A sermon by the Reverend Sarah Grondin, preached at St. Jude’s Oakville, on Wednesday March 12, 2025.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our reading today from Jonah is taken from the middle of this very short book, and without the context of what happens before and after, I think it’s easy to miss the point.
The story of Jonah and the Whale is a favourite Old Testament story that almost always turns up as a Sunday School lesson. Kids love to hear about Jonah getting swallowed by a great fish.
And I have to admit, even as an adult, it makes me chuckle every time I hear the passage, “Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.” The image of a petulant Jonah covered in fish goo is oddly satisfying.
But the story of Jonah isn’t about fish goo, or really about fish at all. It’s a story about second chances and the reminder that in God’s kingdom there’s no “othering.” There’s no “us” and “them.” There’s no “chosen” and “forgotten.” There’s no “insiders” and “outsiders.”
What we learn in todays reading, is that there’s one God whose mercy and grace is wide enough to cover everyone…whose love is all encompassing and refuses to play favourites. Jonah knows this, and so when God calls him to go to Ninevah he’s angry, and he hops on the first boat heading the opposite direction.
God has called Jonah to bring a warning to the people, and to call for repentance, but Jonah wants no part in that, and thinks he can out-run God. Well, we all know how that turned out for him: fish goo… lots and lots of fish goo.
So when God calls him a second time to go to Ninevah, Jonah heaves a big sigh and off he goes.
But why was Jonah so opposed to going in the first place? As far as Jonah was concerned, Nineveh was a terrible place. It was the capital city of Assyria, a nation that symbolized overwhelming and ruthless power of empire.
Israel had been a victim of Assyria’s brutality when they were conquered and deported out of the Promised Land. Nineveh had made life awful for God’s chosen people… and now God was sending Jonah into the cursed capital city of cruelty with a message from God to repent.
When Jonah gets to Ninevah, he preaches the standard Prophets 101 sermon of doom and gloom, but it’s hard to imagine a less enthusiastic attempt at conversion. Jonah’s prophecy is only 5 words in Hebrew and 8 in English, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
There’s no actual call to repentance, there’s no mention of which God or people are going to do this overthrowing… I suspect Jonah did just enough to say he had fulfilled his obligation, but he really didn’t want Ninevah to repent, and really didn’t want God to relent. Jonah wanted God to crush the people of Ninevah.
But God’s ways are not our ways… and they certainly weren’t Jonah’s ways.
As hard as it might be for us to accept, every single person we’ll ever meet was lovingly created by God. That doesn’t mean that everyone will make good choices or even that they’ll care for anyone other than themselves… and throughout history we certainly have many examples of people who have weaponized hate and division. Hate and division seem to be the constant headlines in today’s world too.
But even if we can’t stomach the idea of their repentance and redemption, God never stops calling them back, calling all of us back… back to the way of grace, mercy, and love.
Despite the wimpy prophecy Jonah gives, the response of the people of Ninevah is immediate and drastic. The king declares that every person and every beast should fast and be covered with sackcloth and ashes. The image of the enemy is suddenly transformed from one of a fierce occupier to a comic supplicant.
Jonah should be ecstatic with this response. After all, this makes him the only really successful prophet in the whole Bible. He’s brought about a mass conversion that even Billy Graham could only aspire to! With only a couple of words, he’s turned a whole nation back to God. Jonah’s headed for the evangelism hall of fame!
But Jonah is not ecstatic… Jonah is mad. Jonah is really mad. He’s so mad he storms out of the city and sulks, hoping to see some fireworks of vengeance after all.
Knowing this, if we look back in retrospect at God’s original call to Jonah, it makes a little more sense why Jonah fled in the first place: he wasn’t afraid of failure. He was afraid of success. In his perception, salvation was a small Members Only club, and he was a card carrying member… and Ninevah was the epitome of “the other.” This mission in Ninevah must have felt like treason!
So what does it mean for us, that our God is a God of second chances, and that there’s no “othering” in the Kingdom of God? I think it presents us with both an invitation and a challenge.
In our passage today, Jonah and the people of Ninevah are given a second chance, they’re given the opportunity to amend their ways, to repent, and to obey God. I suspect I'm not the only one who at various points in my life has felt like a lost cause in the eyes of God. We hear these grand stories about God’s grace being extended to all those who ask for it, yet somehow we manage to convince ourselves that we're excluded from that grace.
Yes God loves everyone, but surely not me. I've said too many wrong things, I've made the wrong choice too many times, I've backed down when I should've spoken up. And there's a 100 other reasons why we manage to convince ourselves that we fall outside of God’s grace.
But when God demonstrates that his grace really is sufficient for everyone who calls on God’s name, he means it. Time and time again we see God’s forgiveness in action… we see God's love in action
I know many of you will have heard me quote St. Teresa of Avila before in saying, “Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.”
And that's where the invitation becomes the challenge. We’re invited to return to God as many times as we wander away. The challenge is to recognize and celebrate the fact that this invitation applies to everyone else too.
It applies to the person sitting next to you, it applies to the person making use of a safe injection site, it applies to the teenager who dropped out of high school because she had a baby, it applies to the guy sitting outside the Beer Store asking you for change.
Jonah wanted to have a member’s only club, with a very exclusive list, so when God showed his mercy to the people of Nineveh, Jonah was mad. Jonah didn't want God to be merciful to those “other people,” to those people who had made Israel's life miserable. Jonah wanted them punished. But our ways are not God’s ways.
Each time we come together at the altar to share in the Eucharist, we’re reminded once again that no one is more important than another in God’s kingdom. No one has a higher seat of honor than anyone else. We’re all invited to the table to share in the same bread and wine.
Invitation and challenge.
Some of us might struggle with the invitation, in believing that it applies to us too, even if we can believe that it applies to everyone else.
Some of us might struggle with today's challenge…to see others the way that God sees them, and to extend our hands and hearts in an equal opportunity embrace to all that God loves.
Perhaps the season of Lent is an ideal time to look inside ourselves and consider where we’re currently struggling, so that by the time we reach the glory of Easter, we can believe and celebrate that by dying and rising Jesus has extended the ultimate call of love and forgiveness to all who believe. To you, to me, to everyone.
Our God is a God of second chances, and there is no othering in God’s Kingdom. Thanks be to God. Amen.
