Materials
The Old Testament
Minor Prophets #2
You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Jonah 1:1-3
by R. Todd Bouldin
Today we continue our sermon series from the Hebrew minor prophets, with a three week series from the book of Jonah. There are times when you know what you have to do, even though you don't want to do it. You know it is what God wants. Maybe it is something Scripture asks of you. Maybe it is something you just sense is the will of God. Maybe you don't have a choice. The easiest path may seem to run. But even there God will find you.
Prayer
Jonah was minding his own business when God told him to go to Nineveh, which was one of the great cities of Israel's enemy Assyria. It was a city that appeared strong, but it had become morally weak and decadent. But God hadn't given up on that city, and He needed a prophet who would go there.
Nineveh is an enduring metaphor for all the places in our lives that are wrong and appear to be God abandoned . It is the name of whatever it is that makes you afraid in our society - whatever issue that you believe is the height of immorality - whatever is mean and cruel - whatever enemy it is that you think is thwarting the cause of God, or that has hurt you. Nineveh is the place you would never expect God to ask you to go. It is the place you think would serve the world if it just disappeared from the planet, or the person you think would make you happy if they were just gone from your life. You would rather God just reign down His justice and destroy this place or person. But that isn't God's nature. God has chosen to offer mercy to the place or person you most detest. And as hard as that is to accept, it is even harder to accept that you may be the person God is calling to be the agent of His mercy.
Jonah doesn't argue with God about this calling. The reason He doesn't argue with God is that this is just who He expected God to be, and He was hoping it wouldn't be true. We find out later in the story that Jonah knew God to be " a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishment ." (Jonah 4:2). But that wasn't the kind of God Jonah wanted to serve. It was just like God to care about the enemy, but Jonah would have none of that. So He ran away from this God by booking passage on a ship that was sailing to Tarshish, perhaps in Spain, but far from Nineveh. Tarshish was an idealized port city - something of an ancient San Diego or San Francisco. When Solomon was building his temple he sent his fleet of ships to Tarshish to get gold, silver, ivory and peacocks. Jonah was heading for a nice vacation from the difficult place God had called him, and most of all from this gracious God who just wasn't very fair. Sometimes you just don't want God to be gracious to those you don't think deserve it.
Tarshish is the ideal mission field. Nice, pleasant surroundings, people like us, nothing challenging to love. It is a lot easier to feel a calling to Santa Barbara than Hollywood or Baghdad. We would rather not offer mercy to the sinner, the needy or the enemy. We prefer the peacocks and the beautiful places. We work hard to be among these places because it is our favorite way of avoiding Nineveh.
All of us are interested in God's calling in our lives. We all want a sense of vocation and mission for our lives. But we want to pick the places and people we serve. While we wouldn't say this, somewhere in the back of our minds we really don't think that the inner cities, or countries with terrorists, or places where sexual immorality exists so blatantly are deserving of God's grace much less our lives. This essentially reduces the call of God in our lives to career day at college. God is the man behind the booth with a smile, asking, "How about a Bible study in your dorm? No, well how about shut-ins? How about volunteering in the city? I am sure we have something that you would like." Calling doesn't work like career day .
As Eugene Peterson has written, if you are not certain what God wants you to do with your life, don't start by shopping for good places to volunteer because you will never pick Nineveh . And don't rush to the Bible if you think of it as a catalog for mission opportunities. It isn't an answer book for our vocational questions. The Bible asks questions of us, and waits for our response, "Do you want your life to matter? Do you want your life to make an eternal difference?" That kind of question can lead us to Nineveh. But when we ask the Bible a question like, "Where should I go?", the Bible is silent and we always come back with the answer, Tarshish.
God's calling often isn't some missionary calling, or some volunteer ministry. It often involves something happening in your life that you were not planning, something that alters the plans you had. You were counting on being married, but you are single. You were counting on being married, but now you are divorced. A child may be born with a disability, or your parents may suffer from Alzheimer, or a friend may ask you for help as they begin the long painful journey of coping with HIV and AIDS. And your calling in life has changed again. That was not a mission you were seeking, but it is a mission that came to you. As Jesus explained to Peter at the end of the Gospel of John, often the call of God means sooner or later being led to a place you would rather not go.
You may be visiting with us, and the place you would rather not go, truth be told, is church itself. You hear all about the opportunities to get involved in ministry, or you feel some inclination to be here, but you think, "Oh no, not the church." The problem with the church is that it is filled with human beings. We may look like well-dressed together peacocks from Tarshish on Sunday (particularly Zoe), but if you get involved you will soon find out that we are more like the people in Nineveh. We are desperately in need of God's mercy, and grace from each other. That is why we are here.
For others, the place you would rather not go is the place of compassion or suffering. Or the place where there are people who have values or lifestyles different that are beyond your values or comfort level. Or to the place that seems so evil. Or to the place or people that are the enemies of your nation. Those are never the places we would choose. It would be easier if God would just wipe them off the map instead of asking me to go there.
Jonah fled to Tarshish, not just to find a more attractive home, but " in order to flee the presence of God ." (Jonah 1:3). The only way to get away from God's calling, or from a God you can't understand or accept, is to try to hide from God. But we cannot hide from God because of our inadequacy, or our hurts, or our busyness, or our disagreements with God. You can run, but you can't hide.
My favorite part in this story is Jonah's discovery that he could not flee the presence of God. God would not abandon Jonah to Tarshish. If God wants you, you can flee for a while, but in my experience God will tend to get what He wants. If God has called you to a particular place or person, God seems to give you His presence until you find your way back to the place of your calling. The good news is that He won't abandon you. He will send a stubborn donkey or a large fish to protect your life and your vocation. Out of the abundance of God's grace, He will keep finding ways to pursue you.
Jonah fled from God because He was scared that God would be gracious to people He didn't like. When we speak of God being gracious, that does not mean that God will be nice. It means that God will do whatever is necessary to save us from ourselves. God intervenes, interrupts, perseveres, and insists on giving us what we need, not what we want. Sometimes God's grace is quietly carried in a still small voice, and other times it arrives in quite dramatic ways. But if you have been fleeing from God, don't expect still small voices. Get ready for high drama.
As Jonah's ship sailed for the pretty place, we are told, " The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea ." (Jonah 1:4). The sailors were going crazy trying to keep the ship afloat. We can imagine them frantically trying to trip the sails and steer the wind while the waves of adversity kept crashing onto the deck. Meanwhile, Jonah is in the bottom of the boat fast asleep.
How could Jonah be fast asleep? How could he not be? His whole being is asleep, dead. That is what it means to flee the presence of God. The only way we can numb the yearning of our souls for God's presence is to work ourselves to exhaustion, or sleep in our depression. We are so cut off from the presence of God that we are bored. We amuse ourselves with someone else's life as we watch endless hours of television. We just make another purchase, or eat another bad thing. We settle for a life that has bored us into a sleepy coma. We miss the great drama of what God is doing in the world and in our lives because we refuse to wake up. But others, who are in our boat, are in peril while we sleep.
The captain of the ship came to find Jonah, and cried out to him, " What do you mean you sleeper? Rise and call on your God! " (Jonah 1:6) The captain who wakes you can be a homeless woman who won't leave your mind, and it causes you to wake up to the needs around you. It may be your child who keeps asking you for some of your time, and her request haunts you. The captain could be the person at work who tells you a personal problem, or the church member who tests you and causes you to confront your selfishness or pride. These are all ways that someone comes to us in our boredom, in our malaise, and in our existential slumber to cry out, "What do you mean you sleeper? Rise and call on your God."
When Jonah realized that God had found Him even in the bottom of a boat, he told the sailors to hurl him into the churning sea. Maybe there, in death, he could flee the presence of God. It was a desperate measure. But the point of desperation often is just the place God comes to find you in Jesus Christ. The good news of the gospel is that often God comes in desperate moments when you finally let go of the life you were trying to hold onto. Just when you think you've gone the ultimate distance to escape the mercy and calling of God, even there, the Psalmist asks:
" Where can I go from Your spirit? Or where can I flee from Your Presence? If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me fast . (Psalm 139:7, 9-10)
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