Jonah Goes to Baghdad Washington Both?
Paul Walton
28 January 2003
Readings (Epiphany 3 Year B)
Jonah 3.1-10
Psalm 62.5-12
1 Corinthians 7.29-31
St Mark 1.14-20
Saints this week
26 Jan Timothy and Titus Disciples & companions of Paul, bishops & martyrs
26 Jan Paula (327-404) Widowed at 32 with 5 children; the patron saint of widows; ‘a prodigal almsgiver‘; founded a monastery & hostel for pilgrims in the Holy Land; buried in the Church of the Nativity in Nazareth
28 Jan Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274): Dominican, theologian, mystic, Doctor of the Church, author of the—unfinished—Summa Theologica
31 Jan Cyrus and John the Unmercenaries, with Athanasia and her daughters Theodora, Theoctiste and Eudoxia (d. 292): Martyred together; Cyrus and John were active during the persecution of Diocletian. Healers, they gave their services freely (the ‘Unmercenaries’). They visited Athanasia and her daughters, imprisoned for being Christians, and encouraged them; they were arrested, and all were martyred.
31 Jan Menno Simons (1496-1561): Born in Holland; persecuted for his Anabaptist and non-violent stance; gave rise to the Mennonites
1 Feb Brigid (d. c.525): The major Irish female saint; founded the mixed (male and female) monastery of Kildare
The Book of Jonah is my favourite book in the Bible. It is really a very humorous and ironic tale. It begins as God calls Jonah to
Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up against me.
Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians were the greatest power of Jonah’s day, and an obvious threat to Israel. Oddly enough, ancient Nineveh was situated in what we today call the nation of Iraq.
So God calls Jonah to go to the capital of Iraq—sorry, Assyria—and cry out against it. A pretty clear calling. So Jonah does just what I suspect I would do; he totally avoids the call. Jonah goes as far away as possible. (For Jonah, this meant leaving the territory of the God of Israel, and going to another god’s place, where Israel’s God couldn’t get to him. Little did he know that the God of Israel was the only God).
Jonah gets on a boat to Tarshish. No one knows just where Tarshish was; it may have been in Spain, or Cilicia (in Southern Turkey). It may have been Crete. Wherever it was, Jonah’s fear was so great that he overcame the ingrained fear and loathing of the open sea that his culture had, and tried to find his sea legs.
Little did Jonah know that the God of Israel could send a storm, even out there on the sea. It’s an almighty storm, a storm of Gilligan’s Island proportions. The sailors cast lots, and find that Jonah is at fault. Rather sportingly, Jonah suggests that they throw him overboard. At first, they hesitate; but eventually, these heathen gentlemen pray to God for forgiveness and—reluctantly—throw Jonah overboard. The sea ‘ceased from its raging’, and the sailors ‘feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows’. Despite his very best efforts, Jonah is a mightily effective missionary!
Jonah is prepared to go to a watery grave. But God wasn’t finished yet! Little did Jonah know that God has a great fish waiting for him. He is swallowed by the fish, and stays in its belly for three days and nights.
This is the turning point, the point of repentance. Jonah cries out to God from the fish’s belly, and God hears him. The fish ‘spews’ him up, in a rather messy foretaste of the Resurrection.
So we come to today’s reading. Jonah finally goes off to Nineveh, and proclaims: ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And … well … nothing … actually … happens.… Everything turns out well, because the people—the enemies of Israel—repent. And God is gracious.
Jonah is really ticked off! This is something that he did know. He says,
…for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.
Jonah is the only character in this story who refuses to repent! Instead, he asks to be allowed to die. But he doesn’t die. God just leaves him—and us!—with an incredulously exasperated question:
And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?
The story finishes with this question; and it leaves me with a question, in a time when the nations feel threatened by Baghdad: What kind of story would we tell today?
If we were to write the story of Jonah today, where would we situate Nineveh? Where would Jonah be sent? To Baghdad? Or would it be to Washington, or London? Or, two days after Australia Day, should it be to poor old fire-ravaged Canberra? Where should we direct the call to repentance?
What kind of God would our story tell of? Someone said to me recently, “Perhaps today we have to say that God is on everyone’s side.” But we should have learned that centuries ago from the story of Jonah. Surely, the God of Jonah is on everyone’s side? In the Book of Jonah, God chooses a people, not to be ‘on their side’, but to be prophets, to bring the good news—yes, the good news—of God’s judgement to the nations.
What would our story say about the consequences of the nations hearing God’s call to repentance? How would our story declare God’s mercy for the ordinary people of Iraq, and even for the creation itself?