CRAZY STORY, SURPRISING HOPE
Jonah 1:1-4; 3:1-10
January 25, 2009
- Rev. Janet Robertson Duggins
after
reading Jonah 1:1-4:
We know what happens to Jonah, don’t we? Well, at least we know something about what happens next in the story: the sailors on the ship are terrified by the huge storm; they pray to their gods, they throw the cargo overboard to lighten the load, and when none of that helps, they eventually conclude that somebody on board has brought this bad luck with him… and that somebody turns out to be Jonah. He admits as much, and although they don’t want to do it, eventually the desperate sailors throw him overboard, and a huge fish swallows him. He lives inside the belly of this fish for three days, and from inside the fish, he prays to God (a long, psalm-like prayer; it comprises most of chapter 2). Then God speaks to the fish, and the fish spits Jonah out onto the seashore.
But that’s not the end – or even the most important part – of the story. This is what happens next:
read Jonah 3:1-10
This is a wildly improbable story; every part is played for laughs. You have to appreciate the humor and the irony to really grasp the point. You can’t read it with the voice of rationality in your head telling you “this doesn’t make sense” or “it couldn’t have happened like that.” It’s supposed to be ridiculous – if you can’t see the ridiculousness of it, you will miss the point.
A favorite motif – a joke, almost – of scripture is the “outsider” who is unexpectedly faithful, while the person or people who are supposed to know and do God’s will are clueless. No story carries this theme to the degree that the book of Jonah does.
As you read this story, you keep thinking, “is there any
hope for these people?” All of the characters seem to be in a bad way. There doesn’t seem to be much hope for any of
them - Jonah, the sailors, the people of
Ninevah… and what about the people of
Think, first, about the sailors:
The sailors were … well, sailors. Picture a bunch of tough guys, gentiles, probably an assortment of men who believed in various deities, or none at all. Not only that, unbeknownst to them, they’ve had the bad luck to end up taking on this passenger who has (shall we say) some baggage: he brings with him the heavy weight of God’s displeasure. For a while, it looks like the whole ship is about to go down because of it. And then the sailors realize they’re in a real bind: Jonah’s God is obviously more powerful than any God they have known of, and they’re afraid of what might happen to them if they cause the death of one of this God’s prophets, even one who is not a very good prophet, and not currently much in favor. They decide to try rowing harder first, but the storm only gets worse. When they finally, desperately, decide they will have to throw Jonah overboard, they beg God, “Don’t let us drown because of this man, and don’t blame us for his death.” The situation is out of their control, and they know it.
And yet, they not only survive the storm and sail on a calm sea again, they end up in awe of and attached to the God Jonah wanted to run away from.
And then there’s Ninevah.
I’m not sure why Ninevah had such a bad reputation, it certainly did
have one. Was it vice? violence in the streets? perhaps an addiction to greed and excess? injustice and callousness toward the poor and
vulnerable? maybe they had a reputation
for being a repressive society or aggressive toward neighboring nations? Perhaps all of those things. We know, certainly, that Ninevah was the
capital of Assyria, which was for a time the super power of the ancient middle
east and one of
Early in the story, we are told that God is fed up with the people of Ninevah and their evil ways, and has determined to destroy their society. Apparently it’s not enough to destroy them, they have to have the dubious experience of anticipating their fate, so God sends a prophet to announce the impending destruction of the city and its people.
Does it get more hopeless than this?
And yet… this story has the people of Ninevah hearing hear this guy, who surely must be one of God’s most reluctant messengers of all time, deliver a one-sentence sermon (with no mention of God!) - “Forty days more and Ninevah shall be overthrown.” With that, they repent – the king, the people, even the animals (Which is harder to believe, the animals repenting, or the king??!) are included in the acts of repentance undertaken en masse by this city – on the chance that maybe, just maybe, it won’t be too late after all for God to relent. And – surprise! – God does have a change of heart.
And then there’s Jonah – what can you say about somebody called by God who wants absolutely nothing to do with what God wants him to do? The FISH is better at listening to God than Jonah is!! Jonah is singularly lacking in courage, graciousness, compassion, flexibility, preaching skills and listening skills … he’s big into denial and avoidance of any reality he doesn’t like… plus he has an unfortunate tendency to sulk! As a prophet, he’s hopeless.
But can you blame the poor guy? From the beginning of the story he is saddled
with an impossible mission. Preaching
to Ninevah was an assignment that better preachers and diplomats than Jonah
might run away from. I’m not sure what
we might compare it to: convincing
Jonah is the bumbling clown figure in the story – setting off a chain reaction of wild and crazy events (running away, the storm, the fish) but occasionally getting something right, entirely by accident: He had no intention of preaching to anybody, but because of him, a whole shipful of sailors ends up being very impressed by Jonah’s God and making commitments to honor that God. When Jonah does intend to preach God’s message (to Ninevah) he doesn’t really intend it to be successful… but in spite of him, it IS successful – wildly so! (Whoever heard of a whole city repenting?)
Apparently, God’s intended purposes can be accomplished with a minimum of faithfulness on the part of God’s messenger!
Jonah’s story doesn’t end with the part we read. There is one more chapter (you might want to get out your Bible and read it) … and if you think the conclusion of the story will Jonah happy and relieved to have successfully completed his mission at last, you’d be wrong. Jonah is far from happy; in fact, he gets quite peeved with God, because God didn’t destroy those evil people of Ninevah after all. It turns out that God’s prophet doesn’t understand God very well at all!
You have to laugh!
This crazy story has another group of characters we don’t see so easily: the people for whom this story was told, retold, written, and collected with the other “prophetic” messages. If you compare the book of Jonah with the other Biblical books we call the “prophetic writings,” you see immediately that it’s a completely different kind of literature. It contains no sermons about how God’s people have strayed from God’s ways, no listing of their corrupt behavior that has been displeasing to God, no plea for them to straighten up and come back to God’s ways, no warnings about the consequences if they don’t listen to God. Nor are there the words of encouragement, reminders of God’s love, or references to their history as God’s chosen people which you find in the other prophetic writings. Jonah is a story. The prophetic message is told through story, as Jesus’ message was sometimes told in parables. And it’s a funny story, clearly intended, by its absurdity, to make the people who hear it roll on the floor with laughter … at least until they realize that the laugh is on them, and the crazy story has a serious purpose.
Sure, it seems ridiculous that Jonah would try to run away from God… but is it any more ridiculous than the many ways WE run away from God and the excuses we find for not doing what God wants? Sure, the bad luck that drags the sailors into the drama of Jonah’s life and the things they do to try and get themselves out of it are the stuff of comedy… but don’t we often feel just as foolish when we are caught up in things beyond our control, in tangles where there’s no easy way out, in binds where we don’t know what to do?
Undoubtedly the very idea of a mission to the godless people of Ninevah IS crazy, and the possibility that they might actually respond is beyond belief… but is it any more ridiculous than the fact that people like us who have had opportunities to respond to God frequently don’t? Of course it’s absurd that Jonah didn’t really want the people of Ninevah to repent and find mercy with God… but is it any more absurd than any of the times when we have preferred anger and resentment to healing and reconciliation? Sure, it’s crazy that God’s messenger didn’t understand the first thing about the nature of God’s mercy … until you realize how little we understand God, and how hard it is for us to get our minds around the notion that God’s mercy might even extend to those we have no compassion for. Isn’t it silly that Jonah thought he, and not God should be in charge?… but then again aren’t we all silly for thinking that?
But… If there is hope for Jonah, in his ineptness and stubbornness and sulking, then there is hope for us too;
If there is hope for the sailors, caught up in a storm not of their own making, then there is hope for us too;
If there is hope for the people of Ninevah, in their lostness and sin, there is hope for us too;
If there is hope for the people of
There is hope for us… in our bumbling efforts to do God’s will and our hapless efforts to avoid doing it;
There is hope for us… in the tough and seemingly insolvable situations we get stuck in;
There is hope for us… as we struggle to make our way in the midst of the distorted values and destructive habits and misplaced passions of our society;
There is hope for us… in our complacency and insular attitudes that keep us from seeing God’s love for people different from us.
It may be only after a sense of hopelessness hits home – as it does in this story – that we begin to see that the hope we really need, the hope that is in God’s love and mercy, was there all along… and is, amazingly, surprisingly, for all God’s children. Amen.