Homily : "Jettisoned Jonah" Jonah 3:1-5, 10 by Nori Kieran-Meredith, ARCWP

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?