St Ursula's Bern: 20 September 2020
Quite likely, one of the first biblical characters that most of us heard of was Jonah. It's his being thrown overboard, his three days in the belly of the great fish, and his safe, if undignified, return to dry land that make Jonah's story so appealing to children. But when we return to the Book of Jonah as adults, read it as a whole, and ask ourselves what it's doing here in the Bible, we discover there's much more to it than the great fish. It's a funny, subversive story, with a strange, challenging, open-ended conclusion: did you notice how it ends with an unresolved question from God hanging in the air? This short book is well worth reflecting on carefully, perhaps especially for what it says about Israel in relation to the Gentiles, the wider world of other nations and their gods; and also, in this Creation season, we shouldn't miss what it says about God's love not just for human beings but for everything that he has made. In fact, the book ends with God asking Jonah if he should not be concerned about the huge human population of Nineveh – and also all its many animals.
This morning we listened to the whole narrative, for reasons of time skipping just Jonah's prayer from the belly of the great fish. Let's recap what happens. It starts: 'The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai'. That Hebrew name means 'Dove, son of faithfulness'. But as we shall see, Jonah is neither a dove nor faithful, so we're off to an ironic start: the funny but painful tension between what this representative of Israel's faith is called (is called to be) and what he is really like. Because Jonah does not respond faithfully to God's call to preach to the city of Nineveh; he disobediently tries to flee to Tarshish, as far as he can go in the other direction – we might say Tipperary or Timbuktu. And as we shall see, Jonah is certainly no dove of peace.
But Jonah is pursued by God, and the ship on which he embarks for Tarshish is engulfed by a storm. The crew of the ship – the captain and sailors – are not Israelites like Jonah, but pagans, worshippers of other gods; but nevertheless they are seen in a surprisingly sympathetic light. While these pagans call out to their gods and do what they can to save themselves, Jonah neither prays nor helps, asleep below deck. When challenged, he accepts that the storm is his fault and that he should be cast into the sea, but the sailors respond with compassionate humanity, trying to row to land so as to save Jonah's life. In the end, they do throw him overboard, but very reluctantly, and when the sea then grows calm, they turn in awe to the God of Israel. They come over rather well, these pagans: they seem decent, kind human beings, and god-fearing too. In fact, possibly they take the God of Israel more seriously than Jonah seems to...
Jonah, meanwhile, is brought back to land by a great fish; the word of the Lord comes to him a second time, and now Jonah goes to the vast pagan city of Nineveh, a place where the God of Israel is not known or worshipped. And he proclaims to the Ninevites that God's judgment is coming upon them. Surely he'll be ignored, laughed at, or stoned to death. But amazingly, the whole city responds in repentance and faith. The king announces a fast, and everyone puts on sackcloth; even the animals put on sackcloth and fast. This is comic book stuff. Did Israel ever respond to its prophets like this pagan city? Did the preaching of Isaiah or Jeremiah ever move Jerusalem like this?
So God repents and does not destroy Nineveh. Now, how would we expect Jonah to react? Is he pleased that his message has been so effective and that God has shown mercy on this city? No. Jonah is furious. He didn't want God to be compassionate to the Ninevites. He wanted God to destroy them. And now he sulks off somewhere on the edge of the city where he sits and watches, presumably hoping Nineveh will be destroyed after all.
Jonah is angered by God's mercy. He takes no joy in God's love for the world.
The story ends with a strange scene. God causes a plant to grow up suddenly over Jonah and shelter him from the sun. Jonah is happy with this and the comfort it gives him. But then God sends a worm to eat the plant and destroy it, and Jonah is in despair again, wishing he's dead. God finally leaves Jonah with a question. What do you care about, Jonah? You seem to care about your own comfort, not much else. I care about this world, says God. I care about its people, all its people. I care about all its creatures. I love them. I love the people of Nineveh. I love the animals of Nineveh. I love everything I have made and I want it all to flourish, in joy and peace and abundance of life. Is that bad? What do you think, Jonah? Can't your heart be enlarged even a little, to absorb just something of the mercy and all-embracing love of God?
The way the book of Jonah concludes is very like the end of Jesus' parable of the labourers in the vineyard, today's Gospel reading. The vineyard owner asks those who are indignant at his generosity to latecomers: "Are you envious (literally, is your eye evil) because I am generous?" Are you consumed with anger because of my grace? Think also of the end of the parable of the prodigal son, the disturbing scene in which the older brother is angry at the mercy of the father; he wants his father to punish his prodigal brother; he cannot bring himself to join in the party that expresses his father's generous love, but stays outside the celebration, angry, bitter, just like Jonah. Jesus and the author of the Book of Jonah have this in common, that they encountered angry hostility directed at God's grace, and they clearly wanted to dig into this issue and get people to think about it. So they told stories describing that kind of anger in characters like Jonah, the older brother, and the indignant labourers in today's reading. And in each case these stories leave us with a question hanging in the air: Is this where you really want to stay, angry at God's grace?
So what's the Book of Jonah book doing in the Bible and what does it say to us today? It's generally thought to come from late in the Old Testament period, a difficult time when many were urging Israel to be vigilant against the influence of surrounding peoples and their gods. These were faithful, uncompromising Israelites whose voices would in some cases be included in the Bible. They saw this as a time calling for faithful tenacity, because Israel was tempted to lose its identity, blurring into the world around. The biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, robustly insist on the need to keep very distinct from non-Israelites and their practices. That's part of the biblical message, the word of God, endorsed in many ways in the New Testament, and we need to hear it. But in Jonah we find a different emphasis, apparently more open to the nations, the world beyond Israel. We need to hear this too. In the story of Jonah we read about gentile characters, non-Israelites, worshippers of other gods, such as the sailors and the king and people of Nineveh. But far from being negative figures, alluring Israel away from God, the gentile characters in Jonah's story are impressive people: humane, compassionate, open to hearing new things about God and ready to change and reorient their lives. In contrast, the prophet Jonah, who represents Israel as a whole, is a pathetic figure: fearful, self-absorbed, asleep when he should be active, self-pitying, more concerned with his personal comfort than with the good of thousands of people. His heart is not remotely in tune with the love of God for everything that he has made.
So we do not exactly come away from reading the Book of Jonah feeling: "Israel is a shining light in a dark world."
Where's all this going? Am I suggesting that the Book of Jonah is an Old Teastament version of the kind of relativistic approach that downplays all that is distinctive about Christianity? If so, then perhaps the author of Jonah, if pressed for the meaning of his story, would say something like this: "What I meant was that the demonstrable ethical riches of the Gentile world show us that the religious traditions of Israel and, say, Nineveh, are equally valid, equally effective paths leading up the mountain at the top of which lies the unknowable ultimate reality to which we all give different names."
Well no, not really, because, awkwardly for that view, the pagan sailors and the King of Nineveh turn to the God of Israel and proclaim him the one true God. The Book of Jonah does not suggest that the gods of the nations are all variants on the God of Israel, different names for one supreme reality. Its author believes that the God of Israel is the creator of all things, who loves all people, in whom all people will find their true goal, their true blessedness.
So the Book of Jonah has a complex message. God truly has chosen Israel to be a light to the nations, but Israel, as symbolized by Jonah, is so inadequate, so unlikely a candidate for the job of making God known. So much so that the nations to whom Israel is supposed to bring God's light seem to be living more in the light than Israel is. Again, there are echoes of the ministry of our Lord here, when he points to despised or feared outsiders, such as Samaritans and Roman centurions, from whom Israel can learn how better to be Israel.
The Book of Jonah is an astonishing presence in the Bible. It is a very rare thing: religion in faithful but self-critical mode, even self-satirizing mode. This is Israel saying to itself: "There's no getting round it: the true God has called us, has made covenant with us, and through us the wider world must learn his name and understand his ways. But we are such lousy representatives of this God. We discredit God day by day, so much so that sometimes the Gentiles look a whole lot better than us, and there's sometimes much for us to learn from them. So should we pack it all in, this "Israel, light-to-the-nations" business? No, because we have the privilege, the excruciating privilege, of being God's unworthy servants, and God calls us again and again to wake up and turn from our self-absorption and despair; so that, humbled by our repeated humiliation, stripped of any illusion of superiority inherent in ourselves, we may live again as God's people, making God known to the world. Oh, and by the way, we really need to learn to laugh at ourselves a bit more."
And what of us in the Church, the people of Christ? What of me? Do I want to be involved, on God's terms, and so with no grounds for pride, in the endless outgoing dynamic of God's joy and love, reaching all God's creation, all people, everything God has made? And if so, am I willing to be jolted out of my self-obsessed little world?
That's the question with which God leaves Jonah: an open-ended, challenging, searching question – but a question which invites us to share in the joy of God, the love of God for all that he has made.
It's also the question that our Lord Jesus Christ puts to us, especially every time we are invited to his table.
Revd David Marshall