3rd Sunday after Epiphany - B
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
January 22, 2006
Preaching in Mosul
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
I don’t remember just how young I was when I first heard the story of Jonah. I’m sure it was in Sunday School or maybe in a children’s Bible. I’m not sure that I thought much about it. I had seen Pinocchio, and I knew that being in the belly of a whale was just not that unusual. Of course I was pretty young.
When I was older, I read about a modern day Jonah in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, or, as I prefer to think of it now, “Just how gullible are you?” This man had been swallowed by a large fish and had been disgorged, unharmed, three days later. Unharmed that is except that his skin was bleached white by the stomach acid of the fish. Or so it was alleged.
It all sounds kind of fishy to me now.
Fishy or not, the story of Jonah and the big fish isn’t in our reading for this morning. In fact, there isn’t anything interesting in our reading this morning. That’s a shame, really, because Jonah is a marvelous story and deserves to be heard more often than once every third year.
We don’t know anything about Jonah except that he was a prophet who is mentioned in passing in 2 Kings1 and that he was the son of Amittai. And we don’t know anything at all about Amittai except that he was the father of Jonah, so that doesn’t help us much.
Jonah was hanging out, doing whatever Jonah did, when he wasn’t doing prophet stuff, when God told him to speak against the Ninevites on account of how wicked they were. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire was the regional bully of Jonah’s day. Nineveh was several hundred miles to the north and east of Judah,mostly east and little north.
So, when Jonah was told to go mostly east and a little north to the city of Nineveh, he quite naturally went to the nearest seaport, walked up to the ticket counter and said, “Give me a ticket on the first boat headed west. There’s a boat leaving for Tarshish in fifteen minutes? Sounds great!”
On the face of it I don’t blame him. Imagine going into any imperial capital city, say, Washington, DC, and shouting that God had seen their wickedness and was about to destroy them. Today, of course, we would be bundled off to a hospital for observation. But in those days they had less elegant ways of dealing with such talk. We would be lucky to get away with our lives. So we can understand Jonah’s reluctance to take this mission on. Maybe we would have bought a ticket for Tarshish, too.
If you’ve read the story before you know that this was not the end of the matter. Apparently God was serious about this mission. God caught up with Jonah and “hurled a great wind upon the sea.” Mediterranean storms can appear suddenly and they can be brutal. This was one of those. Soon all of the sailors, not usually noted for their great piety, were praying hard, each to their own god. They weren’t fussy about which god was addressed as long as they got one to listen to their plight.
Nothing did any good, not even lightening their load, not even demanding that Jonah join them by praying to his God,something that Jonah seems not to have been doing.
The sailors ran a diagnostic procedure involving dice and discovered that the problem was Jonah. As soon as they heard his story—that he was running away from God—they knew they were done for and they rowed in desperation. To no avail. Finally, all out of options, they followed Jonah’s suggestion that they throw him into the sea. Immediately the sea was calm and the sailors all made plans to join Jonah’s church.
Jonah in the meantime was swallowed by a large fish that God had provided and remained in the fish’s belly for three days and three nights. He was praying then! In fact he prayed a beautiful little psalm—one that isn’t in the book of Psalms. The psalm doesn’t quite fit his circumstances, but it has stuff about water and seaweed, so we can see how the psalm ended up in Jonah. And it certainly is beautiful.
And then, in an image any sixth grader can appreciate, the fish spewed, hurled, vomited Jonah out on dry land. And the word of God came to Jonah a second time. And this time Jonah listened and obeyed. Good choice.
Jonah began to walk through the city crying out, “Just forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!” And—wonder of wonders—the people listened. From the lowest to the highest, they listened. And they responded. They fasted and put on burlap bags for clothing. This was a grassroots movement at first but when the king heard about it, he made it official: Everyone was to fast from food and water, everyone was to wear clothing made of burlap, and everyone was to “call upon God forcefully.” More importantly, perhaps,everyone was to turn away from violence.All this on the off chance that God might have a change of heart.
The decree not only included all the people, but the animals as well. I can see it in my mind, all the cats and dogs walking around with their little burlap vests. They, too, must fast. They, too, must cry out to God. This I can believe, knowing what a racket a cat makes when supper is late.
They may be the bullies on the block, but the Ninevites have had a change of heart. They turned from their evil. And God turned from the evil God had intended as well.
And now the story get interesting. And we begin to see why the lectionary committee’s choice is so odd.
This turn of events, this great success of his mission, didn’t make Jonah happy. No, “Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry.”It turns out that we misunderstood Jonah altogether. He didn’t run away from God because he was afraid his mission would fail. He ran away because he was afraid his mission would succeed.
Jonah complained to God, “This is just what I said: I know what kind of a God you are. Sure, you talk trash and threaten to bring destruction on this evil city. But then you get all full of mercy and grace and steadfast love and you let them off the hook. That’s why I didn’t want to come here. That’s why I didn’t want to speak your word to these people. I knew there was a chance they would listen. And if they listened, they might change their ways. And if they changed their ways, all your trash talk would be forgotten. And you’d be all sweet and gracious and loving. I can’t stand it. Kill me now.”
With that Jonah sat down and waited. He waited to see what would happen to Nineveh. There was still the chance, I suppose, that God would destroy the city anyway. Or maybe God would kill Jonah. And Jonah sat and listened to all the Who’s down in Whoville and they were singing.
Okay, I’m making that part up. But I’m not making this up: Jonah sat down and sulked. He sat there and pouted. It was a major snit.
And then a funny thing happened. But not to Jonah’s heart—it remained two sizes too small. No, as Jonah sat there in the hot sun, stewing, God hit the fast forward button and a plant grew up overnight and gave him a little shade. It felt good, that shade did. And Jonah was happy because the plant lived. And then God sent a worm that attacked and killed the plant overnight. The next day dawned with a hot wind blowing and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head as he sat and sulked.
Jonah whined, “I want to die.”
And God spoke again, “Are you right to be angry about the plant?”
“Yes,” Jonah sniveled, “I want to die.”
And then God said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”Notice the animals—they fasted and wore sackcloth, too—so they get special mention.
Jonah was sent with a message to the Ninevites, a warning from God. As far as we know they were not told to repent. They were not told what to do. They were given no way out. But they acted anyway, trusting in the essential goodness of a God they had never known. They turned from violence. And God’s mercy was wide enough to include even them.
Jonah, on the other hand, knows this God intimately, knows this God’s character, knows that this is “a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy.” Jonah knows this and resents it from the bottom of his heart.
And so the story leave him there, on a hill out east of town, sulking like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, a brother who likewise does not understand that God’s mercy stretches further than we can reach, that God’s love embraces more than we can touch, that however wide we imagine God’s circle of concern, it is far wider than that.
Our text today suggests that the point of the story concerns the repentance of the Ninevites. But that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is Jonah’s need for repentance, his need for a heart that reflects the heart of God. The point was always about Jonah’s need to change his attitude toward his enemies.
All this was long time ago. Nineveh has gone the way of all imperial cities. It has crumbled back into the desert dust. All that is left of it is a mound outside the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. A Spanish rabbi traveling in the 12th century visited the site and the local people, both Jews and Muslims, were able to show him the grave of Jonah. I wonder: did Jonah get his wish to die rather than see his enemies spared, to die rather than to see God being God? Did he die still sulking, still defiant, still unrepentant? Or did his heart make up that two-size deficiency? Did he change his mind about the evil he was doing? Did he come to see the city differently with its 120,000 people (and also many animals)?Do he come to see them as God’s children, as his own brothers and sisters?
We don’t know. This story about Jonah ends before Jonah’s story does. We are left with our imaginations to fill in the rest. And, in any event, it’s too late to change the ending, whatever it was.
We don’t know the end of our story, either, but for us it’s not too late to change it. Whether our enemies are single individuals, making fun of us in class when the teacher isn’t paying any attention, or whether they are our enemies as a people, wishing our suffering and even our destruction, The book of Jonah calls us to see them differently. The book of Jonah calls us to see them as God sees them, to love them as God loves them, to hope for them as God hopes for them. Only then will our story have the ending that God wants.
©2012, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
12 Kings 14:25.
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