Scripture can be found here.... be sure to click through to each chapter! We read the whole thing.
This week I read these words:
“The book of Jonah is simultaneously pathetic and hilarious.” (J. Clinton McCann, Narrative Lectionary Commentary on Jonah at WorkingPreacher.org.)
And that is so true. Looked at
one way, this book really does tell us about all the troubles of the prophet,
from his causing a storm that made his shipmates throw him overboard, to his being
inside the belly of a great fish calling out pathetically to God, to his being
under a hot sun with nothing to shade him.
Looked at another way, of course,
this is a book about a backwards prophet—one who goes left when God tells him
to go right, one who spouts bad poetry inside a fish before the fish spews him
out onto a beach, and one who pouts over his own success at being a prophet like
some kind of kid who really, really wanted that piece of candy before dinner. Kind
of hilarious.
But before we get to Jonah in all
his quirkiness, we need to understand exactly where he’s coming from. Where he’s
coming from, is exile.
Last week we were with the
northern kingdom under Ahab, as being challenged by the prophet Elijah. This
week we stay with the history of the northern kingdom—only that kingdom has
been destroyed. Around the year 740 BCE, in the midst of a dispute between the
northern and southern kingdoms, the king of Judah (in the south) asked for help
from the king of Assyria. Assyria stepped in, and conquered all ten tribes of
the northern kingdom, and carried their people away into exile.
Exile, along with creation and
slavery, is one the pivotal events of the Old Testament. Not many of us know
what it is to be exiles, to be taken away from our homes—often without
warning—into another land. People from coastal New York and New Jersey know, many
of them. One day they were in their homes, and the next they were
elsewhere—with friends, or family, or more likely, in shelters, with no idea
when they might return home or what they would find when they got there. That
is a kind of exile.
This information casts a
different light on the book of Jonah. Or, perhaps, it casts a shadow. At the
outset of the story, God speaks to Jonah: “Go at once to Nineveh, that great
city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me”
[Jonah 1:2]. Jonah is commissioned by God to carry a message to the people of
Nineveh—the capital of Assyria. The message is one of warning, that God will
destroy Nineveh for its wickedness.
Jonah speaks not a word, but his
actions speak loudly. God says, Go east—that is, towards Nineveh. And instead,
Jonah goes west—to Tarshish, “Away from the presence of the Lord.”
Interesting prophet, whose
instinct is to flee from God. But God does have a way of getting our attention,
and God gets Jonah’s attention of by hurling wind at the sea, causing the ship
to come close to breaking up.
The mariners all cry to their
gods for help, and they cast lots to figure out what the problem is. This would
be kind of like asking a Ouija board to point to the person at fault. The lots
point to Jonah, who pretty quickly owns up to the whole situation. He even
tells them to throw him overboard. But the very decent mariners refuse, and
just keep rowing. Eventually, with a prayer to God not to blame them for
Jonah’s death, they pitch him into the sea like a crate of spoiled bananas. And
a “great fish,” appointed by God to the task, promptly swallows him.
From the belly of the fish, Jonah
prays. Jonah’s psalm sounds pretty good to us, to our English speaking ears.
But you know that scene in “Sister Act,” in which Whoopi Goldberg is pretending
to be a nun, and she’s asked to bless the meal? And she ends up praying a
fabulous mishmash of the traditional Catholic grace, the 23rd Psalm,
the Lord’s Prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance? That’s what Jonah’s prayer
sounds like to Hebrew-speaking ears. And, evidently, to God’s ears. It’s so bad,
it even makes the big fish sick to his stomach. Finally, God gives the fish the
go-ahead, and Jonah is spewed out, presumably onto some ancient Assyrian beach.
God speaks once again to Jonah,
whom I imagine sitting there covered in krill and sand. “Get up, go to Nineveh,
that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you” [Jonah 3:2]. And
let’s be clear: for God to send Jonah to Nineveh is on a par with sending a Jew
to Berlin in 1939, or sending an African to Lynchburg, Virginia in 1850. But
Jonah goes. He goes to Nineveh to proclaim God’s message. And it’s simple, and
to the point: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” [Jonah 3:4b]
Now, I could imagine this being
an incredibly satisfying message for a prophet to proclaim. Jonah is getting to
tell the capital city of Assyria, the kingdom that is responsible for the
misery and exile of his people, that they are sinners, that their wickedness
has come up before the Lord like some kind of foul stench. And Jonah’s message
is wildly successful! From the king to the tiniest child to the last member of
every herd, they put on sackcloth to show that they are remorseful. And each
and every person and animal fasts, as well, not a morsel of food or a sip of
drink touching anyone’s mouth. This is how remorse is shown in the ancient
world. In the 21st century, we might kneel and pray, and make amends
by contacting those we’ve harmed. In the ancient world, people put on garments
of rags, and cover themselves in ashes, and stop eating and drinking. And God
sees their actions, hears their prayers, and God changes his mind. Again.
But Jonah is furious. This is not
satisfying to Jonah. This does not give him joy, that the word of God has been
passed successfully to the people of the land that took his people into exile,
and they have won a reprieve. Jonah does not think, “Oh good! I’ve helped to
save them!” Quite the opposite. Jonah says, “O Lord! Is not this what I said
while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the
beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O
Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live”
[Jonah 4:2b-3].
Jonah wants God to punish the
Ninevites. Jonah wants them to suffer for the bad things they have done. And for all the ways this story pokes
fun at Jonah, I think we need to pause a moment, and recognize that Jonah’s
sentiments are very, very human. And most of us don’t have to look any further
than our own reactions to being harmed to understand where Jonah is coming from.
Think of a time when you were
hurt, or your child was hurt, or someone else whom you love with a protective
love. There is a young woman somewhere out there who hurt my daughter in the
fifth grade, the thought of whom still raises my blood pressure. Think of a
time your community was hurt, or your country—think of our collective response
after September 11, or after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was a rare person
who, in the aftermath of attack, thought, “If only we could give our attackers
an opportunity to repent, we would be so joyful to hear that they had a change
of heart.” That didn’t happen. If it did, it didn’t happen much.
Jonah’s reaction is a very human
reaction.
And it is not God’s reaction. This
is the way God is described in scripture, over and over: gracious, merciful,
slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, ready to forgive. Over and over.
So… if you happen to hear people invoke a God who is eager to punish, to rain
down fire and brimstone on any particular person, or any particular country, following
any particular event… well, God is simply not likely to agree with that plan. Again,
Saint Anne Lamott says it best: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in
your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”[i]
The problem is, God loves
everyone. God loves us. God created us in love, and re-creates us in love, and
redeems and sustains us in love. And God loves the people we hate, too. God
loves the people who have harmed us. Even though there are moments in scripture
that seem to contradict this notion, there are far more that affirm it.
Thus, the troubles of the prophet
Jonah, hilarious and pathetic as they—and he—may be. Jonah is hilarious and
pathetic, and he is also a tremendously effective prophet. Everywhere he goes,
God’s message is heard and people respond. God is able to use Jonah, despite
his best efforts not to be used. God is able to save through Jonah, despite
Jonah’s best efforts not to save.
We don’t know how Jonah’s story
ends. This happens occasionally in scripture. Characters are introduced, and
then slip away, without a satisfactory resolution to their story, without an
“Amen!” to wrap things up. The last words we hear are the words of God, who says,
very reasonably, “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city,
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?” And that’s it.
The end. We don’t know how Jonah will respond. We don’t know what chapter 5
will bring.
All we know is how we will
respond to a gracious God, a merciful God, a God who is slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. We might respond
with relief. We might respond with joy. We might respond with anger. We might
respond with resentment. We might find ourselves bathing in the cool and
refreshing river of God’s love and mercy, or we might find ourselves sitting
furiously under the sultry south wind of our own anger and self-righteousness.
And no matter how we respond, it will
not lessen or change the essential character of God—towards our enemy, or
towards us. We will never wear God out. We can still be assured of that grace, still be confident of that mercy, still
count on that slowness to anger, and that abundant, steadfast love, and that
eagerness not to have to punish. For us. For them. For us again. We will never
wear God out. God will never change. Thanks be to God for that. Amen.
[i] Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing
and Life (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1994), 22.
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