Jonah: When Our God is Their God
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 22, 2006
Book of Jonah
One thing I continue to love about the Bible, and I’ve said this to you before, is its wonderful honesty. It really is not afraid to confront us with our humanity…warts and all. And it presents us with a God who, curiously enough, is determined to work in and through us to accomplish God’s will, no matter what obstacles we might put in God’s way or how much we might resist.
Last week Jean Boal introduced us to Samuel, faithful Samuel, who even when he was a boy stood ready to do whatever God might ask: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” God had work for Samuel to do and Samuel did it. We remember him as a great prophet of God, a wonderful model of faith and faithfulness.
Today, we meet another prophet…Jonah. But Jonah is definitely not Samuel. When God gives him a job to do, Jonah basically says, “No way, I’m not doing that. Get someone else to do your dirty work. I’m outta’ here!” He then seeks to put as much distance as he can between himself and God. Samuel does God’s will. Jonah resists God’s will. Not exactly a sterling example of faith. But there he is, he has his own book in the Bible. So very human, in so many ways just like us. But you have to wonder, why is he there? Why does the Bible dedicate an entire book to this rather unsavory character, this complainer, this whiner, this man who would rather run away than do what God asks? So I thought both today and next week, we might spend a little time with Jonah and figure out why it is he made the final cut. For I suspect his story concerns far more than simply a disagreeable character who had a rather unfortunate encounter with a large fish. (Although that already makes me more sympathetic toward him!)
A true story shared by Fred Craddock: “After the declaration of war by President Bush, some people of faith in Atlanta gathered for prayer. We had songs, we had scripture, we had prayer, and then songs, and scripture, and prayer. It went on for a long time. A young man was seated next to me, I think about seventeen or eighteen, might have been a freshman at the university. In the course of the prayers, he asked that God be with the women and children in Iraq who would be hurt and killed in the war. When it was over, a man in his mid-fifties came over to that young man and said, ‘Are you on Saddam’s side?’
“He responded, ‘Uh, no sir.’
“’Well, you’re praying for the wrong people!’”
Which reminds me of the ever-shameless Rev. Pat Robertson and his suggestion that the devastating stroke suffered by Ariel Sharon was nothing less than God’s punishment of Sharon for his willingness to work with the Palestinians, even giving them back some of their land. I don’t know why the media and people continue to take this intolerant, self-righteous fool seriously? But I mentioned him and I share the Craddock story, because I believe they help to get us into the Jonah story and into a significant issue addressed by this story.
Now as much as I like a story about a big fish – and I’ve told a few myself over the years – I do not feel the need to take this story literally. It is, after all, a story about a man and his relationship to God. It is really not a story about a big fish. In telling us this story, I believe the narrator wants us to look at Jonah, a man of narrow vision and petty disposition, who is called by God to move beyond his narrowness and pettiness. Trouble is, much like Pat Robertson, he wants God to be as narrow and petty as he is. So this also becomes a story about God – a surprising God who won’t to fit into anyone’s categories or expectations, whose mercy and grace and forgiveness are deeper and broader than anything we can imagine, indeed, maybe even more that we want to accept.
This is a remarkable story, really, when you consider that it was told by an Israelite to Israelites. Nineveh…that great city. According to our narrative, it took three days to walk from one end of it to the other. Now that’s a large city in those days. Again, our narrator is not above some exaggeration. Nineveh was also the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Remember – it wasn’t that long ago – when Moscow was not simply a city in the Soviet Union but was in fact the heart and soul of an evil empire…or so we were told. Well that was how Israel viewed Nineveh. And with some good reason. The Assyrians were known for their cruelty, their brutality in war. And they represented a very real threat to the Israel. So Nineveh stood for everything foreign and dangerous and evil. A city filled with enemies. And everyone knew that Israel’s enemies were God’s enemies. My enemies… God’s enemies…right? Just ask Pat Robertson. Or you could ask Mark Twain.
Twain once described this experiment: “So I built a cage, and in it I put a dog and a cat. After a little training I got the dog and the cat to the point where they lived peaceably together. Then I introduced a pig, a goat, a kangaroo, some birds and a monkey. And after a few adjustments, they learned to live in harmony. So encouraged was I by such successes that I added a Catholic, a Presbyterian, a Jew, a Muslim from Turkestan, and a Buddhist from China, along with a Baptist missionary that I captured on the same trip. And in a very short while, there wasn’t a single living thing left in the cage!”
As sad as it is to say this, that is not a bad description of our world today where so much violence is justified in the name of religion; “God is on my side!” And it was also true of Jonah’s world, which again makes this story so very extraordinary. Everyone in Israel knew one thing absolutely for sure: our agenda is God’s agenda and our enemies are God’s enemies, we’ve always known that. Clearly Jonah believed it. So when he hears the unmistakable word from God, “Go at once to Nineveh and cry out against it,” it had to be a dream come true – this is the opportunity of a lifetime. “Vindication! I knew I was right!” He probably couldn’t wait to pack his bags! But he doesn’t go. In fact, he tries to run away. What is he afraid of?
A pilot who served in Vietnam tells of his experience of bearing down on a Vietnamese village, preparing to drop his bombs. As he pushed through the clouds, just before beginning his bombing run, he caught a glimpse of a church. In his words, “It must have been Sunday, because I saw a crowd of people entering the church in the village. It was only a glimpse, but I could see it clearly. They were Christians. Nobody ever told me there were Christians in Vietnam. It could have been my hometown, it could have been my Catholic church. They looked just like us, worshiped just like us. Nobody told me.”
Is this what Jonah was afraid of? If he goes to Nineveh, if he confronts his enemy face to face, he might see something of himself, a reflection of his own hopes and dreams and fears looking right back at him? Jonah needed to demonize those people, not get to know them. This is what fed his hate and his fear. They were the other, the enemy; less than human, wallowing in the mud of their disobedience and sin and immorality. They deserved punishment, not mercy, not another chance. Jonah knew all he needed to know about Nineveh and its people. Just as he knew all about God.
Ah…God. That may have been his other problem. Charlie Brown is caddying for Snoopy as Snoopy plays a round of golf. As they walk along, Charlie Brown says, “I find it strange that the golfing gods have never allowed you to make a hole-in-one. I wonder what that means?” Snoopy thinks about this for a moment, then says to himself, “It means we need some new golfing gods.” Could that be why Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh? No decent golf courses? Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh because what happens if he goes there and finds that God has a completely different agenda, that God isn’t interested in “us vs. them,” that God refuses to conform to Jonah’s expectations and desires and definitions. He might discover a whole new God and he’s not sure he’s ready for that.
Mary Anderson, a Lutheran pastor in Illinois, has written, “When we decide to follow, we are called to lay down some of our most valuable possessions: our understanding of the world, our view of right and wrong, our assumptions about whom God favors and whom God despises – lay it all aside.” And somewhere, deep in his angry and fearful heart, Jonah knew this. But he doesn’t want to let go of his hate, his anger, his self-righteousness; he doesn’t want to let go of this little God he has so neatly defined. He decides he would rather run away.
But he can’t run away. As that great African-American poet, James Weldon Johnson, liked to say, “Young man, your arm’s too short to box with God.” God’s will, will be done. Jonah can’t even hide in the belly of a great fish. Finally he has no choice but to go and preach God’s word and of course, his worst fears are realized. Everyone in this huge city, from the king on down, repents. Even the cattle get religion! And to make matters worse, the God who is gracious and merciful and forgiving, extends grace and mercy to the hated, evil, sinful citizens of Nineveh. God claims them as God’s beloved children as surely as God claims the Israelites. In the words of my mentor Bill Nelson, “Whoever told this curious tale plainly did not agree with the majority opinion of his day. He dreamed of a God larger than just his tribe. He supposed the reach of God’s love over-passed any borders of human making. And most of all, he really believed that God is love." And then Nelson concludes with this question, “How big is the God whom you worship?”
This simple, often humorous story, preaches a powerful message. The “us vs. them” nonsense we continue to engage in just doesn’t work for God. Jonah discovers, as we all must discover, that the very ones we demonize and vilify as the enemy, as less-than, as unworthy, remain God’s people as surely as we do. All those cherished categories we use to separate ourselves from each other, to judge each other, are not real and there is no room in God’s heart for these categories. What is real is God’s love. Like Jonah we can run away – but first consider this. There is good news here. For if God manages to care even for Nineveh, then there is room in God’s heart for each of us. In our folly and our wisdom, there is hope for each of us. We too can cling to and trust in this expansive mercy of God – the One who made us and invites us all to come home.