February 8, 2026
Making Room for Change
Jonah 3:1-10; Colossians 3:5-14
Rev. David Germer
That’s one of my favorite passages of Scripture. If you wanted to memorize a chapter of the Bible, I think it’d be hard to do better than Colossians 3, which calls us, so beautifully, to transformation – to changed lives.
We’ve been making room – in our lives and in our hearts and in our church – for all kinds of things this year: hope, lament, generosity. Today we’re thinking about making room for change.
Our second text is from the 3rd chapter of Jonah, a little narrative story, a book of just four chapters, tucked in with the minor prophets. This might be my favorite book of the First Testament.
I bet you know the story, but just in case, let me give a quick recap of what’s happened in the first two chapters.
- Jonah the prophet was called by God to go to Ninevah – a foreign land of people who don’t worship God, and as far as Jonah knows, are terrible in every way – enemy number one, for Israel… and so Jonah says no. He tried to escape God’s presence, but it didn’t work; the God of boundless love seeks and pursues and finds him, on board a ship headed in the opposite direction.
- All kinds of surprising things happen on the ship. In a moment of foolish recklessness or beautiful selflessness, he tells these foreign, gentile sailors to throw him overboard, believing the hardships they’re facing at sea are because of him. In that moment, finally, he sees that God’s love is for us, but never only for us – it finds us, and spills out into others. And so he offers his life, for theirs.
- He’s thrown overboard and descends into the open sea – into chaos, and death, and Sheol – and the God of boundless love pursues him even there, finds him there, and brings deliverance, even from there… in the form of the belly of a fish.
- Chapter 2 ends with the conclusion of Jonah’s prayer of Thanksgiving, and with the fish vomiting Jonah up onto dry land.
- Close curtain. Time passes.
Listen for the word of God, in Jonah 3:
3 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I hope you chuckled your way through that reading. This is a strange, funny passage. It’s a strange, funny book! I invite you, I encourage you… I assign you (!) – to read it later today. It’s short, but so rich.
I want to look with you at the comically surprising actions of Jonah, of the Ninevites, and of God… to see what they have to teach us about the nature of change.
First: Jonah.
The beginning of chapter 3 is almost identical to the beginning of the book, chapter 1. The word of the Lord comes to Jonah, telling him to proclaim a message to Nineveh. The first time Jonah flees; he runs in the opposite direction. This time, Jonah now appears to be ready to obey. He’s made his peace with the fact that he can’t escape the God of boundless love. And so he goes to Nineveh.
God had a purpose in delivering Jonah from death, by the fish, and we are seeing that purpose here in chapter 3. He is saved, in order to be sent. We see that language of being sent, throughout the Bible. Abraham is blessed to be a blessing – called by God and sent out to other people. Jesus was sent by God for a purpose, and in the same way Jesus sends out the disciples, with the Holy Spirit. This is what God does: claim people – call them, save them, bless them – in order to send them out in mission, for a purpose.
So, Jonah goes into Nineveh, which the text goes out of its way to tell us is huge – a three days journey across. Historians say that is absurd. There is no record of the actual city of Nineveh being anywhere near that large. But the author of Jonah is making a point: it’s a really big city. And I think he’s making the point, to help us see Jonah’s action in a particular light. Jonah has barely entered the city – our translations says he has gone a day’s walk, but the Hebrew is vaguer, suggesting this is just that at some point on the first day – so he’s barely begun his entrance into the city, when he calls out (although again, the Hebrew could be read that he simply preaches, or even says, “40 days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”)
The image I have, is of Jonah, obeying, yes… but by doing the bare minimum amount of warning, of proclaiming this prophetic message. And, did you notice we hear that God will give Jonah a message to proclaim, and we hear the message that Jonah proclaims… but we don’t ever actually hear if Jonah got the message right. Again, my reading is that he gets it part right – that God did tell Jonah to warn the Ninevites that they will be overthrown… but this would be a pretty unique prophetic message, if it didn’t include some command, or opportunity, to repent! To turn around, and change their ways. Jonah conveniently seems to have left that part out.
Jonah’s actions in chapter 1 were absurd and disturbing; for a prophet to flee the presence of God was unheard of. And now, at first, we think he is on the right track, he’s doing it… but I think we are meant to get our hopes up only to encounter an equally absurd, pathetic response.
The question is: Why? Why would he give such a timid, weak sauce sermon? Chapter 4 (which you’ll read later today), tells us the reason: he doesn’t want it to work.
He doesn’t really want the Ninevites to change.
Where would he direct all his anger and his rage, if they changed?
That’s sort of an existential question that’s worth pondering, and I don’t mean about Jonah… I mean for us.
Who are the folks who would be most shocking for God to send us to?
Who would we least want to see changed… because their doing so would threaten our sense of superiority and self-satisfaction with how we’re doing?
[long pause]
It’s hard, isn’t it? I find this hard, because unlike in Jonah’s situation, enemy number one, in my mind and heart… isn’t that far away; isn’t entirely disconnected from my life, in the way the Ninevites likely were, for Jonah.
The destruction and harm caused by ICE, the current administration in our country, those who casually and callously dehumanize others – through racism, reckless violence as a show of force; those who abuse anyone, especially children… and those who protect abusers; those who blatantly lie and deceive for their own purposes; those who are incapable of acknowledging any wrongdoing, at any point, in any way. I mean… it’s one thing when enemy number one in our minds is a faraway place we’ve heard stories about. It’s another when it’s the water you’re swimming in, that’s slowly poisoning people and places you hold dear. I don’t think that I, or anyone else who happens to be with me on any of that… it’s not that we don’t want those people to change; we do, desperately.
But if I’m honest, my hesitancy and discomfort is this: a) I think they are beyond reach… or b) if somehow they weren’t… I don’t want them to get off easy. And like Jonah… I’m a little worried that God is more forgiving than I am.
But let’s take those people – those I mentioned, or maybe entirely different people you thought of – and picture them, as we look at the comically shocking response to Jonah’s half-hearted proclamation.
The Ninevites hear this partial, pathetic, prophetic word, that doesn’t even include a command or invitation to a course correction… and they immediately, completely… believe God. Not only do they believe, they immediately spring into action! They proclaim a fast and confess and lament; the king himself removes his robe and sits in ashes, showing his people, in an absurd and extreme way, the extent to which he has been wrong. Can you imagine a leader like that? [pause]
It’s hard, but not just because I’ve primed you to think about what’s happening in our country, now.
Do you know which other leaders almost never respond to being confronted with wrongdoing in this way?
The leaders of the people of Israel. The other prophetic books are full of stories and images of the prophets confronting the kings of Israel and Judah with warnings and reminders of the way God has called them to live, and almost always… they laugh! They ignore! Or, they try to have the prophet killed!
Not the king of Nineveh. He commands even the animals to wear sackcloth and cry out to God. He completes the part of the message that Jonah almost certainly received from God and conveniently left off: repentance! The opportunity to change. The King of Nineveh commands his people to turn from evil and violence, to change their ways, saying: “who knows? maybe God will relent and change his mind?”
Many of us might instinctively say: “That person doesn’t understand God. ‘Change his mind?’ God doesn’t change his mind!”
But here’s verse 10 again – the closing line of this chapter, and scene: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.”
I think it is true to say, and probably essential to say, that the character of God is unchanging. It is true to say that there is not a single instance in the Bible of God changing his mind in order to be more vindictive than God originally said he would be.
What is also true though, is that because of God’s unchanging character, because God is, centrally, primarily, first and foremost, the God of boundless love… God seems surprisingly willing to relent, to give in and show grace… IF people align themselves with God’s redemptive work of love and peace, and turn away from evil and violence. Sadly, of course, people often do not change. And then things go badly. We see some of the “divine wrath” that we heard in Colossians, the very word and concept that tends to make us deeply uncomfortable, because we think a wrathful God is equal to a “big meany God” without love. (That’s the theological term for it, by the way: “big meany God.”)
But that’s not the case.
There’s an image that I’ve shared before, because it’s been so helpful for me, as I’ve wrestled over the years with an unchanging God whose responses to people seem to change; wrestled with a God who is love, and is also, at times, seen as wrathful.
I had an Old Testament prof in seminary, who was really into sailing, and the way he described God’s wrath – God’s anger and punishment against people acting out of line with God’s ways – was like this:
Imagine you are out on the water, sailing in the middle of a great sea, and you are trying to reach the other side, and the wind is blowing, mightily, toward your destination. There is no greater feeling than getting your sail up and positioned correctly, feeling the wind at your back, and being pushed exactly where you are going. The force of that wind feels like being caught up in God’s pleasure and love.
But, if you decide to resist that wind, if you decide you are going to go in the opposite direction, the force of the wind – the exact same good and mighty and beautiful wind – feels like wrath. Nothing about the wind has changed… but our experience of it is entirely different, based on whether or not we partner with what the wind is doing, allow ourselves to be aligned with it, and where it is taking and blowing us.
That’s helpful to me, as I think about wrath, but also as I think about change.
The change that Jonah went through, and that I need to allow and pursue in myself, daily: where I am resisting God’s powerful force of boundless love, and how can I realign? How can I put to death those things, and clothe myself with goodness and love? How can I make room for change, in myself?
It’s helpful in thinking about the change I long for in others… in those who I see most clearly working against God’s purposes, who, if I’m honest, I too often have already given up on. Those who – again, if I’m honest – I don’t want to just be able to right their ship and get swept up in God’s love, without them feeling the consequences of what they’ve done to others. “Capsize their boat, God!” is my honest prayer.
And God can take that. But I can’t read Jonah and not come away recognizing that I need to make room for God to change others. I have to want that, and pray for that, and believe that it’s possible.
And it’s also helpful in thinking about the change we see even in God.
Years ago, I came across a book of poems on the book of Jonah, by a Presbyterian minister in New York, Thomas John Carlisle. Here’s one:
LIMITATION
God changed His mind
because they had changed
their hearts.
He repented
because they repented.
That is the way
we word it
sometimes.
But always
He is limited
only by
His limitless love.
How does the limitlessness of God’s love change how you think about making room God to change you? To change others?
How would you act toward others, if you believed that God is capable, and desperately wanting to bring all people into alignment with the force of that love, that feels like a mighty, rushing wind?
If they did change… how are you called to respond?
For the sake of grace and love, God is willing to change; let’s not impose limits on what God’s love can do – how it can change you, how it can change those you might find unlovable… God doesn’t give up on you and me, and there is no-one outside the scope of God’s transformative, changing work, in Jesus Christ. Amen.