We’re half-way through the book of Jonah.  We know he tries to escape God’s call to Nineveh, but to no avail.  We know that he’s swallowed up by a great fish.  We know that he prays from inside that fish’s belly, and is given a second chance.  At the close of the last reading, the fish was vomiting Jonah up onto dry land.  Today, we find out what happens next.

[Jonah 3:1-10]

I love the king’s words to the city of Nineveh:

All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.  Who knows?  God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish. –Jonah 3:8b-9, NRSV

So much is summed up in this proclamation: things are not as they should be; we can do better; our hope is in God’s mercy.  The third chapter of Jonah is a wonderful tale of conversion, of change, of repentance, of return.  It opens with Jonah’s repentance.  Once Jonah is out of the fish’s belly, God again instructs him: Arise! Go! Preach!  And, this time, he obeys.  He goes to Nineveh, and declares:  “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4, NRSV).

Jonah may not be very enthusiastic about what he’s doing – he doesn’t seem that interested in telling the Ninevites anything but the bare minimum.  But at least he’s doing the thing he’s supposed to do.  At this point, this seems to be all the repentance that Jonah can muster.  It’s not heroic, really, but it’s a start. 

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?  We’ve had those days, those moments, when grudgingly doing what we’re supposed to do is the most we can manage.  It’s rather disconcerting to realize that you don’t want to do the thing that you’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?  But it’s one kind of repentance, I suppose, and it’s honest enough.  Like I said: we’ve all been there.

But when we get to the Ninevites, it’s a completely different picture.  They get one, cursory prophecy.  The Bible tells us that Jonah failed to mention God’s steadfast, loving kindness – he just tells them that they’re about to be overthrown.  But boy, they listen, don’t they?  Everyone drops what they’re doing.  They fast, wear sackcloths, sit in ashes – the things people do when they’re mourning.  And the king declares that they must turn from their evil ways, and from the violence that is in their hands.  Though the people of Nineveh do not know the God of Israel, they hope in God’s mercy anyway.  Their repentance is dramatic; it’s the kind of story that movies are made of.

Jonah, or the Ninevites: I’m not sure which story of repentance resonates most deeply with you.  It seems that we each have our own ways of finding faith.  Some of you have dramatic stories, some don’t.  Some find obedience a joy, even right at first.  Others are more reluctant, especially in the beginning.  The point of this sermon is not to tell you that there’s one right way to come to God.  Rather, I hope that we can use today’s text as a way to help all of us explore what it means to return to God.

Let’s look for a moment at what happens when the Ninevites turn toward God.  The king orders that they are to do two things.  First, as a community, they participate in rituals that involved fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.  Those rituals sound pretty strange to us, I know.  But it’s not the particular rituals that matter.  What matters, I think, is that the community acknowledges together that things are not as they ought to be.  Everyone is involved – even the animals!  These rituals help the community to set their hearts on the right path, to focus their minds on what needs to happen differently. 

Second, the king demands that the Ninevites change their behavior.  They are to turn from their evil ways, and from the violence that is in their hands.  Conversion isn’t just about our hearts, after all; it’s also about how we live our lives.  Having heard Jonah’s message, the king reminds his people that their evil ways – particularly their violence – get in the way of living as they ought to. 

Here’s another way to describe the lesson we learn from the Ninevites: conversion involves our willingness to come humbly into God’s presence.  It also involves the restoration of our relationships with all others.  True faithfulness requires both.

One image that I’ve heard use to describe the Christian faith is that of a wagon wheel.  Picture that wheel in your head for a moment.  God is the at the center, the hub of the wheel.  Each person is one of the spokes, connected to the center and radiating outwards.  We live our lives somewhere along that spoke of the wheel.  When we’re trying to be far away from God, at the edge of the wheel., that’s also the point where we’re furthest from other people.  As we move toward the center, drawing closer to God, we are also drawn closer to one another. 

I know, I know: you’ve heard it before.  Love the Lord you God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  As Christians, this message comes to us again and again and again and again.  Perhaps it seems like I’m preaching to the choir, telling you what you already know and believe.  The thing is, we don’t seem to be able to hear it enough.  We break these commandments on a daily basis.  And yet, God is constantly calling us to turn back, to return to God’s forgiveness and grace.  As the song says, it’s always us that’s standing in the need of prayer, and not just someone else. 

Here’s what I believe about conversion: Whether our style is like Jonah’s – slow and unsteady and sometimes even unenthused – or whether our style is like the Ninevites – swift and wholehearted – or whether we’re somewhere in-between, I believe that most of us live our lives in cycles of straying from God’s grace, and returning to God’s steadfast mercy.  We’re always converting; we’re never finished with this process of turning towards God.   Always, we must be brought back to the demands of Christian faithfulness: love God,  love your neighbor.

While I was recovering from my appendectomy this week, I read a book written by Robert Coles.  He wrote a lovely biography of Dorothy Day, one of my greatest heroes in the Christian faith.  Day had always been passionate about serving the poor, and when she converted to Catholicism in her late 20’s, that passion continued to burn brightly.  She helped to found the Catholic Worker movement.  Catholic Workers live with one another in Christian community, and are committed to voluntary poverty and acts of mercy.  Their hospitality houses are always open to the homeless, to all who are poor; the Catholic workers provide companionship, food, clothing, and other kinds of help as best they can.

Her whole life, Dorothy Day prayed that she might be more sincere, more open to the people she met every day.  She tells about an encounter she had with a nun who had come to work at one of the hospitality houses:

I remember a nun who came to visit us.  We sat and drank coffee after she had helped us work.  She was a fast one.  She wnet from table to table, arranging chairs and helping some of the men who really needed help. She was tactful and modest, and of course, they took to her.  She knew who could go fend for himself and who needed a little boost from her.  As we sat and talked she said to me in a whisper, “This is dangerous work.”  I’ll remember her words until my dying day.

     At first I couldn’t understand her, she could see… Still whispering, she confessed to me, “I think God knows when I help myself by helping others.  I suppose there’s no way to escape that trap but prayer to Him: admit the sin and try to reserve a laugh or two for yourself, to laugh at yourself.”  She didn’t stop there.  I’m paraphrasing her, but the message was clear and pointed – that we run the risk of thinking we’re God’s gift to humanity, those of us who struggle in our soup kitchens and hospitality houses to be loyal to Him.  It is a message I hope none of us forgets, though we do; all the time we do. [1]

I found this text striking.  Here’s Dorothy Day – a woman whom I admire as one of the great saints in the community of faith – and she’s struggling continuously with the sin that she perceives in her own heart.  But I think that Day is wise, for many of us in the church have had moments like the one that this nun encountered; moments when in our moments of sincere devotion, we find ourselves thinking highly of ourselves at the expense of others.  We take such pride in our own helpfulness that we forget that those we serve are our equals in every way that really matters.  Of course, we have other transgressions as well.  But the point is clear: we never get to the point when we no longer need to turn towards God.

I don’t know you, but sometimes when I think of what true faithfulness requires, I get discouraged.  There are days when, no matter how hard I try, a sincere return to God just seems downright impossible.   Perhaps you have these days, too.   But I am thankful to say that there is good news for us in the third chapter of Jonah.  The Ninevites are not the only ones who turn toward a greater sense of faithfulness. 

In today’s sermon, I’ve used a number of words to talk about what happens in this chapter: conversion, repentance.  But the Hebrew text uses the word return.  The Hebrew word is shuv, and it can also be translated as ‘turn’ or ‘turn back.’  (This is your Hebrew lesson for this week!) 

Let’s return to what the king says to the Ninevites. 

All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.  Who knows?  God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish. –Jonah 3:8b-9, NRSV

This NRSV translation is pretty good, but I have one complaint.  The Hebrew text says that God may turn and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger.  This idea of turning comes up over and over again.  The people can turn because they dare to hope that God will do the same. 

In some ways, this idea of God turning is a challenging one.  We’ve inherited the legacy of many Christians who believed that God is unchanging, always the same for ever and ever.  What I would say to you this morning is this: the Hebrews didn’t believe it.  There are many times in the Old Testament when God repents, when God changes God’s mind.  We see that happen in the third chapter of Jonah.

We are created in the image of God.  I suspect that we’ll spend our whole lives learning about what that means.  But perhaps this ability to change, to turn, to return, is part of what being made in the image of God is all about. 

God chooses to turn away from anger, from destruction.  It’s a return to steadfast kindness, toward mercy and grace.  As Christians, we can know that because God turns toward us, we are able to turn toward God.  We don’t have to be faithful all on our own.  We can move closer to God and closer to one another, and we can do it because God’s grace is always turning toward us.

We all know what it is like to be Jonah.  But this week, let us try to be a little bit more like the Ninevites. 

Let us pray:

Loving God, we turn toward you in thankfulness for the many times that you have turned toward us in grace.  Grant that we might be continually converted to a deeper faithfulness, that we might be truer disciples of Christ.  Teach us to remember your mercy in our relationships with others.  We pray in the name of Christ.  Amen. 

Sermon delived by Sara Olson Dean on April 17, 2005.