Fish tales are often about the one that got away, but our first reading today is about the one that didn’t.
More than a big fish tale, it’s part of the story about the prophet Jonah being gobbled up by a whale or a big fish.
We know that Jonah was a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel under King Jeroboam II who lived between 786-746 BCE, but we aren’t sure about when this book was written or who wrote it, nor are we expected to believe that a human survived three days living inside a marine mammal’s stomach and being regurgitated onto the shore. Jonah’s story is one of the places in Scripture where we can say, “It may not have happened exactly this way, but it’s true.”
Our text today begins, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” (3:1)
The first time is the part of the story you may remember from children’s Bible stories and songs.
Basically, God sent Jonah to speak to the people in a place called Nineveh. The ruins of that city are in modern northern Iraq, and what we know as we read the story now is that Nineveh later became the capital of the Assyrian empire, who were enemies of Israel and known for their violence.
God asked Jonah to go to them and tell them to repent, to turn back toward God and leave behind the evil and wickedness they were doing.
But instead of following God’s direction, Jonah flees in the opposite direction, fleeing from Nineveh, and more importantly, from God’s presence.
He doesn’t get very far though, and when the boat he is on is swamped by heavy seas, he tells the crew to throw him overboard so that they’ll be saved.
And that’s when Jonah winds up in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights. (1:17)
Our reading picks up after the whale had spat him out upon on the shore, and this time, when God speaks, Jonah listens and follows God’s direction.
He undertakes the journey to Nineveh, a city the author tells us is three days’ walk across. The three days are a common biblical unit and mirror the three days Jonah spent in the whale’s belly.
Hebrew scholar Robert Alter suggests the city’s dimensions also exaggerate the enormity of the task before Jonah, explaining that,
Clocking roughly three miles an hour, a walker could cover as much as thirty miles in a day. A city ninety miles across would be considerably larger than contemporary Los Angeles, and …no actual city in the ancient Near East could have been anywhere near that big. (1295)
But Jonah only spends one day in the city before the people of Nineveh and the king himself believed what he was saying and repented, fasting and putting on sackcloth.
In the verses that follow our reading, the author’s flair for exaggeration is on display again as we hear how the king extends the fasting and sackcloth to not only the citizens of Nineveh but also to their cattle and sheep. The bizarre but humorous image of livestock cloaked under coarse fabric and bellowing to God helps us appreciate the urgency and totality of the people’s desire to repent and return to God. (Alter, 1296)
Then the text says,
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. (3:10)
The people “turned back from their evil way” (Altar, 1296) and God “changed his mind” (NRSV) or “relented from the evil that He said to do to them.” (Altar, 1296)
Well done, Jonah, good and faithful servant, right?
Except Jonah isn’t content or relieved. He is angry that God has shown characteristic mercy and love to God’s people and when he sees it, he yells at God.
And then Jonah leaves the city and sulks, but God talks to Jonah about his disappointment, his anger, and his desire for vengeance. And then, overlooking the city and its inhabitants, God reminds Jonah that God is God of all the people in it, not only the Israelites, but also the Ninevites, not only the pious and obedient but also the recalcitrant.
Jonah is angry because he knew the people in Nineveh were violent and wicked, and, just as he suspected God would, God extended mercy and loving kindness to those people. Those people who defied God. Those people who –– fill in the blank. The people you don’t agree with, the people you find difficult, the people whose behaviors or appearances unsettle you.
The same God who gave Jonah a second chance, the same God who gave the Ninevites a second chance, loves those people, and that same God also loves you, with the same abounding and steadfast love and compassion that we hear in this story.
And isn’t that Good News to share with the world?
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment