sermon excerpts: "Resistance Is Futile"

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I talked about Goethe a few months ago and his assurance that when we are in accord with God, with right purpose for the right reason, opposition will melt away and resources will flow. Well, Jonah experienced the opposite. As he tried to resist God’s will, more and more things got in his way, the most dramatic of which was 3 days in a whale’s belly.

The whole story of Jonah is one of reluctance and exaggeration. Grudgingly Jonah goes, but only after his efforts to avoid and escape fail in spectacular fashion. I think we’ve all experienced how in life the obstacles that come up end up redirecting us to a different path. Looking back, it is often that new path we find is the one we should have been on in the first place.

When Jonah followed God’s path, it was surprisingly easy. Just a day into the big city and he preaches, “40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed” was enough. No mention of who or why or how this destruction would happen. It got immediate results. Everyone fasted and mourned and repented, everyone in the city. The verses we skipped over in the chapter relate to how the king directed everyone to do these things, even the livestock.

Even more striking than the effectiveness of that single uttered sentence is that Jonah is the first prophet who has gone to a foreign land to preach the word of God. In the days that the book was written, Ezra and Nehemiah were prominent leaders of Israel. Much of their focus, all of their focus, was on Israel, its problems and possibilities and neglected the rest of the world.

Jonah serves as a reminder that whether one lived in Jerusalem, or in Nineveh, on land or on sea, God is ever calling all creation to a full and complete life of holy and wholesome living. Jonah serves as a reminder to not be so full of ourselves that we cannot see God at work elsewhere. Even the mortal enemies of Israel, the Assyrians, their leaders, and those in the capitol city, Nineveh, were deserving of God’s love and care.

Consider the Ninevites (Ninevenians? Ninevers?) and the speed of their response. They had forty days until their doom, but there answer was swift and immediate. It was as if they already knew what their answer was, they were just waiting for someone to say something. Maybe they had figured out that resistance is futile.

As we consider the seaside call of Christ and the ordeal of Jonah, we recognize that some people are adventurous. Most people are not. If we cannot get up and go like the disciples, or the people of Nineveh, if we are more like Jonah and can think of a million other things that we’d rather do, trust in the power of opportunity and second chances.

Eventually God’s will will prevail. Jonah learned the hard way how much energy and effort it takes to avoid what is good, holy and righteous in life. Although it seems these days it’s easier to escape God. There are more distractions, escape routes and excuses available to us and nothing in the way of whales rising up to swallow us and ferry us to where we need to be.

Yet I remain convinced that despite all of this, the is a deep conviction that rests within each of us souls that there is more to life than this earth, there is meaning worth seeking and the holy and divine does exist. And that the church is an important piece of this spiritual expression. In the end, we will find ourselves turning to God.