Sermon: Jonah and the Whale

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Jonah and the Whale

By Charles Rush

October 14, 2001

r drama by the children this morning depicts one of the oldest parables in the Bible. It is told like a nice children's story but it manages to smuggle in some pretty profound spiritual ideas as well. Children are like that. I heard about a 4 year-old that was at the doctors for a check-up. As the doctor looked in her ears with an otoscope, he asked, ‘Do you think I'll find Big Bird in here. The girl was silent. Next, the doctor took a tongue depressor and looked down her throat. He asked, “Do you think I'll find the Cookie Monster down there?' Again, the girl was silent. He put a stethoscope on her chest. As he listened to her heart beat he said, ‘Do you think I'll hear Barney in there?' ‘No' said the little girl. “Jesus is in my heart… Barney is on my underpants.”

Sometimes children can sneak in the profound themselves. Debbie Moon's first graders were discussing a picture of a family. In the picture, the children were of a different ethnic group from their parents, so they talked a bit about the meaning of adoption. One girl said, “I was adopted. Adoption means that instead of growing in your mother's tummy, you grew in her heart.”

Our story opens with God asking Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach to them that they might be saved. You would think that this would fill a prophet with joy but it does not. Why? The citizens of Nineveh were hated by the Jews. They were long time enemies and the Ninevites had many times conquered the Jews. Jonah was afraid that they might actually be saved and Jonah had already consigned these people to death. Jonah knows deep in his heart that God wants everyone healed. God wants everyone saved. Jonah would rather simply point out their faults.

It is an important word to hear right now. Right now, we are collectively imagining some fairly intense revenge scenario's. The paper reported that a woman selling Pinata's of Osama Bin Laden couldn't make them fast enough for children to pummel apart. Everyone has these revenge fantasies, even if some people won't talk about them, which is just as well because some of them I have heard make me glad they are not people in positions of power. These emotions are powerful. All the more reason, they need to be disciplined and corralled. It is important for us to remember that whatever revenge we exact, whatever justice we mete out, ultimately we have to learn to live together. And if we are careless in our violence because our desire for revenge overwhelms us, we only create a problem for our children's children. As the bible says, ‘the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.' Violence is like that. It provides momentary relief for those who whoop up on other people but it can ignite a resentment and indignation that inspires people for decades, even centuries.

Ultimately, God wants us to be reconciled and God wants all people saved. It is a profound and important spiritual lesson.

But Jonah won't deliver. Actually he says he will. He is like certain teenage sons that I have had. You ask them to go to the store to get some milk. They say sure, but first they stop to see their girlfriend and hang out for a while and she suggests they drive over to see some other friends and hang out for a while. I have to drive my bike over to the church to do a wedding because I have no car and they show up with the milk around 4 in the afternoon.

Jonah gets on a boat headed in the exact opposite direction of where God wants him to go. He figures that he will run away from God. It is a good plan. It has been tried many times. I have even recommended it on occasion. As Psalm 139 says, “where can I run but that you are there”. This is the deal. The God force in the universe is, well, universal. We each have before us God's ultimate destiny, and at some point in our lives, we recognize that there is something that God wants us to do that seems difficult and deeply challenging. And it is the last thing in the world that we really want to do, the last thing we really want to confront.

A storm comes up. The crew of the boat are very concerned. They are all pagans. So each of them starts using their voodoo to figure out what is going on. One has tarot cards, another is casting dice, someone is using lots. They are trying to work out their magic. And everyone of them comes up with the same conclusion. It is Jonah. Even the pagans point towards Israel's God Yahweh as the true God- a little biblical humor. Not only can you not run to the end of the earth and hide from God, even the pagans are ultimately led to make a confession… This text reminds takes me back to my years teaching college. It would be like this, even the English department at Rutgers University… even those knuckleheaded secular, atheist, miscreants… - those guys that write essays with Stanley Fish on how there is no meaning in the universe apart from the meaning that we create for ourselves which we can't really communicate to others and so it is ultimately meaningless- even they can be used to point us towards God. You say, ‘No way?' God says ‘Way'.

We all have in mind someone we know who could not possibly be of any use to God. For me it is my Uncle Bob. No possible way… Way.

They cast him into the sea and he is swallowed by a whale. What does that mean? In the ancient world, people had a little different attitude towards ocean life than we do. Our generation was raised with Jaques Cousteau and those beautiful little men in speedo's on the Calypso gliding underwater gracefully, exploring all these wonders. We like the sea. The sea is our friend. We grew up with Flipper, the lassie of the ocean. We raised our children on ‘Free Willy'. Sea creatures are cuddly.

But in the ancient world people were scared of the sea. They couldn't believe how powerful the ocean could be, hurricanes and storms that came, seemingly out of nowhere. They couldn't believe some of the creatures of the sea. The octopus, sharks, whales… Big creepy stuff that could get you. And sailors embellished on this more than a little. Whales were a symbol of all the frightening, icky, weird stuff that can get you. Whales were the Anthrax of the ancient world. Whales and storms are chaos moving right at you. Icky, evil, satanic even…

All that can be used by God. Now, we are into something profound. All things get taken up into God and used to accomplish what God wants for us ultimately. As is said of the death of Jesus in scripture, “though they meant it for evil, God used it for good.” Even chaos, even random evil, even terror get woven into the broad tapestry of salvation history. In an ultimate sense God transforms not only our vices but even our virtues. God is beyond our goodness as well. We are saved, as Martin Luther said, by Grace alone.

We still have to make proximate judgments in history that are vitally important to us morally speaking. But all we are given to see, from within our perspective of history are these relative virtues and proximate evils. We cannot see the full picture of providence as it is unfolding around us. But the witness of scripture is that our ultimate destiny is Good because God is good and it is God's goodness that is pulling us inexorably towards redemption- sometimes swimming with the tide, sometimes kicking and screaming that we won't go. Like Jonah. God's grace overrides our noble aspirations and our evil doings and weaves us inexorably into that which is gracious and good. All of us, every last one of us. Our hope is not in the perfectibility of humanity but in the redemption of God and that is a profound hope.

Jonah finally goes to Nineveh, reluctantly, spit up on the beach, but he won't preach. He just whispers his message, but that is enough. All God needs is a whisper. Hearts are pierced and all of Nineveh turns to God, even the animals put on sackcloth and ashes and turn to God- a wild miracle breaks out.

Is Jonah happy? No, he pouts and says, ‘see I told you so.' Miserable miscreant, Jonah will later join the English department at Rutgers University and write essays with Stanley Fish on why there is no meaning apart from the meaning which we create ourselves which we cannot communicate to others and so is also meaningless. Even that utter cynical despair cannot gets rolled over with the profound hope of God's goodness.

A child shall lead them. I got an e-mail this week from a former colleague, one of my agnostic, intellectual friends. His first grade daughter and he were having a discussion about God. He was about to have a long discussion with her about what God could not possibly be, etc., etc. when he decided to ask what God looked like. His daughter drew a picture of two people hugging. He said, “I have postponed our discussion indefinitely.” That is a pretty good start. Why don't we also let the children have the last word today?