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Another Tale of God's Abundant, Extravagant Love
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| 1/25/2009 |
We have a reading this morning from the Old Testament book of the prophet Jonah. Most of us will know a little bit about the story of Jonah, most famously that he spent time in the belly of a fish. Let’s look more at the entire tale, for it is scripture about the outrageousness of God’s abundant, expansive mercy.
Jonah is a prophet who thinks he knows better than God. The story begins, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.’” Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, but Jonah acts as if he got bad reception on the heavenly oracle. He heads in an opposite direction. “Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”
To illustrate the point in a silly way, you might imagine Jonah at Penn State in State College, resting on the laurels of his tenure, granted to him for being such a good prophet, thinking that he doesn’t need to do that anymore, and then God comes to the Jonah again and says, “Go to Philadelphia and cry out against it: for I have seen that they are closing libraries while opening casinos, and we have to put a stop to that!” Jonah, instead, goes a gets a train for Pittsburgh; he’s a Steeler’s fan and wants to watch the Superbowl from his old neighborhood.
Being the prophet that he is, Jonah knows this is an assignment that he doesn’t want. He puts his personal needs before God’s interests. He simply flees, like most of us do when faced with a problem that we do not want, on the assumption that if you hide, the problem will go away. But, as Jonah will learn, there is no escaping the presence of the Lord.
In our story, God hurls a a great wind and mighty storm against the boat, such that it may sink. The scripture says, “The mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god.” It was a multi-cultural boat. For each to appease their own god, they threw their precious cargo overboard as sacrifice. “Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’” This scene must have had the original hearers rolling in the aisles and grabbing their sides back at the old synagogue Jonah is a prophet, but he’s absolutely clueless as to what is happening. He thinks he is fleeing from God, and all is okay, but he will soon find out that there is no fleeing from God, even by choosing death.
When the sailors figure out that Jonah is most likely the source of their immediate problems, they ask him, again comically, “What do you do for a living, and for whom do you work?” Truly, sailors on the boat to Tarshish would never end a sentence with a preposition. Jonah admits to the identity he has sought to deny. He is a prophet not of a god, but of the God who control the seas and storms. The sailors ask, “What shall we do to you, that the sea will quiet down for us?” Jonah said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”
For Jonah, it’s all about Jonah. He figures that God is upset with him, so God wants him destroyed. Jonah has forgotten the first thing about being prophet: it is never about the messenger, but the message. God cares about the people of Nineveh. He needs Jonah to give them a message so that they might be saved. And, by the way, God doesn’t want to destroy Jonah. Like Nineveh, God wants to save Jonah. “So the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging.”
And then comes the detail we know so well: “But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah.”
Like Christ within the tomb, Jonah is slowly digested into the fish for three days, moving toward death. But in the reality of death, like the prodigal son, he comes to himself, and from the depths of the fish, we hear his prayer to God. Take note that even though Jonah believed that he could escape the presence of the Lord, there is no escape. And, in his departing spirit, he finds himself once again dependent on the mercy of God.
“I call to the Lord in my distress,” he prays, “out of the belly of hell I cry, and you hear my voice, O Lord. I am in the land whose prison bars close upon me forever; yet you bring up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. As my life ebbs away, I remember you, O God, and my prayers come. I have forsaken my true loyalty. But with a voice of thanksgiving, I now will give my life to you and do what you’ve asked. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
At this moment, the fish spews Jonah forth, right on to the shores of Nineveh. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’” Considering his last prayer, we might expect some real effort by Jonah, but he still seems half hearted. The scripture tells us that “Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days walk across.” Jonah only bothers to walk one day before delivering his message, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” The prophecy is a bit vague. Overthrown, as in destroyed, or the alternate and more plausible “turned over,” meaning changed? I think the latter. Jonah has recommended to Nineveh a distinct Lenten experience of 40 days of fasting, prayer and introspection. “The people of Nineveh believed God.” Even the king, showing a humility unknown to the headstrong Jonah, left his throne and relinquished his power to the mercy of God. “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands,” the king pronounced. “Who knows? God may relent. If we turn, God may turn from the anger intended, so that we do not perish.”
And God did so.
Now this just made Jonah mad. Again, it’s all about Jonah, not God’s abundant, expansive mercy. God’s forgiveness is salt in the wound. If Jonah had come all that way, and went to all of the trouble in the fish, the least God could do is bring Jonah’s propehcy to fruition. For Jonah, that’s destruction. But for God, the prophecy was a hope of change, redemption and new life. Jonah’s response to God’s love for all that God has made sounds painfully familiar: “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” In other words, like so many of us, when God doesn’t do what we want God to do, especially when it comes to punishment, it’s outrageous. We can hear the anger of the older brother when his wayward brother comes home from the distant country, and the father kills the fatted calf. Like the older brother, Jonah can’t stand that the people of Nineveh have been found by God. Jonah can’t even see that he has been found similarly. Jonah doesn’t realize that God is all about finding the lost, mending the broken, and reclaiming the promise in all, no matter how far away we’ve strayed. In disgust, Jonah prays, “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” But the Lord has quite an investment in Jonah at this point. For God, to win back Nineveh, and lose Jonah would be a net loss in the economy of heaven.
The story ends with God trying to show Jonah that God’s love for Jonah and Nineveh are the same. Jonah is right: God is merciful and abounding in steadfast love. Just because Nineveh is another country (Iraq, in fact), and the people are different, God loves them, because God loves them. Is that not enough for Jonah to hope that they not be destroyed?
The story of Jonah reminds me that God is in the loving, not the destroying, business. God is about finding, not losing, be the object Jonah in the raging sea and sending a fish, or a person of Nineveh needing a new beginning.
A funny story, but a tough story, Jonah reminds me that I am too much like Jonah. Full of ego, concerned with my own success and reputation, and wanting to make God in my image, with God doing what I want God to do, rather than being the servant of God’s grace and mercy as I have been called.
But as God has saved me, and filled me with mercy, and allowed me to be transformed by the abundant, expansive transforming love at the heart of my soul, is it not my call to share this love with even a person of Nineveh?
The question, “Who is a person of Nineveh?” is the same question the young lawyer asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Then comes the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I suspect we all remember the answer that parable gives.
So let’s be about it.
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