A Fishing Tale

On this Third Sunday after Epiphany, I am once again at All Saints Church in Worcester. The readings for the day, including the reading from Jonah, can be found here.

Jonah was a prophet, but he never really got it. (Sad but true!)

The Word of the Lord came to Jonah, as it has come to God’s people throughout the Bible and down through the ages: to Abraham and Sarah, to Moses and Miriam and to Joshua the son of Nun and Rahab the prostitute; to Samuel and Jeremiah and Deborah and Esther and Mary Magdalene and as we just heard in this gospel reading, Simon Peter and Andrew and the Zebedee boys. Each of them, and each of us, called by name by the living God.  

The Bible doesn’t give us a lot of specifics about how that call became clear to any of them or how you develop ears to hear “the Word of the Lord.” But I’ve noticed two things that seem to be consistent throughout the Biblical narrative and down to present day, even when people come to the Commission on Ministry looking for some guidance in discerning God’s call:

(1)   It is impossible to hear God if you are doing all of the talking, so you need to learn how to be quiet and listen, not just to God but other people;

(2)   God is very likely to push you out of your comfort zone and ask you to take a risk that you feel ill-prepared for.

If the call is persistent and if it makes you feel a little bit queasy, then it’s more likely than not that it is from God. On the other hand, if it makes you feel more important or more special or holier than anyone else – if it’s an attempt to get attention you would not otherwise receive – then it is more likely your own ego needs. Sorting through all of that is what the church calls “discernment.” God has this knack of using inadequate people to do impossible work. Again and again, the history of the Church is the still-unfolding story of God working in and through ordinary people to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

So, back to this fishing tale: the Word of the Lord came to Jonah: go at once to Nineveh, that great city, to proclaim God’s judgment there. But Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. So he got on a boat and headed in exactly in the opposite direction. But the Lord doesn’t give up that easily. One “take away” of this story, I think, is that if God calls us to a task, it’s easier to face up to it sooner rather than later because you won’t outrun God.

You may recall what comes next:  a storm at sea.  Jonah is thrown overboard because it becomes clear that he is the cause of the storm and he is promptly swallowed by a great fish. And then the text says, literally, that the fish couldn’t stomach Jonah. After three days of a belly ache, the great fish vomits Jonah back up on the shore right where he began. That’s where we picked up the story today:  the Word of the Lord comes to this reluctant prophet a second time. And the Lord says, “Jonah, go to Nineveh, that great city! I’m really not kidding around!”

This time Jonah goes. But his heart still isn’t in it. Even so, Nineveh is slightly more appealing than living in the belly of a great fish. Amazingly, though, the king and the people (and even the cattle) of Nineveh all repent. This is pretty hilarious because usually the words of the prophets fall on deaf ears. Usually Israel tries to kill the prophets or ignore them or lock them up in an insane asylum. But these foreigners—these goyim—repent and change their ways. And then God changes God’s own mind about doing them harm and forgives them.

So Jonah attempts a sort of jujitsu move against God. He tries to disarm God by turning God’s own nature against God. He says:

I knew you were compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in kindness and renouncing punishment. And that’s exactly why I fled to Tarshish in the first place! I’d rather die than have you extend that kind of love and forgiveness to Ninevites!

The most real thing about the God of the Bible is that God is abounding in steadfast love and mercy. As the Prayerbook puts it, “God desires not the death of sinners, but that they may turn…and live.” (BCP 269) God’s change of mind is not out of fickleness. In fact it is completely in keeping with God’s character to show mercy to all who repent, even if they are Ninevites.

Have I mentioned yet that Nineveh is in Assyria, by the waters of Babylon? It’s what we’d call Iraq today. Some scholars believe that Jonah is a post-exilic book. If it is, then it takes on an even more profound meaning because it’s about asking the reader of Jonah to forgive the very same people who caused the exile.

Regardless of its original context, it’s a story for every generation. If you imagine Jonah being asked to go to Bagdad or Tehran or Gaza, then you get the point. It is a tough parable that challenges Jonah’s world-view. Does God’s love and mercy and forgiveness and healing extend even to those from whom he would prefer to withhold grace? How about you? Would you rather die with Jonah than believe that God can forgive people that you personally find undeserving of God’s mercy and forgiveness?

Jonah is a kind of caricature of an unfaithful insider. Israel, as it turns out, has some experience with this. (So does the Church!) It’s about being God’s chosen people and yet behaving like everyone else. In spite of the promises we made with God in a holy covenant, either by circumcision or at Holy Baptism, we are prone to disregard the dignity of every human being and to tolerate injustice. God says to Israel and to the Church on a fairly regular basis something that parents have been heard to say to their children over many centuries: you ought to know better! If you can recite the psalms and quote from Scripture, but are not a doer of the Word (as the epistle of James puts it) then what on earth are you doing?

We are most definitely God’s beloved. The good news we proclaim here week in and week out is that we belong to God and that by the waters of Baptism we have been claimed and marked and sealed as Christ’s own forever. Nothing can separate us from that love of God in Jesus Christ, not even death! But if we aren’t careful we can become complacent and even arrogant about that. We can start to talk like being an “insider” is the be-all-and-end-all of faith. We can start to act like this is all about privilege and forget that it is really about how we respond in faith. So there is always some danger that we will become like Jonah: unfaithful insiders—people who “never really get it.” (Sad, but true!)

The foil to Jonah in this story are the faithful outsiders—the Ninevites. This, too, is not an isolated Biblical claim. Ruth, you will remember, was a Moabite woman who understood covenantal love and responsibility better than the Jews of her day. “Wherever you go,” she told her Jewish mother-in-law, “I will go. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.” In the New Testament there is also that good Samaritan. I always think it helps if you are of a generation that can hear George Carlin offering a litany of oxymorons like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence” and that we should have him be the lector when we read about the “good Samaritan.” Yet it is that faithful outsider who shows mercy to a stranger, and in so doing he reveals the will and even the face of God. Jesus loves that kind of story. It invites us to see the face of God in the person we most want to demonize.

The goal of this fishing tale before us today is therefore a double whammy that is meant to convert the target audience: faithful insiders. That may sound odd to our ears: we are tempted to think that we are already “converted” and our sole purpose is to make sure others know what we know. That’s how we tend to think about evangelism even if we Episcopalians aren’t very good at it. But this story pushes that presupposition. I think the right response to the story of Jonah is not resentment or denial, but laughter. This is pretty funny stuff because it hits so close to home and also, I think, because if we can laugh at ourselves, then we have a shot at redemption. The problem is that too often religious people are way too serious. The story invites us to lighten up and to focus on our own ongoing formation.

This leads me to the third lead character in the story: God. Most of us find it pretty comforting to be told that God is a God of steadfast love and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. At least when it comes to how we hope God will treat us! But when that same love and mercy extend to people we don’t like very much, we may begin to wonder if God isn’t getting a little soft on sin. With our enemies, we may sometimes wish God’s judgment would kick in. It turns out, though, that God’s grace is so amazing that it can save not just only wretches like us, but even wretches whom we don’t like very much as well.   

Our Jewish friends read the Book of Jonah at the afternoon service on the day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In that context it serves for them primarily as an invitation to return to God and entrust themselves to God’s steadfast love and mercy. They are reading the story in a way that calls upon them to repent and return to the Lord.  If we were to read this story on Ash Wednesday we’d probably hear it in a similar way. But we are hearing this story during the season of Epiphany, a time in our life together when several themes emerge. One of those is about the light that continues to shine in the darkness. Another is about how God keeps pushing the boundaries to the goyim, the Gentiles – starting with those three kings from the east.

We are also being invited to reflect on vocation, or calling.  To listen for God’s voice and the voices of our neighbors in order to discern where our deep gladness meets the needs of this hurting world. Calling is not just about each of us as individuals. It’s also about what it means to be part of a community like this one that is seeking to love and serve Christ in this time and place. It’s about our shared calling to be light to the world and salt of the earth. Today’s gospel reading and this opening collect we prayed take us to the heart of this theme:  Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ…

What kind of community is God calling All Saints to become? And what role are you being asked to play? This is not a question I can answer for you. I am just a Christmas and Easter parishioner here, after all. So this sermon is going to stop here. I simply raise the question and commend this wonderful parable to you as you get ready for an important Annual Meeting and all of the work that lies beyond that. I will just add this: we need all hands on deck.