Sermons from the Pulpit

     What a great story. First, a recap:

     Chapter 1: Jonah Runs Away. A prophet who doesn't behave like one. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and the Assyrians were Israel's worst enemies, the baddest of the bad, the vilest of the vile. But will Jonah obey God and cry out against them? No! God tells him to go west, and he goes east, on a boat. And a big storm comes up, courtesy of God. Jonah knows he is the reason for the storm, and he asks the sailors to throw him overboard. But the sailors, all pagans, show compassion. They're reluctant to toss him into the drink. In one commentary of the rabbis, the sailors dip him in slowly - first his feet, then his knees, then his hips, while the sea gets calmer and calmer the lower he gets. Finally, they say a prayer to Jonah's God and let go of him altogether.

     Chapter 2: Jonah and The Whale. That's what we call the story, but actually, the Hebrew says "big fish." God appoints one to swallow Jonah up. And so Jonah goes down - down to the sea in a ship, down to the sea itself, down to the belly of a fish, down to the bottom of despair, with seaweeds wrapped around his head in a sorry crown. Somehow, man and fish survive each other's presence for three days and for three nights. Jonah even sings a psalm of deliverance. But lest he get too comfortable down there, God has the fish throw up, and out comes Jonah onto dry ground. We are back where we started.

     Chapter 3. Jonah at Nineveh. God's word comes to Jonah a second time, and Jonah goes to Nineveh, as God wants. But has Jonah had a change of heart, after all that time sitting in the gut of a fish? Not really. He goes, because he figures there's no choice. The sermon he preaches is only eight words long: "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And no sooner are these words spoken than all of Nineveh repents. From the king down to the cattle, all put on sackcloth, which is made of goat's hair and shaped like a grain bag with holes for the head and arms (or legs, if you're a cow). What a sight! What an outstanding sermon!

     And something else happens: God repents. God has a change of heart and doesn't blast the Ninevites to smithereens. How wonderful! How merciful! How gracious!

     Except that Jonah is mad. Not just mad: Offended. Disgusted. He wanted the enemy to go up in smoke. But he knew that God might just spare them, which is why he has run away in the first place. Jonah's so mad he wishes he were dead.

     Which brings us to Chapter 4: Jonah and The Bush. "Is it right for you to be angry?" asks God, and the question is concerned yet ominous. "You bet," answers Jonah, oblivious to any divine portent, and, in a fit of "suicidal petulance," refuses to leave and sits down and sulks.

     Now, after all that time inside a fish's belly, you can imagine how pale and tender Jonah's skin must be, and so God appoints a bush to grow up, just like that, to keep him from the hot Middle-Eastern sun. Jonah is glad to have the bush, and so, when God appoints a worm to kill the bush, Jonah is even more angry.

     That just about ends the story, with Jonah holding out in disgust under a hot sun, maybe wishing he'd stayed inside the fish. That's the end, Jonah's silence, except for one thing, and that is God's last word, which is: "You care about the bush? Well, then, why shouldn't I care about Nineveh, that great city, where there are 120,000 people who don't know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?"

     Imagine: a God who does not mirror our feelings exactly. This satire is funny, but is still serious stuff. Jonah's problem is both personal and theological. One commentator called him "Jonah the Narrow," and, yes, his bitter and narrow attitudes are his own unwitting display of his rejection of the God he claims to worship. He "overfocuses" on the Ninevites, his hatred of them crowding out everything else. He hides from God's presence because he knows it demands that he let go of his prejudices. He'd rather be "right" about the Ninevites than let God be God.

     But I've never been guilty of such gracelessness; no, not me! I've never been offended at the thought of someone who's done real harm being shown mercy. Jonah says he is "angry enough to die." I submit that if you yourself have never, ever felt that way in the face of someone else's undeserved forgiveness, then you won't "get" this story at all. You won't. Jonah will be a complete mystery to you.

     But he sure wasn't a mystery to the Jews. A prophet who was ordered to preach repentance but refused to do so would totally capture the sympathy of a people who had suffered much at the hands of their enemies. A people who remembered their forced exile - how the tongues of their nursing children had cleaved to the roofs of their mouths for thirst, who remembered the violence, the devastation, the shame - they, certainly, would pray that God would dash their enemies into pieces! The Jews thought that their own exile was God's punishment for neglecting God's covenant. Then, to see pagans doing far worse and not being punished: well, it was asking too much.

     And now.....don't we have the same questions? The story of Jonah was written in an ancient time when God's existence was assumed and everything that happened was seen in terms of God's active presence in the world. But now, in these modern times, and especially in this last century, the civilized world has carried out with dispatch unthinkable horrors, and there was no punishment from God. No divine intervention. Neither judgment nor mercy as far as the eye could see. Now, especially after Auschwitz, there are many who watch evil prosper and conclude that God must not exist, or at least is eclipsed: for all practical purposes, there is no God.

     And we who try to keep the faith, we do not accept this disposal of God, but we also know, deep down, that there is no simple equation which settles the mysteries of sin and repentance and judgment and mercy and goodness and evil.

     Jonah is not satisfied with what happened with the Ninevites, and wants to write his own ending instead. Surely we can sympathize with that. But in his loveless, miserable state, Jonah is the one who is judged. So maybe there's a reason why he is not allowed to die. Maybe God is waiting for Jonah to wise up about himself, and even to ponder his very existence, which is both everything (he exists! a miracle in itself) and nothing (he is as fragile as that bush that withered and died).

     Leonard Michaels writes that God's final question, which ends the story, obliges us to "wonder about certain things. . . whether prophets are required in a world where spiritual darkness is the prevailing fact, . . . and whether this darkness ...is a form of grace, saving a vast number of us from seeing how bad we sometimes are, or how eerily fortunate it is that we are at all."

     Amen!