THE RESISTANT PROPHET
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Text: Jonah (3:1-5, 10)
When I was a youth, I got to read the part of Jonah in Wolf Mankowitz’s one-act play, “It Should Happen to a Dog.” In some sense that was a scary, liberating experience for me. How could someone take a sacred, biblical text like Jonah, not only paraphrasing it in the language of the street, but also poking fun at the unremittingly unhappy, runaway prophet? It was delicious fun to act out the shipwreck, hold forth in the belly of the whale, sit under the umbrella that represented the castor bean tree that springs up to protect the prophet from heat stroke, only to see it devoured symbolically by one of my classmates who slithered across the stage, representing the worm. Throughout these high jinks, Mankowitz presents Jonah in a state of constant complaint about his situation – “Oh, dear God! This should happen to a dog!”
The play is a paraphrase and a parody of a parable, if there can be such a thing. There has been debate for years over the historicity of Jonah. There is an historical reference in the book of II Kings to a Jonah, son of Amittai. Around the year 785 BCE, he is reputed to have prophesied the great expansion of Israel under the rule of King Jeroboam II. That’s all the record we really have except for the use of his name in this parable - and parable it surely is. James Smart says that “As history, the book of Jonah becomes the account of an eccentric prophet who shows his utter unfitness for his office by running away from his assigned task, who is returned to his task only by miraculous interposition of a great fish, and who stupidly mourns his success when the people of Nineveh repent at his preaching.” Smart goes on to say that “If it is history, then it is exceedingly curious history, without a parallel in the Old Testament, and it is hard to see much reason for its preservation” (The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 6, Jonah, pp. 871-2.)
That is, why would this satirical work be placed in the middle of the great prophetic books of Hebrew scripture? No other prophet is as resistant as Jonah to God’s call and work. None other makes such a fool of himself. None other has his entire prophecy contained in eight words, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” None other has such immediately spectacular results from his prophecy. Yet this little book is so important in Jewish life that it is read in its entirety every year at Yom Kippur, that high and holy day of atonement, which focuses on repentance and forgiveness. Perhaps it is the work of some great prophet who created this comical tale to get the attention of self righteous folk who resist God’s call to reach out to those whom they despise. For this is a classic tale of loving one’s enemies and doing good to those who persecute. As with any good parable, it is only in its conclusion that the tables are turned, the truth revealed, the listeners confronted with the reality that it is tale about them. In the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai...” - a very conventional beginning for a work of prophecy. The readers and hearers would have recognized it immediately. This is how God speaks to God’s prophets. “I have something important to communicate. It needs to be said and you need to say it.” There is typically some initial reluctance. Moses protests his tendency to stutter, Jeremiah says he’s too young, Amos is just a shepherd, Isaiah’s lips are unclean, but, in the end, it does not take much persuading. When God appears in a burning bush or high and lifted up, conventional arguments disappear and the prophet says, “Here I am; send me.
Not so Jonah. God has hardly uttered his command, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it...” than Jonah is down at the dock booking passage for Tarshish, the farthest eastern outpost of the known world, somewhere on the west coast of Spain. What’s going on? Any prophet worth his salt knows you can’t escape the presence of the Lord. Jonah is not your typically reluctant prophet though, he’s down right resistant to God’s call and now he’s a runaway. What is he fleeing? I suppose it’s obvious, but I may have chuckled too hard at the prophet’s antics to realize the seriousness of his problem. Jonah doesn’t want to go because he’s an out and out chauvinist, a racist. He hates Nineveh and he detests Ninevites. He would be delighted to see God wipe the whole pagan mess from the face of the earth.
You see Nineveh was the great capital of the Assyrian empire and the Assyrians had tormented the Israelites for years, bringing destruction to the land and hauling the people off into exile. We need to be clear what is asked for here. God’s initial word for the folk of Nineveh is a word of judgment, and Jonah, like many of us, could really get behind speaking a powerful word of judgment on enemies. The rhetoric would come easily to the lips, the passion to the voice and the venom to the heart. Still, we have a strong sense of where Jonah’s resistance lay in prophesying to his enemies. James Alison suggests that, in truth, Jonah was running from himself, from how much he hated his own hatred.
In this classic struggle, God is as unrelenting as Jonah is resistant. Naively thinking he has successfully escaped, Jonah curls up in the hold of the ship, blissfully unaware that God has sent a powerful storm to batter the ship and shake up the sailors. One of the delicious ironies of the tale is that these sailors are all pagan. As do most human beings, they turn to their gods in their time of distress. We find them crying out to their gods for assistance, at the same time they’re lightening the load by throwing the cargo into the sea. Nothing seems to help, until the good captain goes below and finds Jonah snoring away. “What are you doing sound asleep?” he thunders. “Get up, call on your god! Perhaps your god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.” Wiping sleep from his eyes and yawning as he becomes increasingly aware of how the ship is being tossed about, it doesn’t take Jonah long to understand what’s going on. But he doesn’t come clean right away.
The superstitious sailors know that someone is holding out on them. Someone is not praying hard enough or has done something unforgivable to anger some god and is not telling the whole truth, so they resort to casting lots. Of course, the lot falls on Jonah and the sailors confront him. “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us.” Exposed, Jonah draws himself up in self righteousness and says, “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” This proclamation makes an impression on the simple sailors. This god must really be something. They exclaim, “What is that you have done?” They already know he’s a fugitive, running from something or someone. “What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?” The storm was getting worse by the moment. “Pick me up and throw me into the sea;” he says, “then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know that it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”
Even in his self righteousness, something is shifting in Jonah. Now it could be that this is something like assisted suicide on Jonah’s part. He recognizes the foolishness of what he has done in trying to flee God’s call. He is deeply ashamed of his behavior and of the hatred that is driving him. He is not ready to repent, but he does recognize the basic humanity of the sailors who are his ship mates and he is not willing that they all die for his folly. The sailors themselves reinforce their basic human worth by refusing to throw this arrogant, self-righteous foreigner overboard. The text says they redouble their efforts to row to shore at great risk to themselves rather than sacrifice another human being.
But their efforts are futile; they become convinced that the only way to save themselves is to sacrifice Jonah. Into the raging sea he goes, into the swirling depths of his own resistance to God’s call. As he sinks into oblivion, God once more intervenes, this time in the form of a great fish. The fish swallows Jonah whole and he has three days and nights of retreat in the belly of the fish to meditate on what he’s done.
Alison puts it this way, “Jonah had thought he was plunging into death. There must have been something of relief in his descent. At last it was all over. But it was not. Unknown to him, while he thought he had engineered his death [his ultimate escape,] setting it up so as to avoid finding himself in the presence of the Lord, God had a different idea. His plan was to tag along while Jonah would not allow himself to be reached, and then, when he had plunged into the deep, to hold him in being while he was being devoured by all that tumultuous fear, hatred, and darkness, which had glowered beneath the surface of his faith. The great fish is nothing more than God holding Jonah in being in the midst of the darkness and fear...He could see and feel the darkness, and yet not be aware that, in the midst of that, he was being stitched together, reached, held at a depth which he had been unable to imagine” (“Spluttering Up the Beach to Nineveh...” in Faith Beyond Resentment, p. 91.)
Alone, yet not alone, Jonah begins to pray and in that prayer there is a slight cracking of the heart, there is the beginning of a response to God’s call. After three days of reflection he finds himself spewed onto dry land. In Mankowitz’s play, he is conveniently spewed onto the shore near Nineveh. That is, God puts him exactly where he wants him, and then graciously offers him a second chance. Same song, second verse, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh that great city and proclaim to it the message that I tell you,’” that same eight word message, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” This time Jonah knows enough to do what he has been told. And, lo and behold, the prophecy is heard, is taken to heart, and the people repent, including their king. The whole culture is transformed in a brief span of time, because the word of the Lord is really that powerful, when given its proper place in the human heart.
“Repent,” says the king, inserting the key word missing from Jonah’s message. Jonah may have had a peak - or rather a depth - experience. He may have had three long days and nights to reflect, but his enlightenment is still emerging. He still is hoping for the destruction of his ancient enemies. It’s the king who speaks the word of repentance, of transformation, of turning around. “All shall turn from their evil ways, and from the violence that is in their hands,” he says. In contrast to Jonah, God has been hoping all along for just such repentance and redemption of these, her children, but Jonah just doesn’t get it yet. He remains hostile and resistant to God’s work. God is gracious enough and humble enough in her omnipotence to change her mind. Nineveh is saved - the king, his nobles, the people and the animals.
Ah! “But this was very displeasing to Jonah and he became angry.” The heart cracks open further and the truth comes out. “He prayed to God and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish in 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 knew all along what God was like; his struggle was to live up to his own having been created in the image and likeness of God. His struggle was to let go of the fear and hatred, anger and shame that had taken root in his heart and to take on the grace, mercy and love of the God he served, the God who loved him enough to pursue him to the ends of the earth, the depths of the sea and the frozen chambers of his own heart.
But he is still not quite ready for his own transformation. His resistance continues. “Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” He has been exposed, humiliated, and he just can’t rise above his shame. God chides Jonah like a recalcitrant child, “Is it right for you to be so angry?” But like the spoiled child, throwing a temper tantrum, Jonah plunks himself down in the broiling heat of the desert that edges the city, with no shelter other than a flimsy booth of his own construction, which offers minimal shade. He will wait resistantly to see what God will do with Nineveh. It looks like another curious suicide attempt. “I’ll just sit here until Nineveh is destroyed or I have a heat stroke.
God has one last intervention in store as she continues to pursue this resistant prophet. “The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush.” But God is not done. Overnight, God appoints a worm to destroy the bush; then sends a “sultry east wind” while the sun beats down on poor Jonah’s head to the point that he’s about to pass out. Once more he utters the words, “It is better for me to die than to live.” “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush,” God asks. “Yes,” retorts the resistant prophet, “angry enough to die.” Now our parable rushes swiftly and abruptly to its conclusion, as parables often do. God, of course, has the last word. “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 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?
That’s it folks! What happened to Jonah? We don’t know. Did he finally get it? We can hope he did, but the parable is really for the readers and the hearers. Did they get it? Do we get it? The point for those first hearers was to realize that, even they though understood themselves to be God’s chosen people, that did not entitle them to any self righteousness or claim to superiority over their neighbors or their enemies. They were to be a light to the nations. They were to bring God’s word of grace and mercy, of love and compassion to a needy world. They were to be agents of justice, peace and reconciliation in a harsh, warring, broken world. Wherever the resistance of Jonah was present in their lives, the challenge was to root it out so that they could be fully engaged in gathering all of God’s children into one beloved community. Of course, this is just an ancient story that has no real relevance for us or our animals. Amen.