Jonah
is famous for being hesitant, for running away from God’s call. The story of him sailing away from the place
God had called him and surviving three days in the belly of a whale is probably
one of the more famous stories in the Bible: an iconic tale of how God’s will
is done despite human refusal. Plus, it’s
a great story: vivid, action-packed, and Jesus makes reference to it in his
teaching. What is much less well known
though, is what happens next, what happens when Jonah finally gets to
Nineveh. Now, he’s no longer
hesitant. In fact, he’s pretty much the
opposite.
Fresh
off the boat (sorry: fish!), God comes to him again and begins to remind him of
his call: “Go and tell to the Ninevites what I will tell you”… what I will
tell, haven’t told you yet. You might
think that it would hardly count as undue hesitancy for Jonah to then reply: “Um…
is it OK if I just wait outside the city until I get that message you want me
to declare?” But no: Jonah has gone from
avoiding God’s will through hesitancy, to avoiding it through rash action. Without a second’s wait, he starts marching
through Nineveh, not proclaiming God’s message, because he doesn’t know what
that is yet, but proclaiming what he wants God’s word to them to be: “You’re
about to be destroyed.” And he puts a 40
day time limit on it, pretty much putting the Lord his God to the test.
Jonah
is pretty much the comic anti-hero of this book, trying to foil God at every
stage, even if unintentionally, but ending up getting foiled, almost the Wily
Coyote of the Bible. But, we should have
some patience with him. He’s an
Israelite, and the Ninevites are Babylonians.
In fact, Nineveh is the capital of Babylon. It’s the Babylonians who sacked Jerusalem,
who burnt the Temple, who deposed and humiliated God’s anointed King, who
exiled His people. It’s the Babylonians
who taunted the Israelites that their ‘god’ is weak and powerless compared with
the mighty Marduch. And now Jonah,
acting out of hurt and fear and anger, who tried his hardest to refuse to go to
Nineveh because it’s a location of terror for him, dreams of ‘his’ God getting
his own back, giving the Ninevites, and phony Marduch with them, a taste of
their own medicine.
But,
God has better in mind. God always has
better in mind. God can take the hurt
and the fear and the anger, none of which are foreign to him, and in the fiery
furnace of his passion work love, work mercy and forgiveness and
sanctification. Despite Jonah’s word
that their situation is hopeless, the Ninevites find a way to have hope,
despite being completely ignorant of God’s scriptural revelation. Somehow, they know in their hearts to have
hope. And hope isn’t naïve optimism. That would be to completely ignore Jonah’s word. But to accept it at face value, “you will be
destroyed in forty days and there’s no way out” – that’s naïve pessimism, and
that’s not of God.
G.K.
Chesterton was once asked to give a talk on the subject “what’s wrong with the
world today.” He walked up to the
podium, said one word and sat down. That
word: “me.” The Ninevites seemed to
recognize that as terrible as sin, death and disaster are, their own sin was
what they had to name first in their lament, their own pride was what they had
to overthrow. “Nineveh will be destroyed”:
Jonah’s words end up mocking him. That
Hebrew sentence is perfectly adequately translated by our lectionary, and that’s
surely what Jonah would have meant, but the Hebrew is richer in meaning than
that, or maybe more slippery might be a better way to put it. The Hebrew could just as well be translated, “Nineveh
will destroy itself” or “Nineveh will destroy a part of itself.” And it does.
With God’s help, surely, Nineveh acts to destroy its pride. And God joyfully accepts its repentance.
But,
Nineveh would never have acted without Jonah’s action, however off-message he
had ended up being. God makes beautiful
music with broken instruments. However
hurt, frightened, angry, lonely, or timid we might, God can call to new life
through us. Prophets need not be
perfect, no, nor apostles neither. Pope
Emeritus Benedict once wrote that: “Faith grows when it is lived as an
experience of love received and when it is communicated as an experience of
grace and joy. It makes us fruitful, because it expands our hearts in hope and
enables us to bear life-giving witness: indeed, it opens the hearts and minds
of those who listen to respond to the Lord’s invitation to adhere to his word
and become his disciples.”
Faith
grows when it is communicated. God has
the power to call to faith, to discipleship, through our words, however
imperfect they might be. And through
those sometimes hesitant sometimes rash attempts at witness, he strengthens us,
he growss our faith
I’m
sure Jesus knew when he called those fishermen to join him in his work of
proclaiming the kingdom, how much they’d let him down. How much they’d fail to understand. How they’d fall asleep when he just needed an
hour, and run, in his time of greatest need.
But that didn’t stop him reaching out.
That didn’t stop him acting in hope and calling, just as he calls us
today. May his hope lead our way, and
may we follow him.
No comments:
Post a Comment