Sermon Text

Today, we pick up a story in the middle, the story of Jonah. As you know, it's an interesting story!

As children, we probably heard this story as just that -- an interesting story. Sometimes the story had even been given an interesting title -- something like " O, Jonah!" or "Whale Tale" or even "The Story of the Fish that Went Manning". As children, we probably delighted in the story because it fit nicely into a world of imagination to which we were accustomed. But, for those of us who are adults, the story can sound like a fairy tale and can raise bothersome questions in our minds. We no longer live in a world so seasoned with fantasy and imagination. We live in a very practical world of facts and science. And we don't (usually!) read the Book of Jonah for recreational or bedtime reading. We approach this book as part of the Bible, looking for God's Truth in it.

And so the questions come: Is this story true? Is it "history" or something else altogether? So, before we can understand this story, we need to know what kind of story it is. At first glance, it looks very much like what we call "history". The story is set in the time before the Exile, when Assyria was the dominant nation in the Middle East. Since the name of the main character is Jonah, and he could be the same prophet mentioned in 2 Kings 14, we might just conclude that this book is what we call "history".

But most Biblical scholars agree that just isn't the case. It appears that the book was written long after the Exile, not before. After the Exile, a literary style developed in Israel which we now call "Wisdom Literature". This literature included allegories, parables, and short stories designed to make a religious or theological point. The readers were invited to see themselves in the stories. This is the kind of story the Book of Jonah is. It is a Wisdom Story, a parable, told to draw a comparison between the story and its audience.

This means that the question is not, "Is this story true?" but "What is the truth this story contains for me, for you, for us?" We listen to it the same way we listen to Jesus' parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, looking for the religious or theological truth contained in the story.

In the years after the Exile, there grew up in God's people in Israel a spirit of bitterness and vengefulness toward other peoples. After the wrenching experience of the Exile, there was little inclination to keep alive the vision of Israel as God's servant people through whom God's redemption would one day reach all people. At the time this Book was written, the people of Israel's most passionate desire was that God's wrath should utterly consume all their enemies. But God sent the prophets, to reawaken the nation and the faith community to a sense of missionary calling: God's calling not to hoard the love of God, but to be God's light to all the nations.

So, when the people first heard this story about a prophet who, when ordered to save the Ninevites took flight in the opposite direction, they would have been sympathetic. In fact, they would have cheered him on! The very thought of salvation for non-Jews was abhorrent to them. But, as we know, Jonah's evasions were futile, God interrupted Jonah's flight, showed him mercy, and then had him coughed up on the foreign shore to fulfill his calling.

So, everything went well from there? Not quite.

[Jonah 3:1-4:11]

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," we pray every Sunday. "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," we say in the Apostle's Creed. And we say these things because the Bible is really rather single-minded about the sinful condition of all humankind. John Calvin called it "total depravity" -- no individual, no nation, no institution (including the church), no group (including the very religious), no one is without sin. So, one of the Bible's basic assumptions is that everyone, like Jonah, is on the run from God, and that, left to our own devices, human beings tend to imperfection and destructiveness. The only hope for health, wholeness, and peace among humans is when we are restored to our right relationship with God. This restoration or reconciliation is called "salvation" or "deliverance." And the process toward deliverance is clear.

1. The process starts with God, not with us. God calls out to us, saying, "I love you. Face your evil, then turn away from it, and come home to Me."

2. Then comes our part, to "repent," to recognize that we are alienated from God, to face our need for forgiveness and change, and to turn around toward God.

3. God's grace is as promised. God has already granted free and full forgiveness. We can affirm, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins."

But do we? Really? Or does our sinfulness creep in even here, in this basic faith affirmation? "I believe in the forgiveness of sins" -- not in the forgiveness of my sins, or even the forgiveness of our sins, but just "the forgiveness of sins." The problem comes when we can accept our own inclusion, but have difficulty accepting their inclusion, the inclusion of people whose "forgivability" we find questionable. In Jonah, we see all too clearly the truth that we sometimes find God's mercy maddening, for God's mercy surprises us by going far beyond the boundaries of what we would consider appropriate!

Here is Jonah, under protest, but finally fulfilling his calling, proclaiming God's message of repentance and new life to the hated Ninevites. And then, what you would expect to be every preacher's dream -- the people actually listened(!), took Jonah's message seriously, and responded wholeheartedly. Did Jonah rejoice at being such an effective agent of God's mercy? Not at all. He blew up at God and went into the desert to sulk and feel self-righteous and sorry for himself. He hurls at God some of the most profound praise in Scripture, not in reverence and awe, but in rage.

"You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, ... And I can't stand it! I can't stand it that You offer mercy to these undeserving heathens! Why don't You give them what they deserve?" If it weren't so serious, it would be howlingly funny. We could all just laugh at silly old Jonah and go home. But by now the parable is too transparent for us simply to laugh it off.

Parables are like mirrors. We are supposed to see ourselves in them, so that we might be moved to repentance and change by this God of mercy. We -- individually and collectively -- are handed this stinging indictment. When we reject our commission to be "a light to the world," we are like Jonah. When we cling to self-righteous, narrow, and bitter attitudes, we are like Jonah. When we reject other people, for whom Christ died, because we consider them to be not as righteous, not as deserving as we, we are like Jonah, and we reject God.

Who are your "Ninevites?" Whom do you consider to be beyond inclusion? How do you draw the line which separates the righteous "us" from the unrighteous "them," and who gave you that job in the first place?

Is the story of Jonah true? You bet it is. Like so many of Jesus' parables, this story draws us in and then indicts us by our own reaction to it, but it also invites us to discover the reasons for our reaction. As was the case with Jonah, it is our basic competitiveness that makes us mad over God's mercy. This parable forces us to see that we really don't want to be sisters and brothers of the same loving Father. We want to be the best, Number One, on top of the pecking order of sibling rivalry. Jonah makes us see that the last thing we want is God's maddening mercy, because it equalizes everything. It takes away our sense of privilege, our earned reward, our basis for feeling better than other people.

"Is it right for you to be angry?" God teases Jonah, like a wise parent teasing a pouting pre-schooler who has run away to hide under the breakfast table. God must have had a hard time stifling a smile at Jonah's self-righteous protest. The parable ends with God pointing out the absurdity of Jonah's position. "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?" Should God not be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love?

And that's it! We are left hanging! We are left with Jonah hugging his anger in a self-righteous snit, and with God inviting him to a party for all God's children. Jonah had a decision to make! And so do we.

Let us pray.
God of grace, indict us to invite us, so that we may be freed from narrowness to find joy in the wideness of Your mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.