August 16, 2026

The Lord be with you.

I'm so with you.

Thanks.

What a gift to be with you on this spectacularly beautiful Sunday morning.

I'm John, for those I haven't met.

I've uh cajoled a few friends to rise on the wings of this sermon and settle on the far limits of whatever countryside the Spirit will land us this morning.

Deep into the territory of God.

Don't know what you were thinking we were going to do this morning.

Deep into the countryside of faith and life and you, your hurts and your hopes, and your hearts so full of so much goodness and probably some not great stuff, too.

Anyone want to admit?

It's just true of all of us.

I'm thinking about those lines from Alexander Soltz and Nitson.

You've probably heard this.

The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.

So maybe not everything's great.

We want you to listen with us to a story.

It's a true story.

So it's got that going for it.

It's a good story.

I think you're going to enjoy listening to it.

It's a Bible story.

Whether you've ever opened the pages of the book or not, you've heard of this story.

So we want you to set aside whatever preconceived assumptions you've made about the story and heed the wisdom of Martin Luther, who in his introduction to the Old Testament wrote, In Scripture you will see the swaddling clothes and the mangers in which Christ lies, to which the angel points the shepherds, small and tidy the swaddling clothes may be, but rich in treasure.

Christ lies here.

So this is uh Seth.

Uh Seth is a Calvin University graduate.

I had a hunch.

I had a hunch a few people might like that.

He has a gargantuan heart for all kinds of people and a razor-sharp mind, and he's been a gift to our community in so many ways over the last years, not the least of which are our middle school students, who he's been helping us live out our baptismal promises by hanging with them.

And this is Lacey.

Lacey, you've met Lacey, I think.

She stands up here quite regularly on a Sunday morning.

She's a San Francisco girl.

Turn to New York, become Midwest.

She loves people like it's the only thing she has to do.

And she loves Christ like he's the only one there.

So we're gonna offer you the book of Jonah.

Have you heard of this book?

You know the story.

We want you to set aside the preconceived assumptions you bring to the book and just listen.

I know some of you are already reaching for your Bibles.

Close them.

If we wanted to read it to you, we would.

We just want you to listen.

Christ lies here.

So do what you need to do to open your hearts and to read your minds.

The book of Jonah.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai, saying, Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa, found a ship sailing to Tarshish, paid his fare, went on board to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and a great storm came upon the sea, so that the ship threatened to break apart.

The sailors were afraid.

Each cried to his God.

They took the cargo that was in the ship and they threw it in the sea to lighten it for them.

Jonah, meanwhile, had gone into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.

The captain of the ship came and said to him, What are you doing?

Sound asleep.

Get up! Call on your God.

Perhaps the God will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.

The sailors said to one another, Let us cast lots to see on whose account this calamity has come upon us.

So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

So they said to Jonah, Tell us why this calamity has come upon us.

What is your occupation?

What is your country?

Where do you come from?

Of what people are you?

I am a Hebrew.

I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea as well as the dry land.

Then the men were even more afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done?

For they knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.

And they said, What should we do to you so that the sea may quiet down for us?

For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous.

He said to them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea, and the sea will quiet down for you, for it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.

Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to dry land.

But they could not, because the sea grew more and more stormy against them.

Then the men cried to the Lord.

O Lord, we pray, do not make us perish on account of this man's life.

Don't make us guilty of shedding innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.

So they picked Jonah up and they threw him into the sea.

And the sea ceased from its raging.

And the sailors were even more afraid.

And they offered sacrifice to the Lord and they made vows.

And the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah.

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.

And from the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord.

I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me.

Out of the belly of Shaol, I cried, and you heard my voice.

You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea.

The flood surrounded me, all of your waves, and your billows crashed over me.

Then I said, I am cast away from your sight.

How am I to look again at your holy temple?

The waters closed in over me.

The deep surrounded me.

Weeds were wrapped around my neck at the roots of the mountains.

Then I went down to the dry land and its bars closed upon me forever.

Yet you brought up my life from the pit.

Oh Lord, my God, as my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord.

And my prayer came to you into your holy temple.

Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.

But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice what I have vowed, I will pay.

Deliverance belongs to the Lord.

And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.

And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time and said, Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I give you.

So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across.

Jonah began to go into the city a day's walk and cried out, Forty days more in Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh believed God.

They proclaimed a fast.

They covered themselves in sackcloth, in sat and ashes.

When news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, and covered himself in sackcloth and sat in ashes.

He made a proclamation in Nineveh, by decree of the king and his nobles, no human or animal shall taste anything.

No herd or flock shall feed or drink any water.

They shall cover themselves in sackcloth and cry mightily to God.

They shall turn from their wicked ways and from the violence that is in their hands.

Who knows?

God may relent and change his mind and turn from his fierce anger so that we do not perish.

And when God saw what they did, how they turned from their wicked ways, God changed his mind about the calamity he said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

And this was very displeasing to Jonah.

And he became very angry.

And he said to the Lord, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country?

That is why I fled to Tarshish in the beginning.

For I knew that you were a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, relenting from punishment.

Lord, take away my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

And the Lord said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry?

Jonah went out of the city and sat down to the east of the city, and he made a booth for himself there.

He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the Ninevites.

The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah to give shade over his head to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush.

But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush so that it withered.

When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die.

He said, It is better for me to die than to live.

And the Lord said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?

And he said, Yes, angry enough to die.

The Lord said, You're angry about a bush for which you did not labor and which you did not grow.

It grew up in a night and it perished in a night.

Should I not be more concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

I don't know about you, but Jonah's quickly become one of my favorite books to engage with in adulthood because you know it as a kid, and then you kind of come back and like it's funny.

It is, it's funny.

Jonah's pouting, nothing kind of goes the way you think it is.

It it reminds me of hip-hop artist LaCrae who says in a TED talk, our our heroes can be more villainous than we think, and sometimes our villainous are more or villains are more heroic than we like give them credit for.

Or Eugene Peterson uses Jonah to reflect on his vocation as a pastor.

He says, We never do get a picture of the kind of pastor we want to be in Jonah, only the kind of pastor we are.

I think we can expand this to the Christian life.

We don't see the kind of Christians we want to be.

We see the kind of Christian we are.

I'll put it this way, there's this book, probably none of you have heard it, Harry Potter.

Anyone anyone read the books before the movies?

Was anybody not allowed to read the books?

Okay, I was at least one of them, and I ended up doing it eventually, but um Harry, an unsuspecting wizard, his parents died, were killed when he was little.

He goes to wizarding school and he doesn't really find trouble, trouble finds him.

There's this scene in the first book where he stumbles upon a mirror, it's called the mirror of Areset, and he looks in it and sees his parents behind him.

So, you know, he turns around, they're not there, and he's kind of amazed by this mirror.

He brings his best friend Ron to come look in the mirror, thinking that Ron might see his parents.

Ron sees something totally different.

He's got a trophy and a badge.

It's a little puzzling until Harry hears from a professor that the mirror shows you the deepest desire of your heart.

For Harry, he never got time with his parents and he sees them and treasures them.

Ron comes from a big family and he wants to prove himself.

Hence the trophy and the badge.

But it's kind of vulnerable when you think about it, because this mirror shows very plainly in front of the viewer something that is really deep within your heart and soul.

It almost opens the cavity of ourselves and shows what's there.

Jonah does this for us, but it's not really the thing we desire most, it's some of our deepest mess.

So I'd like to just take an inventory of what people in this story are seeing.

God's questions show something to Jonah.

Jonah's word shows something to the Ninevehites, the sailors have a whole experience.

It's just take an inventory of what they're seeing in the mirror, and maybe together we can look too.

We'll start with Jonah.

His people and the Ninevites have some bad blood, a wound, a complicated history.

So when word comes to Jonah, he's going the other way.

He wants no mercy for these people.

He goes, God comes after him, Jonah yields to the sea.

There's really not much else he can do.

He goes, gives what I think is a pretty awful gospel.

You're all gonna die.

And they repent.

And this is very displeasing to Jonah.

He goes outside of the city, and I think he's sitting there waiting to and hoping that Nineveh messes it up.

The bush comes over his head, the bush dies, and Jonah's sitting there furious, because in his mind the wrong thing died.

God's probing questions are asking him to look in the mirror.

He even's like, if you don't care about the book, well, at least the animals.

At least care about the animals.

Jonah looks in the mirror and he sees contempt building.

And it's not going well for him.

The Ninevites see a shocking message in front of them, 40 days more, and you'll be destroyed.

And immediately, into their view, are all of the wickedness and murderous, dysfunctional ways that they've been carrying that are leading them towards death.

They don't know God, but but they're scrambling to fast, to put on sackcloth.

The king gets off his throne and takes off his royal robes for a who knows.

Their wickedness presently before them has them look deeply within.

The sailors are going about their business to suddenly find themselves in a situation where they are utterly out of control.

Unsure what's going on, their gods suddenly way too small to solve their deepest issue.

They're anxious.

Jonah sees contempt, the Nineveh see dysfunctional wickedness, the sailors see anxiety.

Their gods too small.

What do you see?

When you have that argument again, it's the same argument that keeps coming back up, and it kind of wells up to this tightness in your chest.

Or maybe just the everyday parts of life where we realize we're just we're not in control.

We we really don't control that much.

When I was uh when I was working or I was working at campus ministries when I was at Calvin, um, and a friend of mine, we'll we'll we'll call her Kelly, um was doing it with me, and and one of the things that we did as part of this job is we were supposed to commit ourselves to a spiritual practice.

The point of this, it was a small habit or practice to help us see the already there presence of God.

Kelly started her year, you know, the overachieving student that she was, she wanted to memorize scripture.

And she had taken the campus ministry job because she was kind of hoping it would help her help ground herself in her faith a little more.

She gets a couple weeks into the semester, as college students know it's just busy and crazy.

And she expressed to her mentor that it wasn't really working out so well because she had so many expectations on her that by the time she got to her room, memorizing scripture just felt like too much.

Her mentor asks her, Are you trying to memorize scripture because you want God's word in your heart?

Or because it's what good Christians do?

Kelly, now with a look in the mirror, sees that it's because good Christians do, and she decided to switch her practice.

She created margin a few mornings to make some coffee because she delighted in it, and to sit in stillness and let God meet her.

And what she found wasn't this like glorious revelation, but some of the mess of herself coming out where she found in herself a deep insecurity to sit in delight with God without having done anything to deserve it.

But what she also found was what the practice hoped that it would, is the already pres, already there presence of God with her, showing her that she was far more loved than she realized.

Calming her anxiety, people around her to act as a compassionate witness.

She grew up like five years that one year.

Kelly looked in the mirror, she saw this tendency to performative faith when God just wanted to give and let her receive.

Jonah sees his contempt, the Ninevites, their dysfunction, the sailors, their wickedness.

What do we see?

It's a funny story, but when you look in them, it's not that funny.

It's kind of raw.

It's kind of uncomfortable.

Jesus holds up this mirror in Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

The Pharisees are demanding a sign of him, and he's kind of nudging them, look inward a little bit.

They say, give us a sign.

He says, No sign will be given except the sign to Jonah.

For three days and three nights, Jonah was in the belly of the great sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.

And the people of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment and condemn this generation because they repented.

And see something greater than Jonah is here.

See, if Jonah shows us the kind of Christians that we really are, Jesus shows us where to take that.

Jonah shows us our mess, Jesus says, Come to me.

Jonah received word of the Lord to go to a broken people, he goes the other way.

Jesus, as John says, became flesh and bone and moved into the neighborhood.

Jonah gives a brief message as you're all gonna die, and Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest.

And Jonah goes outside the city waiting to watch these people be wiped out, and Jesus goes outside of Jerusalem and offers his life so that the stained record of his people would be wiped clean.

See, Jonah shows us the brokenness of how we really are, and Jesus shows us who God is.

Jonah shows us that we're a lot more messy than we'd like to admit, and Jesus shows us that we are far more loved than we ever dared believe.

Because something greater than Jonah is here.

Amen?

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.