Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Epiphany 3B 1-21-24 Jonah 3:1-5, 10 & Mark 1:14-20   The Cost of the Call (Albany Deacon’s Retreat)   Simon and his brother, Andrew, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their nets and followed him.   Down the beach a ways, James and his brother, John, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their father in the boat and followed him.   No questions asked.   No hesitation.     Jonah heard the call and immediately hopped a boat headed in the opposite direction.   He did not follow; he ran away.   Jonah wanted nothing to do with the call of God.   In fact, God would have to package that call with a life-threatening storm and a vomiting fish before Jonah would even begrudgingly ascent to his divine mission.   But you wouldn’t know any of that from today’s reading from the book of Jonah.   This morning’s lectionary passage gives us the most sanitized, compl...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 11:1-18   Even the Gentiles   I’m not sure one can truly understand this story from the book of Acts unless you first understand the story of Jonah.   I don’t mean the big fish part.   I don’t mean the stuff they put in illustrated Children’s Bibles.   I mean the real reason Jonah ran away to Joppa when God gave him orders for Ninevah.     At first it is a mystery; the reader can’t actually know why Jonah refuses the mission because the book does not immediately tell us.   And so we are, initially, left to speculate.   Ninevah was the capital of an enemy empire.   And so at first it seems like maybe Jonah is afraid of what will happen to him there.   The city was infamously wicked and violent.   It was a scary place.   And for Jonah, a foreigner, it would have been especially scary.   But it turns out, that’s not it.   Jonah’s reason is not clear until th...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Jonah 3:10-4:11 What we like (and dislike) about God   I’m a priest; my wife is a pastor; my children are PKs twice over; and so we have, in our home, a number of Children’s Bibles.   And all of them include the story of Jonah.   Well, excerpts from the story of Jonah; definitely not the whole story.   Most of them begin with Jonah running in the opposite direction; they always include the big fish, from belly to beach; and they typically conclude with the happy ending of the book: when the people of Ninevah repent and are saved – because of Jonah. They never include this part of the story: the part where Jonah is mad because God refuses to kill all the people.   The true ending of Jonah, what we heard this morning, never makes the cut.   This is, admittedly, not Jonah’s finest moment; he does not make a great impression in today’s passage – which is the conclusion of the book that bears his name. Finally, the...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Jonah 3:10-4:11 Jonah and the Problem of Mercy This is not my idea of biblical hero.   Jonah seems like a jerk.   Am I wrong?   This passage from the book bearing his name is the very end of the book.   And there is no redemptive moment.   In this passage he even builds his own personal grandstand to sit and see what he hopes will be the destruction of an entire city.   He is praying for 120,000 people to die.   And he is furious when they do not.   Jonah seems like a jerk. And not many people know this part of the story because every complicated Bible story from the Old Testament that has an animal in it is sanitized until it is safe for a nursery wall.   They all get the Kids Bop treatment.   Noah's Ark – the story of the time God killed almost everything on Earth – is the best example – but the Jonah story is very similar.   The whale thing is usually the only thing anyone knows abo...