Room at the Table (All Saints' Sunday; Jonah (selected verses); November 6, 2016)

Room at the Table

All Saints' Sunday
Jonah (selected verses)
November 6, 2016

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. Maybe I heard it in Sunday School or maybe I read it 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”. A 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 sounds kind of fishy to me now.

We don't know anything about Jonah except that he was a prophet who is mentioned in passing in 2 Kings 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 doing whatever Jonah did, when God told him to speak against the Ninevites on account of their wickedness. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, the empire du jour in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley. 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 little north to the city of Nineveh, he went to the nearest seaport, went up to the ticket counter and said, “Give me a ticket on first boat headed west and a little south.”

On the face of it I don't blame him. Imagine going into any imperial capital city and shouting to the people 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 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 the sailors, not usually known for their prayer lives, 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 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 made sacrifices and offered vows to Jonah’s God.

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 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, but it contains references to water and seaweed, so we can see the connection. And it certainly is beautiful.

And then, in language any sixth grader can appreciate, the fish “spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.” And the word of God came to Jonah a second time. And this time Jonah listened and obeyed. No big surprise.

Jonah began to walk through the city crying out, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall 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 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 cry mightily to God. More importantly perhaps, everyone was to turn from violence. All this on the off chance that God might have a change of heart.

The decree not only included all the people, it included the animals, too. I can see it my mind: all the cats and dogs walking around with their little burlap vests. They, too, are to fast. They, too, are to cry out to God. This I can believe, knowing what a racket our cat makes when supper is late.

They may be the big kids on the block, but the Ninevites have a change of heart. They turn from their evil. And God turns from the evil God had intended as well.

And now the story gets interesting. This turn of events, this great success of Jonah's mission, we are told, “was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.” It turns out that we misunderstood him 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.

“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 your mercy and grace and steadfast love kick in 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 just can't stand it. Kill me now.”

And 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 him. 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. Not to Jonah's heart—no, 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 in a single day and gave him a little shade. And 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 are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 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?” Notice the animals—they fasted and wore sackcloth, too—so they don't get left out.

Jonah was sent with a message to the Ninevites, a warning from God. As far as we know he did not tell them 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 their 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 gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Jonah knows this and resents it from the bottom of his heart.

And so the story leaves 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 extends further than we can reach, that God's love embraces more than we can touch, that however many places we set at the table, there is always room for another.

Conventional wisdom imagines 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 never about the need of Jonah's enemies to change their ways. The point was always about Jonah's need to change his attitude toward his enemies.

All this was a 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 to 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 with its 120,000 people who did not know their right hand from their left (and also many animals) differently. Did 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, Jonah calls us to see them differently. 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 can our story have the ending that God wants.

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