Jonah and the Whale 4. A Brilliant Sermon, Preached by God, to Closed Minds

Many of us first heard the story of Jonah in Sunday School. If you’re older you’ll know the chorus, “Listen to my tale, of Jonah and the whale, way down in the middle of the ocean.” The story of Jonah is so familiar. It’s about the compassion and undeserved grace of God. The very idea that God would forgive Nineveh, the sworn enemy of Jonah’s people, is a scandal. What’s scandalous is that God chooses to have mercy on the world’s worst sinners, and Jonah resents it, and God has to talk him round.

Jonah is usually called the disobedient prophet. But it’s always worth asking why people do what they do. God said go to Nineveh. Jonah went to Tarshish, the exact opposite direction. He’s asleep in the bottom of the boat in the midst of a deadly storm. But he’s found out. He admits to the sailors he’s defying God’s command, and to save themselves they throw Jonah overboard. He’s swallowed by a great fish, prays a Psalm in which he promises to do as he’s told, and is spat out on the shoreline.

Jonah goes to Nineveh, but preaches the worst sermon ever. Nothing about God, repentance or mercy. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” That’s it. Five Hebrew words. Bad news. No hope. Countdown to the city’s destruction and Jonah has a seat in the front row. Then the whole city repents, from the king to the cows, and call urgently on God, God has compassion, and spared them and their city.

So Jonah goes in the huff. He paid his ticket for the best seat in the theatre of God’s judgement, and finds that the original programme is cancelled and there’s a new production called compassion and forgiveness.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (4.1-3)

If our view of the world is that everyone should get what they deserve, then we will have trouble understanding forgiveness. If we’ve been hurt time and again, and have come to wish harm on those who harm us, then forgiveness will seem like weakness. And if we think the world should be a place where life is fair, where wrong is always punished and goodness always rewarded, then we’ll be disappointed, and even resentful that life isn’t the way we think it should be.

All of this is the Jonah mind-set. And it still survives whenever God doesn’t do what we want God to do. Imagine giving God a row because he is “a gracious and compassionate God”! It’s OK for God to forgive us our sins, but the idea that forgiveness is God’s gracious decision, and he shows mercy on all who call on his name, sometimes just doesn’t seem fair. Especially when they have done much worse than we have. That too is the Jonah mind-set.

And God’s answer to the angry Jonah, sitting on a hillside in the heat of the noonday sun, is to make a plant grow up to give him shade. The next morning the plant dies and Jonah is exposed to the dehydrating heat and is angry that the plant has died, blames God, and even wishes the precious God-given gift of life should be taken away. That would teach God! Truth is, Jonah would rather die than have Nineveh spared.

At that point this story comes crashing into the world we now live in. Think of the politics of hate. Reflect on how we ourselves, our politicians, and the wider world, view asylum seekers, refugees, migrant and displaced peoples. As we think about what attitude we should have to those ‘others’, whoever they happen to be, what does it mean to have faith in the gracious and compassionate God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? How does my faith in Jesus, and in God’s justice and grace, God’s mercy and forgiveness, His care for all peoples, - how does that way of looking on God’s world, through God’s eyes, change my heart towards others?

The last two verses of Jonah are amongst the most moving words in the whole Bible. Go read them. This is God, God mind you, trying to convert Jonah’s heart from resentment to compassion, from hatred to mercy, from enmity to reconciliation. There’s a lot of hating going on in our world. The divisions are deep, damaging and hard edged. Instead of finding ways to work with and for each other, the style is to be over and against. It’s almost as if, like Jonah, people find their identity in decrying those they hate, oppose, and who disagree with them.

The book of Jonah is a brilliant sermon, preached by God, to closed hearts. For us as Christians, the faithful witness of the Church in our world at this time, will be as witnesses to Christ the Reconciler who heals enmities by the blood of the Cross; witnesses to Christ the Prince of Peace whose ambassadors we are; couriers of Christ the preacher of the Kingdom of God whose outstretched arms on the cross are held out in welcome and entreaty to all who will come.

We are called to echo the very words of Jonah, not from hearts angry against others, but from hearts that have felt the healing flows of God’s grace, known the touch of God’s compassion and been transformed by the gift of forgiveness: “We know that you are a compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (4.2)

Those words, about compassion, slow to anger and abounding in love; not a bad strap line to guide the way we think about others. They call us to learn to live amongst others as the presence of Christ, and the voice of God’s grace, and in Jesus’ name.

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

Have I sent you my setting of Jonah based on the melodies in the te’amim? I even found a nod to Gershwin.

[Bob MacDonald]

Here’s the link to a mechanical performance. One day I hope to fund a real performance
https://youtu.be/dXxupUtNBDY

[Jim Gordon]

Thanks for this Bob. I found it fascinating, especially the relation of music to text, and at times the sense that the music was interpreting the scene, mood and circumstances in the story itself. So much to be gleaned, or mined, from such a short text. Thanks again Bob, and all good wishes for your continuing projects.