When Life Sucks: Jonah in the belly - Oct 2004

Life sucks: praying and refusing to pray
Jonah sermon -

See also mark 4:35-41 Psalm 107:23-32

Before Rose and I were dating she called me proud, arrogant and self-centered

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines arrogance as
Slide #1
Main Entry: ar·ro·gant
exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance in an overbearing manner

Slide #2
Main Entry: self-cen·tered
1 : independent of outside force or influence
2 : concerned solely with one's own desires, needs, or interests

Slide # 3
Main Entry: proud
feeling or showing pride:
a : having or displaying excessive self-esteem
b : much pleased
c : having proper self-respect

So Rose, called me proud, arrogant and self centered

Had she just called me proud,
I might have been able to salvage a positive interpretation from her comments
But she didn’t allow me that opportunity
No no no

Proud, arrogant and self centered
That pretty much excludes any positive interpretation of her meaning

Thank fully much has changed
She agreed to a date, and eventually agreed to marry me
And as of this last week I did a little status check

Rose I said
Am I proud, self centered and arrogant

And I am proud to say
Strike that - lest you interpret “proud” negatively
I am happy to report to you that my reviews are somewhat better
Though only somewhat
And that my rating has been upgraded
Of course most of this has to do with Roses influence on me

I am not feeling very brave tonight
So I won’t ask for a show of hands to see what the general consensus is about the proud arrogant self-centred thing

Now Lets get to Jonah
A guy who could be described as proud, self-centered and arrogant

Here it goes

All of us are like Jonah, ready to flee to some exotic Tarshish rather than face the reality of who we are and, even more threatening, the possibility that we could become different.

Ironically, Jonah is the only successful prophet in the whole Bible,
the only one whom people actually listen to then truly change their ways.
Yet it is his knowledge that he will succeed,
not doubts about a possible failure,
that causes Jonah to flee.

Jonah is not afraid that the people of Nineveh will dismiss him as a nutcase
NO, he knows that they will repent.
As he says: "0 Lord! Isn't this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand to Tarshish. For I know that You are compassionate and gracious God. . . .
Please, Lord, take my life, for I would rather die than live."

Rather than face that possibility, he flees.
To the end, Jonah resists any sense of responsibility for the fate of the world or his own fate.
Jonah lacks compassion for the people of the city,
a compassion found in everyone else in the story,
including the sailors, who are extremely reluctant to throw Jonah overboard.

Lacking compassion for others,
he lacks compassion for himself.
Fearing repentance [teshuvah] and change in others,
Fearing change in himself he runs from God,
only to find it at least for a moment in the dark depths of the whale.

Jonah's Prayer
1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2 He said:

"In my distress I called to the LORD ,
and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave [1] I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
3 You hurled me into the deep,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
4 I said, 'I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.'
5 The engulfing waters threatened me, [2]
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you brought my life up from the pit,
O LORD my God.

7 "When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD ,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.

8 "Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
Salvation comes from the LORD ."

10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

So what does he find in the gut of a whale?
What is his state of mind?
What does he say?
Where does he find those words?
And does it make a difference?

This has been very bad day

Being angry at god is hard work
And it is a difficult game to win
Jonah is at his wits end
He is desperate defiant and suicidal

Lets step back for a moment and look at what has happened


Its been a very bad day

Jonah has had a change of audience
prophet to the people of God to ► Commissioned to save his enemies

Jonah is running from God as hard and fast as he can
faced with death from shipwreck or lynching ► Chooses drowning

even when he wants to die, he can’t because God interveans
Saved from a certain death (drowning) to ► an opportunity to reflect in the fish

And in his prayer he rediscovers Thankfulness to and then is faced with a thankless task
Sanctuary of the fish to ► the hostility of the ninevites

And being the bearer of bad news it seems that Jonah decided the best way to speak his mind and God’s message was to preached death and what happens? His enemies repent and receive life
Preached repentance to ► witnessing repentance
And what a contrast between Jonah and God
Jonah’s self pity and self contempt ►– yhwh’s compassion

And look at the characters

Conversion of the sailors 1v16
Conversion of Jonah – in the fish 2v1-9
Conversion of the ninevites (individual) 3v5
Conversion of the king 3:6-9 (corporate)
Conversion of God 3v10
Ironically there is no indication of Jonah’s recon version at the end

And talk about childish
Look at Jonah
He runs away angry and sulks three times
To tarshish
After ninevas repentance
After the plant dies

I have gotta say that Jonah doesn’t come off looking very good in this story

As I read this story
As I hear God’s voice rising above the protests of Jonah
And I hear Jonah’s warning to his people Israel
And I hear Jonah’s warning to me

But the fact is I am stuck
Horribly caught in my own destructive thoughts
Caught in a web of relationships that provoke me to self righteousness
I am stuck in my sins, the worst of which are the attitudes I keep
It has an unholy grip on me
I want to change – I think - but find I am powerless to

There are moments where I look around the ship and I refuse to pray
The other sailors urge me to pray
And I just look at them and say throw me overboard

I shake my fist at god
And say, if you won’t get me out of this
Then I will find my own way out
Even if it means throwing myself into the chaos of the sea
And certain death

SOOOOOOOOOOOO

How do you talk to god when your are
Self absorbed

How do you talk with God when you are angry
Even angry at God

How do you talk to God when you haven’t prayed in days or weeks or months

How do you talk with god with you have been avoiding and running and disobeying

There is a saying

“Whenever I am in trouble I pray.
And since I am always in trouble I pray a lot.”


We laugh, because at one level it is true
Most of us find more troubles in life than we would care to have
And so we pray often

You know the kind of prayers
The quick help me out of a jam prayers
Those shoot from the hip prayers
The get it of your chest prayers

We are in trouble a lot so we pray a lot

But just as often our troubles
Are deep troubles
Disturbing depressing debilitating troubles
And our attitudes are fortresses of anger and silence and fear
We are paralized and our prayers dry up like a mud pudle after the rain
And we are nothing but a crust blotch of mud
Then quite honestly
My prayer life pathetic

This is where I find Jonah most helpful

Here is a guy that is as unoriginal as it comes
He begs borrows and steals
His prayer is creative plagiarizing

Jonah, a devout Jew
Learnt to pray
Not by spontaneously coming up with word
Not by striking up what seems like one sided conversations

No, Jonah learned to pray by praying the psalms
Jonah learned to pray by understanding the forms of prayer in scripture

And in desperate times
When Jonah is having a very bad day
When Jonah is shaking his fist at God

As Jonah prays
Not a word of it is original
Jonah got every word
Lock, stock and barrel out of the Psalms

Put the prayer back up on the screen

Its amazing
Prayer, which we often believe to me most honest and true
We think of a spontaneous
The raw expression of our hearts
No Holy Joe intonation, no contrived words or catch phrases

The most honest prayer of Jonahs
Shows up as learned
Borrowed from scripture and filled with more meaning in few words than I can pack into pages

Ironically even though there is ranting and raving in this prayer
Its form is not a lament
Not a cry of human pain
The form of this prayer is a psalm of thanksgiving

Its amazing

When I am angry and self absorbed my words, my prayers are all about me

And Jonah can only be described as angry self absorbed, proud, arrogant and self centered

But his words are all about God

Most of the time
If I am honest

I do not pray because I have nothing good to say
I do not pray because I I cant stand myself, so why would I want to talk about me
I do not pray because I have not learnt to speak of god in good times and bad times
I do not pray because I have not learnt how to be angry at god

But Jonah has no such problem
When he finally prays

His prayer puts things into perspective

Who he is and who God is
This is not a pretty and polite prayer
It is a well designed rant
Jonah is speaking from the gut

But Jonah gets it right in a very important way
Jonah gets it right where so often I get it wrong
Jonah remembers that the main character of the story is God
The main character of Jonah’s story is God
Who is the main character in my story?
Who is the main character in your story?

The main character in this story is God
Jonah’s prayer acknowledges that as much as he would like to avoid, disobey, rebel, rant and rave.
God’s character is certain and unchanging
For I knew that you are a gracious God
Slow to anger and abounding in love
A god who relents from sending calamity
Jonah 4:3

God is a god who hopes that even his enemies would turn from their wicked ways

God is a God of second chances
God is a God who is concerned even for Nineveh,

So how do you pray?

Do you like me mumble and stumble your way through self centred prayers?
Do you feel like your prayers help you see beyond your circumstances?
Do you speak of a God that is vastly bigger than your small world?

Let me draw our evening to a close with a story about prayer that has seeped into my bones

As a 12 year old I spent 9 weeks in the health sciences for a migrane that wouldn’t leave
Day and night I was tormented

My parents lived 500 miles north of Winnipeg and could not be with me the whole time

So they asked Joe to visit me…

He visited every day
Each day reading the same song
Psalm 40

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

Happy are those who make the Lord their trust,
who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.

You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
none can compare with you.
Were I to proclaim and tell of them,
they would be more than can be counted.

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

Then I said, "Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."

I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord.
I have not hidden your saving help within my heart,
I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me;
let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.
For evils have encompassed me without number;
my iniquities have overtaken me, until I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails me.
Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me;
O Lord, make haste to help me.
Let all those be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life;
let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt.
Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, "Aha, Aha!"
But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation say continually, "Great is the Lord!"
As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me.
You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.

The psalm has seeped into my soul
It frequently fills my prayers with words that I could not have found myself
These words, 3000 years old enlarge my world
They put things into perspective
They help me pray
They introduce me to a God Greater than myself

They take a sometimes proud
Sometimes arrogant
Sometimes angry
Sometimes self-centred self-absorbed guy named
And put things into perspective

Even when I am having a very bad time it is not all about me
I am part of Gods plan for something bigger
You are part of God’s plan to show others compassion and grace

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notes
http://www.m-w.com/
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Yom_Kippur/Overview_Yom_Kippur_Community/Prayer_Services/Jonah/Jonah_Strassfeld.htm?OVRAW=jonah&OVKEY=jonah&OVMTC=standard