Jonah 3.1-5, 10; Mark 1.14-20
Many people think of Jonah, today’s first reading, as nothing more than as a children’s Sunday School lesson, a story about a man swallowed by an enormous fish. It sounds pretty improbable, doesn’t it—a fish story to the extreme, a story that skeptics point to in order to show how gullible and simple-minded believers are. But the fish, as it turns out, is merely a background character, getting only two verses in a four-chapter story. Something else is going on; more important, too.
An Old Testament commentator named John Goldingay wants us to go deeper into Jonah and the book’s meaning. He believes we can be so preoccupied by the big fish that we miss the big picture. Now Jonah was an Old Testament prophet; we read about him in the book of 2nd Kings. But rather than seeing the book of Jonah as a prophet’s diary of events, Goldingay sees it as an Old Testament parable of sorts, like a parable Jesus tells in the gospels. The parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, doesn’t depend on an actual family’s estrangement and reconciliation to convey the truth of God’s forgiveness or our resistance to it; the parable of the mustard seed doesn’t depend on the science of Ag Agronomy to show how God works through small seeds. More than a fish story, then, the book of Jonah shows how God is merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. And like any parable, we’re meant to ask where we find ourselves in the story. Because through it, God is speaking to us. “People have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the greatness of God,” says Campbell Morgan. And it’s to the greatness of God that Jonah directs our attention.
Today’s reading begins in the middle of Jonah’s four chapters. When we meet him, he looks strong, courageous, heroic. He preaches an eight-word sermon, only five in Hebrew, and the entire city of Nineveh repents. (An impossible benchmark for preachers ever since, especially the ratio of words to success!) But there’s a clue at the beginning that things aren’t so simple. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”
This isn’t the first time God called Jonah to go to Nineveh. What happened the first time? Jonah wanted nothing to do with God’s purpose or plan. Instead of going east to Nineveh where God had commanded, Jonah got in a boat and headed west to Tarshish, the opposite direction, “away from the presence of the Lord.” That’s how he was met by the fish. While he was on the boat, the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed. Jonah himself got tossed over the edge of the boat and ended up in the belly of the fish. After three days the fish, to quote the Bible, “spewed Jonah out on the dry land.” That’s the setting and background leading up to today’s reading. The prophet of God tries to run away from God. Jonah is a flawed character. But God does not give up on anyone, not even Jonah. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”
Only why would a biblical prophet resist God’s call? From Jonah’s perspective, there were good reasons. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, a nation that was cruel, calculated in doing evil, a looming threat to God’s people. Within 70 years of Jonah’s ministry, the Assyrians would wage a devastating war against Israel and carry the few survivors into exile. Nineveh was fearsome, corrupt, and violent. Yet God commissions Jonah to preach there. “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it, for its evil has come to my attention.”
Now you might think the prospect of preaching against the Ninevites would fill Jonah with delight, a fire and brimstone sermon against old enemies. Who doesn’t like the chance to get your own back? “Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” But even as he preaches God’s message, Jonah resists God’s mission. On the first day of a visit to a city so big it would take three days to see all the sites, Nineveh repents. Through a five-word sermon, the most brutal regime of the day practically trips over itself making a 180° turn. “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” They’re not overthrown but transformed. God isn’t limited by Jonah’s flaws or the Ninevites’ sins. God does not give up on anyone—not Jonah and not the Ninevites. Rather than a story about a great fish, the book of Jonah is a story about the greatness of God.
Good news, right? Not for Jonah. After today’s reading ends, after the Ninevites repent, this flawed prophet still resists God—is angry, outraged. He complains to God and says, “I knew you were gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, ready to relent from punishing.” Now of all the things to complain about, imagine complaining about God’s grace and mercy.
Yet isn’t there something deep in the human heart that makes it easy to rejoice at the misfortune of others, especially when we think they deserve it; and angry when we suspect that someone has gotten away with something, a wrong they should pay for? It’s true for Jonah. This prophet was sent by God to the Ninevites but then was angry to see God forgive and deliver them. “I knew you were gracious and merciful.” Only why would God’s grace and mercy be a problem? Jonah knew. Because he knew the scriptures well, he would’ve also known what the practical application of God’s grace and mercy looked like. If God was gracious and merciful to the Ninevites, it means Jonah will have to do the same. Jonah resists the first time and a second, not because he was afraid of the Ninevites, but because he knew that when the Lord forgave them, after Jonah’s old enemies had become God’s new friends, Jonah would then be the one who would have to repent and change. Yet again Jonah would be called to follow God’s direction to live in peace with the Ninevites, his old enemies. Hard work, that. So Jonah first runs from God who calls him and then complains about God’s mercy and grace when it is extended to the wrong people.
A Presbyterian pastor and poet from the last century named Thomas John Carlisle wrote a book, ‘You! Jonah!’ It’s a collection of poems that takes the story of Jonah beyond the story of a great fish and explores the implications of God’s great grace revealed in this Old Testament prophet. In one poem called ‘Indiscretion’, Carlisle has Jonah speaking to God after the Ninevites have repented and been forgive. “I do not hate you, God. Please understand. You are OK, A-One, the Very Best, second to none I know, great and beyond my criticism so I say Amen to you and all your good intentions—but I might be right about your indiscretion in forgiving folks gladly and shamelessly upon the least evidence of regret. I think you carry your love too far,” Jonah says. I think you carry your love too far.
Only how far is God supposed to carry love? Now some people are indeed difficult, hurtful, and in the case of the Assyrians with the Israelites, truly destructive in our lives. This pain has to be recognized and acknowledged. And this is why Jonah resisted. Why risk grace to people who’ve hurt you? Much easier to be angry for things done wrong in the past, hold tight to old suspicions now in the present, and look at the future with distrust. But that hardly works. It keeps division and discord in circulation both in the world and in our lives. Even worse, it eats away at our spirit and soul and faith; we’re swallowed up in bitterness like the fish that gobbled up Jonah. God calls us in a different direction. In another poem Carlisle says, “God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs…to come around to His way of loving.”
Centuries after Jonah was a prophet, Jesus came along and told his followers that he was the ultimate Jonah. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. The people of Nineveh…repented at the proclamation of Jonah; and see, something greater than Jonah is here!” Jesus is talking about himself, his own life and ministry, his death, and his resurrection on the third day. He is the one greater than Jonah. And in Jesus, God’s mercy and love embodied for us are not carried too far but carried to completion. He preached to the faithful and the far from it, those who received him and those who resisted. “He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.” In him, we have experienced God’s abundant grace, mercy, and steadfast love. “If we show these same things to everyone we meet,” says Jay Sklar, “no matter who they are—no matter their morals, race, nationality, social class, gender, political beliefs, etc.—then we have understood well both the parable-like quality of the book of Jonah and the heart of our Savior. But if we show these things to some people and not to others; if we show these things to those like us but not to those who are different; if we show these things to those we like but not to those we dislike; if we are in any way selective in terms of the people to whom we show God’s grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness, then we have the heart of Jonah, not of Jesus.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus says that in him the Kingdom of God has come near. In response, four fishermen immediately leave their boats and go in his direction. What would it mean for us if, instead of resisting, we lived out the direction and desires of God who is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love? What would happen to the economy, to politics, our relationships, to our health? If today you find yourself in the middle of Jonah’s story, feel the direction that God is leading and yet also feel your resistance and flaws, you can trust that right in the middle of it Jesus stands with you. God is not limited by Jonah’s flaws, or ours; the Ninevites sins, our sins, or the sins of the people around us. God does not give up on anyone—not Jonah, not the Ninevites, not you.
Today, the Son of God speaks to our hearts calls us to find our place among his disciples. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And instead of getting in the boat like Jonah and heading the opposite direction, we can leave our boats and follow Jesus direction—gracious, merciful, calling us to God’s way of loving.
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