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Many of us are familiar with the story of Jonah and the whale as told to us in Sunday School when we were children. Jonah, a prophet of the Lord God, is told to go to Nineveh and warn the people of that great city of their coming destruction if they did not repent. In an attempt to flee from the Lord’s presence, Jonah gets on a boat going in the opposite direction to the city of Tarshish, which was the most remote Phoenician trading place there was at the time.
Just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Jonah could not hide from the Lord. The Lord knew exactly where Jonah was and was not happy with him, because Jonah was not being obedient. So the Lord God sent a huge storm that brought great fear upon the sailors of the boat in which Jonah was traveling. The sailors cast lots to find out who was making God angry. The lot fell on Jonah. When the sailors learned that it was Jonah who had angered God, they threw him overboard and immediately the waters were calmed. Then the Lord took pity on Jonah and sent a great fish to swallow him up. The scriptures tell us that Jonah stayed in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Just imagine how fun that was for Jonah.
After three days and three nights, Jonah began to pray. Here is part of Jonah’s prayer:
“Then I said, I am cast out of Your presence and Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the extinction of life; the abyss surrounded me, the sea-weeds were wrapped about my head.”
Jonah was not a pretty sight. In fact, Jonah was definitely having a bad time of it. The scriptures tell us that the Lord looked with compassion on Jonah and caused the fish to vomit Jonah out onto dry land. Then the Lord God told Jonah for the second time to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to repent.
This time Jonah obeyed the Lord God. He went to Nineveh and warned the people of God’s judgment on them. Then the king and all the people of that great city repented by putting on sackcloth and turned to the Lord God and worshiped Him. This pleased the Lord and He changed His mind and did not destroy Nineveh as He had planned to do. The scriptures state,
“And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God revoked His sentence of evil that He had said that He would do to them, and He did not do it ----for He was comforted and eased concerning them.” -The Amplified Bible
Today when we read the story of Jonah and how he went to great lengths to do the opposite of what the Lord God told him to do, we can easily become judgmental and tell ourselves that we would never be like Jonah. Yet, many of us if we are truly honest with ourselves have had Jonah moments in our lives. Personally, I can recall some times in my life when I was a Jonah. In fact, when the Lord God was reminding me in my mid-thirties of His call on my life for the ordained ministry; I didn’t leave town, but I did do my best to ignore Him.
At the time, my life was already filled to the brim with rearing our youngest child, being an executive’s wife and the mother of two teenagers. Not to mention also serving as the president of the local Aglow chapter, a global ecumenical organization for women and being on the vestry in my church where I headed up the Sunday School. Wasn’t it obvious to the Lord that I was already serving Him to my capacity? So I told the Lord that I already had enough on my plate and for Him to ask someone else to be discerned for the priesthood and to go to seminary.
Three times the Lord reminded me through other people of His call on my life. None of whom knew at that time that when I was ten years old the Lord had called me to preach the gospel. And three times I reminded the Lord of how my childhood church had told me that I would never preach the gospel or pastor a church, because I was female! That began in January when I was in my mid thirties.
Then the month of May came and I found myself in a pickle or whale like Jonah did. A well known speaker had come from South Africa to Pittsburgh to speak at the many different Aglow chapters in the area. Upon her arrival, her husband had a heart attack and was hospitalized. She immediately began calling all the chapter presidents to let them know that she could not come to their meetings, but when she started to call the Sewickley chapter, the Lord told her she could not cancel.
This meant that all of the other chapters were now coming to my chapter’s meeting. A wonderful blessing – yes, but we didn’t have room to accommodate all those people, especially at the last minute. The restaurant where we held our dinner meetings was already booked up. My officers and I phoned other places to book the meeting, but they too were full.
Have you ever reached a point in your life where you have done all you can do and you don’t know what else to do? Well, that was where we were. Not knowing where else to turn, I went to the church’s mid-week healing service to ask for prayer. I went to seek an answer to the chapter’s dilemma and instead I got confronted with the question from God that I had been trying so desperately to ignore.
During a time of silence, the priest looked directly at me and said, “So when are you going to get ordained?” This was not why I had come to church. I needed to know where to sit all those people who were coming to hear the South African speaker. Annoyed by this out of the blue question, I asked my priest, “Who told you about my calling?” Then the priest smiled and said, “The same one who called you, the Lord.”
This was my Jonah moment of realization that I could not run away or ignore the plans the Lord God had for my life. My spiritual eyes were opened and I like Jonah saw that I had let my own plans swallow up my time and energy. Yet, God’s calling on our lives does not go away just because we choose to do something else; whether that is ignoring God or even getting on a ship going in the opposite direction like Jonah did. Try as we may, we cannot escape our God given destiny. The Lord God had called me as a child to serve Him in ordained ministry and that calling was still there no matter which path I took in life.
That Jonah moment changed my life. As a child I had accepted Jesus as my Savior. Now, I knelt before Him as my Lord and asked Him to open the doors He wanted me to enter. No longer did my life belong to me. From that moment on, my life became completely His. I would go wherever He told me to go. In fact, it was the Lord who led me here to serve at St. Raphael’s as your priest. This is the Lord’s doing to call a homemaker out of her home to serve and minister to the people of God as a priest. A mother of three became a spiritual mother of many.
In the gospel reading today from Mark, Jesus calls four fishermen to drop their nets and follow Him. The scriptures tell us that these men immediately left their work of fishing and followed Jesus. There was no hesitation. No rebellion. No ignoring. Only obedience to the Lord was given. Of such obedience, Jesus seeks from all who hear His call.
We don’t have to be a Jonah in the way we live our lives. We can choose to be like the first disciples who left behind their old lives to follow the Christ. As one who has known what it is like to live in the belly of a great fish like Jonah while seeking to ignore the calling of the Lord; it is much better to simply say “Yes!” to Jesus and follow Him.
As for the seating problem I had back in Sewickley, the Lord provided. The very next day after I had submitted to Jesus as my Lord, I got a phone call from the manager. She began the conversation by telling me that now she knew that the ministry we were doing was from God. The reason she gave was that she had gotten phone calls that morning from all of their regular groups who met on our meeting night. Each one of them had called to cancel their monthly meeting for that night only. We had more than enough space for all who wanted to come. When we submit to the Lord’s will, He provides. It might not be what we are expecting, but if we allow the Lord to govern our lives; then it will always work out for good. May we always choose to follow our Lord wherever He leads us. .
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