Don’t Hop A Ship of Hate
We all remember the story of Jonah and the Whale or the big fish.
What we may not remember is the more expansive background to the story.
Most biblical scholars believe the story of Jonah is a parable in novella
form. It is also believed that
Jonah in our scriptures today is a deliberate cast as an anti-hero against his
Jonah ben Amittai, Jeroboam II’s court prophet, (II Kings 14:25.
Jonah ben Amittai was a very successful prophet of salvation in his day.
Jonah in our story this morning, I must confess, comes across as a
stupid, prideful person, who is not interested in people’s salvation and does
not behave in the ways one would expect of a prophet of the Lord.
I guess my most profound insight to the fact that the book of Jonah was a
parable came from one of the kids in the youth group at Stroud, which was made
up of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.
One of the kids asked if the story was true to which one bright little
boy replied, “This has to be a preacher story because God’s is smart enough
to know that not even kids would believe this story.”
In
the years after the Babylonian Exile, there developed a spirit of bitterness and
vengeful hatefulness toward foreigners among the Israelites.
We see this hostility clearly in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, where
the Israelite men are told to get rid of their foreign wives and children or
risk the wrath of God. Israel had
endured much at the hands of her enemies and
there was little inclination to keep alive the vision of Israel as God's
servant through whom the redemptive work of the world was to be carried out.
(Isaiah. 42:1, 6). The common
sentiment among many Israelites was that God should destroy all of Israel's
enemies—wipe’m off the face of the planet or let them become slaves of
Israel.
In
this context, the writer of Jonah seems to have a two fold purpose in his story.
One, he wants to hold up to the post exile Jewish people just how
unseemly their anger, vengeance, and hatred of other people is especially since
they had experienced God’s grace and salvation by being returned to their
homeland. The writer, I believe,
also wants to awaken or re-awaken Israel’s sense of its divine destiny as
God's people. A people, who were
called out from among all the people’s of earth, to be a blessing to all
nations. What better way to
confront and remind folks than in a parable.
(IBD-Jonah, Book of)
In short, the book was written to combat narrow, hostile, nationalistic
and exclusivist tendencies in the Israelites as a result of the teachings of the
post exile leaders Ezra and Nehemiah (Book of JONAH, §3e).
Let’s take a look at how Jonah does this.
[As
the story goes] …, God looked down on the city of Nineveh and saw that this
town was a wicked, wicked place. Nineveh
was one of the oldest and greatest cities of Mesopotamia and was the capital of
the Assyrian Empire at its height. God
was so turned off by the people of the city
that God was going to wipe it and its inhabitants off the planet.
But, as Jonah says, God being merciful, compassionate, and just decide
that the inhabitants should at least have a chance to know of God and God’s
ways and to be given an opportunity to repent before God zaps them. Thus,
the book of Jonah becomes the account of an eccentric, mean spirited, little
prophet, who is called to the task of preaching salvation and reveals his utter
unfitness for his office by running away from his call to be God’s voice of
salvation to the Ninevites.
Jonah
hops a ship headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
On his journey to avoid God’s task for him, there comes a storm that
threatens the boat and all its occupants. Evidently,
this storm was of such a nature that the sailors suspected someone must have
offended a god to cause such a storm. Therefore,
the sailors cast lots to see who on board the ship had angered a god.
On Jonah’s role of the dice they came up snake eyes and that was not
his point. Jonah confesses he is
running from his god’s commission. So
the sailors ask what they could do to abate the anger of Jonah’s god, calm the
sea and save themselves? Jonah
tells them throw him over board. Interesting
that Jonah had compassion on these few sailors, who
he had known for only a short, but he had no compassion for thousands of
his traditional enemies in the city of Nineveh.
The sailors threw Jonah overboard, and then they offered sacrifices and
prayers to Jonah’s god and they survived.
Notice
that Jonah doesn’t repeat and tell God he would go to Nineveh as a way of
saving all souls on board. No, sir,
Jonah may have not been willing that others die for his sin, but he would rather
die himself than do what God has called him to do.
These gentile sailors acknowledged Jonah’s god’s grace and kindness
and offered sacrifices to thank God, but ole Jonah hung tough to his hatred.
At
God’s instigation, a big fish swallows Jonah and for three days, he is inside
the big fish without any harm. In
addition, this fish just happens to barf Jonah up on the beach near Nineveh.
I can just see Jonah, madder than all get out, bleached white from the
fish’s digestive juices, sea weed hanging off him, stinking to high heaven,
stomping up the beach toward Nineveh scowling.
However,
the point being, can you imagine hating some one or a group of people so much
that you would rather die than be around them much less do something good for
them?
In my Air Force career, I worked with several officers who had been POWs
during the Viet Nam war. One
officer, who I worked with, had a particularly rough time as a POW.
The most telling thing about this man came from his sharing that his
anger was eating him up. At night
just before he went to sleep, he fantasized about torturing and killing his
captures. He shared with me one day that his anger and hatred would finish the
job his tormentors had started.
I had seen this kind of rage and hatred several times in my life.
I saw it in my community’s face as it reacted to the freedom riders in
the late Fifties. I saw it on the
angry white faces during the integration of the schools in Little Rock,
Arkansas. I saw the faces of hatred
and rage as a young airman when the University of Mississippi was integrated.
I was working in the command post of the Military Air Transport wing that
had been tasked to ferry troops and supplies in to Oxford, Mississippi in
support of the integration. Some of those screaming, hate-filled faces I s saw
on TV had graduated high school with me only months before.
Thanks to a blessed woman in my life and to the officers and NCOs I was
working with at the time, I had a completely different perspective on the
integration than my hate filled peers.
I’ve seen that rage and hatred on the faces of some Viet Nam Veterans
when our nation started to resume diplomatic relationships with South Viet Nam a
few years back.
In my life, I have seen grown men cry over a dying coon dog and spend
hundreds of dollars saving the life of some hunting dog, all the while
victimizing little children and their parents in the hot sun of the Mississippi
Delta.
I’ve
ridden through the streets of Belfast, Ireland and seen the hate slogans and
murals painted on people’s homes and businesses.
I
saw the rage and hatred on the faces and in the actions of the rioters in Watts.
I
saw the devastation of racial hatred in Rwanda on TV and various periodicals.
Hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered.
On-and-on I could go with examples of people’s all consuming hatred,
resentments, and rage at other people because of real or perceived injury.
Often this hatred is maintained by highly religious people, even some
Christian people, and they hold their hatred contrary to the faith they profess
in Jesus Christ. Insanity of the
soul it is called.
Jonah
finally did as God commanded him and pronounced the word of impending judgment
upon the city of Nineveh. However,
when the whole population, with the king at its head, repented and humbled
itself, Jonah did not behave, as one would expect a prophet to behave.
He did not rejoice in the success of his preaching. He did not take joy in his own understandings of God as a
“…gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and repentest of evil.” (Jonah
4:2b).
Jonah
definitely doesn’t conduct himself as a person of God, who had been a
recipient of God’s grace as a Jew back in his homeland, nor as one who had
been rescued from the bowls of a fish. Jonah
sulks like an angry child. God was
moved to compassion in response to
the Ninevites, but not Jonah. Jonah
was more than angry, he was soul-sick angry over the Ninevites’ repentance. He was so angry that again he would rather die than live in a
world where such people as the Ninevites could repent, be forgiven, and be
saved.
It
is important to see the reason Jonah ran from God’s call and the source of
Jonah’s anger over the Ninevites
repentance: Jonah is not willing that God should be gracious, merciful, slow to
anger, and of great kindness. (Jonah 4:2b) In short, Jonah is repudiating the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. He
is repudiating the God of the covenant, the very definition of the Jews as
God’s people. Jonah is
repudiating the very God who has watched over and saved him and his people from
day one.
At
this point, we see clearly the intent of the parable.
As Jonah rejects God’s mercy and great kindness, we see the people of
Israel’s rejection of Yahweh as a god whose grace and unmerited favor belongs
to God and not to the merit of people or to an ancestral covenant.
Furthermore, the nation, insofar as it rejects its commission to be a
light to the Gentiles, is identical with Jonah. The nation is being warned.
Rejecting God as a God of compassion to all people will put them in
jeopardy with God. They have turned
their back on God in the past and it has cost them. The book of Jonah thus posses a question: Are they willing to
pay again?
Nonetheless,
ole Jonah ain’t through yet. The
final incident that shows Jonah’s truest colors and by implication Israel’s
truest colors is when in his anger over God’s compassion and the Ninevites’
repentance he again would rather die than live in such a world where loving and
saving one’s enemies is not only possible but a mandate.
As
he sits outside the city sulking in his little lean-to in bitter anger and
hatred, this gracious and kind God, who he has rejected, miraculously causes a
plant to grow up next to him and adds additional shade for him against the hot
sun. However, the next day the
plant dies and Jonah laments the capricious fate of the plan. Here Jonah's
attitude, and with it the attitude of most of the postexilic Israelites, was
reduced to a complete absurdity. Jonah
could have pity upon a plant that grew up in a day and vanished in a day, but he
was unwilling that God should have pity upon thousands of
human souls in Nineveh.
Our
nation has been the victim of vicious and hateful people.
We are now engaged in a war against fanatical and angry people, who
rightly or wrongly, we have demonized and in turn they have demonized us.
Sadam Hussein, according to most credible accounts was a vicious, mean,
sadistic person, who ruled his country by fear.
All things considered, he most likely should have been removed from power
for the good of his people and for the world in general.
Nevertheless, we as individuals and as a nation must not let fear, anger,
and nationalistic pride breed hate and vengeance in our souls.
To do so would be a fate worse than anything our enemies could do to us.
To live in hateful fear will eat out our individual and national souls
and will finish the job our enemies started.
Remember
we are Christians, the people through whom the peace, justice, compassion, and
mercy of the Christ of God is suppose to come to the entire world.
Therefore, no more force than is necessary to bring about a just and
peaceful solution to all concerned. Let us seek the power of God’s spirit to
help us find understanding and realistic ways that we can participate in
bringing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven in the face of the hell
of war and terrorism.
God
calls us to this end, take heart, don’t hop a ship of hate, and run in the
opposite direction of your assigned task to love even your enemies.