One Fish, Big Fish, Childish Finish

The Book of Jonah
September 16, 2018
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry

Our reading today is an abridged, condensed version of the book of Jonah. You can find the entire story, which is much better, in your Bible. Jonah appears amid the minor prophets, a book of only four chapters. We know little about Jonah, whose name means “dove,” apart from this story from about 500 years before Christ. Interestingly, the book is about him, not a prophecy from him. It’s generally agreed that this story is more parable than history, but it is rich with truths about God, people, and the nature of our relationship. Let’s listen for God’s word to us in this story of Jonah:

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”
But Jonah went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. The sailors said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.”
So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?”

For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous.
He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”
So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging.
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.”
Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.
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.”
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
When God saw how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind and he did not do it. But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at 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.
And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Then Jonah went out of the city and made a booth for himself there.
He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die.
He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?”
And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.”
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 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Mobile disobedience.
That’s how one commentary describes Jonah’s behavior.
Another less scholarly comment would be “drama queen.” 

Most everyone has heard the story of Jonah and the whale. We’re familiar with the story of Jonah getting thrown overboard and swallowed by a big fish, even if the primary images the story evokes are scenes from the Disney movie, “Pinocchio.” But when it comes to the entire story line, and the epilogue, our memories tend to be a little bit sketchy.

The very abridged version is that God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah does not under any circumstances want to go there. It isn’t surprising, given the reputation of Nineveh, a city of Gentiles, a city of terrorism and violence, located in what is now Iraq. So Jonah runs, not in the direction God gave, but the opposite direction – mobile disobedience.

A terrible tempestuous storm blows up, evidence to the sailors that somebody’s god is very, very angry. They need to appease the angry god and save their ship from sinking. They discover it is Jonah who has displeased his God, the God of Israel. Although they don’t really want to, but they want to die even less, they throw Jonah overboard, into the raging sea. Surely he will drown!

But a huge fish comes along and swallows him up. After three days in the belly of the fish, Jonah repents. The fish vomits him out onto the dry land, and off to Nineveh he goes! When they hear Jonah’s message from God, the entire city repents. By order of the King, everyone wears sackcloth and ashes, even the cattle! Everyone turns to God, and God relents and shows mercy to them!

Yaaay! Happy ending!

NOT!

Because Jonah, the subject of God’s relentless pursuit, is not happy! He is not happy at all. Here’s how The Message translates the passage: “Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God, ‘God! I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness! So, God, if you won’t kill them, kill me! I’m better off dead!’”

There you have it: Jonah’s childish reaction to God’s mercy. Jonah then fixed himself a nice shady spot outside of the brimstone zone where he could watch – with satisfaction – what he expected would be the destruction of Nineveh.

And GOD DID NOT DO IT! What a cheat!

But a God made a nice bit of shrubbery grow to cool him down, and Jonah was happy – for a brief time. Until God sent a very hungry caterpillar to chew the shrubbery up, and Jonah threw another temper tantrum. God rebuked Jonah yet again, pointing out how ridiculous he was being. Disobedient. Judgmental. Petty.

One fish, big fish, childish finish.


On Tuesday evening at sundown, our Jewish brothers and sisters will begin their observance of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Until nightfall of the next day, observant Jews will not work, nor will they eat or drink or bathe. They will join together in a series of prayers. And near the end of the services, they will read the entire book of Jonah.

Why Jonah? Yom Kippur is a day of confession and repentance, a day in which prayers return again and again to seeking mercy from God. It is the final day of ten days known as High Holy Days. The ten days begin with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. From that day until Yom Kippur, observant Jews worship, pray, and seek forgiveness from anyone they have wronged.

Attendance at these services is usually very high – so high, in fact, that members often purchase tickets to attend, and non-Jewish people cannot get a seat. The equivalent attendance we’d imagine in churches would be Christmas Eve, but with ticket sales.

We Presbyterians offer up prayers of confession in every worship service. We understand our need for repentance on a continual basis. But so often, think others need to repent much more than we do. And we believe God’s mercy should be readily available to us,but to the other guy, maybe not so much.

Particularly when the “other guy” is in Nineveh, which is the modern-day city of Mosul, Iraq. Would you want to go and preach in Mosul? I wouldn’t want to, any more than Jonah wanted to go to Nineveh.

In no small way, we are all more like Jonah than we care to admit.
We don’t always like doing what God asks, and we may run from it.
There are some people, mostly people we think of as our enemies,
that we’d like to see God smash like God threatened to smash Nineveh.
There are some situations in which we expect God to hate the same people we hate. 

We like to attribute our ill-will and lack of forgiveness to God.
We like to think that God occupies the judgement seat for others,
and sits in the mercy seat for us and those we love.
Some Christians are quick to inform others of God’s judgment and justice,
which is strangely shaped exactly like their own.

Pat Robertson is an extreme example. He seems to believe that he and God are in lockstep agreement. In his worldview, every bad thing that happens is a sign of God’s judgment. He said that the attacks on September 11 were God’s judgment against “The pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America.” Robertson considers natural disasters to be God’s judgment of us. Middle East peace talks, same-sex insurance marriage, President Obama and Democrats are apparently the cause of strokes, tornados and hurricanes.[1]

While Robertson is an extreme example,
we are not innocent of such pronouncements.
We may say “Karma is cruel”
but what we mean is “serves you right.”

None of us is above the occasional desire for vengeance, even if we couch it in terms of God’s judgment. We sit outside the city, like Jonah, and await its destruction. We question whether the repentance and confessions of others are genuine. But when we ourselves are resisting God’s claim on us, when we ourselves are engaged in “mobile disobedience,” we sincerely hope that God will administer mercy.

Jonah is a comedic, frustrating, peculiar story in which Jonah is not the hero.
God’s prophet, in this case, succeeds in his task but fails to be transformed.
The Gentile city of Nineveh is saved, even if they do not deserve it.
And Jonah pouts, the sun beating down on him,
while God attempts to reason with him!

One rabbi says, “We traditionally imagine God sitting on the Judgment seat, the damning ledger of our deeds open before him, as we plead for mercy and forgiveness. In this venerable image, the purpose of our fervent prayers and confession, our fasting and self-denial, is to influence God to move from the Judgment Seat to the Mercy Seat, and, undeserving though we are, grant us another year in the Book of Life. But what if it is not God who needs to move from harsh judgment to compassion, but we ourselves? What if it is we ourselves who are stuck on the Judgment seat, and it is God who is pleading with us to have mercy on each other and on creation? This is the surprising message of the Book of Jonah.”[2]

Have mercy on us, O God, we pray.
And God does have mercy on us.
When God heard the repentance of Nineveh, God changed God’s mind!

Hundreds of years after this story of Jonah, son of Amittai was recorded,
Jesus, son of God was born.
It is a reverse image of the Jonah story.

Jonah refused to call to warn the Ninevites of God’s impending destruction.
Jesus goes willingly where God sends him to proclaim good news,
and calls people to turn away from evil and toward God.

Jonah was cast into the sea,
and his life was spared when he was swallowed by a big fish.
Jesus was condemned to death on the cross.

For three days, Jonah was in Sheol, the place of the dead.
For three days, Jesus lay in the tomb, in the arms of death.

If Jonah had his way, the city of Nineveh would have been flattened;
in Jonah we see reflected our disobedience, our selfishness, our rancor.

In Jesus we see the reflection of God’s character --
God’s all-encompassing love, mercy, and forgiveness:
mercy so wide that God is even concerned about Nineveh’s cattle!

Because we have been given this gift,
we can turn toward those whom we might rather avoid –
not in judgment, but in lovingkindness;
bringing not destruction, but refuge;
speaking the good news and demonstrating love in word and deed.

Yes, on many days, we are like Jonah.
But thanks be to God, on many days we are not!

I paraphrased Dr. Seuss for the sermon title: One fish, two fish, childish finish.
As we consider the book of Jonah, its worth remembering another quote
from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish:
"A book is just like life, and anything can change."

Including the Ninevites.
Including Jonah.
Including God’s judgment.
Including you.
Amen.

[1] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/5-times-pat-robertson-blamed-tragedies-on-legal-abortion-gays-and-peace-deals/
[2] http://lsi-wjc.org/why-do-we-read-the-story-of-jonah-on-yom-kippur-a-yom-kippur-teaching/