Jonah

On the Third Sunday after the Epiphany the Old Testament reading comes from the third chapter of the Book of Jonah.  It's a short section but it can be an invitation to preach the story, which is always hard to resist. (I think you get the chance twice every three years.) I've preached this sermon before - the story doesn't change. It's one of those about which you can say, "it does not need to have (literally) happened to be true." And honestly, a bit like Esther, it's fun to tell the story to folks who may have last reflected on it in Sunday School. I'll be with the good folks at All Saints in North Adams as their preacher, and to lead a Mutual Ministry Review with the vestry afterwards. 

Today’s gospel reading is about the call of those two sets of brothers and it’s important. In fact this theme of being followers of Jesus and not just fans is an important theme in these weeks after the Feast of the Epiphany.

 But I love Jonah too much to miss the chance to preach on this great fishing story today and that opportunity only comes up twice every three years. And it, too, is a call story even if it’s intended as a kind of parody. So here goes…

Once upon a time there was a man named Jonah, a prophet who 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: as it came to Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam and Aaron and Joshua the son of Nun and Rahab the prostitute; to Samuel and Jeremiah and Deborah and Esther and Peter and Andrew and the Zebedee boys and Mary Magdalene and Dorothy Day. And to each of us, in Holy Baptism.

The Bible doesn’t give us a lot of specifics about how that call becomes clear or offer seven habits of highly successful hearers of “the Word of the Lord.” But I’ve noticed two things that seem to be consistent throughout the Biblical narrative and down to the present day, whether the call is to be a bishop or a priest or a deacon or a more committed layperson:

1. It is impossible to hear God when you are doing all of the talking.

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

God has this knack of using inadequate people to do very difficult work. So if God’s call scares you, then it might just be real. But be sure to listen closely for the angel that says, “be not afraid” and “I will be with you.” Again and again, the still unfolding story of God working in and through ordinary people is that God can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. In a nutshell I think that is the whole of church history and the journey of faith for each member of Christ’s Body.

So back to Jonah: 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. In fact he promptly got on a boat to head in exactly the opposite direction. Nevertheless, God persists. And one of the points of the 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 can never outrun God. You may recall what comes next: a storm at sea. Jonah is thrown overboard when 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, quite literally, that the fish couldn’t stomach Jonah. So after three days of belly ache the great fish vomited 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 AM really not kidding around!)”

This time Jonah goes. But he is still reluctant and his heart isn’t in it. Nevertheless, living in the belly of a great fish and being the cause of that fish’s indigestion is kind of gross. So he does it: “everybody repent. Thus saith the Lord…” And, amazingly the king and the people (and apparently even the cattle) of Nineveh all repent. This is pretty hilarious because usually the words of the prophets of Israel 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 God changes God’s mind about doing them harm and forgives them.

If you’ve heard of the Unmoved Mover of the philosophers this idea about God changing God’s mind might be jarring. It infuriates Jonah, but not for the same reasons it may trouble the defenders of Platonic idealism. It infuriates Jonah because he had assumed that his enemies and God’s enemies were one and the same. And so Jonah attempts a sort of jujitsu move against God; he tries to disarm God by turning God’s own nature against God:

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!

My friends: the most real thing about the God of the Bible is not changelessness. The most real thing about God is that God is abounding in steadfast love and mercy. Meister Eckhardt once said, “You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.” Or 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 Ninevites.

Some scholars believe that Jonah is a post-exilic book. That is to say, it was written as an op-ed piece after the Babylonian exile. That reading has always made the most sense to me as the right historical context. If it is, then it takes on an even more profound meaning because it’s about asking Jonah to forgive the very same people who caused the exile. (Nineveh is in Assyria, by the waters of Babylon.) So now you know the rest of the story, right? That little bit of geography makes all the difference in how we hear the story.

But regardless of its original context, it’s a story for all times. Is God on our side? Or does God love all the little children of the world? (And even the cattle.) Can God’s love and mercy and forgiveness and healing extend even to those from whom we are tempted to withhold grace? Or would you rather die with Jonah than believe that God can forgive the people that you find undeserving of mercy and forgiveness?

I want to say a few words about each of the three main characters in this story. First, we should notice that Jonah is a funny character, but that he is not unique in the Bible. He is what you might call an unfaithful insider. Israel, as it turns out, has a lot of experience with this, and so does the Church. It’s about being God’s chosen people and yet behaving like everybody else. God says to Israel on a fairly regular basis something 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 is the point? You are supposed to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

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 faithful outsider too, a Moabite woman who understood covenantal love and responsibility quite well. “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 of course that “good” Samaritan. It is that faithful outsider who shows mercy. In doing so he reveals the will and even the face of God. The irony down to our own day is that sometimes people who claim to be atheists are a lot kinder and more merciful and loving than we Christians are. Sad, but true

The goal of this fishing story is therefore a double whammy that is meant to convert 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. But this story pushes that presupposition. I think the right response to this story is not resentment or denial, but laughter followed by self-awareness. 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 very often religious people are too serious. 

This leads me to the third 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, then we may begin to wonder if God isn’t getting a little soft on sin. With our enemies we sometimes wish God’s judgment would kick in. It turns out, though, that God’s love is so deep and so broad and God’s grace is so amazing that it can save not just wretches like us, but even wretches whom we don’t like very much.

Our Jewish friends read the Book of Jonah at the afternoon service on the day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In that liturgical context it serves for them primarily as an invitation to repentance: 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 do what the Ninevites did: 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 our liturgical context on this weekend is three weeks after the arrival of the wise guys in Bethlehem. One of the themes in these weeks between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday is about call. Today’s collect sums this up nicely: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ… 

So I wonder how Jonah helps us to answer this question: “What kind of community is God calling us to become?” And, “what kind of Christians are being formed here at All Saints?” Where are your epiphanies, which is to say: how is God being made manifest in your lives and in the life of this faith community?

We are living in dangerous times. Politically, economically, globally we are facing huge challenges and the Church is not an escape from all of that. Rather, it is an invitation to enter into it all even more deeply. Like Jonah, we are called to share the message of God’s grace and mercy with a broken world. We are called to proclaim that what makes God real is the lengths to which God will go to prove that steadfast love and compassion for all people is the very nature of God. That God desires not the death of sinners but that we might turn, and live. 

Grant us wisdom, and courage, for the living of these days. Help us to be brave enough to see the light, and then help us to be brave enough to be the light.