Who Knows?

Jonah 3
3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

   There are two words in our Scripture lesson that rise up to be the central two words in the entire passage; they might be the most important two words in the entire book of Jonah.  Those words, of course: “Who knows?” 

   It’s a question we all ask sometimes.  We’re talking about prophecy in this series, but we’re not usually the predicting-the-future kinds of prophets; we’re the “proclaim the message God sends us to proclaim” kinds of prophets.  So we all sometimes find ourselves faced with questions that can only be answered by that question: “Who knows?” 

   Will the Jaguars manage to beat the Patriots today?  I hope so, but who knows?  Will I manage to keep my sanity until Sherry comes home from her trip?  Who knows?  By the way: I had six meetings this week.  Six!  Do you know how many meetings I usually have during an average week?  One or two.  Sherry leaves me home alone with three kids and I have six meetings added to my schedule.  If you had asked me Last Sunday how I was going to make it through the week, I would have answered, “Who knows?” 

   We make plans, we set goals, and we expect certain things for our future, but at some point, our only answer is a question, a question that ends our questioning: who knows?  But you know, there is an answer to that question.  Today we remember that, in the end, God knows.  God knows the day the Patriots will know justice.  God knows the unexpected challenges that will face us this week.  God knows the people who will show us unexpected help and speak a word of grace that will get us through.  God knows even when we don’t. 

   God does know the plan God has for us and for this community.  God knows the amazing things in store for us as we seek to listen faithfully to the Voice of the Spirit.  God knows the power and mercy that is yet to be unleashed all around us.  And God knows why we sometimes forget about all of that. 

   So, if you were here last Sunday, you heard how I was surprised to find myself in the middle of a sermon-series on prophecy.  The Spirit kind of weaved this thing together through me without me noticing until last Sunday.  What makes it even better was that I started paying attention to what God was doing through the Bible story of the call of Samuel.  If you’ll recall, that’s the one where God calls to the young Samuel and no one realizes at first that it’s God talking.  When Eli, the so-called priest, finally figures it out, he tells Samuel to say, “Speak, your servant is listening.”  So you know I was listening this week, right?  You know I went to all six of those meetings listening, that I might hear what God was saying through those around me.  Some of what I heard was personal.  Some had to do with our church.  Some had to do with others.  One of those meetings had a part of it where we were voting on letting a pastor into our Presbytery.  I’ve never heard the voice of God so clearly through a no-vote in my life. 

   So last week we talked about our listening for the Voice of God, like the prophet Samuel did.  This week our focus is on how others might receive the word God sends us to speak, but not like the prophet Jonah did. 

   I love the story of Jonah so much.  I love this story, and frankly, I find the part about the fish, the least interesting part.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s weird.  I appreciate the weirdness of the part about the fish, but the fish is just doing his job.  God tells a giant fish to swallow up a prophet and spit him up on the beach and the fish does because God’s creatures are supposed to do what God says.  Unlike, of course, the prophet Jonah. 

   The Book of Jonah is unique among the books of the prophets in a couple of ways: first, most books of the prophets are collections of the things God said through the prophets, whereas Jonah is mostly a story about Jonah.  But mostly, the Book of Jonah is different because Jonah is such an awful prophet; he’s really just an awful person too, but he’s an awful prophet first.  He hears God, that’s not the problem.  He knows to listen to God, that’s not the problem.  He even knows what God is like: gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing; that’s not the problem.  The problem is, he doesn’t want the people of Nineveh to know what God is like. 

   Jonah knows that if he goes to Nineveh and says what God has sent him to say, they will repent and God will show mercy.  So Jonah goes the other direction.  Jonah is the worst.  What kind of prophet would avoid speaking the Word of God?  Well, all of us sometimes.  I love the story of Jonah because, like us, he’s such an unlikely prophet.  I would bet that most of us on most days don’t even remember that we are prophets; that we are sent by God to speak God’s Truth.  But if Jonah is still qualified, we have no excuse: Jonah is disobedient, self-centered, and ungrateful.  You know: like us when we’re not at our best.  I mean, how often do we hear God’s call on our lives and we head toward Tarshish?  Usually, the ones around us who need to hear God’s message of salvation the most are the ones who make us the most uncomfortable.  We see the need; we hear God’s call to speak the Truth; and we head the other way. 

   Jonah’s call was simple: to go the “great city of Nineveh and preach against it” because it was wicked.  Thankfully, our message is a bit more upbeat: our message is to share the good news of Salvation through the Risen Jesus.  But we may have similar reasons for why we don’t proclaim it.  Namely, what’s the point? 

   In Jonah’s day, the main enemy of Israel was Assyria.  And guess where Assyrian capital was: you guessed it, Nineveh.  Nineveh is described, around this same time by the prophet Nahum, as a “city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, and never without victims!”  They were not nice people.  They didn’t deserve God’s mercy and they were not likely to even want it.  For Jonah to hear that judgment was coming to Nineveh must have seemed like great news.  Finally!  They’re getting what’s coming to them.  It was a horrible place filled with horrible people and there was no good reason (other than God telling him to) that Jonah would want to go to Nineveh. 

   Part of Jonah’s message was to tell them that they only had forty more days.  If the world was going to end in a little over a month, wouldn’t we be better off not knowing?  I mean, can you imagine living in Hawaii right now?  I can only imagine how upsetting it must have been to receive a report saying there’s a nuclear missile heading your way; I can only imagine having to live with that thought in your head for over a half an hour before finding out it was a false alarm.  The news of Nineveh’s demise was not helpful and only would serve to upset doomed people.  Some people are just doomed, right?  Some people are just evil.  Some people like to sin.  Why would we bother telling them that God has a different plan?  It’s just going to make them mad.  Why would we bother telling the Truth to those who don’t want to hear it?  Because we know the heart of God, that’s why.  Because we know that God desires to show grace and compassion to those who are lost.  What I love so much about Jonah is that, in the end, what he has to teach us is to try not to be like him. 

   It took three days to walk across the city of Nineveh, but Jonah didn’t need them.  We read that, after the first day’s proclamation, from the greatest to the least, they begin to mourn God’s displeasure: they dress in sackcloth, sit in ashes, and begin a fast.  It is in their repentance that we hear the wisest human words in this whole book… and they’re not from Jonah.  In his decree, the king of Nineveh says to the people to turn from their evil and, “Who knows?  Who knows, God might just forgive us?  Who knows, God just might be compassionate and gracious to those who need compassion and grace?  Who knows?”

   There are two ways we can look at this question, both are wonderful: first from the perspective of the Ninevites—whom I don’t think really knew what God was going to do.  “Who knows?  Let’s take a chance on God’s grace.  What have we got to lose?  We know that God is upset with us; we know we’re doomed if we do nothing, maybe God is also gracious.  Maybe God will see that we are sorry and forgive us.”  What a great gamble!  How wonderful it is when a sinner takes a chance on God’s mercy!  Because that sinner always finds out how infinite God’s compassion can be!  Who knows? 

   Of course, we know.  There is our perspective on this question as well.  Who knows about God’s compassion?  Well those of us who have received it, for one.  We know the faithfulness of God.  We know first hand the life-transforming power of God.  We know what God can do in people’s lives because of what God has done in ours; and that is the prophetic message we sent to proclaim.

       Friends, our Savior sends us this day to proclaim his truth in word and action.  And although we have good reasons why we don’t want to and why it will never work, our Savior calls us anyway.  Remembering the mercy that we have been shown, let us be obedient to God’s call… and who knows?  Maybe we will see the very transforming power of God at work all around us.