Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Grace to you and peace from our God, and from our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
A little boy is sitting through his third grade science unit on marine biology and the teacher is talking about whales. The little boy pipes up and says, "I know about whales, the prophet Jonah was swallowed by one." Well the teacher looks at the little boy and says that she doesn’t believe that for one minute. But the third grader insists that it is true; Jonah was swallowed by a whale and he lived to tell about it. His teacher says that the story about Jonah being swallowed by whale is just that, a story, and besides, you can’t prove that it happened because Jonah lived so long ago. So the little boy says, "well when I get to heaven I’m going to ask Jonah if he was swallowed by a whale myself." And the teacher retorts, "Jimmy, what if Jonah didn’t go to heaven." "Well," says Jimmy, "then you can ask him."
The story of Jonah is one of the best known stories in the Bible because it is one of the most absurd. And just for the record, before we go any further, Jonah wasn’t swallowed by a whale at all, at least not according to the Bible, in the Bible it says that Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish. Either way it’s a crazy story that has plagued Biblical literalists forever. It is not so much a problem story because it is absurd. The problem is that this is such a silly story full of serious truth, and I guess the fear is that if you don’t believe the story is true, you won’t believe that the message is true.
Those of us who take the Bible seriously, understand that the stories we read in the Bible are not necessarily in there because things literally happened that way. Rather, the stories we read, have been written down and collected into the book because they are stories of meaning. Meaning for us on the literal and the spiritual level. I like what the Native Americans do - often before beginning a tale about their origins the storyteller would preface her remarks by saying, "I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true." So when it comes to the book of Jonah, what I would like to convey is that this crazy little story has much to teach us which is true.
The book of Jonah begins with a call from God. He says to Jonah, "Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me." And what does Jonah do? He books the first boat for a city called Tarshish that lies in the exact opposite direction of Ninevah. Well, God catches up with Jonah pretty quickly. He sends a fierce storm, and all the sailors on Jonah’s ship panic and ask him what they should do. He tells them to throw him overboard. They first try to row to dry land, but the waves come up against them and they can’t make it. He admits to them that it is his God who is angry, and not only that, his God can calm the waters because it was his God who made them. So the sailors pray to Jonah’s God, ask forgiveness in advance for their actions, and toss Jonah overboard. (Curiously enough, our reluctant prophet, in spite of his pitiful example, succeeds in converting a ship full of sailors.)
Well Jonah isn’t floating for long before God sends a fish to pick him up. The Bible records Jonah’s prayer of thanksgiving and deliverance, which he cries out while inside the belly of the fish. His strange journey lasts for three days, and was cited by Christ himself as a sort of prophetic foreshadowing of his own death and resurrection, and then the fish literally vomits Jonah up onto the shores of Ninevah.
Now, imagine this man entering the gates of a great city after three days in a fish belly all covered in his host’s vomit. Let’s just say Jonah wouldn’t have had any trouble drawing attention to himself. Now most prophets enter a city and say something like, "repent for the end is near!" Well not Jonah. He could care less if the people of Ninevah repent because he doesn’t care about the people of Ninevah at all. Jonah wanders through the city streets for three days and shouts, "Forty more days and Ninevah shall be overthrown!" I think after three days he might have even been enjoying his doom and gloom message.
The people of Ninevah believe him and take it upon themselves to repent. And not just the people, the king issues a royal decree and calls for every man, woman, child, and animal to repent, fast, and wear sackcloth. Again it is a totally absurd picture. Jonah is running around the city covered in crusty fish, well you know, and chickens, cows, small children and nobles are passing by him covered in sackcloth. Delightful.
But the extreme effort works. God spares the people of Ninevah and Jonah… well how do you think he reacts? Surprisingly, Jonah gets really, really mad. "O Lord!" he says, "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." Jonah is furious with God for having mercy on these people. He is indignant that God would have the audacity to forgive them. And frankly, Jonah is extremely put out that he was chosen to come all this way with bad news and now there wasn’t even going to be a big apocalyptic showdown. No fire from heaven, pillars of salt, plagues of locusts. Just forgiveness. And really, where’s the fun in that.
Jonah is so mad that he says to God, "O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." And God looks down on Jonah and says, Jonah "is it right for you to be angry?" But whether it is right or not, Jonah is angry. He storms out of the city and sets himself up at a distance to wait and see what God does to these heathens. But God does nothing to the Ninevites except forgive them and all is well.
God keeps working on Jonah, however. He has a little plant grow up quickly beside Jonah to provide him with shade, and Jonah loves the little plant. And then God has a little worm come along and eat the plant, and Jonah becomes angry enough to die again. Then God looks at Jonah and asks again, "how can you be angry with me for letting a plant die, but disappointed in me for sparing the lives of a hundred and twenty thousand people and their animals?"
And God has a point. There is a major flaw in Jonah’s thinking.
His problem is very obviously a lack of love for neighbor. He doesn’t love his neighbors the Ninevites. In his mind they are heathens who deserve the very worst God can lay on them. He doesn’t care if they repent, doesn’t warn them to repent, doesn’t really even want them to repent. He wants the Ninevites to get what they deserve.
And I think Jonah’s story is an important one for us because, Jonah is a perfect example of that well-developed sense of justice we all seem to be born with. We struggle with forgiveness for a number of reasons. First we believe against all odds, that our sense of justice is only one.
There is also the matter of our pride, it is much easier to feel superior to others when they are sinning and you are not. It’s easier to look down on people when you are already occupying the moral high ground. But the truth is, there really is no moral high ground in the great scheme of things. I think the reality of our situation is that God has placed all of us on a level playing field, and God loves us all.
It is harder to hear that we are supposed to love others the way God loves them. God’s desire to forgive us and help us is never in question.
Barbara Brown Taylor really captures the challenge here, when she says, "If God is willing to stay with me in spite of my meanness, my weakness, my stubborn self-righteousness, then who am I to hold those things against someone else? Better I should confess my own sins than keep track of yours, only it is hard to stay focused on my shortcomings. I would so rather stay focused on yours, especially when they are hurtful to me. It is called bitterness and it can do terrible things to the human body and soul."
We see that bitterness at work in Jonah, who would rather die than live in a world where Ninevites are forgiven. He feels more love and concern for a little plant than he does for tens of thousands of people. Now Jonah’s bitterness and his values are almost as absurd as his journey in the belly of the great fish. And yet, I have seen people cling to bitterness, hatred, and the wrongs of others because in their unconscious minds they know that forgiveness will only confuse the issue, open the wound and the opportunity for them to be hurt again.
As absurd as Jonah may seem, I’ve seen far too many people, even people in my own family, set up shop like Jonah did out in the fields beyond the city. Their anger puts them at a distance, and their stubbornness makes them content to wait and watch for their enemy to get what they deserve. It’s a sad way to live. And I wish it happened as rarely as people getting swallowed by giant fish, but, well, I’m afraid it it is much more common than that.
A friend told me about something that happened during a flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, to London, England. A woman with a thick European accent got on the plane. She came down the aisle to the tourist section and discovered her seat assignment put her right next to a man with, shall we say, an African accent. She looked at her seat assignment; she saw it was correct. She asked her seatmate, "I'm sorry, are you in the right seat?" He smiled and nodded yes. She turned around to see if there were any other empty seats in the section but she didn't see any so she tugged on the sleeve of the flight attendant. "Excuse me," she said, "as you can see, I'm sitting next to a person whose skin color is different from mine." "Yes, ma'am, I can see that." "Well," she said, "this is simply unacceptable. Is there another available seat?" The flight attendant looked at her strangely and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, it's against our policy to move people unnecessarily." "You don't understand," said the wealthy woman, "this arrangement will not do. I have funds in my purse to arrange an alternative." The flight attendant said, "You do?" "Yes, I do. Would you please go up to first class and see if there is an available seat? I simply cannot sit next to this person." The flight attendant shrugged her shoulders, walked up the aisle. A few minutes later she returned. She leaned over the European woman, tapped the man with the African accent, and said, "I'm sorry, sir, I hate to do this. I must make a seating change. If you follow me, we have a place for you in first class."
The love of God makes it possible to give every person first-class treatment. Sometimes, however, we get stuck in our same old seats.
God is willing to love anybody. Even Jonah. Even you and me. The difficulty is not in telling ourselves this is true. The difficulty is believing it's true for everybody else. George Herbert wrote, the person who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself." Amen.