Love in the face of so many complaints

A sermon preached at Highbury by Becky Hartwell on Sunday, 27th February.

What are the best complaints you have ever heard? Have you ever heard moans about school, work, have you ever worked in customer services?
Well to start off this morning I have found online some of the most ridiculous holiday complaints,
“I was bitten by a mosquito – no-one said they could bite.”

“We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white.”

“The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the accommodation’. We’re trainee hairdressers – will we be OK staying here?”

“No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled.”

“Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women.”

The story of Jonah is about different things. It is a story about listening and not listening to God. It is about courage, about consequences. But there is more, I think this is the interesting bit, the afterthought, what happened after all the action… Chapter four is complaining Jonah and throughout it we have the presence of God.

The complaining that Jonah did was not amusing like the earlier quotes. I suspect we have at some point in our lives all complained about something and no doubt been on the end of someone else’s complaints. And maybe we can understand Jonah’s thoughts.

Jonah is full of moans, things he feels he has been victim to and he expects God to listen to it all.
We are nearing the end of the story – here is a recap. Jonah was initially called by God to go to Ninevah, he ran away. He got on a boat but during a storm was voluntarily thrown off where he ended up in a whale. After this he decided to listen to God and go and speak to the people of Ninevah. Now if he is going willingly maybe he has changed, he wants to share God’s great news with people and he wants to see them enter into a relationship with God. Or maybe not.
Ninevah was not a good place before Jonah went to speak there. This kingdom was built upon violence, murder, warfare and rape. There have been engravings found that show people being tortured and others with skulls tied around their necks. Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian empire. When Assyrians took over a town they would take survivors and impale them on stakes in front of the town.

It’s understandable why Jonah wanted to run in the opposite direction. But we find out in chapter four that Jonah doesn’t run away because he is scared of these people but instead he runs because he thinks God will forgive them.

This chapter is a love story. It’s not the average love story. It wouldn’t be a romantic-comedy that people go and see on Valentine’s Day. But it is a story about God’s love for individuals, all individuals.

Let us start with Jonah.

Jonah is full of complaints. It seems strange after all he has been through that he complains so much about what God has done for the Ninevites. Here Jonah isn’t complaining about the whale, about the storm but instead he is complaining about how loving God is.
Jonah complains to God saying, I knew you were gracious and compassionate, that you don’t get angry quickly and you are full of love. It sounds like a ridiculous complaint, like one of those complaint letters we heard, “God, you are so loving, I knew you would be like this.”
Jonah is telling God that was the real reason he ran away, not because he was scared of what would happen to him but because he didn’t want good things to happening to theNinevites. Jonah does not want them to be rescued. In fact he goes and finds a spot to watch the city, just in case it gets destroyed.

We have a God who loves, who is full of compassion, even his critics say it about him. Imagine the worst thing someone could say about you. God is gracious, compassionate, doesn’t get angry quickly and is full of love. I’m sure the worst things people might say about me don’t incorporate any of those characteristics.

And God listens to Jonah’s complaints. He listens with those great characteristics. And it doesn’t cause him to love Jonah any less after he hears them. He is patient, he cares and he makes his response at the end. God listens when we are angry with him, when we rant at him and he responds. We may not always hear him, sometimes it may just be a whisper but he does respond, maybe with words we are not happy to hear. In the book of Job we hear God respond to him, asking him numerous questions, trying to get him to understand exactly who he is dealing with.

But God is ready for a discussion, even bargaining. There is a story where Abraham bargains with God when asking him to spare a city based on how many good people there are living there, he manages to get God down from 50 to 10. God is wanting that relationship with us, one to one, not just a show for others to see. In Acts it says God created us so that we would seek him and reach out for him and find him. That is who is with us right now. Will we reach out and seek him?

God meets Jonah on his level. He meets him where he is at, he wants that communication. God does the same with us. He will listen to tantrums but he won’t fall for tricks. He will meet us and listen to us and respond. With Jonah he tried using whales, storms, questions and eventually he sends a small plant, something he knows Jonah will be able to relate to. In the gospels Jesus talked in parables, meeting people where they were at. What is God using at the moment in our lives to try and communicate with us?

God loved Jonah throughout all of this. But we can see that God doesn’t just love Jonah, he loves the Ninevites.Jonah struggled to understand that God loves others just as much as he loved Jonah.

God loves all people. He loves those who do the most evil of things and he loves their victims. He loves those who say he doesn’t exist and those who say he does. He loves those who repeatedly go against him and those who follow him every day of their lives. He loves those who struggle to love themselves and those who love everything about themselves.
God loves. God loves. God loves.

It may be hard for us to understand how God can love all people. We may have known great sadness in our lives caused by the hands of real people and to know that God still loves them can put a bad taste in our mouths. But God sent Jonah to such people, to share his message with them. God has a place in his heart for all people, even those that can’t really believe it or don’t want to know it.

You may remember the parable Jesus told of the prodigal son. A man asked his father for his inheritance. He went off and lived a wild life. But he ran out of money. Eventually he decided he was best off going home but was willing to work as one of his father’s servants. He thought of the words he would have to say when seeing his father again, believing that he was no longer worthy to be called his father’s son. As soon as his father saw him his father ran to him threw him into his arms and kissed him. His son said his words about being unworthy but his father’s response was joy. He had his son back, he was no longer lost but found. He began to celebrate.
God loves us when we come back to him like the father loved his missing son.

The other son in the story was angry though, feeling that he had justified his father’s love and money for the work he had done throughout the years on the farm. But the father loved this son as well.

God loves us when we are angry, jealous or when we have been serving him, just like the father loved his son who remained at home with him.

God loves all, even those we struggle to love and accept. This idea can have knock on effects, it means we can share God’s love with all, not just those we think are capable of responding. It means that anyone who comes through the church doors are bringing joy to God by being here and we should rejoice as well, whatever the age, the dress, the way they express themselves or things we think we know about them. We can rejoice all that God and his followers are doing in this building and outside, whether in churches or on the street, God loves all.

I remember when a girl who was in my flat at university asked to come to church with me. I didn’t get on with her, she bullied people and made my first term at university really difficult. I took her with me but struggled to accept it, she charmed everyone and I wished she hadn’t come. I don’t know if she had a particular reason for wanting to come, she may have just wanted to be close to God in a safe environment. But like Jonah I wasn’t celebrating, I was bitter and annoyed with God. I don’t know where she is now or what she is up to. But God wanted her there and I still need to learn to be like God in those moments, compassionate and gracious. It is a struggle, it is painful but God is there every step of the way.

We may not always understand what God does but praying through these struggles and talking to God about them is something God is waiting for.We hear the Ninevites were evil people but God still wanted them to hear his message, he chased Jonah all over the place so he would share it.

Jonah asked God to “Just kill me now, Lord! I would rather be dead than alive because nothing I predicted is going to happen.” How do we respond when God’s love is realised by someone different to us, do we become like Jonah or celebrate with the angels.

At the end of this story we are left in one place. God asks a question and the story just stops there. Is it simply a question God knows the answer to, is he just trying to make Jonah think?
Maybe God is asking us the question. Maybe we should be the ones wondering about the great city of Ninevah, about all those around us that God loves and cares for every day but don’t even know he exists or even how much he cares for them. Is God asking us, “you see all those people in the world, going about their daily lives, should I not be concerned about them?”

God loves all people but in this story he was passing the baton to Jonah, asking him to talk to the people, in fact, not just talk to them but care about them as well. And in the end Jonah didn’t care. He cared about the plant that gave him shade but he didn’t care about the numerous people who were causing God to grieve. There are still people in our world who cause God to grieve. People he sees suffering, people he sees causing pain. God is grieving about all these things, was there a part two to his question. The story just ends with the thoughts of God, but maybe you can think what happened next, was he saying to Jonah, “should I not be concerned about them? Why are you not concerned about them?”

Is there somewhere God is calling us to be, someone God is calling us to love like he loves us. Should we let this story end with a question or can we be the answer, concerned for someone that is being ignored by everyone else?

There are those around us that don’t have people concerned about them, those who are facing job losses by the government cuts, those who struggle day to day living on the streets, those who have been trafficked and forced to work as slaves in the hidden parts of our world and our town, here in Cheltenham. Does there need to be a little light shining from each one of us out into the world, creating a glow? There are lights that go with each street pastor, lights that go with those working in CHIKS, lights that go with the food given to CCP and lights that go from the acts of kindness people do that no one sees.

I see the lights shining from different places in this church. From the children who invite their friends to their groups and share things about Jesus with their friends to the Open the Book group who go into schools and tell bible stories in imaginative ways. Those who meet people in the hospital, sharing the comforting love of Jesus and those who stand up for what they believe. And Richard and Felicity who work what can seem tirelessly in serving the church and the community. Let us all be like themand others andpray for them, to help them glow even brighter.

In lots of bible stories we read of someone being challenged by God and changing their ways or learning to serve, learning to love. Jonah doesn’t seem to change in our story. Jonah seems to be the same man he was at the start. Are we changed by the stories we read, are we changed by Jonah’s story?

Last term in Hy-tec we were studying significant people from the bible. We were looking to see what had happened to them and how that can relate to our lives. Is the story of Jonah significant in showing us not just how God loved Jonah, not just how God loves us but how he loves others as well.

God wanted to see Jonah changed, to be a man of action and not just of grumbles. What is God expecting of us, who does he want us to be concerned about?

Maybe, God is waiting to hear from us, whether it is anger that has been building up inside or just a hello when we have been quiet for so long. Maybe there is something we just need to let out to God, things we feel he has failed us on, things from the past that we never got over. He has listened to the angry, to Jonah and to Job. He is waiting for us to reach out and seek him.
Maybe there is something God is trying to say to us today? Is he trying to get on our level but we’re not quite able to hear him, pray and ask others for help. There is somewhere he wants us to be, someone he wants us to share with. Pray and ask for his help, ask others to pray with you.
Maybe he just wants you to say hello to someone new, someone you have never spoken to before, someone here in church today.

This chapter is full of the presence of God. When we are angry like Jonah God is there and listening, when we do things wrong like the Ninevites God is there and waiting to forgive us. When we do good things God is there and he is celebrating. In everything God is there with his love. I want to leave you with that insult Jonah made to God that shows the goodness of God’s character, “I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.”







Welcome and
News of the Church Family
Call to worship
A time of praise and worship with Hy-Spirit
Prayer & Lord’s Prayer
Running away
Song with Hy-Spirit
Offering and Dedication
Bubbles, Splash and Xstream meet for the over 3’s
Focus on CHIKS
Prayers of concern
Reading: Jonah 4
Praise and Worship with Hy-Spirit
Strangest Complaint
Hymn 545 Be Thou My Vision
Blessing