As soon as the name Jonah is mentioned in
circles of faith people immediately start to think of the whale. Jonah, for better or for worse, has been tied
to this giant fish, and in many ways, is thought of more as a Pinocchio-like character
then a prophet of God, sent to the people of Nineveh to deliver a message that
destruction was coming if repentance was not made. As many of us remember, this was not a
mission that Jonah really took a liking to.
In fact, he ran away, hopped aboard a boat and tried to pretend that he
could outrun God. He couldn’t. God sends a storm to batter the boat to the
point that the sailors, despite their best efforts, were fearful that they
would die as their ship sunk. Jonah
gives them as option. He says, “throw me
into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know that it is
because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” Eventually they do; but instead of Jonah
dying he is swallowed up by a giant fish for three days and three nights.
The thing is, much like Pinocchio, the story
does not end with our main character inside the belly of the fish. After lifting a prayer of confession and
commitment, Jonah gets “spewed out upon the dry land” and is told, for a second
time, to head to Nineveh and proclaim that message of repentance. The amazing this is, they do. They listen to Jonah and revert from their
sin filled ways.
What we are about to hear is, as Paul Harvey
liked to call it, the rest of the story.
Beyond the fish and the proclamation lies a tale that is hard to
believe. The scripture reads this
way.
Jonah 3:10-4:11
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways,
God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon
them; and he did not do it.
4 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2
He prayed to the Lord and
said, “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. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to
die than to live.” 4 And the Lord
said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out of
the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He
sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
6 The Lord God
appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head,
to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7
But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked
the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a
sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was
faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to
live.”
9 But God said
to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes,
angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord
said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which
you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11
And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which
there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their
right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Have you
ever run into that person who is very good at what they do for a living, but
absolutely hates what they are doing?
For example, this person is able to sell the most product of anyone in
their region, they get all the accolades of their
superiors that are available, move up the economic ladder, but then goes home
at night dreading the idea of going to work the next day. Maybe they were directed down this path
because that’s what their folks wanted them to do. Maybe they ended up there because it was the
job that was easy to get. Whatever the
case may be, they are now doing something that they hate. They feel like they are trapped.
If you haven’t, then you need look no further
then our main character for the scripture lesson this morning, Jonah. Jonah, as is described in one of the
commentaries that I use, is the “most successful missionary of all time.”[1] As inconceivable as this might sound
(especially when we
consider that he is being compared to the likes of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or even
Daniel), think of what he was able to accomplish. He walked into a city that was going to be
destroyed in forty days, told them that if they didn’t repent and begin to
follow the ways of God that they were all going to be “overthrown”. In terms of the scripture itself, this is all
we are told he said. Now while we can
safely assume that the city of Nineveh, which took three days to walk across,
had to have heard quite a bit more than eight words, it seems quite obvious
that the city took to his call to repentance very quickly. Within days the king called for the city to
acknowledge its sinfulness and follow the ways of the Lord. At the conclusion of the passage we are told
that over 120 thousand individuals were saved because they listened to God’s
word through Jonah. Now that’s getting something
done. His life was not threatened, he
was not thrown into prison, he was not chased out of
the city as was the treatment toward so many other prophets. No, instead, the people simply listened. You’d think that he would be happy. You’d think that Jonah would be overjoyed at
the work that had been done, and done so easily.
However, he isn’t. In fact, we are told that he is incredibly
“displeased” and that he becomes “angry”.
In a way he starts running away from the result like he tried to run
away from the responsibility. As an
outside observer this is shocking. How
could he ever be upset at such a miracle?
Here’s why: the book of Jonah was written in
a time when the people of Israel had a very narrow view of how God worked in
the world. Depending on who you read
this could either mean that the book was written in a period of strength, when
Israel was the dominant military and economic force in the region, or a time
when the people of Israel were looking to overthrow the authority that ruled
over them. In either case, the generally
accepted thought of the day was that there was no way that God should love,
care for, and support anyone but the chosen who were called our of Egypt.
Therefore, the city of Nineveh represents a
gentile society that is either the whipping boy of the Israelites, or the
societal heavy who is leaning on ‘God’s chosen’. In either case, the Israelites do not like
this Gentile society; they feel that they are the only ones worthy of the
Almighty’s divine blessing and forgiveness (which they have received countless
times); and are looking to make sure that the Gentiles get absolutely no
breaks.
This is the ideology that Jonah
represents. This is why when he is
called to Nineveh he runs away. He knows
that God is merciful and will forgive.
He knows this because throughout the generations the people of Israel
have wandered from the path of righteousness and time, after time, after time,
after time, they are welcomed back into the eternal fellowship. Jonah knows that if the people of Nineveh
repent, that they will receive similar treatment, that they too will be
forgiven. This is not because of
anything that the Ninevites have done; it is because it is part of the very
nature of God.
Jonah does not want this forgiveness to be
granted. He wants the people of Nineveh
to be crushed. So when they do repent,
he is “displeased” and “angered” because his point of view, his limited
mindset, has not been followed. In a
whole lot of ways, Jonah is acting like a child who says, “if
you’re not going to play the way that I want to, then I’m going to take my ball
and go home”. And in terms of the
scripture for this morning, that’s exactly what he does.
It is after making the statement, “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to
die than to live”, that Jonah proceeds to go out beyond the city walls and sit
there. Jonah starts to get hot, which is
not a big surprise considering that he is sitting in what is modern day Iraq:
it gets hot in Iraq. It is in this
setting that God decides to teach Jonah another lesson (as if the fish wasn’t
enough). God causes a bush to grow
overnight and shade Jonah from the heat and discomfort of the beating sun. For obvious reasons, Jonah appreciates this
development. The next day, besides
inflicting Jonah with a hot and humid breeze from the east, God causes that
same bush to die, allowing the sun to beat down upon Jonah’s head. Jonah returns to a familiar refrain and says,
“It is better for me to die than to live.”
Basically, Jonah is sorry that the bush has died. Yes, he is sorry because its death means he
gets cooked in the midday sun, but the fact still remains that he is sorry that
the bush has died.
God’s response to this feeling is quick and pointed, “Jonah, look
if you are concerned about a 24-hour bush, for which you did not labor and which
you did not grow, shouldn’t I be even more concerned about Nineveh, a city with
over 120 thousand residents (not to mention the animals) of which I am
responsible for the creation of every single one? The people of Nineveh are my creation and I
will care for them as I have cared for you and your people. This is my nature and regardless of how you
may view the world, my love for the world will not change. Stop running, not only from what I have
called you to do, but from who I am!
Stop running!”
That’s one of those messages that we need to be reminded of,
sometimes a whole lot more often than we care to admit, because we, like Jonah,
just keep running. Jonah ran from the
call that had been placed before him.
Then when he finally relented (unwillingly) to that call, he ran from
the result. He refused to be open, not
only to how God was calling him to serve, but also who God was.
We’ve talked about how we can run away from how God is calling us,
by saying that ‘we don’t have the gifts’, that ‘we don’t have the time’, ‘we’re
just not ready’, or even ‘I don’t want to’ (Jonah certainly exhibited a few of
those).
But how often do we also run away from who God actually is? For example, how often have we thought or
even said, “I’m not good enough”, “God doesn’t love me”, or “how could God
forgive this?” How often have we
thought, “what does it matter? God isn’t
real.” We do that a lot. We run away from who God is.
But why are we running?
Where do we think that we are going to go where we are going to get away
from God?
This past week I’ve had a wide variety of different
conversations. All of them carried a
unifying theme of “where is God? Because I don’t see Him.
And if He is there, then He sure doesn’t care, at least not about me.” Most of us have felt some variation of that
theme. But is it true? The answer, like it was with Jonah and it
certainly is with us is, ‘no’. We just
have to stop running from who God is and instead start to open ourselves to how
God is moving.
For example, how did this past Thursday start out weather
wise? It was warm and summerlike. How did it finish? It was cold and we were looking for our
coats. What happened right in the
middle, as the cold front was blowing through?
A rainbow that you could see from end to end made its appearance. For me, that rainbow was a reminder that God
is there in every season: the good and the bad; the easy and the
difficult. If we would open ourselves to
that trust then we would be able to behold it.
Otherwise, we’re so worried about how cold it is outside that we aren’t
able to recognize the amazing blessings that are absolutely there.
But in order to behold those blessings, we have to stop
running. God is with you: in and through
it all, God is with you. Stop running
from that truth and begin to behold the wonders that were already there.
O holy God, we thank You
for the story of Your prophet Jonah and pray that the shortcomings that he so
clearly exhibited might not be lived out in us.
Allow us to grow beyond our shortsightedness into the amazing glory that
can be found in Your passion for the whole of
creation. Help us to spread this message
so that all people might come to recognize the truth that is found in You. Amen.