[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! We left off explaining the story of the prophet Jonah last time, that the ship in which Jonah was travelling was a great community of destiny. It is like a village, or a city, or the people of a country. Believers and unbelievers, people of God and Gentiles, share a common destiny. Today, the whole world is like a ship carrying all mankind. One great community of destiny. Church and world have a common destiny on earth. Jonah alone in that community of destiny represents faith in the one true God. All the others around him are pagans. This is roughly the proportion, even today, between people who believe God to be Lord, that is, the Church, and the world. It is as if Jonah were the church and the other passengers in the boat were the atheistic, secularised and pagan world around him. And now look! Today, and as it is here, the disobedient Jonah, the man of God fleeing from his mission, the church not fulfilling its mission, is being delivered by God, as it were, to the world. And now the man of God stands before an atheist or a secularized or a pagan world. And, let me say in advance, in a very shameful situation. Because the world in which the Church lives has two attitudes towards her. They ask angry questions: 'What is your profession and where do you come from? What is your country and what people are you from?" - Who are you, church? For 2,000 years you have been preaching the greatest Christian ideals of love, of helping the poor, the unfortunate, of respecting human dignity - and what have you done about it? You have heard, for example, the accusation of the Hindu world against so-called Christian Europe, in a nutshell: You have set the world on fire twice in a generation, what good can we expect from you? 'The fate has fallen on Jonah', and now most of the people of the ship are looking accusingly at the man of God.The rest are indifferent to the Jonah of today. He simply described it as one that is no longer a factor in the fate of the ship. A large part of the world today doesn't even care about believers as much as those old sailors there cared about Jonah. They don't even ask him any more, they don't care who we are, the people of the Church, what we want, how we put our faith into practice. Christ believer or Madagascar fire worshipper? - It makes no difference to him, he considers both equally superstitious. The God of the New Testament, or Zeus of the Greeks, are both outdated myths to him.
Whether the world is accusing or indifferent to the church, it is a greater judgment on Jonah than the storm itself. Indeed, the believer is left in great shame when he is thus forced to confront the world. Perhaps Jonah is now beginning to realize how close those Gentiles were to him, and he had done nothing for them! He paid the ship's fare like any other passenger, but after that he never spoke another word to them than was necessary. He did not even pray for them. No heathen came any nearer to the knowledge of the living God through intercourse with him. Why should he care about the other's troubles, his own troubles are enough for him now! Bear one another's burdens?! - I can hardly bear my own! - thought Jonah. I am sorry for what the world is doing to me! The main thing is that I have peace of mind! He slept, he slept soundly. Deep in his sleep he went wherever the world went. He almost made sure that he would not be recognized as a believer in the Living God. He actually hid his faith from the world. His behaviour, his conduct, his attitude towards people gave no sign that he was a man of God.
He is a typical example of a believer who, in the words of Jesus, hides the light under a veil. The type of the incognito Christian man. Just don't let the world know that he belongs to God, that he goes to church sometimes, and that he wants to have a church wedding! You know, brethren, a lamp-post is a very useful thing in the street, but if it happens not to have a light in it on a dark night, it can become a disagreeable obstacle - such a disagreeable obstacle is the incognito Christian in the world. Christ is a believer, but he hides it: a lamppost is a Christian. He stands in the way of others, bumping into people in a hurry. You may have seen it long ago: soldiers in the so-called Salvation Army wore distinctive uniforms. Everyone could see right away where they belonged. I think a great many Christian people today are glad in their hearts that their inner convictions of faith are not expressed in some distinctive Christian uniform on the outside, which would make them recognisable as a soldier of Jesus. He is silent when he should speak. He laughs with others when he should be protesting. Don't notice that he crumbles a little prayer at the table before a meal! Keep everything incognito!
How strange: he is not as ashamed of his sin before the world as he is of Jesus and his gospel. There is only one stranger than this: the Jesus who really had every reason to be ashamed of us, did not. He was not ashamed to call us, brothers and sisters, his friends, and we are ashamed of him before the world. It is not a question of walking among men with a Bible in our hands, or of handing out tracts, no! Perhaps it is just that, as I read in a poem by Albert Schweitzer the other day, which someone sent me in the post, listen to it:
Find yourself a sideline!
Open your eyes and look where someone needs you.
a little time, a little compassion, a little conversation, a little care.
Maybe they are lonely, desperate, sick or clumsy,
and you can mean something to them. Maybe old, maybe a child.
Who can list the valuable working capital, the humanity, the kindness, the kindness of a person?
of investing humanity?!
There is a shortage of them everywhere!
Well, see if there's not somewhere you can invest your humanity!
Do not be deterred if you must wait or experiment!
Arm yourself for disappointments, but don't give up the sideline,
when you can be a human being for people.
Surely there's a side hustle waiting for you if you really want it.
Yes, this is how to talk about God clearly among modern people. This is how to witness for Christ in the world. Through our humanity, our humanity, through our actions, through our deeds. And that's what Jonah left to the people there on the boat.
It is then that Jonah will be truly ashamed before the world, when he has to step out of this incognito. They ask him, Who are you, where are you from? And now he is forced to confess: "And he said to them: I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." It's as if he's just saying the first sentence of the Apostles' Creed: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth - a beautiful creed, but his whole attitude is contrary to it! He professes to fear God, but his whole attitude shows something quite different. There is a painful contrast between his word and his life, between his creed and his actions. His behaviour does not really testify to what he says about himself. This man does not really show that he fears the Lord Almighty. In the embarrassing situation in which his disobedience has placed him, it is almost blasphemous for him to say: 'I fear the Lord God of heaven'.
I am a disciple of Jesus, who gave himself for the world! I preach the gospel of love, purity, goodness, selflessness - beautiful, very beautiful, but is it true? This question is addressed to you. Is it not our greatest sin that our lives do not bear witness to who we are? What are we: are we Christians? Well, does our behaviour bear witness to it? Does our daily behaviour bear witness to it? Is there not a painful rift between our profession of faith and our actions? Is it not our greatest sin that the man who sits in the church now and works in the factory tomorrow is different? Is it any different for a man to pray over his Bible in the morning or in the evening, and in the afternoon to amuse his companions with a drastic joke over the card table? There is nothing wrong with us either, we can say beautifully, if we were asked, we could perhaps tell you. But would not the world wonder even more? Would you? Is it you who fear God? Is he such a man that fears God?
I feel that Jonah blushed very, very much when he said, there in the Gentile ring, 'I fear the Lord God of heaven'. So anyone who sees Jonah behaving like that on the boat, what do you believe about his faith in God? Is it any wonder that secular "boat people" have become indifferent over the centuries to what "Jonah" so beautifully proclaims. Would they believe you if you spoke of your faith in God? Would you be believed at home, where you are most closely seen, or by friends who know you well? Who do they see in you: a man of God or just a good friend? What did these sailors think of Jonah now that he was forced to tell them about God? One thing they certainly thought: that we take our gods more seriously than he takes his. We are more attached to our ideals, we are more honest in our own place and way than this. Do you ever wonder what this world thinks of you? What does your neighbour's caretaker, your boss or your subordinate or your child think of you as a believer? The incognito Christian always remains ashamed before the world when he has to step out of incognito.
All of this has finally really hit Jonah's heart. At last something good is written about him. Here it says: "And he said to them: Take me, and cast me into the sea, and the sea shall be calm against you: for I know that because of me this great tempest is upon you". Oh, how hard it is to come to the point where one blames himself for a storm, and not others. Even in a small family storm: if I can say that it is because of me, only then will the storm be over. As long as I say it's because of you, the storm will always get worse. The "because of you" always makes it a bigger storm. And "because of me" is almost like a magic word: it makes the waves subside. This "because of me", if it is a truly sincere confession of sin, is usually a turning point. That's where all the messed-up situations start to turn right: Because of me, my husband could not repent. I became a prodigal son to my child. Because of me there is no revival in the church. Because of me the name of God is blasphemed. Because of me, God has judged this whole "ship" that is being tossed about like this by the storm. Have we come to this, brethren? To the point that it is not my friends who are bad, it is not my circumstances who are to blame, it is not the age in which we live that compels us, but I myself who am the weak, the coward, the disobedient, the guilty, the blame, the sinner. I, who have not lived my faith authentically before men. I who have not taken up my mission in the world. I who have run away from God, I who have turned my back on the Living God.
Jonah took this "because of me" so seriously that he pronounced judgment on himself: "Cast me into the sea, and the sea will be calm against you". I deserve nothing but death.
This judgment of Jonah here on himself sounds almost exactly like what we used to say in answer to the Lord's Supper question: in God's just judgment I deserve punishment, death and damnation. I believe and confess. Jonah truly believed and confessed this. Do you, who complain about your fate, the ingratitude of your children, the lack of understanding and the troubles around you, believe and confess that you deserve no better, and that, in God's just judgment, you deserve only punishment, death and damnation? Why, then, must a Jonah go so far? Because this is where the ascent begins. This is the first step from the abyss back to God.
Do you not sense a New Testament reference here in these words of Jonah: "Cast me into the sea, and it shall be calm against you"? His death means life for the rest. It is at his death that others can be saved. In the wake of these words, it is as if I see the cross of Jesus there, on Calvary. Yes, Jesus sank to his death so that we might live. It is at the price of Jesus' death that we can escape the storm of judgment. Our sins, our failures, our disobedience cannot be forgotten, they will come up again. They cannot be extinguished like fatigue. It cannot be forgiven to myself, it cannot be compensated by good deeds. Only one thing can be done: to come with our whole wretched self to Jesus, who knew no sin and whom God made sin for us. So that is why he had to die there on the cross for us, for us, in our place, so that we might live, so that we might begin again this whole ruined life of ours, but now in obedience, in service to God, as a joyful peace offering to the world.
Let us respond to the message of the Word, singing with the fullness of our hearts, my brothers and sisters, the first verse of hymn 397:
O Zion, awake, fulfil your mission,
Say to the world: Thy dawn is at hand!
For he who made the nations will not leave you,
Let no man perish in night or in sin.
Be thou a joyful peace-belt,
Proclaim that the Saviour is come!
(verse 397 1)
Amen.
Date: 12 February 1967.