Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (but you should read the whole story)
22 January 2012
“Where did you hear that?” I snapped.
“From my history teacher”
“Well your history teacher is an id—I mean your history teacher is sadly misinformed.”
The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same God. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible-- that's the bible that Jesus studied. That’s the bible from which Rabbi Jesus taught. That’s where he got all of his best material! So how can anyone say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of vengeance and the God of the New Testament a God of grace—that’s just messed up, and I won’t stand for it and neither should you and what’s a history teacher doing talking about the bible anyway—doesn’t he (or she) have enough material to cover? And furthermore, we know Jewish people who know that God is compassionate. Saying that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous God as if that were the whole story is not just a slander against God, but a slander against a whole faith community!
And here we have a case in point: the story of Jonah, from what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew bible, one of the books of the prophets. Jonah is distinguished among the prophets by his reluctance, to put it mildly. The story of Jonah is a parody, a send up, a spoof, a comic satire of a prophet’s story. Last week, we read about the call of the prophet Samuel. When Samuel was called, he replied “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” When God called Jonah, he ran away! As if a person could outrun the presence of God! Jonah ran for the coast, and boarded a ship headed for Tarshish, which I believe is Hebrew[1] for “the back of beyond,” or “far, far away.” When a storm came up Jonah hid in the hold, the belly of the ship, and you know how he got from there to the belly of the whale and was spit up on the beach, and there our reading for today took up the story.
The story of Jonah is a story of a man who went to ridiculous lengths to avoid the prophetic call of God. That makes him a sympathetic character, somebody we recognize, somebody we can relate to. He’s not a hero, Jonah is definitely not the hero of this story, he’s just a sympathetic character. We can sympathize with Jonah because honestly, who wants to be a prophet? Oh, we would all like to think we might be like Samuel or like Isaiah, and say “Here I am, Lord, send me.” But we know what happens to prophets. Prophets get to speak the truth to power, and power takes offense. Who wants to be exiled and outlawed, like Elijah, or thrown down a well, like Jeremiah?
The story goes to great lengths to demonstrate that once God has set God’s eye on you, you can’t run and you can’t hide. God will continue to pursue and win the game of hide and seek. There’s no evading God’s attentions. God is a persistent suitor.
When Jonah finally acquiesced, and obeyed God’s summons, we can tell his heart wasn’t really in it. He went to Nineveh—that great city. He didn’t even get to the center of the city, he walked one-third of the distance and he said, “Four days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And then, I suppose, he went out to find a safe place to watch the destruction of the city.
But here’s the strangest part of the story: you know how no one ever believes the prophet? You know how Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “You better let my people go or God will smite your firstborn,” and Pharaoh said, “Yeah, right. I’ll take my chances.” You know how Jeremiah said, if you go making deals with the devil the city will be overrun, and the royal family and all their supporters said, “Oh you be quiet, Jeremiah, you’re upsetting people,” and “Into the mud, prophet!”
Yes, the paradox of Jonah is that the most reluctant prophet ever also proved to be the most effective! The people actually listened, and repented, and when God saw that the people repented, then God repented of the destruction that God had planned—which is how prophecy is supposed to work. The job of the prophet is not to predict the future. That’s not prophecy, that’s fortune telling, a completely different business and not one that God is in. The job of the prophet is to tell the truth about what is happening now, and to show people where it might lead, if things keep on going the way they have been going. The goal of prophetic preaching is repentance.
Maybe the reason people get the idea that God, in the Old Testament, is all about punishment, is because they don’t read the whole story. The whole story is that God is—in Jonah’s own words, where he paraphrases a psalm[2]—merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Whenever and wherever people turn their hearts to God and emulate God’s mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, there is life. That is the whole of the law and the prophets, said Jesus, and so said Rabbi Hillel.
The Hebrew bible does not teach that God is vengeful. The Hebrew bible teaches us that God is mutable. God can change God’s mind. The mind of God is influenced by people, by who we are, by what we do and what we say. God listens, God learns, and God changes. Wherever and whenever people emulate God’s ability to listen and learn and change, there is life.
The gospel of Jonah and the gospel of Jesus is the same gospel, the good news of God’s compassion and mercy. The challenge of Jonah and the challenge of Jesus is the same challenge. We are challenged to respond to God’s call, even if our response is reluctant. We are called to speak the truth to power, even if we are afraid. Power might just surprise us, and respond with repentance, mercy and compassion.
One traditional interpretation of the story of Jonah is that Jonah is Israel. Jonah is a parable about Israel. God made a covenant with Abraham, in the early days, God made a covenant that through Abraham’s children, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Sometimes, Israel, like Jonah, avoided the call to be a blessing to all nations, or fulfilled that call only begrudgingly. Because Israel in the time of exile was so used to being disparaged among nations, Israel returned disparagement in kind. The book of Jonah challenges Israel to entertain the possibility that faithful people can be found in foreign lands. The exaggerated response of the people of Nineveh, who repent on a scale unheard of in Israel, emphasizes the possibility.
Jonah could also be interpreted as a parable about the church. We are called to carry the message of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and God’s abundant mercy, to all the world. We have a message to deliver. A message about justice for the poor and marginalized. A message about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and not doing to others what you would not want done to you. We have a message about the God who is still speaking and about people needing to listen and learn and change.
But, like Jonah, sometimes we would rather run away from the call. Because, we know that no one is going to listen, that people have already made up their minds—that’s what we think we know, anyway. We’ll just tweet the message and run away. People have already made up their minds they aren’t going to change.
Truth is, it is we who have made up our minds about “those people,” the Ninevites, the fundamentalists, whoever we think “they” are. “They” will never change. Except, in the story, they do, they change. People can and do, sometimes, respond and repent. However reluctant, meek, or indifferent the messenger may be, people respond to the message.
Let us listen, and hear what the spirit is saying to the church, to us, today.
