where the story becomes very familiar. He goes into the hold of the ship, and promptly falls asleep. A storm suddenly rises up and smashes the ship from side to side. Storms in the Mediterranean can be very powerful, as you may have noticed last week from the cruise ship off the coast of Spain that was hit by three huge waves that killed two passengers and injured many others. Jonah’s ship was in was tossed to and fro, yet Jonah slept. The crew of the ship was in a panic. They knew there was a real possibility that the ship would sink, and so they started praying to their gods to spare them. Nothing worked. Eventually they cast lots, which is the practice of shaking a cup with small bones or sticks of different lengths, throwing them onto a table, and then interpreting the configuration of the bones to discern what God, or the gods, wanted. They cast their lots and realized that it was Jonah who was causing the storm. So they woke him up to ask him what he had done to his God to cause the storm. Jonah tells them, and asks them to throw him overboard in order to still the storm.
This shows something really interesting about Jonah. Even in disobeying God he is the ultimate prophet. Like all the prophets he fears nothing because he knows God is with him. He’s able to sleep like a baby through a horrific storm. He trusts in God, even though he is disobeying. Also, he has incredible integrity in that he owns up to his transgression, and even asks them to throw him overboard. And the final thing is that he is the kind of prophet that when he speaks, people listen and are transformed, as you’ll see in a moment.
At first the crew refuses to throw him overboard. They may be rough sailors, but they aren’t murderers. They row harder against the storm, but to no avail. Finally, they agree to throw him overboard, but with much regret. They also pray to God, not their gods, to save them. And as soon as Jonah is thrown overboard the storm stills. The great fish then swallows Jonah. Most people make the mistake of saying that a whale swallowed him, but that’s wrong. First it’s wrong because the Bible says “fish,” not “whale.” Second, there are no whales in the Mediterranean. He remains in the belly of the fish for three days.
This part of the story causes problems for many people because it really is impossible for a human to remain in a fish’s gullet. All the digestive juices would have killed him if, in fact, there was a fish large enough to swallow him other than a great white shark. I think that when people get caught up in obsessing about whether it happened or not, they miss not only the point of the Book of Jonah, but much of the Bible. The Bible, despite what many fundamentalists and literalists believe, is not a book of history. It is a book that uses history to tell us about what God has done and is doing in the world. I’m fairly certain that there was a great prophet named Jonah. I’m fairly certain that he was called to preach to the Assyrians in Ninevah. I’m fairly certain that his preaching had some impact on them. At the same time, details are added to the story to communicate symbolically and metaphorically God’s will in life. Being in the belly of the fish taught something powerful about God, a message that makes use of the number 3. When you see the number 3 in the Bible, it often stands for a time of being transformed by God. For example, Jesus dies and three days later is resurrected. Jesus’ ministry was for three years, and during that time God transformed the world. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish, and afterwards he was transformed. Unfortunately his transformation was a smelly one, as he was spit out covered with fish goo.
From there he goes to Ninevah, and it takes him three days to walk across the city as he preaches. And much to his dismay, the city is transformed over those three days. The people hear his words, repent, tear their clothes in grief, and wear sackcloth, which is basically burlap (very itchy, and perfect for doing penitence). When he’s done, Jonah goes to a hillside overlooking the city, hoping that God will still destroy the city, but nothing happens. Jonah sits, seething in anger.
Overnight, God causes a great broom bush, a bush with a fan-like leaf that offers shade, to grow up around Jonah. Jonah, feeling the heat, is happy for this. Then, the next night God causes a worm to attack the tree and to kill it. It dies, and once again Jonah is struck by the heat, and becomes angry at God for killing the tree. It’s at this point that God speaks. God says to Jonah, in essence, “How can you be angry at my destroying a tree that I created to do with as I will?” He goes on to basically say, “Who are you to decide what I should do with my creation? Who are you to tell me which people I should love, and which I should hate? Who are you to decide whether or not I should spare the Assyrians?” And the story basically ends there.
So what are we to make of a story like this? I think we could spend a lifetime with it and cull wisdom for life. But I want to share two points that I think are prominent among the lessons.
First, the story of Jonah teaches that life spirals downward when we don’t follow God’s call. The story of Jonah uses a pretty powerful metaphor for this. Think about what direction (I don’t mean west) Jonah moves in after he refuses to follow in God’s direction. He goes down to Joppa, down to the docks, down onto the ship, down into the hold of the ship, down into the water, and then down into the belly of the fish. In the belly of the fish he realizes just how downward his life has gone, all because he didn’t follow God’s call. And in that belly he prays, offering to serve God and God’s will.
Our lives are the same when it comes to doing God’s will. God is calling us in life to serve and live in a certain way. When we do, life becomes full of blessings. But when we don’t, our lives spiral downward. It doesn’t take much evidence to show this. Think about the times your life has been at its worst, and think about what your relationship with God was like. Were you following God, or ignoring God? Most people find that their worst times were also the times they were furthest from God. That’s the story of Jonah in a nutshell. The Ninevites could have ignored God’s calling and been destroyed, but they didn’t, and life was restored. Jonah’s life was good, but as soon as he ignored God, his life spiraled downward. When I think of this I think of alcoholics and AA. Their lives spiral downward to rock bottom, but when they join AA and turn their lives over to God (the higher power), life gets better. The enduring lesson of Jonah is to look at our lives and recognize that as long as we ignore God, our lives spiral downward.
A second point is that to follow God’s will we have to give up our will. I think that the chronic spiritual battle in human life is between God’s will and our will. For too many of us the battle is won in the short-term by us, which often leads to point number 1. But if we are willing to let go of our will, and to let God’s will work through our lives, great things can happen. But they can only happen if we are willing to give up our will.
I’ve experienced this first-hand in my own struggle to become a pastor. This is not the career I would have chosen for myself, and it was one that I actively fought with God about. Yet when I finally relented and said “yes” to God, my life became immeasurably better. But I had to give up my will in order to discover this fact. For those of you who know Steve Cramer, who was a member of Calvin Church and is now a pastor at Crossroad Presbyterian Church, you’ll recognize the same dynamic. Steve says that for twenty years he grappled with God’s will. He sensed God was calling him to be a pastor, and he kept saying no. It’s not that his life was bad because of his saying no. He would simply say that his life was never completely fulfilled. But when he let go of his ego, everything became possible. I think he would tell you now that his life is fulfilled in a way that he never could have anticipated in all those years of saying no.
Now I certainly don’t want to give you the impression that saying yes to God leads inevitably to becoming a pastor. It doesn’t. But each of us is called by God to follow in some way, whether large or small. The question is whether we are willing to give up our will in order to do God’s will.
So I want to leave you with two questions to reflect on. Which direction is your life going, up or down? And if it’s going down, to what extent are you willing to give up your will for God’s will?
Amen.
March 7, 2010
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’
The sailors said to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.’ So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, ‘Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he replied. ‘I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.’ Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, ‘What is this that you have done!’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
Then they said to him, ‘What shall we do to you, that the sea may quieten down for us?’ For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, ‘Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quieten down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.’ Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord, ‘Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.’ So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
You know, there’s a funny thing about the Book of Jonah. Pretty much everyone knows who the prophet Jonah was and knows the basic story, but very few people really know what the story means and why its so important. So this morning I want to introduce you to Jonah so that you can learn why the story of Jonah was considered to be a major part of the Old Testament.
So let’s begin with who Jonah was. The fact is that we don’t know much about Jonah. What little we do know doesn’t tell us much. We know that Jonah did not write the book of Jonah, and we know it for a very simple reason. The story is told in a biographical way, not an autobiographical way. Also, it’s language uses words and phrases common to the 6th century B.C., yet the prophet Jonah lived during the 8th century B.C. in the northern kingdom of Israel. Last week I mentioned that after the reign of Solomon, the nation of Israel was split in two, with the southern kingdom of Judah (which contained Jerusalem) being led by descendants of Solomon, and the northern kingdom, Israel, being led by non-descendant kings. The Assyrians, who would eventually take over and destroy the northern kingdom in the 7th century, were constantly attacking it. Other than what the Book of Jonah says, we don’t know much about him, although Isaiah says that he was a great prophet.
The story begins with God calling on Jonah to travel east to the city of Ninevah to tell it’s citizens that unless they change their ways, God was going to destroy them. Jonah is a man who has spent his life listening for and following God’s call. So what does he do? He immediately gets up and heads west to the city of Tarshish. We really don’t know where that city was, although it probably was in what is today Spain, or on the island of Sardinia. Either way, he was trying to get as far away from Ninevah as possible. Why did Jonah head toward Tarshish? Simply put, he didn’t want to preach to the Ninevites lest God save them. He wanted God to destroy them.
You see, Ninevah was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, the same empire that was constantly sending armies to attack Israel. They were the sworn enemies of the northern kingdom, and for good reason. Within a hundred years they would sack the kingdom and disperse the population throughout their empire as slaves. Unlike with the Babylonian exile two-hundred years later, when the Babylonians destroyed Judea, took their population into exile, and let them return fifty years later, those enslaved by the Assyrians never returned. We have a name for these people. We call them the “Lost Tribes of Israel.” The Mormons believe that these dispersed Jews eventually became the Indians of North America. That belief seems ludicrous to most of us Christians and also to Jews, but hey,… we’re not Mormons. At any rate, Jonah knew what the Assyrians could do to Israel, and he wanted to prevent it by having God destroy Ninevah. To ensure Ninevah’s destruction, Jonah promptly headed west.
Finding a ship in the port city of Joppa, he set sail westward. This is where the story becomes very familiar. He goes into the hold of the ship, and promptly falls asleep. A storm suddenly rises up and smashes the ship from side to side. Storms in the Mediterranean can be very powerful, as you may have noticed last week from the cruise ship off the coast of Spain that was hit by three huge waves that killed two passengers and injured many others. Jonah’s ship was in was tossed to and fro, yet Jonah slept. The crew of the ship was in a panic. They knew there was a real possibility that the ship would sink, and so they started praying to their gods to spare them. Nothing worked. Eventually they cast lots, which is the practice of shaking a cup with small bones or sticks of different lengths, throwing them onto a table, and then interpreting the configuration of the bones to discern what God, or the gods, wanted. They cast their lots and realized that it was Jonah who was causing the storm. So they woke him up to ask him what he had done to his God to cause the storm. Jonah tells them, and asks them to throw him overboard in order to still the storm.
This shows something really interesting about Jonah. Even in disobeying God he is the ultimate prophet. Like all the prophets he fears nothing because he knows God is with him. He’s able to sleep like a baby through a horrific storm. He trusts in God, even though he is disobeying. Also, he has incredible integrity in that he owns up to his transgression, and even asks them to throw him overboard. And the final thing is that he is the kind of prophet that when he speaks, people listen and are transformed, as you’ll see in a moment.
At first the crew refuses to throw him overboard. They may be rough sailors, but they aren’t murderers. They row harder against the storm, but to no avail. Finally, they agree to throw him overboard, but with much regret. They also pray to God, not their gods, to save them. And as soon as Jonah is thrown overboard the storm stills. The great fish then swallows Jonah. Most people make the mistake of saying that a whale swallowed him, but that’s wrong. First it’s wrong because the Bible says “fish,” not “whale.” Second, there are no whales in the Mediterranean. He remains in the belly of the fish for three days.
This part of the story causes problems for many people because it really is impossible for a human to remain in a fish’s gullet. All the digestive juices would have killed him if, in fact, there was a fish large enough to swallow him other than a great white shark. I think that when people get caught up in obsessing about whether it happened or not, they miss not only the point of the Book of Jonah, but much of the Bible. The Bible, despite what many fundamentalists and literalists believe, is not a book of history. It is a book that uses history to tell us about what God has done and is doing in the world. I’m fairly certain that there was a great prophet named Jonah. I’m fairly certain that he was called to preach to the Assyrians in Ninevah. I’m fairly certain that his preaching had some impact on them. At the same time, details are added to the story to communicate symbolically and metaphorically God’s will in life. Being in the belly of the fish taught something powerful about God, a message that makes use of the number 3. When you see the number 3 in the Bible, it often stands for a time of being transformed by God. For example, Jesus dies and three days later is resurrected. Jesus’ ministry was for three years, and during that time God transformed the world. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish, and afterwards he was transformed. Unfortunately his transformation was a smelly one, as he was spit out covered with fish goo.
From there he goes to Ninevah, and it takes him three days to walk across the city as he preaches. And much to his dismay, the city is transformed over those three days. The people hear his words, repent, tear their clothes in grief, and wear sackcloth, which is basically burlap (very itchy, and perfect for doing penitence). When he’s done, Jonah goes to a hillside overlooking the city, hoping that God will still destroy the city, but nothing happens. Jonah sits, seething in anger.
Overnight, God causes a great broom bush, a bush with a fan-like leaf that offers shade, to grow up around Jonah. Jonah, feeling the heat, is happy for this. Then, the next night God causes a worm to attack the tree and to kill it. It dies, and once again Jonah is struck by the heat, and becomes angry at God for killing the tree. It’s at this point that God speaks. God says to Jonah, in essence, “How can you be angry at my destroying a tree that I created to do with as I will?” He goes on to basically say, “Who are you to decide what I should do with my creation? Who are you to tell me which people I should love, and which I should hate? Who are you to decide whether or not I should spare the Assyrians?” And the story basically ends there.
So what are we to make of a story like this? I think we could spend a lifetime with it and cull wisdom for life. But I want to share two points that I think are prominent among the lessons.
First, the story of Jonah teaches that life spirals downward when we don’t follow God’s call. The story of Jonah uses a pretty powerful metaphor for this. Think about what direction (I don’t mean west) Jonah moves in after he refuses to follow in God’s direction. He goes down to Joppa, down to the docks, down onto the ship, down into the hold of the ship, down into the water, and then down into the belly of the fish. In the belly of the fish he realizes just how downward his life has gone, all because he didn’t follow God’s call. And in that belly he prays, offering to serve God and God’s will.
Our lives are the same when it comes to doing God’s will. God is calling us in life to serve and live in a certain way. When we do, life becomes full of blessings. But when we don’t, our lives spiral downward. It doesn’t take much evidence to show this. Think about the times your life has been at its worst, and think about what your relationship with God was like. Were you following God, or ignoring God? Most people find that their worst times were also the times they were furthest from God. That’s the story of Jonah in a nutshell. The Ninevites could have ignored God’s calling and been destroyed, but they didn’t, and life was restored. Jonah’s life was good, but as soon as he ignored God, his life spiraled downward. When I think of this I think of alcoholics and AA. Their lives spiral downward to rock bottom, but when they join AA and turn their lives over to God (the higher power), life gets better. The enduring lesson of Jonah is to look at our lives and recognize that as long as we ignore God, our lives spiral downward.
A second point is that to follow God’s will we have to give up our will. I think that the chronic spiritual battle in human life is between God’s will and our will. For too many of us the battle is won in the short-term by us, which often leads to point number 1. But if we are willing to let go of our will, and to let God’s will work through our lives, great things can happen. But they can only happen if we are willing to give up our will.
I’ve experienced this first-hand in my own struggle to become a pastor. This is not the career I would have chosen for myself, and it was one that I actively fought with God about. Yet when I finally relented and said “yes” to God, my life became immeasurably better. But I had to give up my will in order to discover this fact. For those of you who know Steve Cramer, who was a member of Calvin Church and is now a pastor at Crossroad Presbyterian Church, you’ll recognize the same dynamic. Steve says that for twenty years he grappled with God’s will. He sensed God was calling him to be a pastor, and he kept saying no. It’s not that his life was bad because of his saying no. He would simply say that his life was never completely fulfilled. But when he let go of his ego, everything became possible. I think he would tell you now that his life is fulfilled in a way that he never could have anticipated in all those years of saying no.
Now I certainly don’t want to give you the impression that saying yes to God leads inevitably to becoming a pastor. It doesn’t. But each of us is called by God to follow in some way, whether large or small. The question is whether we are willing to give up our will in order to do God’s will.
So I want to leave you with two questions to reflect on. Which direction is your life going, up or down? And if it’s going down, to what extent are you willing to give up your will for God’s will?
Amen.
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