August 7th 2022
Jonah 1
Let me tell you the story of Jonah. It goes like this: God calls on Jonah to go to the enemy country of Ninevah and tell them to change their ways. Jonah very much does not want to do this and runs away to sea instead. The ship he’s sailing on gets caught in a storm, and Jonah ends up getting thrown overboard, and is swallowed by a big fish, whale, or other large marine creature! After a while it spews Jonah back onto the beach and God does a re-take. Again, he tells Jonah to go to NInevah and tell them to change their evil ways, and quick.
Second time around Jonah doesn’t run away – in fact he goes to Ninevah, and calls on its people to repent, to change their ways. And - do you know what? - they do. Job done. End of story. Except not quite the end of story. Jonah is furious with God and has a rant and a sulk and then God and Jonah have a conversation about what has happened in which God has the last word. As biblical texts go, you’ve got to admit, it’s different!
This is the story of Jonah, which you will find in the Bible, towards the end of the Old Testament. It's short, it's funny, it's delightful, and it has deep truths for us about the nature of God and what it's like being human in God's world. We’re going to look at the Book of Jonah over the next three weeks and see what it’s got to say to us. Because it’s one of the shortest books in the Bible, it is and easy to read. Why not read it this week– either in your bible at home, or online. Go to Bible Gateway.com and type Jonah into the menu bar.
When we’re reading the Bible it’s always good to work out what kind of writing this part of the Bible is. As I hope you know that the bible includes different kinds of writing - poetry, history, letters, gospels and so on. The book of Jonah is best thought of as a short story, a folk tale, that tells us something important and true about God. We're not asked to read it as history. It's not telling us a historical truth. It’s a story that is telling us something true about God.
To say it is a story is not to lessen its importance – Jesus used stories to tell people truths about God. Story -telling has a tremendous power and the Bible harnesses the power of story. And in the Book of Jonah does that in quite a delightful way, by using the medium of humour. This is a story that wants to makes us laugh.
Let’s think about comedy for a moment. We Christians tend not to have a great reputation for a sense of humour. People imagine that Christians are naïve people who are easily shocked, by bad language, by any kind of reference to sex, and so on, but I think this is a tired stereotype. Comedy and humour are often earthy, and earthy is OK. After all our God becomes a flesh and blood human being, and that’s an earthy thing to do.
But think about it. Being a Christian is about letting God change us, about becoming more compassionate, more human. And laughter, especially the ability to laugh at ourselves is a touch stone for being human. Laughter is a way in which we can puncture our own sense of pride and self-importance.
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall always be amused.
When I think of the godliest people I know, they all share the quality of a lightness of spirit, a gentle sense of laughter bubbling up from a place deep inside. Archbishop Desmond Tutu who oversaw the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa, is someone who has been exposed to the full horrors and atrocities of the apartheid era. And yet in his writing and his public appearances he always has a twinkle in his eye, and a child-like sense of delight.
Humour can be simply daftness – but humour can also be a way of making a serious comment. Humour is a way of releasing tension, and often comedy explores this tension. I don’t know if you enjoy comedy on TV? I enjoy the comedy series Derry Girls which is set amid the tensions of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the early eighties. Motherland was a series that delved into the tension of working Mums juggling the seemingly impossible demands of work and childcare.
So where’s the comedy in Jonah, and what’s it doing?
Jonah is a story about a prophet. Now we know about prophets. They receive a call from God. And when they hear their call from God, they respond like Isaiah "Here I am! Send me!" They speak out against injustice, like Amos. They use words eloquently, like Jeremiah, to recall the people to God's ways.
And Jonah? God calls Jonah to preach against Ninevah - Jonah runs a mile. Jonah’s response to God’s command to go East to Nineveh, is to take a ship West to Tarshish is Spain. The Lord immediately arranges for the ship to get caught in a Force 9 gale as a hint to Jonah that the Tarshish plan wasn’t such a great idea. On board ship Jonah makes a half-baked confession of faith, and the pagan sailors are instantly converted although they throw him overboard anyway.
Jonah is not exactly a role model for us to put on a pedestal. He's a bit hopeless, a bit unimpressive. He’s the Mr Bean of prophets. The commentator Eugene Peterson says we can relate to Jonah because he's a companion to us in our ineptness. I like that.
But in the end, it's God who has the last laugh, because despite Jonah's rank failure to make the grade as a prophet, God can work through him. Jonah ducks his responsibilities to God and boards the ship, but the crew of the ship are converted anyway. There's a lovely sense of irony in this.
I said that comedy is a way of opening up tension and that’s true for the Book of Jonah. Ninevah, you see was great city of the Assyrian Empire. As far as Israel was concerned, Ninevah was hateful, cruel, repugnant, godless and wicked. The tensions underlying the comedy in Jonah is that it is to this hated place that the prophet is called. Just imagine if you were praying and you felt that God was telling you to go and go and visit Vladimir Putin and tell him to repent of his murderous war. You’d probably want to do a Jonah and head off in the other direction. I know I would. And of course laughing at evil and moral wrong is another way that comedy works.
So do go home and read the Book of Jonah. When you've read the book through, it's good to read it through in sections slowly. Notice your reactions - what appeals to you in the story, what surprises you, anything you don't understand. Then take some quiet time. Ask God to speak to you, through what you have read and your reaction to it. See where it takes you.
And think about Jonah running away from God, ducking out from the task God has entrusted him with. Was the ever a time that you were like him? Did you go to great lengths to avoid someone – or something – something that in you heart of hearts, you knew God wanted you to face up to? Was there ever a time when you were being avoidant, steering clear of a difficult situation, when maybe you needed God’s help and strength to confront it?
Let’s see if we can find our inner Jonah this week. Let’s let him be a companion to us in our ineptness. And let’s take encouragement from the God who loves Jonah and works out his purposes through him, even when he’s getting it all wrong.