000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

92 Proper 20 [25]/Year A
people to eat a Sabbath meal (v. 25); it is a day to be enjoyed, in contrast to
the absence of all such days under Pharaoh. Observant Jews still keep the
Sabbath as a day of rest and joy, a temporal sacrament reminiscent of Eden
and pointing to the days of the Messiah still to come. The rest of us, caught
up in the grind of producing and consuming, would do well to recover it.
Exodus 16 calls to mind the Lord’s Prayer—“give us this day our daily
bread.” Appreciation of God’s graciousness in the ordinary is essential, if
we are to see God anywhere at all. The accounts of the feeding of the five
thousand and four thousand deliberately evoke today’s passage with their
repeated emphasis that Jesus fed the hungry “in a deserted place.”
Jonah 3:10–4:11* (Paired)
Although the story of Jonah is told as if it took place in the eighth century
BCE, the book was written after the exile when Palestine was a colony of
Persia. The writer uses the earlier setting to send a message to the community
under Persian rule. Jewish people pondered how to live in relationship
with the relatively friendly but still powerful Persians and with the
growing fact of Jewish Diaspora—Jewish people living in other parts of the
Mediterranean basin. Using satire, the book of Jonah calls the community
to continue the vocation of Genesis12:1–3, to be a nation through whom
other nations come to blessing. Even if the entire book of Jonah cannot be
read in worship, it is a single story and the preacher should tell the whole.
God called Jonah to call the wicked city of Nineveh (on the Tigris River
approximately 450 miles northeast of Jerusalem) to repent, but Jonah
refused the call and fled on a ship for Tarshish (perhaps located near
present-day Spain). In response, God sent a great storm and the sailors
threw Jonah overboard to quiet the sea. God provided a great fish to swallow
and thereby protect the prophet (Jonah 1:1–2:10).
God sent Jonah a second time to Nineveh, where he preached that
the city must repent or be overthrown. The people believed Jonah.
The Ninevites fasted, and in an apparent spoof on how Gentiles sometimes
misunderstand Jewish practices, covered the animals with sackcloth
(a sign of mourning and repentance). When God saw that Nineveh
repented, God did not bring calamity upon them. (Jonah 3:1–10.)
But Jonah was angry that God expressed grace, mercy, and steadfast
love toward Nineveh. He sat down outside the city to see whether, in fact,
God would destroy it (Jonah 4:1–5). God caused a bush to grow and shade
Jonah, but the next day God sent a worm to wither the bush and then sent
a merciless sun and a hot wind so that Jonah wished for death (4:6–8).