Whiteboard: Five Little Words

This Sunday I'm preaching about Jonah.

And while I haven't worked out all the details of the sermon, I'm thinking about starting off like this: "The story of Jonah isn't about a whale at all."

That is true for two big reasons.

The first one is downright Biblical. Jonah 1:17 reads, "the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights."

That's right, the word in scripture is "fish" not "whale." And this isn't just a "Your Bible's translation is different from my Bible's translation" issue either. Jonah is swallowed by a large fish in the King James traslation, the NIV, the NRSV, the CEV, the Message, the Living Bible, the Revised Standard translation, and every other translation that I have on my book shelf here in the church office. And if we remember anything from our third grade science classes, it is that a whale is mammal not a fish. 

So the story of Jonah isn't about a whale at all. 

But I mean that is a broader, thematic, theological sense as well. Because you see, the story of Jonah is really all about God's grace. 

God's grace for Jonah when he keeps running away from his calling. 

God's grace for Ninevah, the city God is set on destroying clear up until they are all converted. 

God's grace for you and for me, that continues to rain down upon us as abundantly as it fell on stubborn old, rebellious, run-away Jonah. 

Why, even once Jonah is belched out of the belly of the fish (and honestly, most translation say "vomited" here) he still can't bring himself to quite do what God commanded of him. Jonah walks a third of the way into one of the biggest cities of the ancient world and speaks five little words. Well, it is five words in Hebrew (thus the title of my sermon this Sunday, and of this very blog post) that we translate as "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." We could summarize Jonah's entire call to conversion in five little words of our own, "Repent soon or else, Ninevah." 

And here's the thing. Here's the amazing, wonderful, miraculous, amazing thing. It works. Those five little words get an entire city to change their course. By sheer numbers, it makes Jonah the most effective prophet of the ancient world -- nobody else brought an entire city to the Lord. And all it took was five little words. 

So this Sunday I'm going to preach about five little words. And I promise you, it won't have anything to do with whales -- it will be all about God's grace!