F. Harry Daniel
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: January 21, 2007

"Deliverance, Amazing Grace and Mercy"

When we last left Jonah, he was in dire peril. The sailors had thrown him overboard. Why didn't God let the old narrow-minded prophet drown. But the moment we think that, we have become just like Jonah: trying to limit God's love and grace to people we think deserve it. But God doesn't act like that and we can be thankful God doesn't. God hasn't given up on Jonah or us.

Once in the sea Jonah calls for help. Under the circumstances of his flight Jonah is willing to risk the possibility of death, but he does so from the deck of a ship. Once he is in the water, it's a different story. He does not yearn to die.

Sinking in the sea Jonah calls for divine assistance. Jonah's psalm of gratitude portrays his plight, of one about to be drowned. Now we see another side of old Jonah. He resolves to turn to God in his derelict and nearly hopeless situation. He clings to the love and grace of God. And he is a person of prayer. He views death as evil, unwilling to submit to its life-destroying power. Jonah knows his plight is ultimately attributable to his disobedience and God's pursuing action. But he doesn't want to be separated from God, doesn't want to be deprived of the powerful love and effective help of God. He expresses an intense feeling of isolation. True, he sought to flee God's presence, but that doesn't mean he is seeking a complete severance of all his relations with God. He has not resolved to live the rest of his life devoid of all further contact with God. On the contrary he takes pleasure in God's action where it is for his benefit or when it aims at destroying the heathen. Jonah wants the continued assurance that God is available to hear his prayer. The old con artist!

What kind of assurance does Jonah get? The answer is not: "You made your own bed; lie in it." "You are getting what you deserved." No! None of these. "And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah." The popular mythology of the time had filled the sea with turbulent monsters. That is not true in this story. The great fish is good. It saves Jonah from drowning. The fish is the means of deliverance, a graceful gift for returning Jonah to the place where he may resume the commission he had previously abandoned. Can you almost see a twinkle in God's eye!

What's that coming from the whale? We can't hear you, Jonah. Is it another complaint? Is it a confession of disobedience? No! It's a psalm of praise, praise to God for delivering Jonah. Jonah has his moods: rebellion, sullenness, self-pity, anger, despair. And yet the psalm is a sincere, heartfelt praise. Jonah's experience had demonstrated God's loyalty and mercy even in the most trying circumstances. Deliverance led Jonah to a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and that is an outgrowth of joy based upon the reception of a most precious gift of grace. Jonah can recognize grace and he knows how indispensable it really is.

In his psalm of gratitude sung from belly of the great fish, Jonah is traditional: he calls on the Lord, describes his distress, acknowledges God as his rescuer, and promises a sacrifice or temple offering. In his prayer and worship relationship to God, as well as in his experience of deliverance, Jonah is on same plane as the pagan sailors. Like them he turns to God and receives deliverance. "Salvation belongs to God." Each chapter in the book of Jonah is in some way preoccupied with divine deliverance. Jonah's reaction of thanksgiving for his own deliverance stands in sharp contrast to his reaction to the deliverance of Nineveh. God's deliverance extended to Jonah in spite of his lack of repentance would be denied by Jonah to the Ninevites who will in fact repent. The one with whom God has been more than just insists that God treat the Ninevites according to their just desserts. Jonah confesses at the climax of the psalm "Deliverance belongs to the Lord!" How ironic! For Jonah God should not be able to extend his deliverance to whomever God pleases.

Jonah flees from God, and yet turns to God when the going gets tough. Pity the poor fish. Its stomach troubles are relieved only when it gets rid of Jonah. Imagine what three days of undigested Jonah would be like!

What kind of God is this? This is a God who loves Jonah and is unwilling to give up. Forgiveness and a new opportunity are granted to the prophet just as readily as they will be granted to Nineveh. Jonah found consolation in the Lord who heard his cry and answered it by deliverance. An outcast, left alone, victim of his own follies--he finds God has not abandoned him. Jonah experiences grace. What kind of God is this who knows us so well, and loves us, and tries to make us good?

Amazing grace? Yes, it is. It defies description. Jonah ought to flunk out in the school of grace. He fails to meet all the criteria for deserving to be loved. And God loves him anyway. There is something much deeper here, something about mending God’s creation and the good works God has prepared for Jonah to do toward that end.

When Jonah is cast into the sea, he is at God's mercy. Yet God had prepared a great fish to swallow him and in that fish, alone for three days and three nights, Jonah finds his way to obedience again. The irony of the story is that whereas Jonah knew in his own life and through his own experience how gracious God was, he was not willing that that graciousness should be extended to Nineveh also. That might stop you and me from liking, much less loving Jonah. But it didn't stop God. That's something we have to hear and learn again and again. As one sincere but terribly misguided saint asked: "I hate God's enemies with perfect hatred. Why can't God do as much?"

Behold, the miracle of God's love for Jonah and you and me. We don't deserve it, but we receive it just same. God's love has no awareness of merit or demerit, has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. Grace doesn't seek to balance giving and receiving. God loves, this is God's nature. That doesn't mean God's love is blind or naive. It does mean that God's love holds its object securely in its grasp, calling all that it sees by its true name but surrounding all with a wisdom born both of compassion and understanding. Such love coming from God and others nourishes the roots of our personality, creating an unfolding of ourselves that redefines, reshapes, and makes all things new. When that happens, when we know that, we also know that such love can outlast everything without being dissipated or lost.

The book of Jonah is painting a profound, compelling picture of God, completed in the New Testament. We tend to think of God as remote - somewhere beyond the farthest galaxy. We think of God as other - remote not only in space, but in nature as well, who can't be compared to anything. We think of God in terms of greatness, more powerful than the atom - which God made. Words fail us when we try to articulate in theology and worship our deepest feelings about the awesome, transcendent majesty of God. Jonah paints for us another, complementary picture of God as near, and caring, and loving. The point is that God loves each one of us persistently. That is the revelation of Jesus Christ, God loves us so much that God defies our refusal to be loved by God. God thrusts the divine self into our sinful situation, comes where we are, subjects the divine self to the most primitive and perilous of human conditions and acts decisively for our redemption.

God is not a God at an ominous, transcendent distance, but close in incomprehensible goodness. God is not a God who makes empty promises for the hereafter, nor trivializes our present darkness, futility, and meaninglessness, but who in the midst of darkness, futility, and meaninglessness invites us to the venture of hope. God meets us as the God of redeeming love. God is the good God who identifies with human beings, with their needs and hopes, forgives instead of condemning, liberates instead of punishing and permits the rule of grace.

No human-made efforts, structures, sacrifices, or commitments bind God to us. Grace is God's love and power and wisdom directed to us. By such love God cares for us despite our self assertiveness; by divine power God enables us to go on, despite our weakness; by divine wisdom God leads us, despite our ignorance. Jonah is a clear example of such love. He is not very lovable, but God loves him just the same. God wills to restore us, to cure us of diseased egos, and give us health, salvation, and well-being in God's sight. God made us for great things, made us to do good. We are created for good works prepared beforehand by God for each one of us.

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested any more. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left. Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth. A good sleep is grace and so are most dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody who is not loving? That’s grace too!

The spirit and intention in which we receive grace are vital and here Jonah can teach us much. To accept God's love and not attempt to be an instrument of it is to be like Jonah, enjoying it but not really understanding it and experiencing what it really can do. God will not force God's power upon us - God loves us too much for that. God will permit us to kill, maim, hate, and drive people and things apart and this brings divine judgment upon us. And that judgment proves to be simply letting us follow our own devices in our own God given freedom. But in and through and beyond all this there is also this creative and recreative power of God's love restlessly and relentlessly drawing together what we in our freedom keep driving apart. A great many people spend their whole pilgrimage through life complaining, more or less gently, about their accommodations and trying to have them changed. Their world revolves around themselves. Pleasant with fellow passengers, they are upright and kind. But they never really make something loving and good of life. They resist doing those good works God has prepared. They are on the take, but never on the loving and giving. There is too much Jonah in them. Recipients of grace, they resist being made into its agents. Graced by God, they avoid the call to grace others.

One final thing needs to be said about this miraculous love of God. It offers us a new beginning with power to pull it off. "And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it threw out Jonah upon the dry land." Okay Jonah, let's start over. What are you going to do Jonah? Are you going to accept God's love and do nothing? Or are you going to be an instrument of that amazing love? What are you going to do Jonah? What are we going to do? Could there be a person from whom we have withheld grace? Is it time to be gracious?