Sermon by Tom Are Jr. | January 21, 2024 | Fourth Presbyterian Church

Third Sunday of Epiphany
January 21, 2024

Gratitude Ahead of Time

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Jonah 1–2

I love this story of the prophet Jonah. I don’t know if you have noticed, but being a prophet of God is a job that nobody really wants. Jeremiah said he would rather die than be a prophet (Jeremiah 15:10). Moses tried to substitute his brother Aaron for the job (Exodus 4:10–17). Isaiah asked, “what do you want me to say?” When God told him, Isaiah responded, “How long do I have to do this?” (Isaiah 6:6–13). Even Jesus in the Gethsemane garden tells God, “I do not want what you want” (Matthew 26:39).

Evidently, to have the word of God so clearly in your heart that you are confident in telling others what God wants of them is not easy. It’s not easy, because prophets were often called to tell God’s people where they had failed. Now that I have said that, I admit I know some people who seem to be applying for that job all the time. They are quite good at telling those around them just how they have failed. Of course, telling someone what’s wrong with them doesn’t mean you are a prophet; it might just mean you are a jerk. What made the prophets so reluctant is that prophets were always called to speak to those they loved. And telling those we love how they have failed is nothing to celebrate.

But Jonah’s reluctance is different. God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, that empire that had brutalized Israel. Jonah’s trouble is not that he loved the Assyrians — he didn’t. Jonah’s trouble is that he feared God loved them, and when God loves the wrong people, it makes us mad. I’ll talk about that next Sunday.

But today we meet Jonah in the belly of a fish. You know the story. Jonah is called to go to Nineveh. He catches a boat in the opposite direction. He is thrown overboard to protect the innocents on the boat from a storm. Then he spends the weekend in the belly of a fish who evidently dines on krill and disobedient prophets. If you want to know what kind of fish it was, it was a big one.

And it is in this moment that Jonah prays. And his prayer is not a prayer of lament: “Why has this happened to me?” It is not a prayer of supplication: “How long, O Lord, must I endure?” No, he prays a prayer of thanksgiving. He prays, with a voice of thanksgiving, “I will sacrifice to you.”

I find the timing of this prayer to be odd. Jonah gives thanks when he is at his lowest point. While he sits in the belly of a great fish, surrounded by whatever else is in the belly of the fish, it is there that Jonah gives thanks. This prayer might make more sense if it had come after Jonah is delivered, but here it seems like gratitude expressed ahead of schedule.

I suppose there’s something about being in the belly of the fish that brings everything into focus. Sometimes crisis can be our teacher. Sometimes crisis can teach us who we are or who we want to be, and sometimes it is in crisis that we see God most clearly.

Captain Dimitri Kolesnikov was a crewman on the Russian submarine the Kursk. Almost twenty-five years ago now, the sub suffered an explosion in which most of the 118 crewmen were killed instantly, but 23 survived “for a while.” From the belly of the sub on the bottom of the Barents Sea, Kolesnikov wrote to his wife. “None of us can get to the surface” he wrote. The emergency lighting had gone out, leaving them in a chilling darkness; he continued, “I am writing blindly” (Roger Rosenblatt, “I Am Writing Blindly,” Time, 6 November 2000).

Yes, in one sense. But in another sense, he saw things very clearly. In that moment, he wasn’t a crewman on a sub. He wasn’t a Russian sailor. He was a husband. He was defined by whom he loved and who loved him. And the only thing that mattered was to connect with her. He wrote, “I hope they find this note, so that I can tell you one more time that I loved you to the end.”

It's been my experience that often a crisis can teach us who we are or who we want to be. Jonah realized that he was not just a prophet. He was a prophet called by God. He belonged to this God, and that was all that mattered.

In Thomas Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he says if a literary character falls into a pond or a stream or finds themselves in a drenching rainstorm, they might drown, but, Foster says, if they come back up, it’s baptism (Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, p. 152).

Well, Jonah hasn’t come back up yet, but he is the poster boy of baptism by emersion. And in baptism we celebrate that we belong to God. We are claimed by God. We Presbyterians often baptize babies and young children because we want to make this point clearly. You don’t belong to God because you are smart or faithful, because you are talented or good. You do not belong to God because of what is in your heart. No, you belong to God because of the love that lives in God’s heart.

The word of God came to Jonah not because of what was in Jonah’s heart but because of the love in God’s heart. Jonah knew that to be true. It’s a love that called him by name, and it was enough to make him thankful.

Now, I don’t know who wrote this story, but I tell you, had I written Jonah I think I would have Jonah give thanks … later. Gratitude comes more naturally not when we are at the bottom but when things are going well.

One of my favorite places in the world is Quetico, Canada. It is a national park just across the border from Minnesota. It’s miles and miles of lakes. No cottages and no motorized boats. Just canoes and tent camping. Several summers ago, I went with my son. He was twenty-four at the time. We carried our gear and our food, and our fishing poles. When we got to the portages — which means carrying everything from one lake to the next — he carried the canoe. We had six days and five nights out there, and the middle four days we didn’t see anyone else.

We ate fish that we caught an hour before. We watched bald eagles feed. We built campfires and talked late into the night. I’ll never forget our last night there. We sat by the fire and could see four planets hanging low in the night sky, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus. And it was that night that I realized a truth I had not fully recognized until then. I will always be my son’s father, and proudly so. But I wasn’t his parent anymore. He will always belong to me, and I am his father, but no longer his parent. I felt that we had come to a place we were supposed to be. And the gratitude was overwhelming.

When life is good, gratitude is reasonable, sometimes inescapable.

But life is not good for Jonah. He prays believing his life is over. He says he prays from the belly of Sheol. Sheol is the place of the dead. It’s not hell. Not punishment. Just dead. And from the belly of Sheol Jonah prays with a voice of thanksgiving. It strikes me as thanksgiving ahead of schedule. Nothing good has happened yet. Except this. As strange as it is, I think this is the moment where Jonah understands most clearly that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Even in the belly of Sheol, he has been claimed by God.

So, this is our story. We are all Jonah. You are going to find yourself in the belly of the fish sometime. You will. When the crisis comes, you don’t want to waste a crisis.

Because sometimes crisis is our best teacher. I’m not being romantic about this. And I know it’s not automatic, but it can happen. And when it does, we discover something of who we are, of who we want to be, and sometimes it is in crisis that we see God most clearly.

If I understand the text, Jonah is thankful because this unfaithful prophet, who has rejected God’s calling, still belongs to God.

“With a voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you,” he says.

Old Testament scholar Phyllis Tribble is a brilliant scholar, and Dr. Tribble would hate this sermon. She is not buying that Jonah is grateful. She rightly points out that in chapter one Jonah wants nothing to do with God. And as soon as he is spewed from the fish, he does what God tells him to do, but he is grumpy about it to the very end. She says he’s not really grateful; this prayer is what she calls “counterfeit piety.” (Phyllis Tribble, The New Interpreter’s Bible: The Book of Jonah, vol. VII, p. 506).

Maybe. You may think Dr. Tribble nailed it. But I wonder if she is a bit too harsh on Jonah. I think this short story teaches us something about gratitude. Gratitude can be something we embrace because the circumstances of our lives are all good. But there is a deeper gratitude that comes not because the circumstances of our lives are all positive. There is a gratitude that rests in the simple knowledge that we belong to God. No matter what.

From 1962 to 1990 Nelson Mandela sat in prison because of his violent opposition to the violence of apartheid. In February of 1969 he wrote a letter to his daughters Zenani and Zindzi, who were ten and nine years old at the time. He wrote,

“Zindzi says her heart is sore because I am not at home and wants to know when I will come back. I do not know, my darlings, when I will return. … I told you that the white judge said I should stay in jail for the rest of my life.

“It may be long before I come back; it may be soon. Nobody knows … not even the judge. … But I am certain that one day I will be back at home to live in happiness with you until the end of my days. Do not worry about me now. I am happy, well, and full of strength and hope.” (cited in Douglas F. Ottati, A Theology for the Twenty-First Century, p 672)

He sounds like Jonah: “I called to the Lord and he answered me. … With a voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice for you.”

What am I saying? I think in crisis we see ourselves, but sometimes we also see God clearly, and when we do, we know that we belong to God.

Jonah knows in his marrow that he belongs to a God. Even after running from this God, refusing to be obedient to this God, God remains gracious. So Jonah prays,

“With a voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice for you.”

Years ago I traveled to Louisville, Kentucky. A year before flood waters had rushed through, leaving devastation.

Carol and I and a couple van loads of youth and a few adults went to help. I spent the week working on Sophie’s house. It was ten months after the flood, but when we walked into her modest home, all the furniture was pushed to the middle of the rooms, and the walls were just bare studs from your waist to the floor. Another group had come through and torn out the wet Sheetrock, but none of it had been replaced.

So all week we put up Sheetrock. We didn’t finish. When the week ended, most of Sophie’s furniture was still pushed to the center of the rooms. She didn’t know when another group would come to finish the job. Before we left, we stood in her front yard and held hands and prayed. And Sophie said, “Lord, you have not forgotten me. I have seen you in the faces of these young people. All I have needed thy hand has provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

I was stunned. The crisis did not define her faith; her faith defined the crisis.

Here’s what I want you to reflect on this week: Your life will be a mix of plenty and want, joy and sorrow, sickness and health. It will.

But no matter the circumstances, you belong to God, and nothing will change that. When we remember that is true, even from the bottom gratitude can flow.