|
Jonah After the Whale
Sermon by Rev. Sarah Buteux
for Sunday, 2003
Scripture: Jonah 3:1-5,10
“He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass
himself.” George Herbert
A little boy is sitting through his third grade science unit on marine biology
and the teacher is talking about whales. The little boy pipes up and says, “I
know about whales, the prophet Jonah was swallowed by one.” Well the teacher
looks at the little boy and says that she doesn’t believe that for one
minute. But the third grader insists that it is true; Jonah was swallowed by
a whale and he lived to tell about it. His teacher says that the story about
Jonah being swallowed by whale is just that, a story, and besides, you can’t
prove that it happened because Jonah lived so long ago. So the little boy
says, “well when I get to heaven I’m going to ask Jonah if he was swallowed by
a whale myself.” And the teacher retorts, “Jimmy, what if Jonah didn’t go to
heaven.” “Well,” says Jimmy, “then you can ask him.”
The story of Jonah is one of the best known stories in the Bible
because it is one of the most absurd. And just for the record, before we go
any further, Jonah wasn’t swallowed by a whale at all, at least not according
to the Bible. Does anyone know what swallowed Jonah? That’s right, Jonah was
swallowed by a giant fish. Either way it’s a crazy story that has plagued
Biblical literalists forever. It is not so much a problem story because it
is absurd. The problem is that this is such a silly story full of serious
truth, and I guess the fear is that if you don’t believe the story is true,
you won’t believe that the message is true. I remember my childhood minister,
Pastor Flynn, holding up a newspaper article in church one Sunday about a man
who had in fact been swallowed by a giant fish off the coast of South America
and how he lived to tell about his harrowing ordeal. I don’t think it was one
of those papers you see at the supermarket check out either, but I could be
wrong.
Anyway, the newspaper was probably more proof than my young mind needed,
because for me, I’ve always understood that the stories we read in the Bible
are not in there necessarily because they happened, because plenty of things
happened in history that never made it into the Biblical narrative. The
stories we read, whether they revolve around Adam and Eve eating forbidden
fruits, Moses parting the red sea, or Joshua making the sun stand still, have
been written down and collected into the book because they are stories of
meaning. Meaning for us on the literal and the spiritual level. Now,
interestingly enough, Swedenborg believed this story about the fish was true.
He said, “The particulars there are historical, and yet prophetical.” (AC
1188). And to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t have such a hard time
believing that it could have happened, but I prefer to look at it the way the
Native Americans would have. Often before beginning a tale about their
origins the storyteller would preface his remarks by saying, “I don’t know if
it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true.” So when it comes
to the book of Jonah, whether you believe in it literally or not, I think that
we can all agree that this crazy little story has much to teach us.
For those of you who haven’t heard the story for a long time, allow me to give
you an overview. The book of Jonah begins with a call from God. He says to
Jonah, “Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it; for
their wickedness has come up before me.” And what does Jonah do? He books
the first boat for a city called Tarshish that lies in the exact opposite
direction of Ninevah. Well, God catches up with Jonah pretty quickly. He
sends a fierce storm, and all the sailors on Jonah’s ship panic and ask him
what they should do. He tells them to throw him overboard. They first try to
row to dry land, but the waves come up against them and they can’t make it.
He admits to them that it is his God who is angry, and not only that, his God
can calm the waters because it was his God who made them. So the sailors
pray to Jonah’s God, ask forgiveness in advance for their actions, and toss
Jonah overboard. (Curiously enough, our reluctant prophet, in spite of his
pitiful example, succeeds in converting a ship full of sailors.)
Well Jonah isn’t floating for long before God sends a fish to pick him up.
The Bible records Jonah’s prayer of thanksgiving and deliverance, which he
cries out while inside the belly of the fish. His strange journey lasts for
three days, and was cited by Christ himself as a sort of prophetic
foreshadowing of his own death and resurrection, and then the fish literally
vomits Jonah up onto the shores of Ninevah.
For all I know, this might have been part of God’s plan all along. Jonah
wasn’t aiding his credibility as a prophet by running away, but imagine this
man entering the gates of a great city after three days in a fish belly all
covered in his host’s vomit. Let’s just say Jonah wouldn’t have had any
trouble drawing attention to himself. Now most prophets enter a city and say
something like, “repent for the end is near!” Well not Jonah. He could care
less if the people of Ninevah repent because he doesn’t care about the people
of Ninevah at all. If he had he would have headed there in the first place
and spared himself an uncomfortable journey. No, Jonah wanders through the
city streets for three days and shouts, “Forty more days and Ninevah shall be
overthrown!” I think after three days he might have even been enjoying his
doom and gloom message. But, in spite of Jonah’s best intentions, the people
of Ninevah believe him and take it upon themselves to repent. And not just
the people. The king issues a royal decree and calls for every man, woman,
child, and animal to repent, fast, and wear sackcloth. Again it is a totally
absurd picture. Jonah is running around the city covered in crusty fish, well
you know, and chickens, cows, small children and nobles are passing by him
covered in sackcloth. Delightful.
But the extreme effort works. God spares the people of Ninevah and Jonah…
well how do you think he reacts? Surprisingly, Jonah gets really, really
mad. “O Lord!” he says, “Is not this what I said while I was still in my own
country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you
are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast
love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Jonah is furious with God for
having mercy on these people. He is indignant that God would have the
audacity to forgive them. And frankly, Jonah is extremely put out that he was
chosen to come all this way with bad news and now there wasn’t even going to
be a big apocalyptic showdown. No fire from heaven, pillars of salt, plagues
of locusts. Just forgiveness. And really, where’s the fun in that.
In Jonah’s mind, what’s the point of traveling all the way to Ninevah if
God’s not going to destroy the city after all? Jonah is so mad that he says
to God, “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die
than to live.” And God looks down on Jonah and says, Jonah “is it right for
you to be angry?” But whether it is right or not, Jonah is angry. He storms
out of the city and sets himself up at a distance to wait and see what God
does to these heathens. But God does nothing to the Ninevites except forgive
them and all is well.
God keeps working on Jonah, however. He has a little plant grow up quickly
beside Jonah to provide him with shade, and Jonah loves the little plant. And
then God has a little worm come along and eat the plant, and Jonah becomes
angry enough to die again. Then God looks at Jonah and asks again, “how can
you be angry with me for letting a plant die, but disappointed in me for
sparing the lives of a hundred and twenty thousand people and their animals?”
(paraphrase). And God has a point. There is a major flaw in Jonah’s
thinking.
His problem is very obviously a lack of charity. He doesn’t love his
neighbors the Ninevites. In his mind they are heathens who deserve the very
worst God can lay on them. He doesn’t care if they repent, doesn’t warn them
to repent, doesn’t really even want them to repent. He wants the Ninevites to
get what they deserve. And I think Jonah’s story is an important one for us
because I think we have all been in a situation where we felt that a person
out there deserved to be punished for the wrong they had done, and it’s very
possible that some of us have even inflicted that punishment. Jonah is a
perfect example of that well-developed sense of justice we all seem to be born
with. There is a primal part of us that wants to punish those we believe are
in the wrong.
But there is a difficulty here when you add the truths of God’s love to the
mix, because God’s love is not dependent on any understanding of justice. One
of the most wonderful aspects of our faith is that we know that, no matter
what, we have only to ask God and we will be forgiven. And where is the
justice in that plan? Honestly, it is absent, for forgiveness is never a
matter of justice. It is never deserved. Forgiveness is an act of love that
overlooks wrongs in order to bring us back to what is right. And, in its own
way, this kind of love goes against our rational ideas of right and wrong.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, Gospel Medicine, writes, “ In case you have
not noticed, Christianity is a religion in which the sinners have all the
advantages. They can step on your feet fifty times and you are supposed to
keep smiling. They can talk bad about you every time you leave the room and
it is your job to excuse them with no thought of getting even. The burden is
on you, because you have been forgiven yourself, and God expects you to do
unto others as God has done unto you.”
Jonah would have hated this idea. And he admits right out that it is
because he knew what a loving God he served that he sought to run away from
Ninevah in the first place, rather than towards it. Sometimes we don’t want
God to forgive others because, in truth, we don’t want to forgive them. And
there are some powerful motivations behind this reluctance. We can struggle
with forgiveness for a number of reasons. Our sense of justice is only one.
There is also the small matter of our pride. Jonah was one of the chosen
people. He was a Hebrew and his God was the God of the Hebrews. I think
perhaps he didn’t want to share his special status with others. And it is
much easier to feel superior to others when they are sinning and you are not.
It’s easier to look down on people when you are already occupying the moral
high ground. But the truth is, there really is no moral high ground in the
great scheme of things. I think the reality of our situation is that God has
placed all of us on a level playing field, and he loves all of us no matter
how we conduct ourselves while we are here. Swedenborg says, “God’s love goes
forth not only to good people but to evil people. God loves not only those
who are in heaven, but also those who choose hell, for God is everywhere and
forever the same. (TCR 43) In the gospels Jesus says that God sends his rain
on the good and the evil alike. God doesn’t offer special treatment to people
who sin a little, and he doesn’t offer special treatment to people who sin a
lot. God simply loves all of us all of the time. Which is the good news.
The harder part to hear is that we are supposed to love others the way God
loves them. And God’s love for us is never in question. God’s desire to
forgive us and help us do better next time is never in question. The only
question is what we will do with the freedom God gives us when it comes to
accepting that love and forgiveness.
Barbara Brown Taylor really captures the challenge here, when she
says, “If God is willing to stay with me in spite of my meanness, my weakness,
my stubborn self-righteousness, then who am I to hold those things against
someone else? Better I should confess my own sins than keep track of yours,
only it is hard to stay focused on my shortcomings. I would so rather stay
focused on yours, especially when they are hurtful to me. Staying angry with
you is how I protect myself from you. Refusing to forgive you is not only how
I punish you; it is also how I keep you from getting close enough to hurt me
again, and nine times out of ten it works, only there is a serious side
effect. It is called bitterness, and it can do terrible things to the human
body and soul.”
We see that bitterness at work in Jonah, who would rather die than live in a
world where Ninevites are forgiven. He feels more love and concern for a
little plant than he does for tens of thousands of people. Now Jonah’s
bitterness and his values are almost as absurd as his journey in the belly of
the great fish. And yet, in my own life, I have seen people cling to
bitterness, hatred, and the wrongs of others because in their unconscious
minds they know that forgiveness will only confuse the issue. When you can
stay angry at a person than at least you know where it is they stand, and most
often it is beneath you. At least you know what you owe them, and typically
that is nothing. And best of all you know that as long as you can keep them
down with your anger they will be hard pressed to get close enough to hurt you
again.
As absurd as Jonah may seem, I’ve seen far too many people, even people in my
own family, set up shop like Jonah did out in the fields beyond the city.
Their anger puts them at a distance, and their stubbornness makes them
content to wait and watch for their enemy to get what they deserve. It’s a
sad place to be, sitting on the outskirts of another’s life and waiting for
the end. It a sad way to live. And I wish it happened as rarely as people
getting swallowed by giant fish, but, well, I’m afraid it happens every day.
And as for punishment, it is there, but it is not a punishment meted out by
God. It is the one who sits alone with her bitterness that is punished, and
such punishment is always self-inflicted.
In 1994 I was traveling through the Netherlands and happened to be in
Amsterdam. I came around a corner and saw a historical marker on the wall of
the building. The plaque said that the little house was once the clock shop
of Corrie ten Boom, one of my childhood heroes. She and her family had hidden
Jews in their home before they were found out by the Nazis and were themselves
taken away to a concentration camp. Corrie’s father died soon after entering
the camp and her sister succumbed to pneumonia while they were there as well.
Corrie was the only one of her family to live through the whole experience,
but after the war she took it upon herself to write and speak about her
experience, and she often talked about forgiveness. One day she came face to
face with the cruelest guard she had known in the camps. A man who had
tormented her, who had humiliated and degraded she and her sister, and that
man stood across from her and reached out his hand and said, “Will you forgive
me?” She writes: “I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I
know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I
prayed, Jesus, help me! Woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hand into the one
stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current
started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms and sprang into our clutched
hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing
tears to my eyes. “I forgive you brother,” I cried with my whole heart. For
a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard, the former
prisoner. I have never known the love of God as intensely as I did at that
moment!” To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover, all along, that
the prisoner was you.
Let us pray:
Dear Lord, we thank you for the example of Jonah, because we have so
much to learn from this man. Help us to set aside our pride, our
guilt, our anger, and any other emotions that keep us locked away
from true relationships with those we love. Fill our hearts with your
forgiving love and the humility and grace we need to continue to
reach out to one another.
Copyright 2003 by Rev. Sarah Buteux
|
