Loading...What’s the old adage? If you want God to laugh, just tell her your plans?
HA!
Dear God, I want to go to Japan for my sabbatical!
Dear Kimmy, um, nope, there’s this COVID thing happening.
No can do.
Or, in Jonah’s case, God told him the plan
and Jonah said, “Nope-ity nope with a side of nope sauce,”
then ran the other way from where God wanted him to go.
Y’all know the story of Jonah, right?
It all started because God had an idea – that the Assyrians,
the enemies of the Israelites, who were brutal in their military tactics, and a huge empire,
should have the opportunity to repent and change their ways.
This may not sound so “off” to our ears, unless you’re up on your history of the Ancient Near East.
But, to Jonah and to other Israelites,
this would be as bizarre as God asking any one of us to go to the biggest, baddest bully you know –
well, the biggest, baddest bully you know who doesn’t believe in God –
and tell them that they need to change their ways or
God will destroy them.
Um. No. Nothankyouverymuch.
Jonah high tails it the other direction from Ninevah, the capital city of the Assyrian empire, where God had told him to go talk to those bullies.
But, Jonah’s run-away plan, or sail-away, didn’t work.
The boat he was on ended up being in a terrible, sudden storm and the sailors were freaked out. They started praying to their gods and throwing things overboard to try to lighten the load and make it safer. They woke Jonah up from his nap [WHAT?!?] and told him to pray to his god also. He replied, “Oh, yeah. It’s my fault. I’m the one that caused this storm; throw me overboard and the storm will stop.”
Uh. OK....
They do. The storm calms. Jonah is swallowed up by a very large fish.
And hangs out in the belly of the fish for three days ... to think.
And to pray:
I called to you, O God, out of my distress, and you answered me; *
out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, *
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and billows passed over me.
Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight; *
how shall I ever look again upon your holy temple?”
The waters closed in over me, the deep was round about me; *
weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land beneath the earth, *
yet you brought up my life from the depths, O God.
As my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, O God, *
and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
With the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you; *
what I have vowed I will pay, for deliverance belongs to the Lord.
Jonah takes the time to ponder, to think,
and to trust God again –
even though he doesn’t understand
and may not agree with God.
Even though Jonah might laugh at God’s plans or ideas.
The very large fish threw Jonah up on the shore and God took that opportunity to tell Jonah to go to Ninevah again and tell the people that they needed to turn to God again or they’d be destroyed.
While Jonah had a “come to Yahweh” moment in the belly of the fish,
he was still pretty crabby about the task he was given, but off he went.
To the great city of Ninevah, a city that was so big that it took three days to walk across.
No matter. Jonah went in one day’s worth and hollered out,
“Forty days more and Ninevah will be no more.”
That’s it. That’s all he said. That’s all he did.
They heard, turned to God, mourned, lamented, and changed their way
(at least as the story goes).
God relented, and didn’t destroy them.
Stop here for a moment and wonder in amazement at the power of this word, of this half-baked sermon that was nine words long (actually fewer in the Hebrew language).
No sound equipment, no Facebook livestream, no Zoom, no internet, no microphone with attached boom box, no bullhorn, not even a megaphone!
Yet, people heard the Word. And they shared it. This Word from God through Jonah was heard and shared all the way until the king heard it.
And, they all believed it and trusted it (!) so much so that
they changed their ways. Completely.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There’s something more about Jonah’s story that intrigues me –
as a storyteller, yes (it’s a masterful story, even with an awkward ending)
But more as a person of faith
who tries to walk the way of trust and faith
and is sometimes ... befuddled ... by God.
After the conversation of the Ninevites, well ALL of Assyria, actually,
and their salvation from destruction,
Jonah was pissed.
Really pissed.
He KNEW that God would relent!
He KNEW that God wouldn’t actually destroy them
and that just irked him SO. MUCH.
“This is why I ran away the first time, God!
This is why I took off to Tarshish,
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.
“And, now, I’d like to just die. Please and thank you.”
So, Jonah took his grumpy self out to the far edge of the city
set up a little bit of shade, sat there and waited.
Waited for what?
To die? To calm down? To see what would happen to the city!
God made a bush to grow up to provide shade for Jonah. YAY!
God made a worm destroy the bush which wilted and died and took away the shade from Jonah who had to suffer through awful heat. BOO!
Grumpus!
BTW, the Bernie memes are very funny, but the best, in my mind,
is the one of Bernie sitting under the tree.
Caption: God: the Assyrians repented, so Nineveh is spared.
Jonah: [Bernie with his mittens under the tree]
But, here’s the clincher:
Then the Lord said, ‘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 people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’
“Should I not be concerned about Nineveh?”
The upside down, table-turning, radical plan of God
is that God is concerned about Nineveh, and Syria, and Russia, and Zimbabwe, and Brazil, and Papua New Guinea, and India, and the US, and... and....
God is concerned about the animals and plants in the world, the sea creatures and the desert places.
God loves the people who are overlooked and pushed around,
and also those who doing the pushing and the overlooking.
What God ASKS of these various groups may differ (a whole lotta repenting needs to go on!), but God loves indiscriminately.
Indiscriminately.
And this is what has Jonah’s undies in a bunch.
This is what might irritate you.
This is definitely NOT the plan that we might have
for the bullies and meanies of our world.
Yet, this is God’s plan. To love.
To give second, third, fourth, fifth... and innumerable chances.
To forgive. To embrace. To heal. To reconcile.
Regardless of what may have been the reason for the brokenness (remember, those Assyrians were AWFUL), God loves us deeply and fiercely, and fully.
This is the Good News that Jesus brings to us.
This is the Way of life that we’ve been invited into.
This is the call you’ve been asked to answer.
Tarshish or Nineveh?
God hopes that you hear God’s plan and vote for the beloved,
just as God does,
for you, for me, for the Ninevites, and for all of creation.
Amen
