Third Sunday after Epiphany

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is uncanny how sometimes the lectionary presents us with Bible readings that speak directly into our current situation. So it is today with the reading from the Book of Jonah.

Many people know the story of Jonah, who is called to be a prophet, but doesn’t want to do it. He flees by boat in the opposite direction of his assignment. However, God catches up with him and brings him back in the belly of a big fish. After the fish spits Jonah out on land, God calls him a second time. That’s where our reading comes in.

By now Jonah has learned that you can’t escape God’s call, so he reluctantly goes to Nineveh to proclaim God’s message. It’s brief and to the point: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” We don’t know if that really was all God wanted Jonah to say or if Jonah edited it down to this, essentially telling them they are all going to die. “Overthrown” is the same word the Bible uses to describe what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, so this is serious destruction he is talking about.

I can imagine Jonah angrily stomping around in the big city shouting that they are all going to die. And relishing that message. Because he hates Nineveh and its people.

The Book of Jonah is not the only time we encounter this prophet in the Bible. He also comes up in the Second Book of Kings, talking to the king of Israel. Jonah is active right after the death of the Prophet Elisha. Elisha and his mentor Elijah had fought for decades against all kinds of abuses in the kingdom: false gods, abuse of power by the royals, wealthy people not caring for the hungry, injustice and corruption, lack of faith, and more.

Elijah and Elisha had bitterly argued against these grievances and gone head-to-head with religious and political leaders. They wanted to bring the people back to God and God’s will.

The Prophet Jonah was not like that. Instead of pointing to the abuses and uttering God’s displeasure about them, Jonah told the King how God loves Israel and will help Israel expand its borders. Professor Corey Driver put it this way:

Jonah’s prophetic career, outside of the book that bears his name, is based entirely upon prophesying national greatness for an unrepentant country. As a prophet, Jonah was an unconditional Israelite nationalist.  

As a nationalist, Jonah thought his country was better than all others, and more loved by God than all others, and he looked down on or hated all other nations. He especially hated Assyria with its capitol Nineveh, a bitter enemy of Israel’s.

Isn’t it delicious that God should choose this nationalistic prophet to be God’s messenger to Nineveh? No wonder Jonah didn’t want to go. No wonder he is stomping around the city yelling about death and destruction. If he must go, at least he has a great message of hellfire and damnation for those blasted people! Oh, he can’t wait for this city to go under. After delivering his message, he sits down on a bluff above the city and eagerly awaits the spectacle of its demise.

But lo and behold, a miracle happens: The people of Nineveh listen to him. They believe his message. They proclaim a fast and they wear sackcloth, which is really scratchy, and even the king takes off his royal robes and sits in the ashes. The whole population, young and old, admit the error of their ways and repent and pray for God’s mercy.

What the kings and people of Israel never did, these foreigners and their king do: They listen to the prophet’s words and act upon them.

They change their behavior. That’s what repentance really means: Changing your behavior; turning from bad behavior to good behavior; pleading for God’s mercy.

All the people repent. All the people say “sorry”. All the people humble themselves before God. This includes the king. What humility in a leader! Here is the king of a powerful nation admitting his error and humbling himself before God.

This humility and repentance move God to change his mind. 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. God is moved to mercy by the people’s sincere repentance.

Wonderful, right?

Well, Mr. Jonah doesn’t think so. He is mad. He had wanted his enemies to be destroyed in front of his eyes. His hatred, his anger demanded that they pay for all they had ever done to Israel.

Instead, God forgives them! Jonah is furious. In anger, this is what he says to God in the next chapter: ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? 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. In other words, “God, I knew you were just going to forgive those people. That’s why I didn’t want to go!”

So, Jonah knew about God being a forgiving God. Interesting, isn’t it? Jonah knew God well enough to guess there might be a chance that God would forgive those people, and he didn’t want God to do that.

This even though Jonah himself had just experienced God’s mercy in his own life. After all, Jonah had refused God’s call and he tried to run away from God. In doing so, he endangered a bunch of innocent people on the boat he took. God would have had good reason to punish Jonah. He could have left Jonah in the belly of that big fish. But no, God heard Jonah’s prayer and rescued Jonah and gave him another chance.

Now Jonah is mad because God grants the Ninevites what God had granted him: forgiveness and a second chance. Why can’t Jonah be happy for them?

His nationalism gets in the way. He hates the Assyrians, and because he does, he wants God to hate them, too. Obviously, though, God does not hate them but forgives them. With that forgiveness, they can turn around and become a godlier society.

This image of the king climbing off his throne, taking off his robe, and humbling himself, that image struck me. I wondered how often I had seen someone in power admit that they made a mistake. When was the last time a politician announced that he or she had changed their mind on an issue?

And why are they so reluctant to do that? Because we the voters reprimand them for it. We call them flip-floppers. We dig up footage from 20 years ago and say, “But then you said this and now you say this. Can we trust you? Are you a liar?” We do not encourage our leaders to show the humility needed to admit past mistakes and to repent, to change.

Which is rather short-sighted of us. Don’t we want our leaders to learn and grow? Some of them have been in government for decades. I know I have adjusted my opinions on several issues during that time; should they not have that space, as well? Wouldn’t it be better for the whole country? How much damage has been done by leaders who doubled down simply because they couldn’t muster the humility of admitting mistakes and we didn’t encourage such humility? Instead, they bore down on the mistake or falsehood and made everything worse. In the process they waste a lot of money and energy for the nation and caused damage to the public’s opinion of legal and political institutions.

Thus, one lesson I take from Jonah’s story is the wish for an electorate and its leaders to make room for humility and change.

The other lesson is closer to home: Jonah sits in his cozy little hut and fumes because God is not punishing the people he hates. Instead, God is forgiving them.

There have been days when I could relate to Jonah’s feelings. When I watch the news, I often shake my head at the things people say, offensive things, blatantly false things, racist things, fascist things. I was often tempted to think of them as “those people”.

They from their perspective probably thought of me as one of “those people” as well, with all this talk about racism and climate change and welcome of immigrants.

People from either side have clashed countless times. Images of them screaming at each other across barriers are quite unsettling. They show the anger that is out there. People are so angry. This, I am afraid, will be the hardest to overcome in the effort to reunite the nation: the deep, deep anger.

Jonah was angry. What helped him overcome that anger was the realization that not only the people of Nineveh depended on God’s grace, but so did he. Not only the people of Nineveh were saved by God’s mercy, but so was he. He was beloved by God, but so were all ‘those people’. Before God, they are the same.

People on both sides of the political divide are dear to God. That is a place where we can start. We can look at them and think, “You, too, are a child of God. Jesus died for you, too.” Hopefully, that will make our anger calm down. Hopefully, that will make us drop our desire for violence. Hopefully, that will open conversations with people who disagree with us; conversations that invite both sides into the mindset of humility and repentance; conversations that create safe space for changing minds.

Repentance, humility, and the awareness that God loves all people: those are the spiritual truths that will help us move forward with healing.

In my sermon research I found two texts that really spoke to me. I couldn’t decide which one to share with you, so I am closing my sermon by sharing both.

The first one is from a blog called RevGalBlogs. It refers not only to the Jonah story, but also to our gospel reading about the call of the first disciples:

What if God is calling us?  What if God is calling us to do something we don’t want to do?  What if God is calling us to extend not only God’s mercy but our mercy, not only God’s love but our love, not only God’s forgiveness but our forgiveness, to people we don’t like, people we don’t believe deserve love and forgiveness and mercy?

Here we sit, minding our own business, mending our own nets, being nice and good to those who are nice and good to us, busy about the business creating a friendly, family church – when suddenly we hear this voice saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe the good news.”

How shall we respond?  Will we repent?  Will we change our minds about what’s important and alter the direction of our lives to follow more closely God’s call? Will we leave whatever boats and nets represent in our lives and follow after the one who calls us?  Will we go to “Nineveh” and preach God’s love?

The second is a poem by Thomas Carlisle from his book “You! Jonah!”, a collection of poems imagining Jonah’s thoughts. This poem is entitled “Coming Around”:

And Jonah stalked

To his shaded seat

And waited for God

to come around

to his way of thinking.

And God is tail waiting

For a host of Jonah’s

In their comfortable houses

To come around

To his way of loving.