Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "The God of Second Chances"
Date: January 22, 2006
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Jonah 3:1-10

One of the most colorful stories in all the Bible is that of Jonah.  The entire book is just four chapters, 48 verses.  It can probably be read aloud in ten minutes.  The imagery of Jonah being swallowed up by a big fish—the Bible does not call it a whale, any more than it says there were three wise men or that they rode camels—sometimes far outshadows the real focus of the story. 

I don’t know how literally you take the story of Jonah.  The single issue on which scholars agree unanimously is the uniqueness of Jonah among the so-called Twelve Minor Prophets found near the end of the Old Testament.  Unlike all the others, it tells a story about a presumed prophet (although he is never called a prophet), rather than relating oracles spoken by a prophet.  Beyond that, there is no scholarly unanimity.  Scholars have variously identified the genre of the book as allegory, didactic story, fable, fairy tale, folktale, historical account, legend, midrash, myth, novella, parable, parody, prophetic tale, saga, satire, sermon, short story, and tragedy.

You probably know the story; Sue told a summary in her introduction to today’s lesson.  Yet lest you become drowned in the minutiae of whether any fish is big enough to swallow a person for three days, let us set that aside as unknown and focus on a theme that I perceive to be woven throughout the story—namely, ours is a God of second chances.

The story began when God commanded Jonah to go to the foreign city of Nineveh and warn it to repent because of its wicked ways.  Jonah goes in exactly the opposite direction, and boards a ship bound for Tarshish, modern-day Spain.  The non-believing sailors deduce that the storm upon the sea must be caused by the displeasure of the God in whom Jonah believed.  Jonah thinks the only solution is to sacrifice himself by being thrown overboard.  Let us simply agree that in some way, shape or form, God didn’t want Jonah to die and found a way to save him.  Today’s lesson then began:  “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time…”  A second time. 

How many times do we head off in one direction, the direction of our own choosing?  Maybe we stand at a crossroads.  Should we go further in our relationship with this person or end it so we might date another?  We’ve educated ourselves for a particular career path, yet another also reveals itself.  Which way should we go?  We’ve been raised in the straight and narrow way, but suddenly we’re exposed to drugs and alcohol.  Do we succumb?

We head off on one of those paths, not necessarily a downhill one, and we discover one day that we’re not very fulfilled or satisfied with the destination.  Do we stay there, or do we turn around and take the path back to the crossroads, where we may choose to go the other way?  Doesn’t God somehow open our minds to that possibility, and let us see the road back to the starting point again?

I’ve performed 610 weddings in my career.  As much as I’d like to think they all were successful, I know that is not true.  Jesus makes some very adamant statements against divorce, yet they are within the context of the ease of men obtaining them, and women of the time, who were regarded as property, having no such rights.  Our society has come to accept a more tolerant view of divorce than the Bible.

How many couples in our own church, having been in a first marriage that ended badly, that perhaps shouldn’t even have happened in the first place, are now more happily married to their current spouse?  One of my sisters, married in 1975, found her marriage disintegrating three years later in 1978 just as our father died—a double loss for her, both at the same time.  Last fall, she and her second husband celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary—a match built on mutual love and respect for one another that the rest of us in the family feel much better about.

So God gives Jonah a second chance too, and this time, Jonah agrees to comply.  He enters the city of Nineveh and walks about a third of the way through it, proclaiming one of the shortest evangelical sermons on record:  “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  Eight words in English, but only five in the original Hebrew!  And, miracle of miracles, the people heed the warning.

Thanks in no small part to the king, who begins by removing his robe himself and dressing in sackcloth and sitting in ashes.  Then, the commentators note one of the funniest instances in the Bible:  the king commands that every herd, animal and flock shall likewise be dressed in sackcloth.  Can you imagine what that must have looked like?

Yet this king of a country which did not follow the Hebrew God must have been a wise and thoughtful person:  “Who knows?” he asks.  “God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

And that’s exactly what happened.  For the second time in this story, the God of second chances saw that the people of Nineveh had turned from their evil ways and repented.  God changed his mind and did not destroy them.

Father Mapple, the preacher in another great fish story, Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, points out that God often speaks in commands, because he knows that what he wants of us is difficult.  “If we obey God, we must disobey ourselves,” Mapple says, “and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.”

Last fall we saw the movie “Walk the Line,” the story of Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter Cash.  It did quite well at the Golden Globe awards last week, winning best musical picture and best actor and actress in a musical.  The story details the events in Cash’s early life that defined who he was and why he wrote the music he did.  Like another film of last year, “Ray,” it neither glosses over nor prettys-up the fall of Johnny Cash into heavy drug abuse, and the redemption he found, through the support of the woman who became his second wife, in overcoming his addiction and turning his life around.  It is a dramatic illustration of how the God of second chances comes to us, and offers us that second chance, if only we heed it, on our own or with the support of others who care about us.

The message of Jonah is all about hearing the word of God and obeying it.  When we’re obedient to God—even after a time of running in the opposite direction, as Jonah did, or hearing the cry of the prophet and heeding the warning, as the king did—we find that our efforts result in life, not death.  Regardless of what path we are following, obedience to God can open up new possibilities for renewal and regeneration.

The late German theologian and preacher, Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986), had an old photograph which he always kept near his desk.  It was a snapshot of a nativity pageant.  A group of rather grizzled looking men are wearing white robes and holding candles in their rough hands.  Another group of men is kneeling before them, feigning terror.  It is clear that the robed men are supposed to be the angels, speaking to the crouched and fearful shepherds.

Why this photograph in the pastor’s study?  Thielicke explained that it was taken in prison.  The men in the scene were all convicts, hardened criminals whose lives had been transformed by Christ.  These murderers and thugs were dressed like angels.  For Thielicke, it was a beautiful parable, a visible remind of the power of the God of second chances to overcome human sin.