A Fish-Food
Faith
Pastor Mathew Magera – 7/29/18 – Sermon 298
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
When I say "Jonah"
the first thing that likely comes to mind is the whale or fish, whichever way
you learned it. There are things in this world that just go together. Peanuts
and Cracker Jack, salt and pepper, Sonny and Cher. You can't have Jonah without
the fish. Without the fish, Jonah never goes to Nineveh... eventually. Without
the fish, the story never turns around. Without the fish, there is no
salvation.
We pick up the story with
Jonah in the water. Jonah has not been doing very well but God is going to come
rescue him. While Jonah is suffering in the sea, spitting up water, half
drowning, exhausted from trying to stay afloat, God is calling for a savior,
but not your everyday first response team. The Coast Guard isn't on their way.
No nearby ship is going to pick him up. No island appears in the distance for
him to swim to. No, instead of any of these, we find God being God and we see
his sense of humor coming through. You see, God called a fish to come and
swallow Jonah. A fish. Remember when the story of Jonah started, God called
Jonah and wanted him to do something. Jonah refused. Jonah didn't listen. Jonah
did everything in his power to get away from God. Jonah, this prophet of God
hears God's call and rejects it. Then, we have this random fish in the sea. God
called the fish just like he called Jonah. Jonah didn't listen. The fish did.
Jonah gets outplayed by a fish because even it knew enough to listen to God.
The story of Jonah is
written in a very poetic way. When you and I think of a poem, we might think of
a haiku or a sonnet or a limerick. Most of the time, however, we think of
phrases that rhyme. Hebrew poetry doesn't use traditional rhyming like we might
but it will often use linguistic patterns. The story of Jonah starts out on a
level playing field when God comes to him and tells him to go to Nineveh. The
moment Jonah begins to disobey, he begins to sink. He tries to get as far away
from God as he can so he goes down to the dock and boards a ship. While on the
ship he goes down to the lower deck to sleep. When the storm comes he's thrown
even lower, down into the sea itself. I think you see where this is going. Now,
when the fish comes, it takes Jonah even further down into the depths of the
sea. Jonah is continuing to go down. Jonah believes himself to have gone even
further down, to Sheol, the realm of the dead. That's pretty far down. Soon,
Jonah will hit bottom and his direction will change. He will begin to rise,
back to the surface and eventually back to the path God wanted him on. This
change all takes place while Jonah is in the fish.
Jonah chapter 2 is the
prayer he prays during these three days that outline the very change in his
story ark. What we're going to explore today is how the process Jonah goes
through mirrors life as we experience it and how it further mirrors the work
Christ went through to save us. A sinking to the bottom, a change in direction
and rising up, and a commissioning.
Sinking And
Hitting Bottom
We start with Jonah sinking.
Verse 5 and 6 of Jonah's prayer say this: "The engulfing waters threatened
me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of
the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever." Jonah
tried doing things his way. He tried to be the master of his own destiny but he
was seeing that this was not working out very well. Jonah is having a pretty
bad day. This would be the story at the water cooler one day at the office.
Hey, if you think you had a bad day, remember that day Jonah got thrown off a
ship and swallowed by a fish. THAT was a bad day.
This past Friday afternoon I
ran into someone who was having a bad day. My family and I were on our way home
from our short road trip and stopped into a chain sandwich shop outside of
Detroit so I could get a bite to eat before getting stuck in Detroit's rush
hour traffic. This guy behind the counter was having a terrible day. A lady in
front of me was trying to order for her family using her phone to have them
tell her the order. I stood there for nearly ten minutes waiting for my turn
and there was nobody else working there. After the lady left and the guy came
to help me I asked him how his day was going. Well, let me tell you, asking
that question must've been the code word to open up the dam because he poured
into me just how his day was going. His co-worker didn't show up to work that
day, customers were mad at him because his co-worker didn't show up and their
orders were taking forever. Someone messed up one of the bathrooms and he
couldn't do anything about it because there was no one there to help him. He was
on the verge of walking out and boy he sure used a lot of f-words to tell his
story, but he had to vent. It makes me
wonder what he would've done had I told him I was a Pastor. He was sinking
fast, and let me tell you, and he just needed to let it out and I was the ear
that was fortunate enough to hear it and I was grateful to be there.
We are not immune to bad
days, bad weeks, bad months or even bad years. Sometimes we just feel like we
are sinking and sinking fast. We think we can do it on our own. We think we
have the power, the strength, only to realize that our efforts seem only to be
digging our hole deeper. Overwhelming, stressful and we sink lower and lower.
Jonah is so low right now he
thinks he is already dead. He's gone from "I can do whatever I want"
to "I can't do it anymore." He has been imprisoned by the darkness
and he does not have the strength or the power to get out. He can't do it any
longer. It's too overwhelming. He has no choice but to give up his power. Some
of us know what it feels like to hit bottom, to give up, to feel powerless.
Some of us know what it is like to say the words, "the earth beneath
barred me in forever." Some of us know what it feels like to be so close
to nothing, so far from help, so far from God, to feel like Jonah, like nothing
but fish food.
Change In
Direction And Being Raised Up
Once on the bottom, however,
Jonah's direction is going to change. He began this story thinking of himself,
thinking of his ability, his power, his strength, his decisions, his will, and
look where that got him. Now, his direction is changed. Jonah stops being the
actor. God now becomes the actor. And when God is the actor, you know there is
a salvation plan involved.
Jonah continues to pray,
"But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was
ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy
temple." Jonah had hit his bottom but there was something that turned him
around. It was God. Here Jonah is, in the belly of this fish, realizing that he
was beyond help. He was beyond human help. No one could help him. There was no
one to take him to Tarshish.
Then, he remembers God.
Yeah, the one who told him to go to Nineveh. Nineveh sounds pretty good
compared to what hot mess Jonah is sitting in. So having nothing left, being
hopeless and worthless, worthless to others, worthless to himself, having
nothing left, Jonah turned to God. Lord, I need your help.
No matter how old you are,
no matter your physical limitations, no matter the depths to which you have
descended, we can always ask God for help. When you think you've become nothing
but fish food, God has not abandoned you and he is ready to bring you back up
and put you back onto the mission field and be his disciples. God changes our
direction from hopelessness to hopeful, from worthless to priceless.
So, Jonah relies on God and
things start looking up. He knows he can't cling to his own power any more. He
knows he can't get a grip with his own strength. He is relying on God's
strength now. From even the worst day ever in the history of bad days, God's
strength is sufficient for you and will carry you and will raise you up. When
you feel like nothing but fish food, kind of like Jonah, so worthless, so
hopeless, that is where God comes and gives you faith, faith to rely on him, faith
to trust him to do what God does best. To save you.
Commissioning
Still, Jonah isn't done yet.
He may have sunk and hit bottom. God may have changed his direction and begun
to raise him up, but Jonah needs to be sent out. He needs to be commissioned.
He's still inside the fish and he must still wait on God for that
commissioning. Jonah doesn't try to open the fish's mouth to get out. We don't
even see the fish deciding to spit Jonah out. The only way Jonah is moving on
is by God's command. Just as I had shown the humor in the fish listening to God
more so than one of God's own prophets, we are about to see the fish listening
not once but a second time as God commands the fish to do something. God is going
to commission Jonah and God is going to use the fish to do it.
I want you to think about
the language that is used in Jonah's commissioning because it is also quite
humorous. It might be easy for us to say that the fish spit out Jonah onto dry
ground, but that's not what the NIV says. Verse 10, "And the Lord
commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." I think this is
fantastic writing here. Now, that gives you something to visualize. I know what
you're thinking. It's gross and unnecessary. Yes, but it's also the way God
works and you can't help but give a sigh at God's work here. When you hear
about a commissioning, perhaps you think of Jesus standing before the disciples
giving the great commission before being taken up into heaven. Perhaps you
think of a coronation ceremony. You think of something divine, something
magical, something amazing. That's exactly what you get here in Jonah too but
masked by the disgusting image and whatever slime Jonah is covered in now.
That's Jonah's commissioning service. An unsightly image in our minds but a
literary gem of portraying the essence of a commissioning.
God does commission us and
he does send us forth, and it may not be a pretty sight or even a great
feeling. It may not be the neon sign or the coronation ceremony or the
installation service that you had envisioned but nonetheless God commissions
you. We may not be feeling better on the outside, but we have been made better
by God on the inside, given hope and commissioned for service in his world.
* * *
This is the story ark for
Jonah and chapter two shows up that downward trajectory is changed by God. God
sent a fish to take the old Jonah down to the depths and to raise up a new
Jonah commissioned into God's service. This is a fish-food faith.
Have you ever noticed one of
the symbols of Christianity is a fish, the Jesus fish? God sent us a fish too.
God sent us Jesus. In early Christianity, it is said that the symbol of a fish
was etched on homes or buildings letting Christians know they could find safe
harbor or a gathering place inside. In these early days of Christianity, the
symbol of the fish could easily mean the difference between life and death.
But, it was more than just a symbol, it was a secret code. The word for fish in
Greek is “Ikthus.” Each letter of that word makes an acrostic poem that reads “Jesus
Christ God's Son the Savior.” Jesus is the fish that rescues us. Jesus is the
one that swallows our sin whole and takes it to the depths of death, changes
our direction from death to life and raises us into new life as he rises from
the dead. Jesus literally hit as far bottom as one could go, taking and leaving
our sins there, and he did it for each of us, to be that salvation for us giving
us hope that our trajectory isn't always downward but that our direction is
changed and we too have hope of rising again.
So, as we see Jonah being
commissioned up onto the shore, given new life, ready to go to Nineveh, when we
leave here this morning, let it be as if we have been vomited onto the very
mission field God has set before us, saved by very blood of Jesus shed on the
cross, renewed and strengthened for the week ahead, pushed out of this place
together, and given the opportunity to be Christ to others who are experiencing
the depths.
When we think of Jonah, we
have to think about the fish that played such an influential role in the story.
They go together just like how Jesus plays such an influential role in our
story. Praise be to God for that. Jonah ends his prayer, the very words that
are written right before he is vomited, with these very words that I leave you with.
Jonah prays, "But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to
you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, 'Salvation comes from the
Lord." There could be no truer words than these. To God be the glory, now
and always. Amen.