21 January 2018

Epiphany 3B

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Psalm 62:6-14

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1:14-20

 

 

“Jonah and God’s Mercy”

 

Barbara Brown Taylor, gifted spiritual writer and Episcopal priest, says this about the Book of Jonah:  “As far as I am concerned, the Book of Jonah has the best last line in the Bible: [which is] ‘And should I not be concerned about Ninevah,’ God says to Jonah, ‘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?”  The End.”

 

And I think BBT might be right about this being the best final word from God to us.  For this story establishes three things about the nature of God,     and about how we should view God in our own times.  The saving of the evil people of Ninevah teach us that God is above all merciful, and also that God is persistent and will not be circumvented or dodged when God intends something for us. God will persist in faithfulness in undeserved love for us and his willingness to hear our cries and even to change his mind because of repentance and supplication. 

Hence the story of the prophet Jonah also reveals God’s responsiveness to us humans, ever viewing us in ways that are foreign to our ways.  Our judgment is clearly not God’s judgment, which is far more tempered with love and mercy.  Indeed, as the Lord says in Isaiah:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways  … 
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” 

And thanks be to God that that is true!    So like BBT, I think there is much to be learned from the tiny book about Jonah.

 

Most of what we learned as children was only the narrative about Jonah and the whale.  From that part of the book we learn that we cannot hide from or run away from God when God sets God’s sights on us.  God is even responsive to the sailors who were unfortunate enough to become participants in Jonah’s attempt to hide from God.  Once they realize that it is because of the presence of Jonah on their boat that they are likely to perish in an increasingly violent storm, they accept that their only salvation will be from throwing Jonah overboard to a certain death.  But they beg God:  “Do not make us guilty of innocent blood” and God hears their cry and answers, perhaps in part to their plea that God not blame them for Jonah’s death, and certainly in response to Jonah repenting from within the belly of the big fish.  God does not kill Jonah but has the fish spit him out on the shore.  And our persistent God, once again, tells Jonah to do as he says, to “Get up, go to Ninevah, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”  After the near drowning incident, God has finally gotten Jonah’s attention.  Realizing there is nowhere he can run or hide, Jonah marches into this foreign and wicked city.

 

Since not many readers of the Book of Jonah have all the background about Ninevah, let me tell you that there was good reason for the good Jewish boy Jonah to fear going there.  He might have been a far more willing and obedient prophet if God had sent him to reform an evil population within his own country, maybe someplace like perhaps Jericho.  But Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, a country now known as Iraq.  The Assyrians were pagans who had enslaved the Israelites and warred against God’s people for centuries.  They were indeed the classic enemy.  And Jonah did not want any part of proclaiming God’s message of repentance to the Ninevites because he was fairly certain they would ignore him at best, or kill or imprison him, since the story says even the king was wicked through and through, but still quite powerful.  And beyond his fear, Jonah also did not want to preach redemption to the Ninevites simply because they were his people’s sworn enemies who had invaded his people’s homes, destroyed their cities and taken them into captivity to serve as slaves to their oppressors.  Hence Jonah has not a smidgen of desire to be part of Ninevah’s salvation, in spite of commandments from the Lord God.  He felt those people deserved God’s wrath and all harm that would come upon them from Almighty God.  They were evil and deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth.

 

Yet after the whale incident, Jonah was begrudgingly obedient.  He walks through the city saying only eight words:  “Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!”  Not a lot of words from a prophet preaching to wicked people.  But through some miracle, or perhaps the intention and mysterious power of God Almighty, they take to heart Jonah’s words.  They don’t wait the proclaimed forty days.  Although the next four verses are not included in our lectionary reading from Jonah,        the king immediately removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, sat in ashes,        and proclaimed to his people that they were not to eat or drink.  The people and interestingly all their animals too, were to cover themselves with sackcloth (a sign of mourning) and to cry mightily to God.  The king proclaimed:  “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.  Who knows?  God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

 

Isn’t that amazing?  A king who might have worshipped pagan gods, or not worshipped anything but himself,   hears the warning from God and immediately repents, ordering all inhabitants and animals in his city to also repent.  And God hears their cries, changes his mind, and the city is saved. 

 

Meanwhile, there is Jonah, now sitting on a hill just outside the city, waiting to see God vaporize Ninevah.  He is feeling smug and righteous.  He, a good Israelite, has finally obeyed God and bravely spoken truth to power, and lived!  He feels he alone knows how richly these evil people deserve the fullness of God’s judgment.  The last thing in the world that poor Jonah wants is for God to spare the Ninevites,           and so it is not even on his radar that might be God’s new action. 

 

And Jonah, in his self-righteous smugness, so wants to be right.  Everyone in the story, even God, repents, except Jonah.  He simply cannot fathom that God’s idea of justice might not match his own idea of justice.  Jonah cannot grasp that what happens to the Ninevites or to Jonah himself is God’s and only God’s business.  Only God decides how the world should run, and God is not as petty as Jonah or as merciless as Jonah, or as petty and merciless as we are. 

 

We too rejoice when the wicked seem to get what they deserve. 
We, like Jonah, want mercy for ourselves but justice for other people, especially for those we view as our enemies or as lesser folks, like immigrants, who don’t deserve what we have, forgetting that we deserve nothing that God has freely given us.

 

Commentators on the Book of Jonah say the beauty of the lessons found there are that Jonah reminds us that the world’s Ninevites and the unworthy and unwashed in America, and all the people outside our own tribe whom we judge most harshly, also receive the mercy of God, making us think there is something inherently unfair in God’s distribution of mercy.  We never seem to learn the biblical teaching that God does not spend a lot of time deciding who is worthy of grace and who is not.  We alone do that. 

 

So perhaps the last lesson from the story of Jonah is about God’s universality.  God’s mercy and love is not reserved for just us Christians, or even worse, for just us American Christians.  We have no right to try to limit God’s grace just to those on our list, those in our tribe.  Like the scatterer of seed in the Parable of the Sower or the vineyard owner who pays the last hired worker the same as those who toiled in his vineyard since sunrise, God is dramatically opposite from us and our petty views of judgment and justice.  God scatters his seeds of love and redemption for all, and he provides the same mercy for those who come to him much later than those who work all their lives for God’s kingdom.

 

Jesus taught us that God’s kingdom is unfathomably different from any kingdom humans would construct.  I think it might be helpful and wise for each of us to remember that in the midst of debates about which foreigners are deserving of a chance to make a better life in our country, and which of the poor deserve the same good healthcare we have, even though they have not had the benefits some of us have had that make meaningful work possible.  I fear that our country is turning mean in spirit and following those who would only make us more so: more selfish, more like the wicked Ninevites, and less like Jesus who opened his arms on the cross to all, and who ate with the poor and outcaste, and preached that we should not only feed the poor but also respect them as equal children of God. 

As Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“when you get right down to it, we are all Ninevites and ne’er-do-wells, only I do not think God would put it like that, because those are human labels full of human judgments.  From where God sits, I expect we look more like hurt, sick, lost children, all of us in deep need of mercy.  … 

If Ninevah is spared, who won’t shout hallelujah?  …  Only those who do not know who they are.  The rest of us will be down in Ninevah at the party, whopping it up with all the other folks who do not know their right hands from their left, and also many animals.”

 

So with those words echoing in our ears, let us do likewise to all we feel unworthy and outside our circle.  Let’s go join the party of grace and mercy, ever thankful for the forgiving, loving, righteous God of all creation.

 

 

 

AMEN.