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| Nori Kieran-Meredith ARCWP |
Today’s
sermon comes with a tip of the preacher’s hat to my hiking buddy, comedy writer
John Mirdo.
The book of
Jonah is a fishy tale to be
sure. If we’re going to make sense of it,
it helps to re-tell the story in contemporary language. And so we’re using North American cities
instead of Nineveh and Tarshish, which don’t mean much of anything to most of
us. So let’s give it a shot! For
starters, “Jonah,” means “dove” in Hebrew.
This is the story of the dove’s awakening.
Jonah is in
San Pedro, at the Port of Los Angeles.
God calls Jonah. “Set sail for
San Francisco!” But Jonah doesn’t want
to go to San Francisco. That’s where the
enemy lives!
In disobedience to God, Jonah packs up everything and
hotfoots it off to Cabo San Lucas.
God sends a
“great wind” and a “mighty storm” after Jonah, such as threaten to break apart
his ship. In a panic, the sailors jettison
their cargo. And when that doesn’t work,
they jettison Jonah, too. They suspect,
rightly, that a defiant Jonah is the cause of their distress. Conveniently, a big fish swallows Jonah who
spends three days in utter darkness, sautéed in stomach acid. A terrified Jonah prays for deliverance, and
God relents. The great fish spits Jonah up on the shore, and God hits the reset
button. Time to try this again!
God calls
Jonah. “[Ahem. I told you to] set sail
for San Francisco!” Jonah replies, “God,
I don’t want to go to San Francisco.
That’s where the enemies of the Jews are.” Is Jonah afraid that God might be courting a
new chosen people? Might God abandon the
Jews, or worse yet, use their enemies to destroy them?
But Jonah sets
off reluctantly anyway. Upon his
arrival, he proclaims God’s message in exactly seven mournful words. [Aside: Now we return to Biblical names for
cities.] “40 days more and Nineveh will
be overthrown.” Jonah may be saying one
thing, but he’s definitely feeling another.
He yearns with all his heart
to fail at this mission.
So what
happens next? Faster than a camel on
diuretics, word flies to the king of Nineveh, who buys into the message of the
Hebrew God. The king proclaims that everyone is to commence immediate
penance, even the pack animals. No one
is to drink water, nor eat, and from now on all must wear sackcloth. (Can’t you just picture all the animals
wearing sackcloth?) Then all the
Ninevites wail aloud to God for mercy. And the animals howl, too. Every one.
What an earful that must have been! And all because Jonah uttered seven words. The repentance is so intense that God forgives
everyone. God promises that no evil
shall befall the Ninevite children.
Jonah sputters in protest and holes up dejectedly in a lean-to east of
the city.
Thoughtfully,
God provides Jonah with a bush to shade him from the sun, whereupon Jonah falls into an exhausted sleep. But then God sends a scorching east wind and
a most industrious worm to devour the bush.
And God proclaims cheerfully “Rise and shine, Sleepyhead!” Well no, God doesn’t actually say that, but
Jonah nonetheless wakes up on the wrong side of his sleeping mat. He would rather die than aid Israel’s
enemies! Why did God ask something so
terrible of him? But God reminds Jonah
gently that the children of the earth all belong to God, and that God will take
care of them, each and every one.
This is so
incredibly different from every other passage of scripture! And just why is that? This isn’t a history lesson. It was never meant to be taken literally. It’s meant to wake up the Jewish people to be
who they’re supposed to be. The Ninevites behave like the chosen people
of God. And why aren’t the chosen people
behaving? Why are the Ninevites more
like true believers than the Hebrews? What
is all this craziness? What is really
going on here?
The book of Jonah is a satire! The book of Jonah is a satire. As far as I know, it’s
the only satire in the Bible, and for thousands of years, we’ve been
misinterpreting it as history. Or
perhaps as a parable, but not for what it truly is.
And so what
does it have to do with anything today? I’m
going to turn this over for discussion now.
Points for
Discussion, if No One Has Any
God loves
all God’s children, none more than others.
Jonah
wasn’t afraid to oppose God. He was
hardly passive. His first concern was
for his fellow Jews, not God’s will. He
wasn’t right, and even though God creamed him [or acidified him?], he emerged
in one piece, hardly the worse for wear.
LGBT
scholars point to Jonah’s incarceration in the great fish in terms of being in
the closet. Does this comparison
work?
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