Sermon - Jonah 2 – The Fish and the Dove

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon - Jonah 2 – The Fish and the Dove

Beaver Dam and Pitts Creek Churches

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 15, 2012

I am continuing today with my series of four sermons drawn from the Book of Jonah. Last week we talked about Jonah's disobedience. God specifically told Jonah to bring God's message of forgiveness through repentance to the most depraved people on Earth, the Ninevites. But Jonah was not going to do something like that so he fled from God trying to get as far away as he could. Of course God is the creator of the world and so has the power to stop anyone trying to flee. And that is exactly what God did to Jonah. He sent a storm to prevent his ship from getting away.

We also saw that like Jonah, we have been commanded by Jesus Christ to go into the world to make disciples. We are to talk with others about our faith and invite them to church. And like Jonah we try to flee from this responsibility because evangelizing depraved people in our community is just too difficult. But God will not let us get away either. So expect storms in your life. Today we will look at what happened to Jonah when he was thrown into the raging sea, but first let's pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

Jonah was tossed into the sea and swallowed by a giant fish in which he remained for three days until being spit out on dry land. Wow, what a story! What are we to make of this? There are some who say this is factual history. And certainly God has the power to do a miraculous thing like this. Other say that it is a story like Jesus' parables and we should look for meaning in the way the story was written. I think the answer is both. Jonah was swallowed by a fish, and there is deeper meaning if we take a closer look at how it was written. To do this we must remember that Jonah was written in Hebrew sometime before the 3^rd century before Jesus. In Hebrew, words can have multiple meaning and do many different things. For example a word might have both it own dictionary meaning and also be the name of a person. So let's look at the Hebrew text of the Book of Jonah and see what we find.

The first clue for understanding what the author is trying to communicate to us is to look at the name “Jonah”. “Jonah” is a Hebrew word that means “dove”. So you could translate the passage read earlier into English like this.

Jonah 1:15-17 ¹⁵ Then they took the dove and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. ¹⁶ At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him. ¹⁷ But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow the dove, and the dove was inside the fish three days and three nights.

This reminds us of another raging sea, a flood and a dove. In Noah's time a dove was sent out from the ark and when it returned with a olive branch in its beak Noah knew that dry land had returned to the earth. Since the purpose of Noah's flood was to deal with sin in the world, the dove was a symbol that sin had been purge away. We can also see this in the ancient sacrificial system where a person desiring forgiveness would bring a dove to be sacrificed on the altar. So the dove is a sign of God's forgiveness. And so we see the irony in the Book of Jonah. The dove, the very symbol of God's forgiveness, refused to proclaim that forgiveness in Nineveh.

In the Old Testament the eyes of the dove were considered the height of beauty. And the cries of the dove when in danger are likened to the prayer of God's people when facing calamity. In the New Testament the dove appears again. All four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John report that a dove descended upon Jesus at baptism. They all see this dove as a symbol of the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus. So the dove is present on Noah's ark, Jonah's raging sea, and Jesus' baptism in the Jordan. In all three of these God uses water to wash away sin. So when we read that Jonah was thrown into the raging sea we should think about baptism. In baptism we pass under the waters, symbolically washing away our sin. We become like a dove, innocent without blemish. So too with Jonah, he was baptized in the raging sea. His sin of disobeying God was washed away. Jonah, the dove, became innocent like a dove.

One thing to note in all of this is that Jonah did nothing to deal with his own sin. He did not decide to do what God wanted done on his own. Jonah did not try to deal with his own sin in any way. The initiative for washing away Jonah's sin in the water came from God. Jonah fled, slept and was thrown in the sea. He did nothing to save himself. But God intervened. God caused the sailors to throw Jonah in the water. And God sent the fish to save him. So too with us. There is nothing that we do or can do to wash away our own sins. There is no reason to even try. Our only hope is that God will save us. If God does that by having us thrown in the sea and swallowed by a fish, or if God saves us when we confess our sins and pass through the waters of baptism, then praise be to God.

The irony in the Book of Jonah does not stop here. Next we find the Jonah was eaten by a fish. This is the opposite of what we would expect. Usually we are the ones who eat fish rather than fish eating us. So what is going on here? Fish is the sign of God's abundant love for us. The four gospels teach us that Jesus was able to feed thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. And Jesus demonstrated his power by filling the nets of the fishermen. In both of these examples Jesus showed God's abundant love for his people. So we have in the Book of Jonah, the symbol of God's forgiveness, the dove, swallowed by the symbol of God's abundant love, the fish. Suddenly the story of Jonah sounds pretty good because God's forgiveness and abundant love come together and offered to us in our baptisms.

Jesus taught his disciples from the Book of Jonah. And he focused on the three days when Jonah, the dove, was in the fish. And he told them that Just as Jonah was in the fish for three days so to would he be in the tomb for three days. This was a reference to his upcoming death on a cross and burial in a tomb. Jesus used this analogy so that we would know that in his suffering and death the fish would swallow the dove, and God's abundant love and God's forgiveness would come together in the person of Jesus Christ.

After three days in the fish Jonah was spit out on dry land. There is no way that person could be thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish and live. Jonah had to die. His old sinful self passed away. It was no more. This is what happens to us in our baptisms. Our lives as slaves to sin come to an end, and we emerge from the baptismal waters reborn to new life in Jesus Christ. When Jonah was spit out on dry land he was reborn as Jonah, the dove, the symbol of God's forgiveness. And he was ready to obey God and bring the message of God's abundant love and forgiveness to the people of Nineveh. And Jesus emerged from the tomb proclaiming God's abundant love and forgiveness to the world. So too with us in our baptisms we are reborn as children of God and called to proclaim God's abundant love and forgiveness to people in our world who desperate need to hear it.

While Jonah was in the belly of the fish he had time to think about God. He remembered all the blessing he had received. He realized that God is a God of forgiveness and abundant love. Jonah reflected over his life and what had happened to him. And he realized how close to death he had come. So Jonah made a vow that if God saved him from the raging sea and the belly of the fish then Jonah would come to the Temple to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving for God's preserving his life, Jonah made this vow in a prayer he spoke from within the fish. Let us pray with Jonah,

Jonah 2:2 He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4 I said, 'I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.' 5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God. 7 "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. 8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. 9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD."

Let us pray. Lord Jesus we thank you for passing through the baptismal water and the tomb bringing together God's abundant love and forgiveness. We are so grateful the you love us and forgive us, and we vow to proclaim this good news to the people we know and the people we meet. This we pray in your glorious name. Amen.