Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, Pastor
Jonah 3:1-5, 10The story of Jonah is an Old Testament parable. It is not intended to describe a historical event. This short work doesn't tell us about a real person or a real city and, much to many folks disappointment, not even a real whale. It struggles to tell us something about God and our anger, more specifically, our racism. And like any well-crafted parable, it is full of irony, humor and dramatic action.
3The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2"Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
The story is set up this way: a Jewish man is called by God to go and preach in the capital city of Assyria.
It is set in a time when Assyria has destroyed Israel and pretty well messed up Judah and all of their neighbors. Assyria was practicing that ancient form of warfare that built their national wealth by stealing everything of value from all of their neighbors and enslaving their population. Assyria had never done anything good for any Jew and had done every outlandish, criminal, reprehensibly violent thing they could do to destroy the Jewish people.
So, this is a very tense set up. God tells Jonah to go and preach to the people he hated the most.
Now, Biblical scholars agree that this story is not nearly old enough to have been written in those days of Assyrian rule. It was written much later, two or three hundred years later. It was written in a time when the tiny little remnant of Jews were trying to rebuilt a scrap of a nation on the ruins left behind after nearly a century of slavery in Babylon. In those days of reconstruction there was just an awful lot of anger.... they had been bullied, robbed, burned out, sold into slavery and then finally dumped totally vulnerable in a nearly barren land in a city with no walls and very little to eat.
The person who sat down to write Jonah lived among a rag tag bunch of survivors who kept themselves alive by feeding on how much they hated Babylonians, Egyptians, Syrians and just about anyone who didn't look and sound Jewish. And when people are so certain that their hatred is justified, when they know for a fact that their bloodthirsty prayers are heard by God it is very very difficult to offer an alternative position.
I found myself becoming very provoked a few days ago when I woke up to my usual diet of coffee and news programs and the news channel that I was watching had decided to replay, moment by moment, the original broadcast of their program on Sept. 11, 2001. I totally understand the desire to remember, to memorialize, to honor those who lost their lives on that horrible day, but what we were being asked to relive was the terror, the confusion, the toxic blending of fear and rage that we all felt when the second plane hit the second tower and all speculations about an accident suddenly ended. America was under attack.... A sneak attack, a terrorist attack.... Against unarmed civilians who posed no threat to anyone.
And watching that first hour again, that I still remembered very clearly from that Tuesday morning thirteen years ago, I realized that I wasn't really being asked to remember and honor, I was being asked to relive the fear and anger, the desire for revenge.
And I immediately wondered if TV stations in Bagdad replayed coverage from our bombing of Bagdad on March 18, 2003 every year and if they did, would they be memorializing the dead or reminding the people of Iraq that they need to still fear and hate Americans? You remember where you were on 9-11-2001 but do you remember where you were on March 18, 2003? Does that illegal and extremely lethal act of war strike you in anything like the same way?
Whoever wrote the book of Jonah wanted to ask that question that I just asked in a somewhat more diplomatic, more empathetic manner. Sometimes, when people are that mad, using a little slap stick humor is the only way to break the ice. So the story starts with Jonah going the opposite direction from where God wants him to go. And God causes a great storm to strike the ship at sea. And even pagan gentiles are getting religion trying to beg God to help them.
They finally throw Jonah overboard into the raging sea and the sea calms down and a giant fish swallows Jonah and swims for three days to deliver him to the shores of Nineveh.
See, everyone in this story is totally obedient to God.... the weather, the sea, the fish, and even pagan sailors but one person is defiant of God's will..... the preacher! Cause, see, he has got a serious mad on. It is not just that he thought Judaism was that much better than the religion of Assyria or that Judah was just all that much better than any other nation.... it was that he had seen the wreckage, the slaughter.... he knew people who had been killed, enslaved, raped and robbed. His anger was a righteous anger that doesn't really believe that anyone who disagrees with him can be anything but stupid or evil and probably some of both.
We've recently had this whole debate about Syria going on in the news. Last year John McCain was mad at the president for not arming ISIS because they were fighting against President Assad in Syria. Now McCain is mad at the president because he is not arming Assad so that he can fight ISIS better. Which only leads me to wonder why news programs still interview Joh McCain?
There is an element of our government, of our population, that just doesn't want to learn about history, or facts or to see it from perspective other than their own sense of having been wronged. They are frightened, xenophobic.... They want to feel safe and they want revenge. That, men and women, is Jonah.
Jonah walks into the middle of this huge monstrous city and delivers a short and pretty sad attempt at a sermon. He preached a one sentence sermon....One sentence predicting the immanent destruction of the city. And against all credible odds, the entire city repents.
The storyteller wants us to believe that everyone from the King to the cattle in the field repented! Best revival in the history of the world!
But, of course, that is part of the irony. Jonah didn't want them to turn from their evil. He wanted God to destroy them. Isn't that God's business? Destroying evil people? Doesn't God see the injustice? Doesn't God become outraged by the mass destruction? Didn't God see the videos of people being beheaded? Doesn't God want us to wipe out Nineveh and every city like it?
By the way, our drones also make video recordings.... We could be showing the videos of our execution of thousands of innocent civilians by our own killer flying robots but you never see those videos do you?
Jonah goes up on a ridge over looking the city to watch and see if they'll mess up.... maybe God will go ahead and bomb the city anyway. You know, it gets hot when you don't have anything but your anger to keep you company. Jonah is just sitting up there, waiting, watching, and hoping they'll mess up.
In Alcoholics Anonymous they say that anger is the dubious luxury of ordinary people. It is a luxury because it is an emotion that some people can revel in but recovering alcoholics know that it is a luxury they can't afford. If they get angry then it won't be long before they also get drunk. But it is a dubious luxury because even people who don't get drunk don't seem to get much good out of it. Anger doesn't seem to make people very smart. It doesn't make them spiritual.
It doesn't make them compassionate or loving and a whole lot of the time it makes them do something really destructive, usually self-destructive. The Big Book of A.A. calls anger poison and it may well be.
But let me return to the Biblical story. Jonah is sitting on the ridge watching the city and a vine grows up over the little shack where he is sitting and the vine is the only decent thing that has happened to Jonah.... at least the vine offers some shade from the hot sun. However, just as the weather, the sea, the fish and the pagans are all obedient to God, now even a worm is sent to do God's will..... a worm eats through the vine and it dies and that, for Jonah, is the last straw.
He rants at God:
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...?
When God asks Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry?" Jonah doesn't even understand the question..... because, you see, anger can be its own logic.
Why wouldn't he be angry?
Angry at the Assyrians for their violent sins. Angry at God for not destroying them. Angry at the vine for dying and making him so uncomfortable..... angry enough to die.
You know the routine...... angry at illegal immigrants so that when you see signs in Spanish at the hardware store you are afraid that you are losing your country. Angry at Muslims who raise terrorists and who have no remorse for their heinous deeds. Angry at autoworkers for demanding salaries that put American businesses into bankruptcy. Angry at bankers who helped to wreck the economy. Angry at gay people for wanting the same rights as straight people.... How did our famous local defense attorney put it? Dee Wampler said he was tired of these gay people shoving things down his throat..... is it possible that he can't hear himself?
It is not that Jonah and his people did not have a reason to be angry, ....it is not that Isis is not a terrorist army capable of sub-human acts of violence. It is that our anger won't solve the problem.
The message of Jonah to the people who first read it was that their captivity in Babylon was over and it was time for them to stop hating and to accept the interracial marriages among them, the mixed blood Jews, the Jews who spoke other languages or who had family members who were of another religion.
We face those issues. My father would never own a Japanese car because, for him, the score of Pearl Harbor wasn't over yet...... but if you take that perspective, it is never over.
The world isn't what it was and will never again be what it was. There are more Muslims in the United States than there are Episcopalians or Presbyterians. The economy of the Americas is blended and there will always be both English and Spanish speaking people in every state of the United States.... For ever!
Men and women, there are times when it is right to be angry. But as Aristotle noted:
"Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy."
Our nation is trying to figure out how to untangle ourselves from a war which has already lasted longer than WWII. And yet, we are still angry about and afraid of terrorists.
The book of Jonah asks, "Do you do well to be angry?"..... 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...?
In years past we have invaded Mexico and Canada. We have gone to war with England, France, Germany and Japan, all of which are now close allies and trading partners..... OK, not France really but still..... think of the wine and cheese. It is possible for old enemies to become allies. It is possible to find a way around the anger to something much more healthy..... not out of fear but out of courage....
Not in ignorant naiveté but in powerful faith.
Anger is almost always rooted in fear. My modest suggestion is that our anger has led us into an eye for an eye mentality that has made our nation morally blind. I think that it is time for those who live in the land of the free and the home of the brave to stop being such cowards. We will not fight our way to peace.
