Sermon: God Calls Us to Act
A call to climate action from the story of the prophet Jonah
Hello friends. I wasn’t able to publish a Friday Nudge last week, so I have unlocked this essay, a sermon I preached this past Sunday at Rothwell United Church in Ottawa, Ontario. The previous Friday Nudge, in which I reflected on the need to be willing to stare into the belly of the beast of the climate emergency (and the roots of the term in the story of Jonah), inspired me when I turned to the revised common lectionary and discovered the story of what happened to Jonah after he was spat out from the belly of the big fish onto dry land. I hope that you find this sermon meaningful and a rousing call to action.
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Scripture Reading
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. (Jonah 3:1-5, 10 NRSV)
Sermon: God Calls Us to Act – Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Preached at Rothwell United Church, Ottawa ON, January 21, 2024
Let us pray:
God of Life,
May the words of my mouth
And the meditations of all our minds and hearts
Lead us to deeper understanding of you
And the love you call us to live. AMEN.
This morning, we hear from the Book of Jonah in the Hebrew Bible. Remember Jonah? He’s the prophet who ends up getting swallowed by a whale. More accurately it was a big fish, but it is more fun for children to picture Jonah and the whale. To better understand today’s reading in Jonah we have to go back to the beginning of his story.
The story of Jonah opens with God telling Jonah, who is a prophet, to go and tell the Assyrian city of Nineveh that they must change their evil ways, or God will destroy them. Jonah doesn’t want to do this, and so he disobeys God and runs to Tarshish instead. Finding Jonah on a boat, God then causes a huge storm to come up, threatening the lives of Jonah and the fisherman on that boat. Once the fishermen discover that it is Jonah who is the cause of the storm, he agrees to be thrown into the sea.
There in the sea, God causes a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and there he stays for 3 days and nights.
Recently, I was reading a book on the climate emergency called The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, by Jeff Goodell. It goes into detail about the nature of heat and the very limited human capacity to withstand the higher levels of heat that are being created as a result of burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases.
It is a gripping book, full of intense examples and dire scientific prognoses for what is to come if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels. When I was reading it, I thought, I am staring into the belly of the beast in reading this. I was staring into the belly of the beast that is the horror that is currently being inflicted on humans. Over 5 million people die from extreme weather – either heat or cold – every year around the world, and the number of heat-related deaths is rising.1 During the hottest summer on record in Europe in 2022, more than 61,000 people died due to the heat between May 30 and September 4, 2022.2
The author of The Heat Will Kill You First not only discussed the direct risk to human life of increasing heat, but also the implications for agriculture, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor around the world, and more. Surely, I was staring into the belly of the beast in reading this book. I recommend it to all of you to read, too.
I was staring into the belly of the beast that is the horror that is currently being inflicted on humans.
I didn’t know this before, but the phrase ‘the belly of the beast’ actually comes from the story of Jonah and the big fish. I shared this in a recent essay in the aith and climate change newsletter that I write every week [this one!]. I wrote about the fact that my personality is such that I tend to be willing to stare into the belly of the beast and name what I see. I try to be unflinching, to witness to the chaos and pain that is around us in the world.
Unlike Jonah, who really didn’t want to tell Nineveh what was going to happen to them if they carried on with their wicked ways, I’m more likely to turn around and confront the evil. The fear. The chaos.
What kind of person do you tend to be? Are you one who tends to stare into the belly of the beast and learn all you can about what is happening? Or do you tend to want to avoid the problem, and try to look away? Prefer to go to Tarshish instead of Nineveh?
Now don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to boast. I have my own blind spots, things that I would prefer not to know about. I am more passionate about the climate emergency, so I am more likely to turn toward, and not away, from its dire reality and threat for the future.
And it doesn’t mean that I always remember to bring what I see to God. I don’t always remember to pray, to lament, to worship God in the face of the evil, chaos and suffering in the world.
But that’s what Jonah does. After spending three days and nights in the belly of the beast, Jonah prays a beautiful prayer to God in which he thanks God for being with him and hearing him even when Jonah is right there in hell, right there in the belly of the beast. He thanks God with the most beautiful psalm of thanksgiving. Hearing Jonah’s prayer, God spits him out onto dry ground, saving Jonah. I encourage you to read it: it is Chapter 2 in the Book of Jonah.
Not only that, but I don’t always act on what I see, either. And in that, Jonah and I have far more in common than I realize. We are now in Chapter 3 of Jonah’s story, the words Neil read this morning [that the reader finds at the top of this sermon]. After Jonah tried to ignore God’s command and found himself in the fish, he prayed and was released. God then repeats God’s command: “Get up, go to Nineveh, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you” (Jonah 3.2).
Now Jonah knows better than to disobey God again, so he goes to Nineveh and shares the message, but he does so extremely reluctantly. Unlike Moses and Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel, who come across as brave, bold prophets, Jonah is a cowardly, disobedient, drama-prone prophet who wildly exaggerates the struggle to share God’s message! Nineveh was not a three-day walk like he claimed. Not only that, but we discover later that he is very resentful that when his barebones’ message – “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” is actually listened to! He becomes resentful that the entire city, including the king, repents and turns to God. He resents that God takes pity on them and changes God’s mind about destroying the city.
I might be willing to stare into the belly of the beast like Jonah, and I might even be willing to pray, but I must admit that I am not always willing to do anything about what I see! Is it possible that this is true for you?
I might be willing to stare into the belly of the beast, and I might even be willing to pray, but, more often than not, I complain about how much work it is to do the thing that God has asked me to do! When I think of Jonah exaggerating about the size of Nineveh – I think of kids who complain when we ask them to pick up the clothes from their floor! I can be more like this than I want to admit.
And I might be willing to stare into the belly of the beast, and I might even be willing to pray, but I too can be resentful when God’s idea of Earth healing for all people and the planet doesn’t look like my much more limited, much more judgemental, image of healing and justice.
Jonah may have been cowardly, disobedient and prone to exaggeration, but he was still a prophet. He was still one of God’s messengers, and it was, we discover, Jonah’s actions that mattered. His actions mattered more than his attitude.
So it is for me, and for you. What we learn from Jonah is that it isn’t about how willing we are to stare into the belly of the beast, but about listening to God and acting upon what God tells us to do. Minister Donna Schaper notes that the brevity of Jonah’s message to Nineveh echoes “the community organizer’s mantra [that] thought does not create action, action creates thought.”3 The more that we act for justice, the more that our minds and hearts are formed for justice.
One of the other things that we learn from Jonah, too, is that God will use what God’s got! We can be as resentful as Jonah when God doesn’t do what we expect and exceeds the limits of our own hearts and goodwill. But God works through and in us, anyway. God calls us to act, even before God calls us to change our thoughts or our hearts. Resentful or not, cowardly or not, prayerful or not, God calls us to action for the sake of the world. God calls us to discipleship for the sake of the world.
The more that we act for justice, the more that our minds and hearts are formed for justice.
And we surely need to act right now. We are in a climate emergency. The heat is rising and it is getting increasingly deadly. We have a very limited ability to adapt, and that will affect us here and especially people who are least able to escape the heat, both the poor and marginalized in Canada and the many millions of the poor in the global South. The rising heat will also kill animals and plants, and disrupt the seasonal cycles that make it possible to grow food.
Whether you are the kind of person, like me, who tends to stare into the belly of the beast and learn the details of the climate emergency, or you are one who would prefer just the broad strokes – or, if you’re being honest, to not know at all – we are all called to act. We are all called to take climate action, to work for the reduction of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases. We are all called to take climate action, to work for a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor, and to increase the resilience of marginalized communities to adapt. We are all called to take climate action, to work to take control of our planet away from the global corporations and the richest 10%.
God is asking this of us. We know this, because it is God’s world, the entire Earth community, that is suffering and at risk. God is asking this of us, and God is making the same command to us over and over again. Go and work for peace, justice, and Earth healing. Go and take climate action.
God and work for peace, justice, and Earth healing. Go and take climate action!
It doesn’t matter how many times we have tried to escape God’s command, God’s call for climate action; God calls us to act. It doesn’t matter if we are feeling cowardly, or resentful, or reluctant or scared. God is calling us to climate action, and God will keep calling each one of us again and again, just like God did with Jonah.
My friends, God is calling us in this time of climate emergency. God is asking each one of us to go to Nineveh, asking each one of us to do the hard work that we are seeking to avoid. If we don’t God will ask us again, and again.
Every one of us, no matter how old we are, or how young, how poor or how rich, no matter our abilities, our gender, or even the colour of our politics, can and must take climate action. If you aren’t sure what you can do, given your own life circumstances, come and talk to me after the service.4
Let us all go to Nineveh; let us take climate action. How we feel about it matters less than that we act. And indeed, when we act in discipleship, when we take the climate action that God is calling us to, we will find ourselves singing psalms of thanksgiving to God.
May it be so! Thanks be to God.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z. Accessed January 20, 2024.
Donna Schaper, “Jonah 3:1-5, 10: Pastoral Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year B, Volume 1, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 266.
I was heartened when a couple with a young family came up to ask me this! I soon discovered that they already do more in their lives, with two children under 4, then most. While this is great, I don’t want to just be preaching to the choir, so to speak!