Don’t Run Away From Tension

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, January 24, 2020, third Sunday after the Epiphany. “Tired Feet, Rested Souls” series.

    Text: Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Considering how much people love a good fish story, it is curious that in the whole of the three-year lectionary cycle, the book of Jonah is included on only two Sundays—and neither of those selections include the fish! Today’s passage is certainly a key moment in the story. But the short book—totaling just four chapters—is such a rich wisdom parable, layered with symbol, satire, and surprises it merits not only a full read, but also repeated, probing reflection. Likely written in the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., Jonah, like any good satire, is both entertaining and sharp in its critique. The Jewish people in this period—either toward the end of the Babylonian exile or newly returned—were struggling to navigate how best to relate as a minority population among the nations of the surrounding lands. There were tensions and concerns about assimilation and about losing their cultural and religious identity. These religious, tribal, national tensions are certainly part of the backdrop for the story of Jonah. And the primary characters—the reluctant Hebrew prophet Jonah, the city of Nineveh, and God—all play their parts brilliantly. The tension is palpable from the beginning.

God calls Jonah to cry out against the wickedness of Nineveh. Jonah’s response was to flee in the opposite direction. Historical side note: Jonah is mentioned in one other place in scripture (2 Kings 14:23-27) as a prophet who supported the Northern Kingdom (Israel) in the 8th century B.C.E. Nineveh is a large city in Assyria, the nation that brutally conquered the Northern Kingdom during that same period. The last place Jonah wanted to go was into the belly of the beast, Assyria. 

But in trying to get away, Jonah lands in the belly of another beast, the great fish provided by God who provides a strange, comic shelter for him within the waters of chaos and danger. In that place, Jonah cries out to God. And after three days and nights, Jonah is returned to dry land, changed. He is now not only a prophet, but fish vomit.

This is where our text picks up. God calls Jonah again and this time, Jonah doesn’t run away. He walks about a third of the way into Nineveh and delivers his prophecy, the shortest sermon on record, just 5 words in Hebrew: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And immediately, in a magical realism kind of way, the people “believed God,” their fasting and putting on sackcloth were signs of their repentance. The king of Nineveh ups the ante, proclaiming that all people and animals will fast and be covered with sackcloth and turn from their evil ways and violence.

And looking upon this rather absurd scene of people and their cows and sheep covered in sackcloth and ashes, God’s mind changed and the calamity Jonah had announced did not happen.

One might think that Jonah would be pleased that his 5 word sermon had such a transformative effect on the people. What we didn’t hear today, however, is that Jonah’s reaction is rage and despair. He goes so far as to say he’d rather die than live with this outcome. Why might Jonah be displeased at God’s mercy upon the Assyrians? We know one reason—Jonah hates them. Jonah wants God to be gracious, merciful, slow to anger, steadfastly loving and ready to relent from punishment with him but not with them. (4:2) Jonah wanted to end the story with his message of judgment being the last word. Instead, the story ends with Jonah outside the city, pouting under a tree withered by a worm (the kind of image that lends itself to a Bernie Sanders meme).

We don’t know if the people of Nineveh’s repentance was sincere. We don’t know if Jonah withers up like the tree or has a change of mind or heart. A good story doesn’t necessarily tie up all the loose ends. It leaves us in the tensi