AEC2000

Stephen B. Reid

Professor of Old Testament Studies, Austin (Texas) Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Our task here today is to continue the work you’ve been doing for the past several years, namely to take the stones of pietistic and Anabaptist traditions and to fashion ever anew a foundation and a catalyst for mission and evangelism.

You might ask: why mission and evangelism combined? This is only a rhetorical question because coming out of the Anabaptist tradition, indeed how would you ever separate these things? The Great Commission talks about making disciples–that sounds a lot like mission to me.

The problem is that I was told to do this from an Old Testament perspective. For you see, neither the Israelite religion of the Bible nor Judaic Phariseeism, its modern heir, are founded on evangelistic mandate.

So, what we are doing is not what the authors of this text intended. It’s always helpful when we use the Jewish text to be clear that we are doing a distinctively Christian thing, not just "our" text. We need to recognize that we are reading it in a special way.

I grew up with some awkwardness and middle age hasn’t helped me much. I cannot, in all honesty, do Olympian gymnastics with this text (the Old Testament). I couldn’t use many of the texts because I would have had to do too many gymnastics to take them to where we had to go.

So I selected Jonah which I thought was pretty much of a natural fit for where we are going. How do you get a Jonah? Well, not from anyone in this room because we all watch public TV. But people outside this room watch regular television. If you are my age you might have even watched Perry Mason. One of the things about the Perry Mason show was that it had such compelling titles–even when the story wasn’t that good.

So think of Jonah as the doubly reluctant evangelist. I want you to do a very 21st century thing. You are in your living room with interactive television; you are asked to be part of the jury to determine whether or not Jonah is guilty.

What are the charges? He has two counts of being a reluctant evangelist and missionary and one count of being like us. I will serve as the district attorney and luckily, since Johnny Cochran wasn’t available, the defendant has no attorney so we’ll just hear the prosecution’s case.

I want to make the case, being a little anachronistic, that Jonah forgot his baptism. One of the elements in the typical Ash Wednesday service is that at the end of the service, when the person spreads the ashes says: "Remember your baptism." I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and went to the Church of the Brethren all my life and so I went to one of my Presbyterian friends and asked: Okay, we can remember our baptism but how do you, who baptize babies, encourage people to remember their baptism? You can’t remember that far back.

His response was: Even if you can’t remember your individual baptism, you can remember what baptism is about. What happened to Jonah was that he forgot his baptism–the core element of his identity. In baptism we find the foundation for what makes us church; it is central to our ecclesiology. The reason we baptize adults is because Christianity is dangerous stuff. This will also come into play with our evangelism.

Evangelism is a little more tricky if you are inviting persons to a cross than if you are inviting them to a soft pew. So, when we say Jonah forgot his baptism, we say that he forgot that which made a distinctive difference in his community of faith.

The text begins with: "the word of the Lord was to Jonah." We’ve heard this context before, haven’t we? This was a traditional formula, but for Jonah it was something that landed right on him. Go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyrian empire.

In the historical context, we note that Assyria had really colonized Judah in the past. Part of this political process was to levy fairly serious taxes. Like people in Texas, the people of Judah really didn’t believe in this–and didn’t send their taxes to Nineveh. So when Jonah heard "Nineveh," what did he do? He booked passage on a boat, going to the south of Spain. He went in the opposite direction–good evidence of a reluctant evangelist.

How many times we have heard that if we want to be a welcoming presence, we have to do such-and-such and we do exactly the opposite. As a reluctant evangelist, Jonah gets into the boat and a storm came up. Now keep in mind, while a boat is rarely referred to in the Old Testament, this isn’t the first time someone was sleeping in the bow of the boat when a storm came up.

The "salts" (sailors) are worried. They start praying and throwing dice to find out what was going on. If they would have had a cell phone they would have called the psychic hotline. They start throwing things off the boat and finally they say: why don’t we go talk to his guy. Jonah owns up right away. He says to them: "I’m the problem."

Now this is indication of some spark in Jonah. At the same time that he has forgotten his baptism, he somehow remembers who he is and what he has been called to do. He owns up to his actions. He does come clean. It gets him thrown into the water.

What happens next? He is eaten by a big fish and goes on a three-day retreat in its belly. What happens in this unique retreat center? Well, in the middle of this you get one of the best-written laments in the entire Bible. Jonah is now pretty downhearted. Wouldn’t you be that way if you got entangled in the intestines of a fish?

But it does help him find himself. Why the three days? Part of the function of three days in the fish is to portray the "wilderness"–that place that is neither home (the familiar) nor the place where revelation can take place. Sound familiar? For many congregations when everything is going well, if they can pay all our bills, they are really not very interested in evangelism or mission.

In this "wilderness," notice that God has not forgotten Jonah. God causes the fish to throw up. Now, visually imagine the scene. First, Jonah has been in these clothes for Lord knows how many days, then he is swirling around in the belly of the fish and now he comes out on dry land as "fish vomit."

What happens next is very clear from the text: "God spoke to Jonah the second time." God hasn’t given up on his "reluctant evangelist." You see, the story of Jonah, and indeed for all of us, is the story of second chances. Many of us would have given up on Jonah as an evangelist, but not so God.

Several years ago I was a pastor in the poor section of South Austin, chosen by a weary search committee at work for more than 18 months. You know the process: first, the candidate isn’t biblical enough, then is "too biblical," first too liberal, then too "fundamentalist." They decided I looked good enough for the job. They gave me a "chance." The story of Jonah is a story of second chances. He didn’t "get it" the first time.

So now he goes to Nineveh, a several days’ walk across. How far can you walk in a day? 15 miles, 20 miles? This was four-day walk. On the second day Jonah starts in on Ninevites: "God is going to zap you if you don’t repent."

Now that is real church growth strategy, isn’t it?

A funny thing happened, though, despite Jonah’s clumsy approach. The Ninevites repented. Now, keep in mind that few things will disturb an evangelist more than being successful. The joke is told of what happens when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Presbyterian (or Brethren or Mennonite). The answer is: someone who knocks on the door and when the person answers, he/she has nothing to say.

Jonah wasn’t prepared for them repenting. He had gotten himself a nice seat where he could witness the great fall of judgment on these people. He had something like Sodom and Gomorah in mind, something like the July 4th fireworks–a great show. But they fooled him; they repented. The Hebrew term for this process is to "reorient themselves." These people just didn’t pretend and say: "I’m sorry." The repentance was deep and profound. Even the king put on sackcloth and ashes.

Can you imagine the president of the US putting on sackcloth and ashes and repenting. Not only the king, but also the cattle were covered with ashes. The writer wants to impress on us that this repentance was not only of the powerful, but it ran the scale of the whole community–human and animal alike.

The reason Jonah is the doubly reluctant evangelist is that he got mad with God, getting very aggressive in his responses and saying that this is why he (Jonah) didn’t want to do this ministry in the first place. He somehow knew God wouldn’t destroy Nineveh but would rather accept their repentance. "I knew that you, who are slow to anger and quick to forgive, would up and forgive them," he grumbled. "All my hard work would be for nothing."

Isn’t this just like us? When I was young in ministry, I wanted to be prophetic. Preparing that wonderful sermon, I was sure it would change people, bring new vision into their lives. Well, it didn’t quite happen that fast.

We are just like Jonah. Not only did he forget his baptism, but now he forgets that his vocation is to be "Christian" (the New Testament term), borrowing from Karl Barth. The message to us is that as different as these people are to whom we are called, the fact is that they, too, have the same vocation as we have.

Jonah was very disturbed when the people he knew as "them" became "us." Again, how so like us! One of the things we work hard at is keeping the gate-keeping in place. We want new people in our churches, but we’re not sure they can be elected until they’ve been here for five years. Perhaps then "they" can help us make decisions.

We Anabaptist are a "quiet people," and so we pass on that rule to others–you just be quiet until it is your turn to speak or until you have "earned" the right to speak. These gate-keeping mechanisms are very strong.

We need to recognize that these new people are also called by God to be Christians. One of the most challenging things about new Mennonites/Brethren is that we always want to talk about this peace stuff. We need to sometimes rise above our self-interest and go a little easy on these things, recognizing that we need to see in the eyes and face of the other the calling to the Christian vocation.

Jonah ran away and God brought him back. Jonah ministered to people he didn’t care about and God saved him anyway. Jonah forgot that the reconciliation through Jesus Christ is for all and that reconciliation for every human being, from the foundations of the world, is to be reconciled to God.

Oh, I almost forgot the plant story: Jonah is up in the cheap seats and it begins to get hot. The sun is beating down on him and he complains. So God grows a plant quickly (all in one day) for shade. Jonah is feeling pretty good until God sends a Texas-sized caterpillar which eats the whole plant.

Now he develops an attitude. "Why did you take away this plant, God," he asks. And God responds: "Jonah, you care more about the plant than the people of Nineveh."

What might be our "plant" today? There’s a story of a church needing new carpet in the sanctuary. Now this was a very progressive church–one that served communion once a month. "What would happen if we spilled crumbs and grape juice on this new carpet," they feared with some dread as the new carpet was laid. They wanted to postpone communion until the carpet aged some and not show the dirt. How sad and how like Jonah–wanting to postpone the sacraments of the church until the carpet was worn a little.

Like Jonah, we also don’t invest much in new people because we see them mostly as statistics–numbers that show our church growth. We see them as "things" that bolster our strategies, but they are not "us."

The third charge is that we are like Jonah. Could it be that we Anabaptists would forget our baptism, forget that we are reconciled to Christ, forget that others are also called to be Christians?

Yes, we are guilty as charged. We are taken up with the political correctness (PC) when we should pay more attention to what is BC–biblically correct. Remember that passage in the New Testament where it is stated there is now no Jew nor Greek, male nor female. This is the foundation of our baptism . . . and it has made the Christian movement what it has become.

This reconciliation is for everyone, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

What do you think, jury members?

1. Did Jonah forget his baptism?

2. Did Jonah forget that the vocation of Christianity is for all through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, even those who could be our enemies?

3. Would you charge Jonah with looking at Nineveh as "them" and not "us"?

4. Finally, are we also guilty, like Jonah?

These are the hard questions we need to address over the next couple of days.

Taken from A New Humanity: Anabaptist Ministry Among Many Peoples (© 2000 New Life Ministries). Permission to reproduce for local church use only is granted. Provided by New Life Ministries, 6404 S Calhoun St, Fort Wayne, IN 46807, through its web site at www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org

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