Preachers really think long and hard about sermon titles.  The catchier the better!  The story of Jonah has inspired several unique sermon titles: “How to Make Prophet from Fishing,” “And Then the Whale Hurled,” “The Urgency of Regurgency,” “How Does a Whale Spell Relief,” and “You Should Have Seen the One that Got Away” to name just a few.  This story that many of us learned in our childhood holds many lessons about God and human nature.  It is more than the story of one prophet’s journey to Nineveh; it is also that prophet’s journey to greater understanding of himself and of God.

Jonah was a lot like many of us.  A person can believe in God and be God’s follower and still have lots of imperfections and sins in his life.  As long as we live, we can be sure that God will keep working on our rough edges, smoothing us out.  Jonah’s chief sin was prejudice.  He had declared an ethnic group to be unlovable.  He probably enjoyed telling Ninevite jokes: “How many Ninevites does it take to change a lamp wick?  Who cares!  Let them remain in the dark!”  So God wanted Jonah to go preach to a people Jonah hated!  Jonah could care less if they got God’s Word and repented.  He hoped they would not repent and then be destroyed.  So Jonah, full of hate toward the Ninevites, ran away from God.

God had other preachers He could have sent to Nineveh.  Isaiah, Micah, Amos, and Hosea were all contemporaries of the prophet Jonah.  Why did God single out Jonah for this mission?  It was because God had two targets for His redemptive work and one of these was the preacher.  A few times in my ministry I have wondered why God was sending me to a particular church.  What was it that God wanted to accomplish by sending me there?  Several times I have discovered that God was sending me to a church, not because they needed me but because I needed them!  I was the patient who needed the operation.  God has shaped my life by the churches I have pastored.  This time the people of Nineveh and the preacher both needed God’s work.

Isn’t it strange how we keep running into the very people we would like to avoid?  Could it be that God is arranging for these chance meetings so that we will know what we still need to work on?  Just as God did to Jonah, God will single us out and send us into the very midst of our prejudices and hatreds so that we can grow.  As I began college, I was somewhat prejudiced against all preachers – present company excluded!  They just didn’t seem to be very real human beings.  Perhaps I thought that they had to be holier than the rest of us.  By the way, they aren’t!  Don’t you know that God took great delight in the fact that He was calling me to join the ranks of those I didn’t particularly like?  Now I deeply love and respect my clergy colleagues.  God will not leave you alone if your attitudes are not Christlike!  He will send you to Nineveh!

Running from God is always a bad idea, and Jonah’s flight from God created problems for himself and for the others on the ship to Tarshish.  The other sailors were pagans but when they heard that Jonah had disobeyed the God of Israel, they were terrified. They feared the God of Jacob!  They finally agreed with Jonah that he had to be tossed overboard if any of them were to survive. With a prayer for forgiveness on their lips for what they were doing, they threw Jonah into the raging sea.  I suppose that this would have been the end of Jonah if God had not specially prepared a huge hungry fish for a special meal.  Someone has said that Jonah became the first man to get a three-day submarine ride.

Three days is a long time to be in a dark, cramped place, being digested!  Jonah no doubt had the time to consider the foolishness of trying to escape from God.  But he doesn’t make too much progress toward loving the Ninevites.  He does confess the error of his attempted escape and ask for forgiveness, and God does what God always does.  God forgave Jonah and gave him another chance.  After three days of indigestion, the poor fish got sick and – there is just no nice word for it – regurgitates, hurls the prophet back at the edge of the shore.  Thanks be unto God! God is the redeemer of our rebellious ways!  He put Jonah right back at the spot where he had made his mistake.

Again God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh to warn the people to change or face destruction.  Rev. Luronne Jennings of Chattanooga, speaking at our recent Annual Conference, pointed out that according to some translations of the Bible, Jonah walked a whole day inside the city limits of Nineveh before he began to call the people to repentance.  He still doesn’t seem too anxious to rescue his enemies!  Rev. Jennings said, “When Jonah did start preaching, I doubt that he preached loudly or enthusiastically,” and then he imitated Jonah (speaking very softly): “Ya’ll need to repent…”  Still, his preaching was very effective. Comedian Mike Warnke explains Jonah’s success this way: “What would you do if a man, his skin bleached white by his almost being digested by a fish, his clothing in tatters, with seaweed sticking out of his ears, walked up to you and said, ‘Repent!’ I think I’d repent!”  The people of Nineveh, from king to pauper, all put on sackcloth as a sign of humble repentance, and God did what God always does.  “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction He had threatened.”

Mission accomplished…almost.  Nineveh was changed, but Jonah was not changed yet.  The closing chapter of Jonah paints a magnificent picture of our God and how He deals with us.  We find Jonah east of the city, on a hillside, in a crude shelter, still hoping that Nineveh will be destroyed.  He becomes frustrated and angry with God because his enemies were spared.  He prayed, “Lord, isn’t this what I said when I was still at home?  This is why I hopped on that ship for Tarshish.  I knew that if I came down here to Nineveh and told them that they were about to be wiped out, they would repent and you would change your mind and spare them, and I would be left looking like a fool!  God, you are just too gracious and compassionate, too slow to anger, abounding in love, a God who always changes His mind about sending a calamity whenever He can.  I am so upset that I just want to die.”  God’s response was, “What right do you have to be angry?”  Jonah was too blind right then to connect his own repentance and salvation from the fish with the salvation of the people of Nineveh who had also repented.  By all rights, Jonah should have perished.  What right did he have to be judgmental toward the Ninevites?  God had been gracious to both Nineveh and Jonah.

Fortunately for Jonah, God is merciful!  Jonah receives some of the tenderest fatherly care from God that can be found anywhere in the Bible.  God placed a vine with huge leaves next to Jonah to shelter him from the heat of the day.  This plant became a distraction and a delight for the unhappy prophet, giving him something to take care of.  But the next day, another creation of God, a worm, came along and chewed into the vine, causing it to wither and die.  Again Jonah was very sad, so sad that he just didn’t want to live any longer.  The plant became an object lesson for God who says to Jonah, “You mean to tell me that you are sad because a plant died, a plant whose existence you had nothing to do with?  You didn’t plant it.  You didn’t even water it!  Now you have the gall to be sad because it died?”  “Yes, I am,” replied Jonah, “I am so sad that I could just die!”  Then God replied, “Jonah, how about all my children in Nineveh?  Don’t you think I would have been sad if they had perished?”

Perhaps then Jonah could really appreciate the fact that God was merciful, having mercy that endures forever.  God forgives us repeatedly.  God is looking over our lives, looking for ways to bless us and help us.  God is constantly searching for opportunities to bless us.  In His love, He sent Jesus who died to redeem us.  Jesus was so sad about our condition that He could just die, to use Jonah’s words.  Now Jesus lives to redeem us, to help us grow.  He is the ultimate expression of God’s mercy.  Have you stepped inside that source of mercy and grace by trusting in His name?  “All you have to do is to look into His bleeding face.  All you have to do is step inside His grace” (Christian, by The Hope of Glory).

I wonder if there is a Nineveh in your life?  Is there someone or a group of people that God wants to send you to so that you can tell them about God’s forgiving love for them, but you don’t want to go because you don’t like them?  Have you checked on the cost of a ticket to Tarshish lately?  Are you wanting to take a ride in an un-air-conditioned fish?  If you will say “yes” to God’s call to try to love those people, if for no other reason that because God loves them and because God has also forgiven you, you will experience more of God’s love in your own life.  Don’t try to escape from God!  Go on down to Nineveh!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

My father was a fan of boxing, much to my mother’s dismay!  Television of the 1950′s featured “Friday Night Fights”and Dad would walk to a neighbor’s house to see the fight, and this was one of the reasons that we finally got a TV. Daddy would sit there with his fists clinched, watching the fight so intensely that you could say “boo” to him and make him jump straight up out of his chair! I was watching the fight with Daddy when a young man named Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston to claim the Heavyweight Boxing Crown, and we heard this young boxer proclaim, “I am the greatest!  I am the greatest!” We all thought that he was arrogant, too proud for his own good. But now in retrospect, most boxing fans agree that Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Mohammed Ali, was the greatest boxer of all time.

Hindsight makes us see things differently than contemporaries saw them. In retrospect, we Christians know that Jesus was the greatest!  Even non‑Christians will admit their admiration for Jesus’ words and actions. His words have shaped the history of Europe and America for 2000 years! He is the greatest! It is, therefore, hard for us to believe that His contemporaries were filled with doubts about Him. Some even thought He was crazy.

Today’s Gospel lesson tells of some events that occurred very early in Jesus’ ministry, after He had performed only a few miracles and preached only a few sermons.  According to Mark’s telling of these events, Jesus had just returned to Capernaum from an outing with His followers during which He had selected 12 of them to be His Apostles. Upon returning home, He was greeted by so many needy people that there wasn’t even time to eat. A delegation of Jesus’ childhood friends or family members arrived from Nazareth. They had heard rumors that Jesus had gone crazy. “He is beside Himself,” they had been told. Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase of the Bible known as The Message says that His friends suspected that Jesus was getting “carried away with Himself,”  taking Himself too seriously.

Think of this! These friends of Jesus, motivated by love, were coming to rescue someone they loved whom they thought had gone off the deep end. Alexander McClaren said, “Christ’s friends, apparently the members of His own family ‑ sad to say, as would appear from the context, including His own mother ‑ came with the kindly design to rescue their misguided kinsman from danger, and laying hands upon Him, to carry Him off  to some safe restraint in Nazareth, where He might indulge His delusions without doing any harm to himself.”

Meanwhile, religious authorities arrived from Jerusalem, desiring to derail Jesus’ popularity. They, too, think that He is crazy, but they think that His mental illness is much worse  than His friends suspect. They say “He is possessed by Beelzebub,” a name which means “Lord of the House.” “He is in league with Satan,” they say, “using Satan’s power to destroy demons.  He is using Black Magic.”

Jesus’ response to this charge has a note of humor in it. A Holt paraphrase would translate it this way: “Imagine this! Satan taking up arms against Satan! Evil is destroying evil!  Since a house divided against itself will soon fall, here is some good news: Satan’s end has come at last! But here is what is really happening: I’ve entered the ‘Lord of the House’s’ domain in order to tie him up and take his possessions ‑ those poor souls who have been overcome by evil. Be careful,” Jesus concluded.  “If you are so spiritually blind that you call good evil and evil good, you will blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.”

The crowd that had gathered had to decide for themselves, “Is Jesus the Christ or is He crazy?” That is really the decision that everyone who has ever lived has to make. C. S.  Lewis, who was a professor at Cambridge University and an agnostic in his early adult years, wrote: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about [Jesus]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic ‑ on the level of the man who says he is a poached egg ‑ or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse.”

Is He Christ or is He crazy?  Some thought He was crazy because His words went against accepted ideas.  Back in 1990 when I was at Francis Asbury in Greenville, a group of 6th grade boys, tough guys who were always getting into fights, started coming to our youth group.  It was always a challenge to come up with programs that would connect with these boys.  Once I led a program on “The Crazy Things Jesus Said.”  That got their attention! I said, “Do you know what Jesus said to do to those that hit you in the face?”  “Hit them back harder,” they replied. “No,” I said, “Jesus said for you to turn your other cheek toward them and let them hit you again.”  “That’s crazy!” they exclaimed.  “Do you know what Jesus said to do if someone stole your coat? He said to give them your shirt as well?”  “That’s crazy!”  they cried.

When we hear Jesus say that the way to fullness of living is through self-denial ‑ taking up our cross ‑ we say, “That’s crazy!”  When we hear Jesus say that obedience to God’s will is thicker than blood kinship and that doing the will of God is more important even than our families, we say, “That’s crazy.”  When we hear Jesus say that we are all God’s children and that, therefore, we must repent of racial divisions and gender prejudices, we respond, “That’s crazy.”  When we hear Him say that we must forgive those that hurt you ‑ like the Father has forgiven you – we think that sounds O.K., but then we hear Jesus saying that the Heavenly Father’s forgiveness extends even to the vilest of criminals, we cry, “That’s crazy!”

One of my middle age habits now is listening to the radio before I fall to sleep or when I wake up in the night.  One night I picked up a program on an AM station in Philadelphia that raised the question: what if Jesus had been given His own radio talk show?  I listened as people called in to talk to “Jesus.”  One caller phoned to complain about people on welfare. “Don’t these lazy bums make you mad, Jesus?” The man portraying Jesus said, “You should give your money to the poor.  Then you will have riches in heaven.” The caller angrily hung up.  Then a man called in to complain about all the sinners he hated.  He complained about the adulterers, the drug addicts, the alcoholics, and people in same-gender relationships. “What do you say about this, Jesus?” the caller asked. The man who was portraying Jesus answered, “I think that you should judge not, lest you be judged.” The self‑righteous caller said, “You are crazy!” and hung up.

Is Jesus crazy or is He Christ?  If He is crazy, then we can ignore Him; if He is Christ, then we must start following Him obeying His words.

This world could use a little of Christ’s madness.  It would be wonderful if we walked so closely with Christ that people thought we were crazy.  Governor Festus of Caesarea said to the Apostle Paul, “You are crazy.”  But this crazy man Paul wrote most of our New Testament and established the foundation for church doctrines.  St. Francis of Assisi was thought to be crazy by his peers because of the serenity he had attained in life which allowed him to pray and to live these words: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

I remember a guy at Wofford, a fellow who is still my friend and a United Methodist pastor. But back at Wofford we all thought Joe was crazy. He ran for Student Body President, claiming as his platform “I know nothing and I will do nothing.” He added, “The other guys running for President also know nothing and will do nothing also. But I’m the only one who will admit it.” Joe was crazy. While the others of us slept late on Saturdays, Joe got up and organized recreation for some poor kids that lived in the slums around Wofford. Joe was crazy ‑ like Jesus.

Or look at a husband and wife whose story was told in Guideposts several years ago, who went to visit the prison where the man responsible for their daughter’s death was incarcerated, to tell him about Jesus.  The prisoner was converted, and when he was released from prison he lived with this couple who helped him find a job. They were crazy, insane, like Jesus.

Paul recorded in 1 Corinthians 1:18 and following that the message about salvation through Christ’s death on the cross is considered crazy by those who are lost. But by means of the so‑called crazy message about Christ God decided to save those who believe. For what seems to be God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.  Halford E. Luccock writes:  “Living as we do, in an atmosphere of so much skepticism about the validity of Jesus’ teaching, if not blatant denial, we need a new and overwhelming conviction of His sanity.  We need downright belief that … far from being mad, he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no other foundation for an enduring and endurable world can be laid than that which is laid in Christ Jesus.”

Crazy or Christ? You decide. If you decide that He is crazy, then you, like many others, can dismiss his radical teachings. But if you decide that He is, indeed, the Christ, then you must follow Him and live as He did, even if others think you are crazy to love as Jesus loved!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

If you are spending all your time talking to little children, you are wasting a valuable resource.  You ought to be listening to them instead!  They will tell you some delightful things. My daughter once told me how light sounds.  Did you know that light says “zzzz”?  I guess I never listened.  Last week I heard about a little boy who said that one of the disciples was so bad that they named a bad tasting vegetable after him: Judas Asparagus.

Children are astonished to learn that a pastor works at the church on days other than Sunday.  “What do you find to do on those other days?” they ask me.  When I remind them that Jesus worked every day for God, they can’t comprehend that either.  One day a week is enough! Our story today begins with Jesus going from place to place, teaching people, preaching the Gospel, and bringing healing and wholeness to people every day.  Jesus’ disciples today are still involved with the teaching, preaching, and healing ministry of our Lord.

Jesus was immensely popular!  Everywhere He went, a huge crowd soon gathered.  The greater the number, the greater the demands upon His energies.  Several decades ago, a very wise retiring pastor told us younger pastors at Annual Conference that we should not be looking forward to moving to bigger and bigger churches because “the more members you got, the move devil you got.”  Jesus certainly found this to be true.  More people meant more in need of deliverance from the oppression of the devil, more in need of healing and teaching.  In Matthew 9 we hear Jesus express a sense of being overwhelmed by His success: “The harvest in plentiful but the workers are few.”

It was out of His awareness that He needed help in order to accomplish His mission that Jesus decided to change the roll of His followers from students to teachers.  This decision came after He had prayed to the Lord of the harvest to send more laborers into the harvest.  His prayer was answered when He realized that God was calling His Disciples to assume more responsibility.  He gathered His 12 Disciples around Him, gave them instructions, and more importantly He gave them His authority and power to do the same things He had been doing.

At this point in the story we are introduced to the 12 students Jesus had been training.  The Bible contains other lists of disciples that differ from this one slightly, probably due to the fact that people are sometimes known by more than one name. About half the people she knows call her Ann but I’ve always called her Penny.  Last year I went to pick up a prescription for her and the pharmacist ask me what my wife’s name was.  I told him that I was not sure.  He insisted on seeing my drivers license!  In much the same way, Matthew was also known as Levi, and probably Bartholomew and Nathaniel are the same person.  We know a little bit about most of these disciples.  Matthew had been a cheating tax collector, Thomas was predisposed to doubt and fear, James and John had explosive tempers, Simon Peter waffled in his opinions about many issues, Nathaniel was prejudiced against people from Nazareth, Simon the Zealot was an advocate of armed rebellion against the Romans, and Judas was a Benedict Arnold.  That this group of men succeeded at anything is quite a tribute to their Teacher!

Jesus gave them what He Himself had been given by God: spiritual power and authority to bring wholeness to people with broken lives.  Then He limited the scope of this particular mission.  They were to limit their activities to their own kindred and nation at this time.  They were not to go to Gentiles or to the Samaritans, a group that was a hybrid mix of Gentile and Jewish blood.  Specifically they were to seek out the lost within their extended family, those who had fallen through the cracks in ancient Judah, having been forgotten by the wealthy, the powerful, and the righteous, those whose sinful ways had made them outcasts of society.  There would come a day when Jesus would broaden the scope of their mission to include Gentiles and Samaritans, and a very successful and righteous Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus would one day hear the Good News.  One day that same Paul would preach the message of God’s grace to a powerful King Herod Agrippa and he would ask for an audience with Caesar.  But Jesus limited to reach of this mission because it was just the beginning.

Jesus told them to travel light – to travel without gold, silver, or traveler’s checks, to pack no bags or extra clothing or sandals.  They were to give their message and pray for people without charging for their labor, but material support for them would come along anyway.  Hospitality would be extended to them as long as they stuck to their mission of preaching, teaching, and healing.

When Jesus was baptized by John, John was preaching that the Kingdom of God was at hand.  That became the theme of Jesus’ preaching also, and now He tells the Disciples to make that their message as well. Someone has said that Jesus was encouraging the 12 to go forth and ask people, “How would your life be different if God was in charge of your life?”  Wouldn’t your life be better if you did things God’s way?

In the day in which we live, the answer to that question largely depends on which God you are talking about.  We live in a time when militant fundamentalistic Islamic leaders are trying to establish theocracies in the world, and so the idea of living under the reign of God isn’t a very clear concept.  It sounds ominous and repressive to some people.  Perhaps this is why Jesus limited the scope of this first mission to those who had the same concept of God.  More specifically, we Christians view God through the eyes of Jesus who proclaimed that God was the God of mercy and grace, quick to forgive sinners, the One whose love for His children is limitless.  How would your life be different if the God of grace and mercy directed your life?

We also live in a day when people are harassed and helpless.  The harvest is plentiful but there is always a need for more workers.  We still pray for God to send our workers into His harvest, but then we are shocked to learn that He intends to send us!  Not me, Lord.  I’m still learning.  I’m not ready to teach yet.  God responds by saying, “Becoming a student-teacher is a terrific way to learn.”  How many of you would agree with me that it is when you answered the call to teach a class of children or adults that you learned the most?  The way to learn more about God is to teach others!

Where do church leaders come from?  They come from the ranks of students in the local church.  I remember hearing one of my first District Superintendents answer a question at a local church.  The question was, “When are you going to send us better preachers?”  His wise answer was, “When you raise them!”  When we in the local church do a better job of teaching disciples is when we will get better pastors, teachers, and leaders.

I remember hearing about one church that experienced a true revival back in the late 1800′s.  It was said of that church that it had more people out on the mission field than it had back home keeping the fires of the faith burning.  That is how it is done.  Students become the teachers.  As we answer God’s call to teach or lead, we find out that Jesus still gives His authority to us and His power, enabling us to bring wholeness to people with broken lives.

The list of our names isn’t any more impressive that the list of 12 Disciples.  Jesus still calls people whose pasts are a bit shady.  He still calls those who are predisposed to doubt and fear and who have explosive tempers.  Some of us waffle in our opinions.  Some of us are prejudiced against people who are different from us.  Some of us see no solution other than to fight against our enemies all the time, and sometimes my actions remind me of Judas Iscariot. That we succeeded at anything is quite a tribute to our Teacher!

Jesus has also limited the scope of our mission.  For the most part, we are here in Greer.  We send supplies and material goods elsewhere, but it is to the people of Greer that we have been sent for our mission.  We are to seek out the lost within our extended family, those who have fallen through the cracks in our society, those who have been forgotten, those whose sinful ways have made them outcasts of society.  We have been sent to raise the next generation of Christian disciples.  (I thought to myself this past week that in just a few years this current group of children in our church will be the leaders of a Vacation Bible School for their children).  We need to travel light, to streamline our necessary maintenance issues so that we can free our energies for the mission God has given us.  Some churches spend all of their energies maintaining their buildings and worrying about the church’s future rather than looking around them to see the harvest in need of workers.  We aren’t called to be famous or rich; we are called to be faithful.  Freely we have received; freely we are to give.

Our message is still the same one Jesus preached.  How would your life be different and better if you let God be in charge of your life?  How would life be for you if you did things God’s way, if you practiced forgiveness, turning the other cheek, sacrificing for each other, loving those who have hurt you?  If things would be better for you, then why not surrender your life to God and let Him run the show? The Kingdom of God is near.  It is with us here and now.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt