JONAH

Epiphany 3B, 2015

The Book of Jonah is a story presenting the reader with a poignant satirical look at world affairs – just as applicable today as in the 4^th Century BCE. 

The story comes at a time when the policies of Ezra and Nehemiah are fostering a narrow form of nationalism and exclusivism; added to the fact that there is a strong and hated enemy, the Assyrians, with Nineveh as the capital – a people who had cruelly oppressed Israel.

Sobering that Nineveh, on today’s map, lies across the river from Mosul, Iraq.

The story comes at a time when the policies of governments around the world are fostering narrow ideas of nationalism and exclusivism; added to this the fact that there is a strong and hated enemy – terror; here there and everywhere. The enemy – people whom people choose to hate, with cause and without cause. News outlets have us observing hatred that escalates to war and rumours of war: the Ukraine and Russia, North Korea, any number of African tribes, Israel and the Palestinians, Yemen, the fight against terror – Iraq, ISIS, homegrown terrorists; Jews and Muslims, Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Muslims.  The Chronicle Herald ran an article this week entitled,  “Clinton Urges Canada to Continue Fight Against Hate.” – to fight against hate.?

On to the scene arrives Jonah a soon to be reluctant prophet.  We have entered the story in Chpt.3; previously, Jonah  – regular person like you or me-  has been called by God to go to Nineveh to ask the people to repent and turn towards God. Jonah is an Israelite in a country that is rebuilding and inward focused, the biggest enemy are the Assyrians – hated, demonized, and good for nothing. Jonah hears God, but decides not to go. In fact, on second thought, he decides to go farther away – he gets on a ship going to Tarshish. A terrible storm comes about and the crew chooses lots to see who is causing the calamity; Jonah peacefully asleep underdeck, is rudely awoken when it is decided that he has made God angry.  Jonah is thrown into the sea, swallowed by a big fish, and three days later is spewed up on shore.  God calls to Jonah a second time, “Get up and go to Nineveh…”

Jonah becomes a reluctant prophet. He goes to the no-good Ninevites, only going a third of the way into the city he gives his message.  I picture him dragging his feet, doodling, and when he finally speaks it is a soft cry: “Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!”  and inside his heart is saying “yes let it be so”, Sodom and Gomorrah all over again, with hail, fire, and brimstone… but no, despite Jonah’s wishes the king and people of Nineveh immediately have a change of heart and believe in God. The people fast, put on sackcloth, sit in ashes – they repent, pray, follow. The Assyrians turn from violence and align themselves with God’s work in the world. In the end God has a change of heart, there will be no smiting the people of Nineveh.

Now those of us who have gone through Sunday School know how Jonah is supposed to feel.  Happy!  People have turned towards God, yippy! Amen. Alleluia!

Jonah is not happy.  God has chosen to show mercy and compassion to his most hated enemy. Jonah drags himself outside the city and pouts.

In our relatively safe place in the world, it might be easy for us to say that we hate no one, that we really don’t have any enemies, that we are not like Jonah and would be perfectly content for God’s mercy and compassion to be lavishly given to the whole world – all people.

Our actions as a people, government policy – by the leaders we have elected-  say that we are like Jonah, with a small part of us that wishes for hail, fire, and brimstone to befall others (often practiced in the form of keeping the enemy away from us, sheltering ourselves, not having to or wanting to address difficult issues and working out solutions). We have First Nation’s people relegated to reserves, many in dire need of food and water and shelter; mental health users are pushed to the street so they can be forgotten about and live shorter lives; policies allowing refugees and immigrants to enter Canada are ever more restricted; references to “those people” are growing every day – comments that everyone in Canada should “dress like us” whatever that means in a multicultural society.   If each of us is honest with ourselves, we will admit that we hold prejudices and to varying degrees are racist. Jonah was. I am.

The powerful part of the Jonah story for me are the words Jonah angrily spews at God, after Nineveh believes in God and God shows compassion.  Jonah says,

“That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah would rather die, than be considered a traitor – because I can only imagine what some of his country folk will say when they find out that because of him God came to the Assyrians.  Jonah would rather die, than see an enemy shown God’s compassion. Jonah would rather die, than be of no more importance than his neighbour. 

What really gets to my heart is that Jonah knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.  If I were to ask you if you believe this statement to be true, most of you would likely agree.  Do you live like you believe this statement, or do you falter as Jonah into exclusive thinking and nationalist tendencies?

The book of Jonah was meant as an opinion piece to speak to the issues of the day, to illustrate the foolishness of demonizing a people, to show the ridiculous nature of holding on to hate, and to express the expansiveness of God’s compassion and mercy.

Reading the Jonah story (a good read if you have never read the book before – 4 short chapters) I would like to take Hillary Clinton to task.  Her rhetoric was wrong –the world should not in a fight against hate; Canadians –we- shouldn’t fight against hate.  Rather we are called to be compassionate.

On whom should God have mercy?

Abraham Heschel, a polish-born American Rabbi wrote:

God’s answer to Jonah, stressing the supremacy of compassion, upsets the possibility of looking for a rational coherence of God’s ways with the world. History would be more intelligible if God’s word were the last word, final and unambiguous like a dogma or an unconditional decree. It would be easier if God’s anger became effective automatically: once wickedness had reached its full measure, punishment would destroy it. Yet beyond justice and anger lies the mystery of compassion.

Therein is where I am at, left to contemplate the Mystery of Compassion –God- 

A God that has compassion on Jonah-s like me, despite my lack of compassion in what I deem complicated matters of race, privilege, identity, and prejudice.  The Mystery of Compassion has compassion despite my lack of prophetic utterance, my running away through complacency, and my pretending that all is good. A God that has compassion for the people whom I see as others- for the neighbour who wears a birka, the Hindu police officer who wears a turban, local shopkeepers who barely speak English, carpet bag people who spread bedbugs around housing developments, and the crazies I pass by on the street – tattooed and pierced.

Jonah’s story calls us to take a close look at our hearts, at our prejudices, at our racism – and invites us to see how ridiculous Jonah appears, how immature his actions are, and asks us to open our hearts to the heart of God – the Mystery of compassion.

Surely at some point in our lives the words of the Mosaic law have been made known to us as truth, because we have experienced it in some way, even in a small way that:  God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; I would like to think that you have felt that through this community. Having experienced the Mystery of Compassion, go against your prejudice and shower mercy and compassion.