"It Sounds Fishy to Me"

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

January 22, 2012 + Third Sunday after Epiphany

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

The story of Jonah has always been of great interest to those whose religion is based upon the Bible. To the thoroughgoing traditionalist, it is a supreme test of faith. In the early part of the twentieth century, fundamentalist Christians insisted that real faith meant believing in the “credibility” of Genesis and the “edibility” of Jonah! About the same time, Liberal Christians chose to see Jonah as a charming allegory. Jonah meant Judah, which was swallowed by a great empire, the Babylonian, yet managed to survive and re-establish its religious identity. Of course, to skeptics, the story of Jonah has been proof of the foolish credulity of people who base their beliefs on the Bible.

Actually, none of this is relevant to the facts. Traditionalist, liberal, skeptic – all were wrong. There is nothing historical about Jonah and nothing obscurely allegorical either. Jonah is fiction. But responsible Biblical scholars have known for a long time that Jonah is fiction with a purpose once we know the circumstances in which the story was written.

From its language and style as well as from internal evidence scholars know that the book of Jonah was written about 350 B.C. Some of you may recall this was less than twenty years before Alexander the Great entered Jerusalem on his path of world conquest. For Israel it was a time of mingling of many cultures – Babylonian, Persian and Greek with that of Judaism. Two hundred years earlier Jerusalem had been destroyed and its leading citizens carried away into Babylonian exile. After the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Persian, the descendants of these exiles had been allowed to return to Israel if they wished and many did. Obviously, they were the most dedicated Jews. They had to be given the difficulties they faced. The books of Ezra/Nehemiah tell of the problems they had to overcome in rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple while warding off the attacks of the people who had moved into Israel in their absence. It was very much like what Jews faced returning to Israel in the twentieth century.

The political, social and economic problems were immense. But even greater than all this was the religious problem. In ancient times the common assumption was that when one nation defeated another nation this proved either that the defeated nation’s god was powerless or, perhaps, did not exist at all. A wise conquered nation would worship the god of their conquerors. Faithful Jews refused to accept this interpretation. It was the Lord who was still the superior, the only god. It was the Lord who had given the Babylonian Empire the power to overwhelm God’s chosen people. God’s people had betrayed God and had followed other gods. They had sinned and so the Lord God gave them the hard punishment of defeat and exile. Yet they were still God’s chosen people.

Friends, I cannot emphasize strongly enough what a remarkable theological belief this was. Rather than destroying the faith of Israel defeat and exile became the foundation for a stronger faith. Nothing like this had happened before in human history. Without it only archaeologists and ancient historians would even know of Judaism today. But with this positive achievement came something not so admirable. The Jews in Exile came to believe that they were a unique people set apart who should not mingle or mix with other peoples.

Earlier in their history the Israelites had mixed quite freely with many other peoples. When the Jews returned from exile they wanted to do away with all that. They wanted to create a people set apart, a people so deeply committed to a Jewish way of life that nothing – not defeat, not exile, not even a holocaust – could destroy them. This has an admirable quality about it given the terrible persecution that Jews have faced down through the centuries.

But being human some less admirable qualities crept in. If Jews were God’s chosen people then what about the rest of the earth’s peoples? The prophet Obadiah put it plainly: Jehovah is furious with these other nations, especially those who took advantage of the exile and deportation of Israel to seize Jewish land. In the near future there would be a “Yom Adoniai,” a “Day of the Lord,” when all these guilty nations would be destroyed.

This was the official doctrine. But it did not go unchallenged. In Judea, and especially in Jerusalem, a sizable group of persons, liberal in spirit, magnanimous in outlook, were repelled by this official creed and did not hesitate to ridicule it. These men and women were strongly influenced by the great prophet of the exile, the unknown figure we call the Second Isaiah, who taught that God is the Lord of all humankind. God has no favorites. Yes, the Jews are a chosen people but chosen to carry this message of love and reconciliation to all the world.

The people who believed this tried in every way they could to influence the Judaism of their day. I am sure they did it by the usual means of preaching and teaching and conversation, but one of them was a gifted writer. He chose to make this point through religious satire. The book of Jonah is the result.

You remember how the story goes. Using a figure out of ancient times (which was a common literary device in those days) the author tells us that a certain man named Jonah is commanded to take God’s word to the heathen, as a matter of fact to hated Nineveh, the capital city of the ferocious Assyrians period Jonah is to warn them of impending doom unless they mend their evil ways. Since Jonah is convinced that doom will not arrive and anyone who predicts it will be courting not merely ridicule but disaster for himself, he makes the wise decision that it is time to get as far away as possible from the reach of God. Jonah books passage from Joppa for Tar shish, near Gibraltar at the opposite end of the Mediterranean. This is a particularly subtle bit of satire since the belief still lingered among some Jews that the Lord was only supreme in Israel and the surrounding territories. If someone got far enough away he might well escape the power of God. Jonah decided to try it. He sails from Israel to the far-off Pillars of Hercules but the Lord catches up with him. Here the author says that God raised a great storm. It convinces the crew that someone among them must have offended the gods. They draw lots and the culprit turns out to be . . . Jonah. Clearly the thing to do is throw him overboard but being heathen and merciful they are reluctant to do it! Jonah, however, is Jewish and unable to accept the barbaric leniency of Gentiles. He insists that they throw him overboard. The reluctant heathen finally take him at his word and over he goes. At that moment the storm ceases.

Now says the author, the Lord causes a great fish to swallow Jonah and carry him back to where he started and Jonah is thrown out onto the beach near Nineveh. Apparently he is none the worse for wear after three days of fishy confinement. Jonah will have to be God’s prophet, like it or not.

I should interject for the benefit of any traditionalists who may be with us this morning that no one should waste time pondering what sort of sea animal it was that so conveniently carried Jonah to Nineveh. Not only was there no “whale,” but by the time of Jonah there was no Nineveh either. Nineveh was completely destroyed in 612 B.C., more than two and a half centuries before the book of Jonah was written. People had forgotten by that time what Nineveh was like since the book of Jonah describes the city as so large it took three days to walk around its walls. Nineveh was, indeed, a large city but archaeological evidence tells us that its circumference was about eight miles, an easy day’s walk. This is just one piece of internal evidence that Jonah is fiction not fact. What we have in the book of Jonah is not a legend based upon actual history, but a free composition, a moral satire, inspired by a new and robust Jewish universalism.

But back to our story. What did Jonah do when he arrived at Nineveh? He did what God told him to do. He prophesied doom in the center of town and then quickly left. But the king and the people do an incredible thing that Jonah never expected. They actually repent and God rescinds the edict of destruction. Jonah is deeply disappointed. He had stationed himself conveniently on a hill outside Nineveh to watch the celestial fireworks. When God lets him know the destruction is off he is very upset and drifts off into an uneasy sleep. At that moment, says the author, God causes a miraculous gourd tree to spring up and shelter the sleeping Jonah from the intense heat of the sun. Naturally Jonah is very pleased by God’s concern for his complexion. But the next day God causes a “worm” to destroy the roots of the gourd tree and it shrivels up. This causes more bitter reproaches and lamentations from Jonah.

Now God intervenes with the moral of the story. “I am amazed at you, Jonah,” says God. “If you can get so upset over the loss of one gourd tree, why didn’t you get even more upset over the thought of the destruction of Nineveh, an enormous city, full of men, women and children, not to mention all the livestock.” There the story ends. The author leaves his Jewish readers to ponder for themselves how to apply this in their own times.

I suspect that I should allow you the same opportunity but I can’t resist the eternal preacher’s temptation to drive home the point. Alongside the narrow concept of a chosen people whom God loves to the exclusion of the rest of humanity, the author pictures a far different vision, a God who cares about all people, who, as Jesus said, “makes his sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and who sends rain to both the just and unjust.” In other words we can’t expect special treatment or favors from God because we are a Jew or any other kind of believer, for that matter.

The Jews were not the only people in history who believed they were special favorites of God. History is full of slogans proclaiming that God cares more about Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, whoever. This belief has been a special temptation to Americans.

Abraham Lincoln once called Americans “God’s almost chosen people.” Americans throughout history have believed we are an exceptional people, superior to the other nations of the earth. Sometimes that belief has inspired great compassion and sacrifice. The Marshall Plan after the Second World War comes to mind. But too often this notion of American exceptionalism has led to arrogance and self-righteousness. We have believed we have the right to interfere – militarily and otherwise – in the affairs of other nations. We have tried to control the destinies of places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and the results have been tragic. Yet some politicians tell us that we should try the same sort of thing with Iran. When will we ever learn?

The Jews of Jonah’s day were challenged to believe that God loves all the peoples of the earth. They should all be treated with respect and dignity and justice. If we try to do that I believe world peace might just come a little closer. And that’s no fish story!