Don Friesen
Helmut Thielicke (1908-86), one of the outstanding European theologians of the twentieth century, was also a courageous preacher. Dismissed by the German government from his post of Professor of Theology at Heidelberg in 1940, Thielicke came to prominence in Stuttgart where, during the worst of the bombing raids and in spite of continuing Nazi opposition, he continued to preach to a congregation of several thousand each week. Though a witness to many of the most significant and tumultuous events of the twentieth century, Thielicke dared to write a book entitled, Life Can Begin Again (1963), in which he comes to grips with what are often seen as the impossible ideals of our faith.
It's not surprising, then, to learn that Thielicke kept on his desk an old photograph--a snapshot of a nativity pageant in which a group of rather rough-looking men are wearing white robes and holding candles, and another group of men is kneeling before them, feigning terror. They're supposed to be angels and shepherds, but it's a photograph taken in prison, where Thielicke was a prison chaplain. The men in the scene were all convicts, hardened criminals whose lives had been transformed by Christ. It's quite an image! Murderers and felons dressed like angels! Thielicke witnessed some of the worst atrocities the last century had to offer, but for him the photograph was a vivid reminder of the power of God and its ability to change us.
Jonah, The Story
Today's Old Testament reading is also about change. The drama group recited a few verses of the book of Jonah, but the book itself is not much longer. With but forty-eight verses, Jonah hardly qualifies as a book! It's a short story, and the story itself is simple enough. Rejecting God's command to preach to the Gentiles of Nineveh, capital of Assyria, Jonah fled in a ship bound for Tarshish, in the opposite direction! His shipmates, convinced that Jonah was to blame for the stormy weather they encountered, threw him overboard! Immediately "a great fish," often assumed to be a whale, swallowed him! After three days the fish had had enough and spit Jonah onto the beach. Proceeding at last to Nineveh, after God had called him a second time, Jonah warned of its destruction. The Ninevites took him seriously and repented, whereupon God granted the Ninevites a reprieve, whereupon Jonah sat down under a bush and began to pout, whereupon God taught Jonah a much-needed lesson about the depth of God's mercy.
The story of Jonah is a short story and an improbable story; nonetheless, it has never failed to capture the imagination of those who studied it. For example, there is extensive commentary, both serious and fanciful, in Jewish sources. One persistent early tradition has it that Jonah was swallowed fully clothed, but was vomited forth both naked and bald! Some of the early commentary includes fantastic descriptions of the whale's belly and its contents, together with the legend that Jonah used the whale's eyes as windows into the depths of the ocean. The twentieth century Aldous Huxley had a similar fascination with the fish, following Jewish midrashic lore in romanticizing the wondrous innards of the fish (Jonah, 1917, cited in David Jeffrey, Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature 1992)
Jesus refers to Jonah several times. (Matthew 12:39-41; 16:4; Luke 11:29-32) In fact, in early theological writings Jonah is often seen as a type of Christ, especially the resurrected Christ. Jonah figures as an emblem of the resurrection in nearly sixty early Christian paintings found in the catacombs.
Jonah, an Improbable Prophet
The story of Jonah is often cited as a lesson of repentance, or as an example of God's magnificent mercy, or as an early example of a mission to Gentiles. Jonah is included among the prophetic books of the Old Testament, but in many respects he doesn't fit the bill! When I think of Old Testament prophets, even minor prophets, I think of Amos, who spared no passion in calling his people to justice. "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream," preached the eloquent Amos. (Amos 5:24) I think of Hosea, who spared no drama to enhance his message, going so far as to marry a prostitute to make a point. I think of Micah, who showed equal dramatic flair by walking around barefoot and naked, howling "like a jackal" and wailing "like an ostrich" (Micah 1:8, TEV) in order to convince his people that they were destitute before God.
Old Testament prophets tend to rant and rave. They point out the suffering of war and the sins of their leaders. In response they are at best ignored, at worst ridiculed, beaten, jailed or exiled! Jonah, as prophetic literature, contains some surprises. Firstly, Jonah was a reluctant prophet. Most of the Old Testament prophets were deeply convinced of their message and delivered it with verve and passion. Jeremiah wasn't too excited about his prophetic role (Jeremiah 1:6), initially, but once he embraced it he never looked back. One of the conventions usually observed in stories about the prophets is that they obey the call of God; they may question it, but invariably they obey it. Jonah, on the other hand, didn't even stop long enough to question God's call; he tried avoid it and evade it! He took off in the opposite direction! He boarded a ship, which itself wais an unusual thing for Israelites to do, for they were by no means a seafaring people. The sailors on the ship took Jonah's call more seriously than he did himself. (Jonah 1:10) It was only after Jonah's "near death experience" in the ocean, and after God called him a second time to go to Nineveh that Jonah relented and went.
A second surprise in this story is that unlike the other prophetic books, the book of Jonah contains very little prophecy! Isaiah, for example, piles prophecy upon prophecy upon prophecy. The story of Jonah, however, is largely the tale of his mission and reveals very little about the content of his message.
Thirdly, Jonah is an unusual prophet in that he is called to prophesy to a foreign nation from within that nation. The prophet's stock in trade was to denounce the enemies of the nation, and the prophetic books are filled with harsh invective against foreign nations, but usually uttered from the safety of home and not from the public square of the enemy's capital city! Isaiah prophesied on home territory and called his own community to righteousness and justice. Jeremiah prophesied to his own people, on home territory, as did Amos and Hosea. Ezekiel lived in exile, but he prophesied to his own people, both those in exile and those at home. Jonah, however, was called to prophesy to a foreign nation from within the foreign nation, and not just any foreign nation but the very worst of Israel's enemies!
Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and the Israelites hated the Assyrians. They considered the Assyrians responsible for a number of Israel's greatest national disasters. For two hundred years, the Assyrians had repeatedly invaded Israel, burning and looting, and deporting its inhabitants. The Assyrians had a reprehensible reputation in war, especially in their treatment of war prisoners. And God wanted Jonah to prophesy to what he and his fellow citizens considered the most arrogant, cruel and militarized people of their time?!?
The fourth surprise in the story of Jonah--a delightful surprise, really--is the success of Jonah's mission. Jonah's prophetic career path deviates from the path of other Old Testament prophets, who were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned or exiled! Jeremiah's community, for example, responded to his prophecy by plotting against him (Jeremiah 11:18-23; 18:18-23), arresting and imprisoning him (37:11-21), and on one occasion leaving him abandoned in a dry well! (38:1-13) Jonah, however, received an amazing response in Nineveh. Listening to Jonah, the people of Nineveh, we are told, "believed God," "proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth." (Jonah 3:5) The city of Nineveh is described in Jonah as a huge city (3:3), and so the success of Jonah's mission, in numbers alone, is incredible!
Jonah's success was felt at all levels. When news of these mass conversions reached the king of Nineveh, he "rose from his throne, removed his robe," and he too "covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes." (3:6) Unlike the other Old Testament prophets, who often struggled in vain merely to get a hearing from governments, let alone influence them, Jonah's message penetrated the senior levels of governance, and public policy changed radically as a result.
Please Ignore this, the Shortest Sermon in the World
Jonah, compared to his Old Testament colleagues, is an improbable prophet, dare I say the joker among prophets, for his story-line is an unusual one. And for a story that is very short, it has an incredible number of twists and turns. It would be nice to end the story on the triumphant note of success, but Jonah, the reluctant prophet, the improbable prophet, the unusual prophet, becomes the pouting prophet! He wasn't at all happy with his success. Jonah had delivered his message, desperately hoping that the Ninevites would ignore him, and when they didn't he got very angry and told God, I knew this would happen. I knew you were a weak, indulgent, namby-pamby, criminal-coddling God who wouldn't destroy evildoers who deserve to be destroyed! I knew it all from the beginning! The Bible actually phrases it more eloquently, but the meaning is the same.
The book of Jonah is an amazing story of change in which everyone changes except Jonah! Even God changes His mind. The Ninevites really were a reprehensible nation, and God was very angry with them, but when God saw their change of heart He too had a change of heart. The king of Assyria wasn't sure that their national repentance would be enough to sway God's determination to punish them, but he said, "Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger...." (Jonah 3:9) And indeed, we read, "When 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." (3:10) God called off the plan to destroy them.
Everyone in this story repents except Jonah, who only relents, hoping against hope that Nineveh will not repent. In a delightfully ironic twist--Jonah knowing full well that God prefers to love people, even bad people--Jonah delivers God's message. On the one hand, Jonah hopes that he will get to see Nineveh's fiery destruction! On the other hand, he's afraid that God's mercy may spoil everything!
Sometimes we have an ambivalent attitude toward change, and that includes those of us whose task it is to call for the most profound of changes. One preacher (Fred Kane) was quite surprised one Sunday afternoon when after a sermon urging people to become more committed to Christ a couple called him to tell him that after discussion and prayer they had decided to sell their house and volunteer for mission work abroad. The preacher didn't know what to say! He felt like saying, Now look, I was just preaching! The couple's willingness to make drastic changes to follow God's call scared him! Maybe he had overstated the issue. Maybe he hadn't added enough qualifications and reservations. Maybe he hadn't left enough wiggle room in the sermon.
Jonah had even less time to add qualifications. His sermon is one of the shortest sermons on record--eight words! "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" (Jonah 3:4) Or as another translation phrases it, more forcefully, "In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!" TEV) A very short sermon, totally lacking in grace, essentially communicating, You're all going to hell, and I'm glad you are! No doubt Jonah tried to make his message as unappealing as possible, knowing that any positive response to his message would move God to compassion. Jonah made his sermon as uninviting as possible, essentially communicating, Please disregard this sermon! I'm just preaching!
Please Disregard any Calls for Change
This week I watched an episode of the television show, Everybody loves Raymond. I like that show, no doubt because it reminds me of my own family of origin. In this episode Raymond's wife, Deb, successfully cooked a very tasty dish. Deb's cooking is usually the brunt of family jokes, but when she cooked a meal that was particularly appealing to her father-in-law, it completely rattled her mother-in-law. Deb's ability to cook as well or better than her mother-in-law upset the family dynamics, changing them, and the mother-in-law turned even nastier than usual.
Not only do we often ignore calls for change, we may resist change. I sometimes wonder if I send mixed messages about change. I say one thing in my sermons, but then jovially assure you as you're leaving, albeit wordlessly, that I was just preaching. Don't take it seriously. In fact, several years ago a person attending OMC who now lives in another city asked me if I meant what I said in the sermon that morning, or if I was only preaching!
We often have an ambivalent attitude toward change. There is a part of us that dearly wants people to change, but there is also a part of us that wants them to stay the same sensible, rational, predictable people they've always been! Some, in fact, are downright cynical about change. The philosopher Schopenhauer wrote, "Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free...and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life...that he can become another person. But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change....and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must...play the part which he has undertaken, to the very end." (The World As Will and Idea)
Consider the chief inspector in Victor Hugo's story of Jean Valjean. (Les Misérables) The inspector pursues Valjean for years, fully convinced of his criminality, and when Valjean shows him mercy that the inspector can neither understand nor accept from his nemesis, his enemy and his prey, the proud inspector chooses to kill himself rather than undergo the deep spiritual change this may require of him.
It's hard to change. And it's hard to believe that the Ninevites changed as much as indicated in the story of Jonah. In fact, I'm tempted to say that if you believe this fanciful story, you should come and see me after the service--I have some Nortel shares I'd like to sell you.
It was hard for Jonah's contemporaries to believe his story, for it left them with the possibility that God's mercy might be sufficiently broad to include even their dreaded enemies! Jonah embodies the type of nationalism and religious ethnocentrism which regards God as the exclusive property of one group. And in contrast to the character of God, Jonah's character ends up looking rather petulant and tawdry. It would be very easy to read the book of Jonah as a comedy, only it's a very serious comedy--a satire, really--in which those who identify with Jonah's reluctance and petulance end up looking rather foolish.
Jonah teaches us that God's mercy extends far beyond national and ethnic bounds. It is in that grace-filled spirit that our gospel reading invites us to spread the good news, to become "fishers" of men and women for the kingdom of God, but it's very hard to do that if in our hearts we hate those with whom we are sharing good news. It's very hard for people to see the news we share as good news if they sense that in our hearts we despise them. You may think that you don't hate or despise anyone. You may think that you don't have any enemies, but even if you don't you will soon be told that you do. You will be asked to condone the behaviour of governments and media as an entire nation is demonized in our name. It's rather appropriate that our reading from the book of Jonah falls on what is surely the eve of a war with the very people Jonah was addressing.
Martin Buber (1878-1965), another European witness to many of the most significant events and worst atrocities of the twentieth century, warned us that the first step in demonizing an enemy is to regard him, her or them as an "it" rather than a "thou" or a "you". Such objectification allows all sorts of inhumane things to happen because the enemy is no longer a human being, or a group of human beings but rather an abstract life form, rather like a virus, something to be eradicated.
God's Mercy, however, Is Hard to Disregard
God's mercy, however, is hard to disregard. No doubt the story of Jonah made many people uncomfortable, but Israel had enough confidence in the power of God to change hearts and minds that they considered the book of Jonah one of their sacred books, which accounts for the reading of the book of Jonah on the Day of Atonement in the Jewish liturgical calendar.
The book of Jonah may be a small book but its canvas of redemption is a very large one, a notion not lost on biblical tradition. In the book of Acts, nearly two hundred pages beyond Jonah, and hundreds of years later, we see the Apostle Peter repenting of his prejudice against Gentiles. Much more graciously than Jonah, Peter walks into a house full of what he had learned to regard as loathsome people and preaches them a sermon much better than Jonah's sermon. (Acts 10) They too repent! As does Peter, who then returns to Jerusalem and persuades the whole church to open up to Gentiles. (Acts 15)
I imagine that the book of Jonah was not the Apostle Paul's favourite reading, at least in his early days. The depth and breadth of divine mercy evident in the story of Jonah would not have sat well with Paul's determination to destroy the church. (Acts 8:1-3) But then Paul himself changed (Acts 9), an amazing turnabout! Even after Paul's conversion there were those who bent Paul's ear, saying, Don't preach to the Gentiles. They aren't like us; they don't deserve God's love. But Paul went on to pen some of the most compelling words of the New Testament--"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) In addition, Paul worked tirelessly to nurture and build up the Gentile church.
The Scriptures and our faith are based on the premise that we can change. Repentance and transformation are central to our faith. In today's gospel, Jesus calls us to repent (Mark 1:15), to change down to the very depths of our souls, to start over, start afresh, anew, to let go, to venture forth, to be "born again," in the language of John's Gospel. Repentance is not so much making a self-obsessed list of our sins and guilt or flogging ourselves for our shortcomings as it is about change--changing our lives, our minds, our spirits, our attitudes, our behaviour, our relationships, our plans--in order to attune them to the beautiful melody of God's redemptive love. The graceful ability to change is the gift of God that we call repentance and faith.
The gospel is good news, good enough that it compelled Simon and Andrew and James and John (Mark 1 16, 19) to set aside the nets they were mending and to join Jesus in his efforts to share this good news. This news is so good that even when those who are God's enemies accept it, God is moved to change His mind about them. If God can change His mind, surely we can. If you don't believe that, then kindly disregard this sermon.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.