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Time for a turnaround
Jonah’s eventual obedience and Nineveh’s surprise repentance show there’s a time to turn around (Jonah 3:1-5,10).
Context
- Speaking at the UK parliamentary Business and Trade select committee on Tuesday, the European boss of Fujitsu – the technology company involved in the Post Office Horizon scandal – admitted his company had a ‘moral obligation’ to contribute to compensating the sub-postmasters affected, apologising for Fujitsu’s part in ‘this appalling miscarriage of justice’.
- Oxford University Press has announced their Children’s Word of the Year for 2023: ‘Climate change’. Also shortlisted in the top three: ‘war’ and ‘coronation’.
- On Wednesday, the Christian charity Open Doors UK & Ireland, which aims to support the persecuted church worldwide, published its annual World Watch List for 2024. The list highlights the 50 countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian.
Ideas for sermons or interactive talks
Surprise, surprise!
Were you as surprised as I was to see Fujitsu’s Paul Patterson offer up what seemed to be a frank apology and confession on behalf of his firm for their share of responsibility for the Horizon scandal? I certainly was – but you may be less cynical than me! It’s all too uncommon to see businesses or leaders admitting in public that they have done wrong.
Perhaps it’s just as surprising to read in Jonah chapter 3 of the Ninevites’ response to Jonah’s message. (Once he finally gets round to delivering it after his diversion over and under the sea!) The people of Nineveh seem less reluctant to respond to God than Jonah was himself: he’s not even halfway into the city with his warning when the people begin to believe and fast. Even the king, the big boss, repents, putting on ashes and admitting that he and his city need to change. When God sees ‘how they turned from their evil ways’, he shows them mercy (Jonah 3:10).
When an accusation of wrongdoing is met with apology, it can be tempting to dismiss the response as purely self-serving, offered only to avoid punishment. It can be easy to let righteous anger linger on until it becomes bitterness, as we will see Jonah do in chapter 4. Only time will tell if, and when, adequate compensation will be given to the wronged sub-postmasters, who have already waited so long. But for now let’s work to suppress our cynicism, give thanks for any such signs of repentance at work in our world, and pray and petition to see the hope of coming justice realised.
Turn, turn, turn
More than 5000 children between the ages of 6 and 14 were involved in the research that led to the OUP’s sobering selection of Children’s Word of the Year for 2023. Their choice of ‘climate change’ is a call to us all to turn from the evil ways in which we’ve treated our planet. One girl quoted in the research report (p.4) said: ‘We need to make a change before it’s too late.’ The word voted into second place was ‘war’ – another stark reminder of how badly we adults are messing up. It’s clearly time for us to turn around and make a new start, like Jonah as he climbed out of the fish and set out at last on his mission, or like the people of Nineveh, turning towards God’s mercy.
And if we need help to do this, where does it come from? Well, there’s a hint in the children’s third word, ‘coronation’ – ‘a happier word than the others’ (p.11). Now, King Charles, despite all the celebrations last year and his support for environmental causes, will probably not be enough to save us! But in Christ ‘the kingdom of God has come near’ (Mark 1:15). If we turn to him and his kingdom, perhaps we will find the strength to make the changes our world needs.
Pour out your heart
While Jonah at first tries to avoid God’s call, the fishermen turned fishers of men in Mark’s Gospel enthusiastically throw down their nets to follow Jesus. But whether slow or fast to respond, the call isn’t the end of the story, for them, or for believers today. What follows is a lifetime of service and the challenges it brings. For many Christians around the world those challenges are extreme, and may take the form of persecution and violence simply for the fact of their faith.
The World Watch List 2024 from Open Doors ranks the 50 hardest countries in the world to be a Christian and explores the difficulties faced. Shockingly, there has been a ‘seven-fold increase in attacks on churches, Christian schools and hospitals’ from 2110 in 2023 to 14,766 in 2024. At least 4606 Christians were killed for their faith in sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of those deaths occurring in Nigeria, number six on the list. North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea and Yemen take the dishonour of the top five places.
How to meet this challenge? Pray, “pour out your heart” before God, our refuge (Psalm 62.8). Get informed by choosing a country to explore in more detail and pray about more deeply. If you live in the UK, write to your MP to ask them to read the focused advocacy report (available soon) and consider its recommendations. And take heart from the stories of hope shared by Open Doors (filter by Story type: Impact).
Questions for discussion
- This week’s Sermon ideas asks if we sometimes ‘limit the Gospel to people like us’. Should we be less surprised how ‘open to the possibility of good news’ those outside of church life – whether people, organisations, or wider society – may be?
- Do we sometimes hold back from challenging wrongdoing and injustice because we secretly don’t fully believe in the possibility of change? How can we step away from our cynicism?
- Do we hold back from sharing the gospel because we are fearful of what it might mean for us if others are reconciled to God and come to share in his embrace? Or even because we don’t feel they deserve grace, jealously wanting to reserve it for ourselves?
- How can we learn to feel so secure in God’s limitless love that we can be free to welcome, rather than question, those who respond to God’s call, however much that call or their response to it may surprise us?
- Which of the needs facing us today calls to us most urgently? Justice, climate change, peace, religious freedom, the persecuted church? We can’t do everything – only God is that big! But we can reflect prayerfully on what God may be calling us, personally, to do.
Rebecca Froley lives and worships in the London Borough of Sutton, mainly in a Baptist fellowship but sometimes also in a local Anglican church. She works in online business publishing and enjoys the privilege of continuing to contribute to Roots, for which she was the launch web editor some years ago.
Check-in
Connecting faith with everyday, real-life issues for young people
It’s taken over 20 years – and counting – but I’m slowly learning how God calls me; how he speaks to me.
Maybe that’s not entirely true; I may have known earlier how God speaks to me, but I’ve not always been willing to respond positively to what God is calling me to do.
I may not have walked away from God as clearly and as obviously as Jonah did, but there have been times when I’ve not listened or responded well: For example when I got angry at my kids – even though God nudged me to calm down before I entered their room, or the time I didn’t offer to buy a sandwich for the guy outside Asda, or when I tried to apply for a job that wasn’t a good fit , even when I knew in my heart that God would provide the right one at the right time, but I was getting impatient…
Maybe there was something about Jonah responding to God’s call individually, outside of the community of faith, which led to him walking away from God so dramatically. I respond best to God’s call when I’m in dialogue with others; when we’re sharing together, praying together, bouncing ideas off each other, egging each other on to be more Christ-like. Maybe we respond better to God’s call as a community of believers than I do as an isolated individual.
Jonathan Buckley is Youth Coordinator for Sheffield Methodist Circuit
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