Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, January 21st, 2024

Have I told you how much I love Jonah? The story, yes, familiar from way back in childhood, but most of all, Jonah the character. He is the most real to me of all the characters in the Bible – whoever spun this yarn had a profound grasp of human nature.

We get a brief snippet in today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures; I am guessing that it is included in this week’s lectionary as an example of how those who follow God’s call can change whole communities’ destiny for the better. Jonah preaches, Nineveh repents, and lives are saved from destruction. But this tiny scenario only makes sense in light of the whole story of Jonah, and that is a story of a man who did everything he could to avoid following God’s call. In a way, 

Jonah is the antithesis of Simon and Andrew and James and John, who dropped everything to follow Jesus. Notice that our excerpt for today begins with, “The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time…” The first time, well, it was not so successful.

The word of the LORD came the first time to tell Jonah to go to Nineveh and cry out to its citizens against their wickedness. Jonah’s response? He high-tails it out of there and gets on a ship going in the opposite direction of Nineveh. Jonah wants to put as much distance between himself and God’s directive as he possibly can. 

It is a farcical story, almost, full of exaggeration and hyperbole. The ship encounters a storm and is on the verge of being destroyed, yet all the while Jonah is sleeping peacefully in the hold. The sailors, praying frantically to their own gods, wake Jonah up so that he can pray, too. When they find out that Jonah’s attempt to escape from God is the reason for the storm, they throw him overboard as a sacrifice, and miraculously the storm ceases.

God does not abandon Jonah to the wild sea, but provides a large fish to swallow Jonah, where he stays for three days and three nights apparently without being digested. This seems to be the source of Jonah’s conversion, for while he is in the belly of the fish Jonah sings a song of repentance and thanksgiving to God for saving him, at which point the fish spews him out on to the land. This is a fish that either can get very close to the shore or who has prodigious projectile abilities. Either way it’s impressive.

This is where we meet Jonah in today’s reading – the second time around is the charm, and Jonah goes to Nineveh to pronounce that judgment will come upon the city in forty days’ time.

So far, so good – Jonah’s proclamation is effective, and the king and people of Nineveh repent of their wickedness, with the result that God does not destroy the city, but spares all of its citizens. Jonah should be pleased – he has responded to God’s call, and in so doing has saved thousands of lives. But no – instead, Jonah sulks. He says to God, “I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” 

“That’s why I fled,” implies Jonah. “You didn’t need me, God, you knew you were going to let them off the hook anyway! Why did I even bother?” Jonah didn’t even get the satisfaction of seeing wicked people punished. And he resents their good fortune, much as the older son in the parable of the Prodigal Son resents his younger brother who, despite frittering away his father’s inheritance, is welcomed back with open arms.

Jonah sulks in a booth he made for himself, which works for a while, with lots of shade provided by a bush God causes to grow up over Jonah, but then a worm comes and eats the bush, and Jonah is miserable again. Jonah cannot take joy in the salvation in which God has called him to participate; he cannot see the beauty of a city that has been saved, the belovedness of a people whose future has been salvaged.

I love Jonah – what is there not to love? I love him, because I am Jonah, in so many ways. I heard a call to ordination in my early twenties, but after a few tentative years of inching toward the call, I basically ran in the opposite direction for almost two decades. There were storms, in which others probably got caught, much like Jonah’s sailor companions. I was not swallowed by a fish, but there were certainly times when it seemed as if the waters were closing in over me and the deep was surrounding me. 

When the call came again, I was ready to hear, but even then, I often wondered whether God really needed me at all. The Church into which I was ordained was radically different than the one that existed even twenty years earlier – far less resourced, less confident, less well-regarded.

Sometimes it feels like a worm is eating our shade and we are baking in the sun. And like Jonah, I am prone to sulking about the worm, railing at a life that I have no power to change while losing sight of the great and beautiful things God is doing in people all around me. 

I don’t know if you can see yourself in Jonah. But I take heart in the fact that scripture shows us a wide range of responses to God’s call, not just the impressive ones. Even Simon and Andrew and James and John, who leap up to follow Jesus, struggle with misunderstanding and failure and cowardice and make just about every mistake a disciple can make. 

Most of all I take heart in the fact that God has never given up on this reluctant, obstinate, resentful, and petulant follower. That is the best news of all, the very news that Jonah and Simon and Andrew and James and John and all of us are being invited to share. God will continue to send a word – once, twice, three times, as many times as it takes, because that is what someone does who loves another without reserve. 

That is what you do when you love: you don’t give up. God does not give up on us, and we do not give up on each other, even those we consider wicked Ninevites. More often than not, the “wicked Ninevites” are not distant enemies but friends and neighbors – and more often, ourselves. 

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Better yet, believe the good news – let it catch us in its net, let it calm our fears and jolly us out of our sulks, for we are loved, and however many times it takes, God will call.