Sunday Service 8th February
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
The Sign of Jonah
8/2/26
Call to worship
Hymn 258(JP):This little light of mine (in first verse remove ‘I’m gonna’ in lines 5 and 6)
Time for all
Hymn 266(JP): We have heard a joyful sound
Reading: Luke 11: 29-36 Kay
Prayer
Hymn 259: Beauty for brokenness
Sermon
Prayer
Hymn 396: And can it be
Benediction
Welcome to our meditation for 8th of February.
Here’s a thing. Some people are known for one thing, and maybe it’s the wrong thing.
Like today: anyone who has read the Old Testament remembers that Jonah was swallowed by a whale for three days. So when Jesus says the only sign that the people will get from him will be the sign of Jonah, then everyone jumps to the three days in the stomach of the whale...Jesus must be referring to his death and resurrection, which happened over three days.
Really?
How would anyone before the resurrection ever have understood that reference?
And if that isn’t what Jesus was talking about, then what was he talking about?
And what does that have to do with us?
We will find out after Kay gives our reading and prayer for today.
Sermon
Sometimes we come across folks who are too clever for their own good.
They know they are smart, and sometimes they are so smart they miss the obvious.
So it was one retreat when all the divinity students went off on spiritual retreat in a country cottage for a weekend.
And to lighten the tone a bit we played Trivial Pursuit one night. Now these are all clever people, these are people that have at least one degree and often two, some had masters degrees and some had doctorates.
Clever folk; and of course playing trivial pursuit they all want to show how clever they are.
So up comes a Biblical Question.
How many of each animal did Moses take into the ark?
Well that was the wrong question to ask biblical scholars.
And soon the arguments were at full voice.
It was an unfair question.
The simple answer was two of each animal but of course a biblical scholar would know that the Bible also says that seven pairs of clean animals were taken into the ark and one pair of unclean animals was taken into the ark.
What to go for?
The simple answer that the trivial pursuit compilers would come up with...
or the more complex answer that theologians would come up with.
They argued for a long time about what was an acceptable answer.
Eventually they went with two of each animal, because they thought that the compilers of trivial pursuit would be basing their answers on the understanding of ordinary folk and not theologians like them.
You can imagine their shame when they read the answer...
None, because Moses didn’t take any animals into the ark, Noah did.
I think this passage is a bit like that.
Jesus has been arguing with the Scribes and the Pharisees.
It’s beginning to get a bit tense between them.
To the Scribes and the Pharisees their relationship with God is based on heritage.
They are children of Abraham.
God has chosen them to be his people and they respect that by living as children of God, following the laws God has given them.
Jesus come along and stated that it isn’t as easy as that.
Instead God has shown his love to them, completely undeserved and unearned love, and if they trust in that then their response should be to live lives of love.
Now if I came into the church this morning and said that I had a new revelation of God. That I had been praying for a long time and God had revealed to me that He was a Partick Thistle supporter, and that if we were true disciples then we would all be devoted Partick Thistle supporters.
I suspect that there would be a few people that would doubt me.
There would be a lot of people going, ‘Why would God want us to follow anything as crass as football, surely God is a rugby fan?’
There would be Hearts supporters out there saying, ‘No, don’t do this to me. This might be the first year in a generation that Hearts might win the league and at this moment of finally winning something we have to give up our team?’
There would be Rangers and Celtic fans going, ‘Sure, but does he want us to be protestant or catholic Partick Thistle supporters?’
And all of them would be saying, ‘Prove to us that God is a Partick Thistle supporter. We’re not going to change our belief system so fundamentally over just your word.’
And to be honest that was the same challenge that the Scribes and the Pharisees were asking Jesus.
We have been following this rule of Moses in all its forms for thousands of years, why should we change?
And to this Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah.
And this is where people get too clever for their own good.
Jonah is remembered because as children we don’t talk about Jonah...we talk about Jonah and the Whale.
Jonah is told to go to Nineveh and tell them to they are going to be destroyed by God because of all their evil actions.
Jonah doesn’t want to go so instead heads off on holiday to Spain. Where a storm hits the boat and the sailors realise the storm has been caused because Jonah is running away from God so they chuck him over the side and he is swallowed by a whale for three days and three nights.
After Jonah feels sorry and promises to do as God wants him to do the whale peuks out Jonah near Nineveh
and after Jonah preaches the people repent and God doesn’t destroy them.
And some theologians thinking that the most important thing about Jonah was that he was swallowed by a whale for three days and nights; look to Jesus’ life for an equivalent and think of his dying on a cross and being resurrected after three days is what Jesus was talking about.
Jesus’ death and resurrection is the sign that Jesus is referring to.
Which is fine for us looking back on everything...but that might just be us being too clever for our own good.
Is it likely that Jesus would tell them a sign that wouldn’t make sense for three years?
Is it likely that God thought the most important thing in Jonah’s life was being swallowed by a whale?
What if Jesus is referring to something else in Jonah’s life.
Something that the Scribes and the Pharisees needed to see...something that we needed to see?
Would that not make more sense?
I would suggest that in Jesus’ eyes the most important thing about Jonah, was that he gave a message of God to the people of Nineveh and that changed them for the better. That they saw their lives differently, they saw their lives with God differently.
That was the sign of Jonah, helping people to see life differently,
and reminding them that there was the possibility that they could see a life where God was with them.
Changed lives was the sign of Jonah, changed lives would be the sign of Jesus.
That was what Jesus was offering them.
Jesus would give a message to the people that they could see their life differently, that they could see that their life had God in it,
and that would change the way that they saw their own lives,
that would change the way they saw God,
that would change the way that they saw others.
And that is still the case today.
Jesus is still offering us that chance to change the way we see life, that we see life with God in it, involved in our lives.
The problem is I think we forget that that challenge is with is every day.
That challenge to see God in our lives is a daily event.
Because every time something goes wrong, it is so easy to believe that we have deserted God,
or maybe that God has deserted us,
or that something has gone wrong in the relationship and we need to fix it,
or God needs to fix it, or we both need to fix it.
Jesus reminds us that it is all about how we see things. His message to us is like a light that shines in the darkness.
But do we look at the world through the prism of that light,
or do we close our eyes, or hide the light and look through the world through the prism of the worlds darkness?
It is a valid question.
With what lens do we look at the world?
After 18 months of looking for a house that we would retire to Roseanna and I found a house that we both liked.
We had been planning for this for a long time.
We had saved up money in an ISA, we had bought a flat 15 odd years ago to sell when the time was right.
we truly believed that one day I would retire and that God wanted us to plan for that day. And this was OK with God.
Well the time came and we sold the house, and we cashed in the ISA and between the two of them we could afford the house that we both liked.
Then two days before we were to pick up the keys of our new house the buyers of our flat backed out and we were £84,000 short of the amount that we needed.
Now that was a tough time for us.
That was a challenging time for us.
But the really tough challenge was with what eyes were we going to look at that situation?
It would have been easy to look at it that God had let us down, or that God didn’t care, or that maybe we had let God down and he was punishing us for something; maybe greed, maybe pride, maybe selfishness.
It would have been really easy to feel vulnerable and become self centred, we needed to concentrate on this problem and this problem alone. Our future was the only thing that mattered and once that was sorted out then we could maybe look to the needs of others.
You know what was surprisingly hard?
Believing that God has shown his love to us, completely undeserved and unearned love, and if we trust in that love then our response should be to live lives of love.
Yet that is what we have tried to do, I think that is what God wants us to try to do.
To look at our lives through the prism of His love for us, and just trust that that is there...always, and then live a life showing that love to others.
We reminded ourselves of all the other things God was doing in our lives.
That we still had a manse to live in for over a year.
That we had a family to love always.
That we had our church family to help and support us.
That we had so many friends that were keen to look after us.
In God’s love we were fine, so we had more than enough blessings to help others in need.
Our problem would sort itself out in time, so we didn’t need to worry about it.
What we should think about, was the people God had put in our lives, and what support we could give them.
That is the sign of Christ, of Jonah, of us...letting others feel God’s love, and hoping they will respond in love.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
How often do we drift through life?
We wake up in the morning and just carry on as if we live our life the way we want, and eventually you will catch up with us.
Or if something goes wrong we will bring you in to deal with it.
We forget that we need you all the time.
We need your light to shine in the uncertainty and show us our next step.
We need your word to instruct us and guide us through the complexities of life.
We need your peace to assure us that we are part of the kingdom of heaven and that your love and joy and hope are with us now.
We forget we need you all the time.
We need your justice to show us that there is right and wrong.
We need your mercy to remind us that we have another chance to do things right.
We need your compassion to show us that others need that chance to change as well.
For with these things we bring in your renewal for the world.
We need you, O God,
the challenge, the critique, showing us truth given in love and showing us that we have the chance to change.
Help us to look at life through your eyes of love,
May our prayer be in our work.
And our work be in our calling.
And our calling be the sign of your longing for the world.
Rather than asking for miracles in our lives to assure ourselves of your love;
may we,
embrace Your mercy,
accept Your forgiveness,
and show Your love and compassion to others.
This we ask in Jesus name.
Amen.
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