January 25, 2015
Jonah
“Changing Minds”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
Our second scripture lesson this morning comes from the Old Testament, the Book of Jonah. The bulletin lists a reading from chapter three. I have decided instead to read from chapter four. But when it comes to Jonah you really have to tell the whole story. It is a wonderfully humorous, compelling story that packs quite the wallop of meaning when it comes to God, the people of God, and God’s call on our lives. When I was in college I remember a Friday night Christian Fellowship meeting with a guest speaker who was a professor from a nearby school. His talk was entitled “The Historicity of the Book of Jonah.” I don’t remember much of the lecture, his attempt to argue why and how all the stuff in the Book of Jonah really happened. But I was thinking about that Friday night somewhere around 1982 this week in my study as I found myself swallowed afresh by the Book of Jonah. Here’s my thought about that night and that lecture: “Wow, what a waste of time.” Maybe it’s because I am getting older and value time well spent. Maybe it’s my own theological journey and my ever increasing fascination and love of scripture; my amazement at how it comes alive and speaks afresh over and over and over again. Maybe it is because of how compelling and timeless I found the story of Jonah again in my encounter with it this week. It’s a great story about a God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. It’s a great story about God’s love.
The Word of the Lord came to Jonah and told him to “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah didn’t want to go. It wasn’t simply that “he didn’t want to go”, Jonah decided to sail to Tarshish in order to get away from God. He ran away and jumped on a ship bound for what, at the time, was considered the farthest place you could go. Jonah thought he was on the run, running from the presence of the Lord.
Not too long into the trip the problems started: wind, rough seas, danger. A storm unlike any other. Even the ship itself knew it was in trouble. In a panic, the crew threw all of the cargo overboard, hoping to lighten their weight and tough out the storm. It wasn’t working. Jonah, the prophet, maybe with a bit of pious bravado, or a bit of “I couldn’t be bothered to help” attitude, was sleeping down in the hold of the ship. The captain rousted him, “What are you doing asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps your god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish!” The sailors weren’t ready to wait for God, they wanted to bank on superstition as well. They drew straws among all the men on the ship to see who among them could explain it or who they could blame. Jonah drew the wrong straw.
“I am a Hebrew,” Jonah said as everyone backed him toward the rail of the ship, “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” The crew drew closer around him and were scared all the more. They figured it out, that he was on the run from God. He in as much told them so. “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” Jonah offered them a solution: “Pick me up and throw me into the sea, then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” The men weren’t convinced. They rowed harder and harder, but nothing was working. They cried out to the Lord, pleading that God would not make them suffer because of something Jonah had done. “So they picked him up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from it’s raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more. They offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.” I bet they did. Right then and there!
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. During that time, Jonah prayed, asking God to save him, to hear his plea. In a notable detail not to be missed by the story’s listeners, Jonah prayed about God and his own deliverance all in the past tense. His prayer reflected his flat out confidence that God would spare his life. “Deliverance belongs to the Lord!” he prayed. Then the Lord spoke to the fish and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. The fish upchucked Jonah. The fish vomited Jonah. The Lord again told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Surprise, this time Jonah went. And his message to the people of Nineveh was clear, short and not so sweet. “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” A sermon, a fire and brimstone sermon fit for Twitter. “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Nineveh will be no more.
Here’s where the story gets even more interesting. Something happened that Jonah wasn’t expecting; probably the last thing Jonah was expecting. Something Jonah wasn’t prepared for. The people believed him, or perhaps better said, they listened to him, or they took him seriously, or they decided he was telling the truth about what God was about to do, as it is written in the ancient text; “The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and everyone great and small, put on a sackcloth.” For goodness sakes, even the king put on a sackcloth and sat his royal backside down in some ashes. He made a proclamation. He legislated repentance and dared hope that God might have a change of heart. The king declared that all human beings and all animals should fast. The king proclaimed that all human beings and all animals should put on sack cloth. And that all human beings and all the animals should cry mightily to God. The king said “Who knows? God may relent and change God’s mind; God may turn from God’s fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” The people heard, responded, repented, worshiped, prayed, turned from their evil ways and turned toward God.
Jonah 3:10-4:11
According to the story, when God changed God’s mind, Jonah became angry. “You see, I told you so! I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing! Why do you think I fled to Tarshish?” Jonah couldn’t bear to see the love of God pour out upon a city that he had come to hate. He was preaching a message of judgment and destruction, while God came through with an experience of mercy and forgiveness. Jonah wanted to see God’s power in wrath. God displayed God’s power in love. Jonah wanted vengeance. The people received new life. Jonah tried to run away from God. God found him even in the blubbery walls of hell. Jonah tried to play God. God sent a worm to teach him a lesson. By the end God must have been speaking real softly and probably just as slowly. “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor, and which you did not grow. It came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Ninevah, that great city” full of all those people who don’t know their right hand from their left?” Should I not be concerned about Ninevah?
It’s a great story about God’s love. A story that doesn’t offer a philosophical, theological treatise on the changing mind of God. This story, how it ends abruptly there with God’s question, it’s a story that refuses to reveal whether or not Jonah changed his mind. It’s a story not so much about God’s changing mind, or Jonah’s changing mind, it’s a story about ours….our changing mind; and how willing or comfortable we are with the notion that God’s love is always greater than we want it to be. It is not a story that begs for profound theological conclusions or the perfecting and protection of sound theological doctrine, it’s a story about God’s grace and mercy. It’s not a story to be kept up in the ivory steeple somewhere safely guarded by those who think they hold the keys to God’s love, who is in who is out, who deserves it, who doesn’t. It’s a story that ought to worm its way into your life; unsettling those feelings of resentment and bitterness you have for all the “theys” and “thems” in your world, poking at all the animosity you have for those you might even name as enemies in your world, prodding at your faith-filled conscious where you hold the grudges, the jealousies, the bitterness. This story ought to worm its way int your life making room for the steadfast love of God to do God’s work in you, the steadfast love of God at work in the world through you.
Rob Bell was a pastor and a preacher who wrote a book not long ago entitled Love Wins. His provocative affirmations about the greater love of God got him pretty much kicked out of or shunned by the Christian evangelical community. At the end of one of his sermons, a sermon on the Book of Jonah, Rob Bell offers a summary that is all the more compelling when you ponder what happened to him. “Religious people have been very good over the years at seeing themselves as US”, he preached, “while the people that aren’t a part of the group are viewed as THEM. But in this story, the dude (that’s Jonah) who sees himself as Us is furious because of how chummy God and THEM have become. He’s so furious that he’d rather die than live with the tension.” The tension he means, is the tension caused by the notion that God’s love is always greater than we want it to be.
There’s been quite a stirring controversy down at Duke University about the prospect of the Muslim student group on campus broadcasting the call to prayer from the steeple of Duke Chapel. Muslim students have prayed in the basement of the chapel for years and the chapel office made the decision to host the broadcasted call to prayer one day a week from the tower. The university then reversed that decision because of security concerns in light of all the reactions and threats lobbed at the Muslim student group, the chapel office, and the university. The threats presumably coming from those who would be Christian. Some of the most rabble-rousing and unhelpful comments have come from Billy Graham’s son Franklin. Many of us here have friends and colleagues down at Duke who are writing or have been quoted on all sides of the conversation. You can’t live and serve in a university community like we do and not think about the complexity and the challenge and the reality of the situation, wondering what would happen here?
I found myself thinking about all the folks from the Center of Jewish Life on campus, the Reformed Jewish community that worships in this space each year for the High Holy Days with the pulpit moved and the Torah up here and hundreds of Jewish folks coming and going for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Then I wondered what the reaction would be if that was the local Muslim community broadcasting a call to prayer and gathering to worship at Nassau Presbyterian Church.
If that happened, someone would have to stand up and tell the story of Jonah. Someone down in Durham ought to be telling the story of Jonah. It’s a great story about God’s love and how that love can changes minds. God’s love is always greater than we want to be.
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