9th September 2024

Jonah

Jonah

Jonah

A sermon by Ross Meikle, Missioner For Young People

Sunday 8 September 2024

This summer, we have journeyed through a sermon series based on Old Testament Shorts: those books of the Hebrew Scriptures that are perhaps not very well known. We have met minor prophets in Nahum, Habakkuk and Obadiah. We have heard Jewish literature in the story of Esther, the erotic poetry of the Songs of Songs, and the apocryphal tale of Daniel verses the idol Bel and the Dragon.

Today, we come into land with the Book of Jonah – a book that would have started our had I not pipped the Canon Chancellor to the post. But actually, the Parable of Jonah makes for a satisfying end to our sermon series.

Jonah may seem to some rather a cheat. Surely everyone knows the story of Jonah and the Whale! Perhaps some even use the Reluctant Prophet Jonah as a yardstick for discipleship. But it is neither the Big Fish nor his Disobedience that I am concerned with.

They make for a fun story and interesting reflection… but there is more.

More, which grants us a connection to our previous stories, the community of faith which connects them, and to Jesus who we follow and affirm as the Christ, the Anointed One.

Buckle up. Let’s go.

We enter the Story to discover:

  • a fantastic world with allusions to the ancient world, and
  • our anti-prophet, Jonah the Son of Amitai: translation – the Dove of Truth.

Yet unlike the dove of Noah’s ark which willingly seeks out signs of New Life after God’s judgment, this Dove-of-Truth-Jonah cares not for his mission to deliver God’s judgement to Nineveh – he flees to the sea! We know Nineveh. We heard of it from our sermon on Nahum as the prophet rails against it in words of judgment that leave us feeling cold about the All-Loving God we worship:

A jealous and avenging God is the Lord,
the Lord is avenging and wrathful;
He cares for those who trust in him,
but with an overwhelming flood
he will make an end of Nineveh;
he will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness.

In the real world, Nineveh was known for its wicked power against the Hebrew people. Jonah’s mission has been likened to the sending of a 1930s Jew into the midst of Nazi Germany to give God’s judgment on their sin of Holocaust. Esther’s story also comes into play as she finds herself a secret Jew who alone can save her people from genocide.

In our fantastic world, those connotations carry over. Jonah – rather reasonably therefore – runs away and begins an odyssey upon the open sea. His movement is down, down, down.

Down to the port of Jaffa…

Down into the ship…

And then further down into the sea, as:

  • the Lord stirs up a storm,
  • Jonah bears witness to ‘the Lord God of the Heavens, who made the sea and the dry land’, and
  • the sailors reluctantly cast him into the sea.

His downward movement reaches its nadir, his rock bottom, when God sends a great fish to swallow Jonah where he pours out his soul in a traditional psalm of thanksgiving. Rescue comes from the Lord as from God’s instruction, after 3 days, Jonah receives New Life and is vomited onto dry land. Christians naturally think of the Easter story at this point: 3 days of death and a pseudo-resurrection.

Let us pause as we are three quarters through the chapters of this book and notice. Notice God’s power:

  • Power over Jonah as God of the Hebrews.
  • Power over the storm – its stirring and settling.
  • Power over Creation – credited as “the God of the Heavens who made the sea and dry land”.
  • Power over Creatures – the great fish obeys him both in swallowing and spitting.

We are being invited to consider the nature of God in a fantastical world where our expectations are subverted. When a story does this – subverting expectation – we enter the realm of Parable:

  • A Shepherd leaves his 99 sheep to go after just one lost one… where’s the logic in that?
  • A Samaritan stops to help a Jew bleeding on the side of the road… shock! Horror!
  • A son who scorned his father is welcomed home with abundant gifts… that’s not what he deserves!

These parables of Jesus subvert our world and challenge our understanding. And in the parable of Jonah, we have already had our expectations of a holy prophet subverted because where the likes of Isaiah and Jeremiah show obedience… Jonah runs away. Now in Nineveh, let us see how else the Parable of Jonah subverts our expectations…

Ah! But notice: chapter 3, verse 3, that Nineveh is a great city of God’s… God’ power is here too… How would Nahum feel about that? And Obadiah so angry against Edom? He’d have something to say on that surely. And Habakkuk who feels so abandoned by God… And Esther who is trying to save her people from genocide.

Nineveh is a great city of God’s? How can that be possible and just and fair?

And now behold: for the prophet makes his declaration of judgment: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”.  This is the stuff Nahum is made of!

And in another subversion of all the prophets who proclaim the Word of the Lord to their own people to change their ways… the people of Nineveh listen to Jonah. Prophets are typically ignored and vindicated after the fact.

All of Nineveh repent: the king, the people, the animals. ALL of them fasting and in sackcloth in the hope that God will have mercy. Imagine in this fairy tale world of giant fish and sudden storms: the cattle, the sheep, the dogs refraining from food and water and dressed up in sackcloth. An idea perhaps for our upcoming Pet Service.

And God does not punish them after all. Nineveh is forgiven. In the words of the Epistle of James: Mercy triumphs over Judgement. Nahum must be raging! So is Jonah, who storms out of the city into the blazing desert to sulk – he rejoices not in the mercy of God even though he knew all along that God is a ‘gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in kindness and relenting from evil’.

But God – in a mini-episode with a plant and a worm – leaves Jonah and the listener with a final question for our consideration:

“You – you had pity over the plant, for which you did not toil and which you did not grow… And I, shall I not have pity for Nineveh the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand human beings who do not know their right hand and their left, and many beasts?”

Should God pity Nineveh or not? Might we dare to ask with more contemporary language: Should God pity Nazis or not? Furthermore, we cannot escape our current context of violence and genocide in the Holy Land, as the State of Israel becomes a Nineveh to the people of Palestine.

I think this series we have seen two responses in the Hebrew Scriptures to their traumatic corporate history:

  • Nahum, Obadiah, Habakkuk, and the story of Daniel versus the idol Bel… we find texts that assert through vengeance, rage and grief, a sense of “My God”. My God shall smite you. My God is stronger than your idol. Where is your justice for me, my God?
  • With Esther and the Songs of Songs, we find texts that are told at festivals. Esther is told like a pantomime and Song of Songs is the text of the Jewish Passover. They turn trauma into laughter… yet we have been told that God is not there in either text.

We have “My God” and “No God”. And in Jonah… ?

We are reminded of the power of God who is over all creation: sea and storms, all nations and people, all plants and animals…  Not unlike the Book of Job – but while Job looks inward at his own soul and righteousness, Jonah looks outward to a world that has such deep divisions between nations and dares to say: “Our God”.

I like what John Dominic Crossan has to say about parables: God is given a little room in which to be God, and we are reminded of our finitude and our humanity. And in that sense, we find in Jesus a walking breathing parable. God subverts all expectations in Christ, who fulfils the Sign of Jonah – a sign of God’s universal love and compassion. For in Christ, we find the one with the Power of God:

Christ who commanded the wind and sea… and preached peace.

Christ who grew up under oppression… and had mercy even unto them.

Christ who we may encounter in the Eucharist: a morsel of bread and a sip of wine… and a richness of Spirit and an abundance of Unity.

Christ who succumbed to three days in the belly of Death Itself… but shares power over death with the whole world, leaving us with the hope of redemption as Mercy triumphs over the Judgement we deserve.

Still yet, the Parable of Jonah is a relevant challenge to us today:

Because if Christ, through whom all things were made, has demonstrated grace and mercy upon us who believe… then why should Christ not pity those who do not believe, and indeed, even those we consider to be the worst of humankind…

Amen.

Now, parables are designed to challenge and prompt discussion. Join me on Zoom tomorrow night at 7pm as we go deeper – maybe even into the belly of the whale! – and explore Jonah, reflect on the whole sermon series, and identify what to take with us on our spiritual journeys.