The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
We all know the story of Jonah — at least we know some parts, some of the details of the story of Jonah. God called Jonah to Nineveh. We know that He called Jonah to preach against the people of Nineveh. We know that Jonah really, really, really did not like Ninevites. He didn’t want the job of a prophet, and he certainly disagreed with the purpose of the mission. So he ran in the opposite direction — literally. He bought passage on a boat headed in the opposite direction, so that he’d end up in a city that none of us probably could pick out on a map these days, a city called Tarshish — which, by the way, was named after the great-grandson of Noah. We know that God caused a great storm while he was at sea, and everyone on the ship believed that God was going to kill them as a punishment for some undisclosed, unknown sin committed by some sinner on the boat. So they cast lots to see who the guilty party was, and the lot fell to Jonah. Only then did Jonah confess what he had done, and suggested to his crewmates that they throw him overboard into the sea in order to save themselves. They thought that was a good suggestion, so they executed it. Shortly thereafter, Jonah was swallowed by a great sea creature — which today we usually call a whale. Three days later, he was spit up on the shore, probably in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea. And that’s what most people know about the story of Jonah and the so-called whale. There’s more to the story than that, though. And there’s a whole bunch we can learn from the story of Jonah about how God often deals with His very own children — especially those that He calls to special offices in the church.
So first, let’s take the whole matter in a timeline. When was Jonah? When did Jonah’s prophetic ministry begin? The answer is: after the division of the two kingdoms, probably around 760 BC. As a historical reference, the Northern Kingdom, Israel, would fall to the Assyrian army — which, by the way, Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria — some 38 years later, in 722 BC. Second, to put some geography and history to the matter: Jonah was from a border town, Gath-hepher in Zebulun, which was about halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea, not far from Nazareth. That’s where God called Jonah into the prophetic ministry. And after being conscripted by God, Jonah ran off to Joppa — which, by the way, is just a little south and a little east on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea from that area. As for Nineveh, it’s what we know today as Mosul in Iraq. It sits in the same area. It’s about 550 miles north and east of Joppa. As for Tarshish, the city to which he was going to escape — the city named after the great-grandson of Noah — it was 2,500 miles straight west of Jerusalem, on the Mediterranean Sea coast of Spain. It was a long way. It was a city that I’m sure he had never been to before. And in the ancient world, it was thought of as the last stop, essentially, before you headed to the end of the earth. That’s how far Jonah was willing to go, and how much Jonah hated both the people of Nineveh and being conscripted by God to be a prophet. He was willing to leave and to run and to leave everything behind, so that he didn’t have to go to work for the Lord God. We remember Adam and Eve tried to hide from God too. That didn’t work out so well. And perhaps, since it had already been written by the time Jonah lived, Psalm 139, written by King David, would have been a helpful thing for Jonah to read: “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.” You cannot escape the presence of God. But that didn’t stop Jonah from trying.
Now, this whole series of events begins in chapter 1, verse one, with these simple, clear, directive words: “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before Me.'” Two chapters later, we pick up where Jonah was dropped off — literally — on the shore. And there he is, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, probably the northeastern corner at this point. “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.'” Two notable things here. “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.” Even though Jonah did everything he possibly could do to put as much distance between the Lord God and himself, even though he tried to do everything he could do to scuttle the mission of calling Nineveh to repentance — why, he was right back where he began. And even though he had repented in the belly of the fish — he wrote a long poem, by the way, or conceived it; I doubt he had a piece of paper in the belly — chapter two is fundamentally a poem of repentance, of asking God for deliverance from the great beast, and the pledge that he would be faithful. But once on dry land again, he reverted to the old, old Jonah. One commentator wrote of the wording, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time”: by paralleling here the book’s opening remarks almost word for word — “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah” — the author skillfully conveys the idea that Jonah is beginning anew, starting all over, as if the first offense had never happened in the first place. Jonah is given a do-over. In golf they call it a mulligan — pretending as if that which has happened never happened at all. In Jonah’s case, his sin of rebellion was forgiven and remembered no more. But Jonah’s call and duty still remained. He still had the job that he didn’t want. And he’s sent on his way now, probably even more unhappy than he began. As we learn in the Small Catechism, God’s will will always be done. And as we pray in the Small Catechism, the good and gracious will of God is done indeed without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us as well. Jonah wanted it to be done among somebody else. And he didn’t change his mind about that at all. The only thing he was going to do now was to fulfill the obligation given to him in the embedded vocation he was now drafted into.
Also take note of the second thing: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” The last part of that — “the message that I tell you” — is a new addition to what was said in the first call. The second call includes a qualifier that the first did not. Jonah does not have the freedom to preach any message that he wants for himself. He has to preach the Word that God will reveal to him in God’s good time. When the time was right, he would get further instructions. Now, we have this happen all the time in our own lives. God frequently works this way, and our sinful flesh, at least mine, finds it rather irritating that He doesn’t consult me before He sends me to do something. It’s often the case that God puts us, or allows us to be surrounded by, circumstances that we don’t like at all, and gives us work to do that we find unpleasant. And we don’t understand why such hardship has to come to us. Why do we have to learn piecemeal what it is God wants us to do, as we go through life? The story of Nineveh and Jonah demonstrates why God leads us step by step. If we knew too much before we entered the journey, we wouldn’t have taken the journey at all. An awful lot of pastors live to regret becoming pastors — but they still do their duties. They thought they’d be loved and adored and well compensated for preaching the Law and the Gospel, and baptizing and doing weddings and funerals — only to discover that they’re not well-liked, sometimes by even their own flock. We might be tempted, if we knew all the details of what was ahead of us, to do the same thing Jonah tried to do — that is, run as far from our duty as we possibly can.
This is what Lutherans call part of the doctrine of vocation, or in the Latin, vocatio. A vocation is a station. It’s a place, an office, it’s a relationship God has placed us in in this life, so that we may be of service to somebody else. That’s what He means, by the way, when He says, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” Ultimately, these duties and responsibilities are to be filled as we carry out our vocation — for the sake of our own families, for the sake of our neighbors, be they our clients, our customers, our relatives, our fellow citizens, and the like. We are placed in these stations to carry out the will of God in the life of other people — including in the kingdom of the left, that is, under the government, in civilization, in our communities, in our daily lives out in the, quote, real world. Every Christian is called to serve others. Sometimes God doesn’t give us the exact details of what our vocation will require, and we don’t learn about it until we’re actually fully engaged in that vocation. Expectant parents kind of know what they’re in for, right? But grandparents really know what they’re in for. Regardless of the circumstance of the job and the circumstance surrounding our stations in life, we are not there to serve ourselves. We are there to serve others. As Luther taught: God doesn’t need your good works. Your neighbor does.
Jonah did not choose to be called into the vocation of a prophet, and he was very upset that he was conscripted. Like the rest of us, there were aspects of this job — principally the primary purpose of the job — that he didn’t like. He was a weak and sinful man, just like the rest of us. When his call came, and it involved serving people that he most certainly did not want to serve, let alone save, he did everything he could to desperately avoid the job. He wanted something for himself rather than something for his neighbors. It’s here, after the first mission failed and the messy business of the sea creature, Jonah is called to the vocation of prophet a second time — as if the first time never happened. This time, he goes to Nineveh. The pagan city — a pagan city through and through. Cruel, vicious, base, violent Gentiles. That’s the city he wanted to avoid. They were all sinners, in the world he knew that. But these people were among the worst. Yet Epiphany, as we learned last week, is about the light of Christ coming first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. In places like Nineveh, Christians are to be the light in the midst of a dark world — and people that sometimes others don’t care for. Why did Jonah hate the city of Nineveh? Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and the Assyrian Empire was threatening every one of its neighbors, including Israel and Judah. It was the largest city and the greatest city in the world at the time. It was an intimidating place to go for a foreigner who was on a mission to call an entire nation to abandon their evil ways or to die. The Assyrian Empire was one of the most violent and cruel empires. When it conquered a territory, it was normal procedure: you conquer the territory, you slaughter all the civilians who have no value to you, and you haul all the ones that are worth saving and using off to slavery. That was the modus operandi. Assyrian kings gained and held thrones by threat, destruction, assassination, and oppression. Preaching in this corrupt and evil capital of international terrorism was a dangerous thing to do, and Jonah didn’t expect to live through it. Yet into this corrupt culture, the Lord God sent Jonah to preach against the base, the powerful, the evil, and the corrupt. Nineveh was a huge city, and if he was in trouble, there would be nowhere for him to run — no escape, easily, from Nineveh. “Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.” It was a big town. Everywhere Jonah preached, he knew he was putting himself at risk, and into the hands of possibly very angry Assyrians. The message Jonah was to proclaim was not popular. “Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'” And you see, the thing about a prophet in the ancient world: when a prophet speaks, they believe it’s going to happen. So to prophesy destruction on a city is almost a declaration of war in and of itself. The message was certain to offend the merciless, powerful people who would seek to silence him. And he could run no longer.
Yet the Lord God worked His purpose in Nineveh. The Word of God accomplished the purpose for which He, Jonah, and the message was sent. The people of Nineveh believed God, that He would do what He was going to do. So they called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. We’re told even the king of Nineveh, in Assyria, by leaving his throne and robes, sat in sackcloth and ashes. Then he proclaimed a national fast and a national sitting in sackcloth — guess what, not only for the human beings in the empire, but also for their flocks and their herds. Even their animals were to be covered in sackcloth. The king also decreed that every person was to turn from his evil way and from the violence that was in his hands. The miracle of the divine grace is more powerful than the worst of human sins. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented — some translations, He repented, He turned around — of the disaster that He had said He would do to them, and He did not do it. That’s the text.
Jonah was the prophet by vocation, and a very faulty human being by way of sin. So when he saw that the Lord changed His mind regarding the destruction of Nineveh, we’re told in chapter 4, verse one: Jonah was exceedingly displeased — a polite way of saying he was really angry at God for not killing his enemies. “I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” That’s how much he hated the Ninevites. But God saw fit not to destroy them, but to lay the burden instead upon His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. How quickly Jonah himself had forgotten forgiveness and the grace that God had extended to him after he tried to run away and rebel, after he tried to forsake his vocation of preaching and teaching. The Lord God asked Jonah: “Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city?” He goes on to say: that great city with 120,000 souls. See, evil has permeated all of human history — from Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, to this moment. From Assyria to Rome to modern nations, human hate and violence have earned a divine sentence of wrath and condemnation for all of humanity. The Lord God of the Old Testament is the world’s Creator; thus He is also the world’s Judge. It’s a part that we often forget when we think about our Lord Jesus Christ, His Father, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit — they are together one Judge, and the judgment must be executed on sin. But He didn’t execute it on the people of Nineveh. He held it in abeyance until the birth, life, and death of His Son, Jesus Christ. He placed the divine retribution that you and I have earned by our sin on His only-begotten Son. He condemned Him in your place. From the moment of His conception, He took every evil and every sin of the ancient Assyrians and placed it on Him — and then He took your sins and mine and put it on His Son as well. Christ Jesus, the Son of God, would be the great and final Prophet, whose sacrifice and proclamation would redeem the whole world — not as a reluctant prophet, as they call Jonah, but as a willing Prophet, Priest, and King, who overcomes sin, death, and the power of the devil by dying and taking up His life from the dead.
What changed for Assyria and for Jonah, for Israel and for you, did not come through judgment of destruction, but through the punishment of all sin inflicted on the sinless, sacrificial Lamb, once and for all: Jesus the Christ. Into this world, God continues to call men and women — little Jonahs — to vocations, both inside and outside the church, for the sake of the church and for the sake of the world. He calls men, young and old alike, well-educated and simple, into the Office of Public Ministry, making them pastors and preachers. He brings into the church faithful men and women to serve as deacons and deaconesses and other churchly offices. He brings into the church faithful men and women who live by faith and in repentance. He places you in your respective vocations and stations in life — some of which you may not want or like. Yet through you, God serves our neighbors for their good, and bestows His general grace upon them, as He does upon you. Parenting is not about being parents; it’s about children in need of parents. No matter what your vocation may be, the Lord will lead you and use you in a world filled with rebellious, lost, broken, and hurting people. Remember: your jobs are not yours. They’re given to you to occupy by Christ Himself. Their jobs are about others — and serving, and keeping order and peace and health and kindness alive in the world, even the worst Nineveh, past, present, or future. That is: our sin, death, and the power of the devil cannot hold you on the day of your resurrection, for Christ has risen from the dead. And this He is going to do to you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.