How interesting to reflect on the story of Jonah on All Saints Sunday! Ever think of Jonah as a saint? Not a lot of St. Jonah Lutheran Churches -- actually none (that I could find).
As one author puts it: “Poor Jonah. God pardons them all.”
Some ancient Byzantine calendars do commemorate St. Jonah: He’s the saint for “anyone (and that’s most of us) who despairs that the mercy of God will cover even those (and that’s most of them) undeserving of such grace. We can only imagine Jonah...sending out Christmas cards with this, or a similar, sentiment, ‘May all my enemies go to hell. Noel, Noel, Noel...’”
And the Ninevites -- let’s just be clear -- were definitely enemies. They weren’t just like an annoying neighbor. The people of the giant metropolis of Nineveh were fond of hunting down and executing Judeans like Jonah! No wonder he wanted to go the other direction completely. “Poor Jonah. God pardons them all.”
But let’s back up in this fantastic story…which is really about you and me...and ultimately about God. Jonah is asked to go. And what does he do? He goes the opposite direction. [Once heard a dramatic reading with full pointing: God said this way and Jonah went that way!] And do you know where Tarshish is? It’s in Spain! 2500 miles from Joppa! Nineveh is in modern day Iraq (550 miles). Not just an equal distance in the opposite direction; that’s like 5x farther away!
Can you relate to that? God calling you into something, God needs you for something, and you not just saying no, or even heck no, but saying 5x-farther-away-NO!? [pause] St. Jonah.
He buys a ticket -- which means he had money. Jonah had to have been a person of means, and chose to use his means to run from God, take a Mediterranean cruise, kick back, relax, and head for beautiful Spain. While he’s relaxing, while he’s napping aboard the ship, a great storm comes up...and Jonah realizes what he’s done.
What kind of a God is this, by the way? Q: What kind of a God comes after us so aggressively? A: The kind of God that needs us badly. That’s how bad things have gotten: so bad that God’s going to swirl up a hurricane just to get you back. Can you relate? [pause] Have you ever run so far in the opposite direction -- and made a pretty good rationalization for it too -- but God comes after you...through a natural disaster, or through a traveling companion who shakes you and wakes you up...or [pause] by being plunged into the water?...Raise your hand if you’ve been baptized? Oh, then you have been pursued by God...and I’m sure many times since, whether you knew it or not.
I love how, with Jonah anyway (maybe not always with us), he’s deeply aware of God’s presence and power in all this. If this was happening to me, when this has happened to me, it takes me a little longer sometimes to realize, “Oh, this is God pursuing me. This is God working on me. This is God actually redeeming me, even though I’m thinking I’m about to die...or check out, at least.”
Friends in Christ, God is always pursuing us -- whether we’re running 2500 miles away from God, or just turning a blind eye to the suffering, the violence, the cruelty, the hatred, the ignorance or the destruction God’s creatures and creation.
While I was gone these past 3 weeks -- for a few days I was at Theoasis out in Palm Desert. Both synods: ours Pacifica and SW California. And after the first day our newly installed Bishop Andy announces that the other bishop just flew out at the last minute: “He’s decided to go to Standing Rock (along with our national Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and about 500 other clergy across religions) to be with the native peoples there, who are protesting and resisting the Dakota pipeline project which threatens sacred land.” Bishop Erwin has Native American blood himself, but this was an issue faith and justice, and he was going to stand with them, and bring attention to it. “Me, on the other hand,” Bishop Andy goes on, “I’m going going golfing this afternoon [and then proceeds to give a logistical announcement about tee times]. He’s going to Standing Rock and I’m going golfing.” I thought that was pretty cool and honest that Bishop Andy said that, and drew such a sharp contrast...[pointing this way and that]. (I went golfing too.)
God is always pursuing us though -- whether we’re running 2500 miles away from God, or just turning a blind eye to do something more immediately satisfying for ourselves.
Then we have this episode of being thrown overboard, and swallowed by a beast-of-a-sea-creature. Who cares if it was a whale or a fish -- I remember I always used to obsess and argue about that. But that part doesn’t really matter...what matters is that God works a bad thing for good once again! Remember that with Joseph and his brothers? With the Israelites in the wilderness? With David and Bathsheba, and with Elijah and the widow last week...on Reformation Sunday? Talk about Reformation: God through Christ reforms our evil, self-centered, lazy, scared, broken and reckless deeds -- God reforms them for good! [What if God brings a good thing out of whatever happens on Election Day?]
Jonah is in the belly of that creature, and there’s a conversion. The giant fish-whale does a u-turn, like a prehistoric Uber, and drops him off back on the shore he started from. Now at last, he’s ready to go to Nineveh. Only to find success in his preaching...which is to say, it wasn’t his preaching at all, but God’s mysterious and gracious hand that did the re-forming, the re-conciling, the re-configuring of priorities for those once-lost-but-now-found Ninevites. It was God, all along, who cracked the door to that glorious re-pentence work.
Those of us who have had our own conversions, isn’t God so deeply present in that? How God was there all along!
The people on Nineveh repented. Jonah’s enemies repented and we stopped reading there, but he’s pretty bitter about that. How would you feel if God forgave your enemies?
“Poor Jonah. God pardons them all.”
You know, it’s interesting: when Jonah is in the belly of the whale, he sings a song that we also skipped, but it’s a psalm reveling in the grace and mercy of God, sparing his life. He goes on and on about how great this God is: gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Yet, when that same grace and mercy, the retardation of anger and the open tap, unending flow of love and forgiveness is released on others, he can’t handle it…
Well, that’s God for you: Upsetting, surprising and always present and loving. Pursuing us...and this whole world. Ready to forgive, transform and go with us now as we begin anew this day (we’ve just been spit up on the shore), and now we too journey down that path and into the challenging tasks, where God needs us. Here we go.
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