I received an e-mail this last week that captured a piece of me...

one I'm not always proud of...

Stupid people should have to wear signs that just say,

"I'm Stupid".

You wouldn't ask them anything.

"Excuse me...

oops, never mind.

I didn't see your sign."

It's like before my wife and I moved.

Our house was full of boxes and there was a U-Haul truck in our driveway.
My friend comes over and says

"Hey, you moving?"

"Nope. We just pack our stuff up once or twice a week to see how many boxes it takes.

Here's your sign."

A couple of months ago I went fishing with a buddy of mine,

we pulled his boat into the dock,

I lifted up this big 'ol stringer of bass

and this idiot on the dock goes,

"Hey, y'all catch all them fish?"

"Nope -Talked 'em into giving up.

Here's your sign."

I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel.

There was a guy inventing a shark bite suit.
And there's only one way to test it.

"Alright Jimmy,

you got that shark suit on,

it looks good...

They want you to jump into this pool of sharks,

and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you."

"Well, all right,

but hold my sign.

I don't wanna lose it."

Last time I had a flat tire,

I pulled my truck into one of those side-of-the-road gas stations.

The attendant walks out,

looks at my truck,

looks at me,

and I SWEAR he said,

"Tire go flat?"

I couldn't resist. Said,

"Nope. I was driving around and those other three just swelled right up on me.

Here's your sign."

We were trying to sell our car about a year ago.

A guy came over to the house

and drove the car around for about 45 minutes.

We get back to the house,

he gets out of the car,

reaches down and grabs the exhaust pipe,

then says,

"Darn that's hot!"

See? If he'd been wearing his sign,

I could have stopped him.

I learned to drive an 18 wheeler in my days of adventure.

Wouldn't ya know I misjudged the height of a bridge.

The truck got stuck and I couldn't get it out no matter how I tried.

I radioed in for help

and eventually a local cop shows up to take the report.

He went through his basic questioning..

ok..

no problem.

I thought sure he was clear of needing a sign...

until he asked

"So.. is your truck stuck?"

I couldn't help myself!

I looked at him,

looked back at the rig

and then back to him

and said

"no, I'm delivering' a bridge...

here's your sign."

Anyone here know anything about gardening?

You have to do something about the weeds.

They get in the way of growth.

Weeds are little things that can grow into big things...

Wrong thinking, gossiping, marijuana,

how we relate to others.

Take a long time to root out.

weeds are what pull us away from the kingdom of God.

(Matthew 13:25-26) in the end the weeds will be sorted from the wheat.

Jesus also says

you recognize the plant by the fruit it bears.

You might have looked ahead and said,

"Today we're talking about Jonah and the Whale...

what's with the weeds?"

Ah.

Jonah is called by God to go a direction

he didn't want to go.

Went the opposite direction.

Got on a boat.

Waves and storms came and almost overtook the boat.

Nearly wiped them out.

The sailors cast lots and it landed on Jonah.

He was thrown overboard...

into the water.

He was suddenly alone,

and in way over his head,

trying to stay afloat.

The text says, in a very short verse,

"The Lord provided..."

Thank you Lord!

"The Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah,

and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days." (Jonah 1:17)

Ever been thrown over?

Cast overboard because your state is destructive to the ship?

Ever been swallowed up?...

where you are held...

not knowing which way is up...

not knowing whether you are deep or shallow...

not knowing day from night...

no longer breathing...

Did it occur to you in that moment

that it might be God providing for you?

In the belly of the fish Jonah prays thanks to God,

"The waters closed in over me;

the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped around my head...

I went down..."

In the belly of the fish Jonah begins pulling weeds...

maybe started thinking,

"Maybe my existence isn't about me getting what I want...

isn't about me feeling good...

isn't about me going where I'm comfortable..."

In the story God speaks to the fish who,

and I quote,

The flu has swept our nation.

Remember the last time you spewed?

Fish barf.

The next time you begin to believe

that God is real concerned about your car

and your clothes

and your status

and how good you feel about yourself...

fish barf.

So, here we are. Read Jonah 3:1-5, 10 & 4:1

Schadenfreude is a German word.

One of the glorious things about German

is that a single succulent word can capture what it takes four or five words to express in English.

Schadenfreude.

Translation? Hold on to your zeitgeist.

"malicious joy at another person's misfortune."

Schadenfreude.

Here's the deal:

Jonah was perfectly happy to preach hellfire and damnation

to the people of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria,

because frankly, they deserved it.

Horrible people.

Nasty habits.

They were Israel's longtime enemy,

and therefore God's longtime enemy ...

Right?
As long as God pushed the delete key in the end as promised,

and served up the obliteration those miserable Assyrians deserved,

all would be well,

sermon or no sermon.

After all,

the Assyrians had humiliated and crushed the Israelites,

then stripped them

of their culture and their land.

Surely God would never forgive them!

Surely God could not love them!

They had terrorized God's precious chosen people,

and frankly, their behavior had far surpassed Israel's on its worst day

in terms of sheer offensiveness to the Holy One.

Okay, so God assigned to Jonah

the task of preaching prophetically to those abominable heathens

in the wicked city of Nineveh.

That command alone worried our hero.
But what exactly did God mean by calling Nineveh

"that great city"

not once,

but twice?

This really piqued Jonah's suspicions.

Yes, Nineveh was wicked,

but "great"?

It almost sounded like God had a soft spot

for those evil Ninevites!

How worrisome to Jonah

that there was even a remote possibility

that God could see potential

in the most depraved of Israel's enemies!

So he bolted.
The mere notion of preaching to such infidels

was enough to cause Jonah to skip town

in order to avoid God's assignment.

But after escaping on a ship,

almost capsizing in a storm,

being swallowed by a great fish

and then finding himself spewed out on the sand,

Jonah finally accepted God's assignment.

Even so, Jonah consented with all the enthusiasm of a sullen adolescent.

Jonah spent minimal time on his conversion sermon.

In fact, the message was a mere eight words in English:

"Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown."

In Hebrew, it took only four words.

And can you picture the delivery?

All the enthusiasm of a Ben Stein lecture.

Forty days more ...

and Nineveh ...

shall be ... overthrown.

Much to Jonah's utter astonishment,

the sermon was a breathtaking success!

A real life-changer!

Out came the sackcloth!

Into the fire went all the little statues of fertility gods.

Who knew this whiny excuse for a preacher

could move the sorry heathens of Assyria to sing

"Change My Heart O God"

en masse?

And Jonah's reaction?

He was absolutely livid.

How dare God change God's mind

and not obliterate Nineveh!

How dare God forgive the unforgivable!

How dare God love people that Jonah hated!

So now, in our text,

Jonah is having a whale of a time.

While he begins stuck in schadenfreude

and we never see him unstuck --

the story closes with Jonah chock-full of

"sorrow at another person's joy."

Jonah pouts like a fool sitting beside a withered castor bean plant.

Who is this Jonah?

He is the patron saint of anyone who secretly smiles

when the high school prom queen shows up at the 10th reunion

with 60 extra pounds and her third husband.

He is the soul mate of the employee who feels delicious pleasure

when the boss is suddenly sacked with fifteen minutes to clear his office.

He is the poster child of all who appreciate reading in the newspaper

about the "family values" politician

who winds up photographed in a hot tub with "a woman not his wife."

Jonah reminds us that

even in the community of faith --

and perhaps especially in the community of faith --

we confuse what we hate

with what God hates.

Let me ask you something...

do we, like Jonah, find pleasure in hating?

Joy in our enemy's misfortune?

rather than God's glory and the growth of the kingdom?

Are we also schtucke in schadenfreude?

While "hate" increasingly becomes newsbreaking --

stories of hate crimes, hate groups, hate Web sites permeate the media --

in the presence of such malevolence.

And they certainly are not Christian,

even if they call themselves some sort of religious group!

But Jonah provides a new mirror for us to examine ourselves.

Jonah presents a painfully clear reflection

of slice-of-life malevolence.

display glaring, colorful hatefulness for all the world to scorn...

Jonah reminds us that

hate also takes shape in souls that appear to be respectable and faithful.

Souls like ours.

Is schadenfreude pervasive in our souls?

Do we experience a touch of joy when others falter?

Or is freudeschmerz our problem?

Translation...

do we experience sadness when others find pleasure?

Do we rejoice when those we despise --

or merely find annoying --

suffer?

find themselves touched by grace?

Or have we become so intimate with the God of love

that we routinely shower our enemies,

our rivals,

our vexing acquaintances

with Christ-like compassion?

According to Jonah's story,

God saves even our enemies

if they turn from faithlessness to holiness.

This is excruciating for those of us who delight in the notion that

God detests all the people,

all the ideas,

and all the organizations

that we detest.

Jonah reminds us that "wickedness" springs

not from the fact that

you are not like me,

or "they" are not like "us."

Wickedness ensues

when people are not like God,

whether those people in question happen to be

Ninevites, Serbs, Iraqis,

Democrats, Republicans,

or any one of us.

God's point is the point of this story...

not that fish swallow people...

this allegory...

and everybody is invited.

Even the obnoxious neighbor who yells at our dog.

Even the coworker who stabs people in the back.

Even the church leader whose attitude is so self-righteous.

Even those nasty Ninevites.

Even us.

God's plan is that

everyone will be saved

by turning away from wickedness and toward

the only God who can free a guy from the belly of a fish,

the only God who can transform an entire city of heathens,

the only God who can melt hateful hearts.

God persists as the only one who can change us, too.

Jonah's story ends with a question.

God tosses one to Jonah, and we never hear the answer:

"And should I not be concerned about Nineveh,

that great city (one more time),

in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons

who do not know their right hand from their left,

and also many animals?" (Jonah 4:11).

It is fore-shadowing of the loving father's words

to the prodigal's older brother in Luke:

"Son, you are always with me,

and all that is mine is yours.

But we had to celebrate and rejoice,

because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life;

he was lost and has been found" (Luke 15:31-32).

In both stories we are left without a tidy ending.
The ball is in Jonah's court.

Whether he sulks through the remainder of Nineveh's penance

or comes around to see things God's way,

we do not know --

just as we do not know

whether the prodigal's brother ever comes inside to join the welcome home bash.

And there is no tidy ending for us, either.

Whether we spend the rest of our lives stuck in schadenfreude,

frittering away in freudeschmerz,

or gravitating toward grace,

it is yet to be seen.