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Sermon by Donel McClellan
A Cautionary Tale
Jonah 3:1-7, 10
Following our annual meeting last Sunday I heard a number of comments on the
motion for our church to consider taking a position on the possibility of a war
on Iraq. One group expressed surprise that the congregational meeting avoided
addressing that issue. For some, our reputation as a diverse and welcoming
community suggests to them that we ought to be more comfortable with difficult
and even divisive subjects.
Another group of people expressed relief that we
didn’t allow ourselves to engage in a debate which could leave some members
feeling misunderstood or not heard.
I was still ruminating on the meeting and your
response to it when I opened my Bible and examined the texts for this Sunday.
“Oh no,” I thought to myself, “Jonah is coming around again!” This scripture
appears twice in each three year cycle of the lectionary. I estimate that I have
encountered it 25 or more times in my career as a preacher. My immediate reaction was to turn to one of the
other texts. Then something dawned on me and I realized that the text had
already chosen me and that I had no choice but to follow where it led.
Jonah is a simple story which we all know, at least
we know the part about the whale. Jonah has always been a cautionary tale—a
story which gives a warning. But the warning in Jonah is given with a killer
sense of humor. I like the way Paul Keim retells the story, translating the
language from the formal tone of the Bible into a form which sounds today more
like the original sounded to its first listeners.
The Prophet of
the Lord (PL) is commissioned to warn the Most Evil Empire (MEE) of its
impending destruction. The PL flees by boat in the opposite direction. An act of
God on the high seas threatens to destroy the ship and all aboard. Phoenician
sailors, more deeply religious than the PL, determine who is to blame for the
predicament and what to do about it. Despite their reluctance to risk the loss
of life (wink, wink), the Phoenician sailors toss the PL into the sea. The PL is
promptly swallowed by a large marine creature. From the belly of the whale like
fish, the PL delivers himself of a prayer so lousy with pious platitudes that
the poor sea creature pukes him up onto dry land.
1
Jonah, the PL (Prophet of the Lord) was an
Israelite. The nation Israel feared and hated most was Assyria. The Assyrians
hounded and threatened Israel, they mocked and derided the Israelites. In the
minds of Jonah’s contemporaries they really were the MEE (Most Evil Empire). The
capitol city of Assyria was Nineveh.
Jonah was not pleased when the word of the Lord
came to him, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh,
that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before
me.” Why should a righteous prophet of the Lord go into that cesspool
of a country and warn them of their impeding destruction?
Nineveh was east of Israel. Jonah took passage on a
boat sailing west to Spain. Then, after the brief whale episode, Jonah was again
sent to Nineveh. Jonah walked into the city and preached a sermon which deserves
to be in the Guinness Book of World Records.
· First,
it is the briefest sermon ever preached.
· Second,
it is the worst sermon ever preached.
·
Third, it is the most
effective sermon ever preached.
The sermon is five words in
Hebrew, eight in English: “Forty days more,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And then comes the kicker. The
people of Nineveh repent. We know the story is intended to be comic in it’s
telling because the king of Assyria orders all of the people of the land and all
of the animals to fast
and put on sackcloth. Picture in your mind, farmers running around the barnyard,
trying to cover their sheep, goats and oxen with gunnysacks.
You remember the rest of the story. Jonah sits
down in the burning desert sun and pouts. God grows a tree to shade the PL from
the sun then kills the tree overnight with a pernicious worm. Jonah becomes
suicidally angry because of the loss of the tree. Then the book ends with what
Barbara Brown Taylor calls the best last line in the Bible. God notes Jonah’s
anger over the destruction of the tree and says:
“ .
. . 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, and also many animals?”
Jonah is a cautionary tale revealing the
exclusiveness of the religion of Israel by demonstrating that even an evil
nation like Assyria can be more obedient to God that God’s chosen people are.
God’s grace knows no national boundaries. God’s love extends to every nation.
I presume that you know where Nineveh is. Nineveh
is located on the Tigris River. Today the city is named Mosul. It is not far
from the Turkish border, about 200 miles north of Baghdad. It is the second
largest city in Iraq.
I find myself wondering how this cautionary tale
from the Hebrew Bible might be interpreted today. Some might assume that the
United States Government is playing the role of the Prophet of the Lord in
warning the Most Evil Empire of Baghdad to repent or be destroyed in forty days.
Unfortunately that interpretation would completely reverse the intent of the
original story.
It was not Israel and its prophet Jonah that was
to destroy Nineveh, but God. It was not Israel and its prophet Jonah who
rejoiced when Nineveh repented, but God. Whatever sovereign power our nation
has, it cannot and must not confuse its agenda with that of God.
No, I think there is another implication of the
cautionary tale of Jonah. It is an understanding of God which was developed long
after Jonah’s time. Christians ought to understand it well although on the
issue of whether or not to condone a war on Iraq there remains division in the
Christian community.
That difference is illustrated by the well known
evangelical Christian author Philip Yancey who spoke last fall at Seattle
Pacific University. In his book Soul Survivor, Yancey muses on his
reasons for becoming a writer. He says,
I became a
writer, I now believe, to sort out words used and misused by the church of my
youth. Although I heard that ‘God is love,’ the image of God I got from sermons
more resembled an angry, vengeful tyrant. We sang, ‘Red and yellow, black and
white, they are precious in his sight ...‘ but just let one of those red,
yellow, or black children try entering our church. Bible college professors
insisted, ‘We live not under law but under grace,’ and for the life of me I
could not tell much difference between the two states. Ever since, I have been
on a quest to unearth the good news, to scour the original words of the gospel
and discover what the Bible must mean by using words like love, grace, and
compassion to describe God’s own character.
2
Yancey goes on to define three characteristics
which, he believes, make Christianity unique among world religions. The first is
belief in a truly personal God, second, belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of
God, and third, grace: the unmerited favor of God. It is God’s grace—and the
realization that it extends to every human person in every land—that essentially
defines and sets apart Christian theology.
During his visit to the campus, Yancey told
Seattle Pacific students, “Jesus doesn't make life easier, but a lot more
complicated”. When it comes to thorny issues like confronting Saddam Hussein in
Iraq, Yancey draws from his own understanding of the teachings of Jesus and is
“totally against an unprovoked war with Iraq”. In that position he is at odds
with other devout Christians. Yancey concludes, “In a world of ungrace,
Christianity extends the grace that other religions withhold.”
Does the cautionary tale of Jonah have something
to contribute to the discussion about America’s role in addressing the evil in
Iraq?
· It
does if we believe in God’s grace.
· It
does if we catch the rhythm of Jesus’ vision for a world responsive to God’s
rule.
· It
does if we are willing to place our trust in the sovereignty of God rather than
in the military sovereignty of any nation.
· It
does if we have the humility to see the good in others and the evil in
ourselves.
There is much more to be
said about the danger of war in Iraq, but that belongs in a discussion where the
conversation can be mutual, where there is time to listen to one another and
respond graciously. I encourage that conversation.
And even more, I encourage
you to take this issue up with God in prayer. Ask the simple question: God, what
do you will for your world in this crisis. Then be quiet and listen for an
answer.
Let the conversation begin
with the strange prophet of the Lord who once was sent to Iraq to proclaim
judgement and found himself judged. The bottom line of this cautionary tale is
simply stated in Thomas John Carlisle’s poem, You Jonah:
...Jonah stalked
Amen.
1 Paul Keim, Living By the Word:
Mutant Ministry, The Christian
Century, January 11, 2003, p.17
2 Philip Yancey from Soul Survivor
(Doubleday 2001) quoted in Response, Winter 2003, pp. 23-4 |