Nineveh Ahead
Jonah 31-5, 10, Psalm 62, Mark 1:14-20
January 22, 2006
Rev. Marcia J. Hauer

I’d bet that almost no one here is unfamiliar with the book of Jonah. You remember the story. God called Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh to preach repentance. So Jonah decided that Tarshish was the place for him, went to Joppa, got on a boat and set off. As soon as the boat was at sea, God sent a massive storm which almost capsized the boat. The sailors were afraid, and, after casting lots, made Jonah tell his story. He admitted that his disobedience was the cause of the storm and told the sailors to throw him overboard. They were reluctant to do it and tried to row back to land. They couldn’t do it and finally cast Jonah into the sea. The scripture says that God provided a big fish to swallow Jonah and that he stayed in the belly of the fish for 3 days and 3 nights. While he was in the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed long and hard and God had the fish spit him out on the beach. I always think that Jonah caused the fish a great bellyache. Then God called Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh to preach repentance to the people. This time Jonah went, did what God asked him to do and the people repented. The king decreed a fast for all the people, the men, women and children and for all of the animals. All of them were to clothe themselves in sackcloth and cover themselves with ashes. All of the animals as well as all of the people. No one was to eat or drink because this would show God the sincerity of their vows and, perhaps, keep God’s punishment from coming their way. Indeed, God relented and did not punish these Assyrian people (Nineveh was the capital of Assyria). Meanwhile, Jonah was an unhappy man. The people had repented and God relented. This was not what Jonah had in mind. He thought that if he went and preached as God had asked, the people of Nineveh would be too hard hearted to repent and God would surely punish them and even if they did turn from their wicked ways, God would punish them anyway. Jonah was angry and took himself outside the city gates, built himself a shelter and stayed there waiting for God to do what Jonah wanted and expected. God then caused a bush to grow up and give him shelter from the sun and then caused a worm to eat the bush the following night. When Jonah was angry about this, God responded, “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. 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?� (Jonah 4:10-11)

It’s a familiar story, one that Sunday School children learn. They sing songs about how Jonah tried to run away from God and ended up in the belly of a big fish, or maybe a whale. It’s a story, however for grown-ups. It’s a story about how God loves and cares for all of creation, even the animals, even our sworn enemies. It’s a story we need to pay attention to.

Jonah is unique in the prophetic literature. Most of the prophets wrote speaking against the injustice and corruption that was all around them. The oracles themselves are written in poetic form. Through what the prophet says, we have a sense of what was going on in Israel or Judah at the time of the writing. Jonah has none of that. Its literary form is that of myth. Please be aware that myth does not mean fallacy. The story is true even if the facts are not. That is, the story has a message to deliver and the writer wants that message to be loud and clear. In this particular instance, the myth takes the form of the hero’s journey, in which the hero is called away from ordinary life, takes a journey in which he encounters all sorts of dangers and returns to his old life a changed person who has a boon to give to his people. In this story, though, Jonah is an anti-hero. He flees from his call, ends up in the belly of the fish (a metaphor for death) the fish has a belly ache and spits him out on the beach (a metaphor for resurrection), goes to do what he was called to do, but he doesn’t change. This hero doesn’t do what is expected. That ought to catch our attention.

Jonah is a cautionary tale. It talks about two different things. One is obvious, and that is that God’s ways are not necessarily people’s ways. The other is related to it and is that God’s grace is available to everyone and everything. God cares about the world and everything that is part of the world, not just for our particular clan of people. The Hebrew people were convinced that their God dealt only with them and that the rest of the world was not included. They believed that their status as God’s chosen people gave them rights to judge others. Jonah says otherwise. Jonah says that God’s plan is not good news for him and people if they want to maintain their exclusivity. How can they continue to believe that they are to be the exclusive recipients of God’s grace and care?

We behave like that, too. There is a Jonah in almost all of us. We want to see our enemies suffer, to lose, to have bad things happen to them. I know that I have had such thoughts as the Judicial Council has pronounced that it is OK to discriminate against faithful people who want to join our churches just because they are gay or lesbian. I have wanted to see some of those who are leaders in the right wing caucuses of our church to get their comeuppance, to be exposed or somehow punished. It’s somehow gratifying to perceive those who oppose us and our positions as enemies. After all, they don’t know what’s the true truth. They couldn’t possibly have it right. It’s comforting, somehow, to see these people being reprimanded by God. It’s hard to see some of those people as colleagues rather than enemies, but we do ourselves, and them, a great disservice when we demonize them.

While these attitudes are natural and normal, they are counterproductive. We are God’s people, but so are those people with whom we disagree. We have to find some way to live with the tensions of our disagreements and to find some sort of common ground if we are to be the people God wants us to be. We are called to be prophets and name injustice whenever and wherever we see it. We are called to ask our brothers and sisters with whom we disagree hard questions, and they are called to ask us some, too. It’s so much easier to simply be right, and to know the correct answers. Unfortunately, we don’t have all of the answers. We don’t possess the mind of God. We can only do the best we can with the tools we have. We don’t have a corner on the truth. We only see part of the whole of God’s plan and we can only do our part to put the whole puzzle together. Unfortunately, we often believe that we have all the correct answers.

Our lessons from the Hebrew Bible and from the gospel this morning are reminders of our need to repent. The Hebrew word that is translated as “repent� means to turn or to return. It is not about guilt and a horrible person who needs to get right with God. What the word means and that our scripture lessons talk about is a complete turning around of our lives. Jesus called fishermen away from their livelihoods, away from their families. They followed. Their lives were turned upside down. Nothing was ever the same. When we accept the God’s call to follow, our lives are supposed to be turned upside down. We can’t say that we believe without action that follows from that belief.

Jonah is each of us trying hard to keep things comfortable, trying to live in our boxes where we know best and anyone who isn’t on the same page is wrong at best and evil at worst. Jonah doesn’t see or want to see that God’s grace is big enough for all of us whether liberal or conservative, Christian or Muslim, a member of this race or that one. God loves us all and it is our calling to love as God loves—even our perceived enemies.

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