Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, UCC

Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel

August 21, 2011

The Reluctant Prophet

In this sermon series on the Minor Prophets we have heard from Old Testament prophets who not only speak for God, but bear the heart of God. They empathize deeply with God, and their prophecy originates from that profound reality. Not so with Jonah. The book of Jonah is a story, an imaginative one that has made it a favorite for children’s books and even a feature film. Jonah did not empathize with God as the other prophets before him. Instead of a series of oracles like the other prophets, the book of Jonah is a story about the prophet, beginning with “As it came to pass,” which is a way of saying “once upon a time.”

Jonah tries running from God because he does not want to go on a mission to Nineveh. The sailors on the ship have to wake him and ask, why aren’t you praying to your God?  It is graphic and vivid as we imagine being in the belly of a whale. Yet the story of Jonah and the whale gets especially interesting after Jonah is spit out and on land again. God gives him a second chance to prophesy to the people of Ninevah. Jonah obeys, half-heartedly it seems. He only goes a third of the way through the city, and keeps the message short and blunt: in 40 days you’ll be overthrown. The people of Ninevah immediately repent of their evil and completely change their ways. The King himself instructs everyone to submit to the God of Israel. He says, who knows what God will do to us, but we must repent. He wasn’t banking on receiving grace and forgiveness. He just knew they needed to change. But God did bestow grace and forgiveness on the people of Ninevah, and that burned Jonah up. “Do you do well to be angry?” God asked Jonah. Jonah responded by getting out of town, he couldn’t stand to be there anymore. He stewed in his anger in the heat just outside of the city. God made a plant to shade Jonah, but then it withered away in one night. Jonah went from anger to relief to anger again. You are going to be angry because you lost one plant you enjoyed for the few hours it existed? You cared that much about a plant, and I shouldn’t care for the people of Ninevah? Yes! we might respond, distastefully considering Jonah. How could he? But the story does not allow us to shake our finger at Jonah, but beckons us to see ourselves in Jonah.  

It’s easy to think, I would go to Ninevah! I would go anywhere God calls me. I’d go to Calcutta, I’d go to inner city Chicago, I’d learn to be the hands and feet of Jesus as I served the poor. But I’m going to push it a bit further. What if God called you to go live among the Amish? What if God asked you to learn from a faith community that you would normally avoid?  Imagine finding yourself in the midst of a Pentecostal worship service, with someone on one side of you making the strangest of sounds, and on the other someone dancing to music you can’t hear.  Or maybe it would be a megachurch, with tens of thousands of people. Would you go? Paul in the Romans passage says to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought. It is inconsistent with our faith to have an us and them attitude. At the church I grew up in, those outside the denomination were not permitted to take Communion. The denomination has moved well beyond that, but an “us and them” attitude has not left Christian Churches. Do we ask God’s blessing on those whose theology, practices or traditions vary greatly from ours?  Do we ask God’s blessing on all people? The more harmonious society becomes, the more we can see God in other people the more love and peace will prevail. Marianne Williamson has written, “It seems to me that the key to happiness is getting over yourself.”^[1] Peace comes when people share a vision, and when they see how interconnected we all are, all of us on this earth and with the earth. We must not isolate ourselves, lest we forget that we are one family.

When we are angered by the evil in the world, about the wrongs done, that anger can be used for good if it causes us to band with others to make change. Anger can also be a signal that we need to get centered, and ask God if there is anything of which we need to repent. But when we hold onto anger, when we stew and complain, at times we armor ourselves with it. It makes it harder to show love. it makes us wound up, and we bristle.  

A story told by Marcy Heidish, author of Soul and the City: Finding God in the Noise and Frenzy of Life:

“I remember watching a homeless woman let go in an urban shelter. It was dinnertime, and I was helping to serve stew and rice from huge, steaming vats. Outside, the rain was pounding the streets of Washington D.C. Many women came to dinner wrapped in plastic bags discarded by dry cleaners. One older woman glared at a volunteer who tried to collect her empty paper plate. There was rage in her eyes as she growled, ‘It’s mine. This plate-it belongs to me.’ The volunteer calmly explained that plates couldn’t be taken out of the dining room. The volunteer’s voice became steely and hard. The other woman’s voice rose too. I remember exchanging looks with a fellow server. Would there be a fight? What could be done? Just then, another woman arose from her table. Taking the situation in at a glance, she approached the older woman and embraced her. The paper plate drifted to the floor. The two women, rocking together now, wept. (Marcy wrote,) We had all witnessed the power of mercy in action and under pressure.”^[2]  The old woman was carrying a lot of pain, and instead of laying it down she used it to shield herself from others. It was human touch and empathy that melted her anger.

Jonah armored himself, too. After fleeing and hiding didn’t work, he got angry. Anger is one way we try to protect ourselves. He even set up a booth for himself outside of town, reiterating that he was not like other people. I wonder what would happen if someone would have come and embraced him. Do you do well to be angry? God asked. Sometimes approaching an angry person with kindness doesn’t seem to do any good, sometimes there is too much darkness there. But we can still say a silent blessing for them. God, have mercy.

I was so blessed by church members Mel and Dorothy Meyer a few days ago. Conversation with them always takes place on holy ground, as we talk about how we see God moving in our lives, question what God is up to in our lives and in the world, Reflect to each other the grace that God sees. Dorothy said to me, when I pray I just talk to God. I tell him what’s on my mind. When I say, God, here is something that we really need, God provides. Mel and Dorothy are armored too, but they are armored not with anger but with prayer.

Jonah would have chosen death over changing his mind about the people of Ninevah. He chose fear over love. Williamson pointed out that sometimes we need to tell our fear to go to hell, because that is where it came from. Fear can have such a hold on us that I think this is a helpful way to think of it. When we sense fear creeping into our consciousness, when anger is not a helpful, change-provoking anger but a destructive, poisonous anger, we can tell that fear, that anger to go to hell. Because when fear leaves, love and grace have room to spread their wings.  We can love our enemies because love is not based on how people have behaved. Unconditional love is based on every human being’s identity as image-bearer of God. That doesn’t mean asking our enemies out for coffee, in most cases. But it does mean that we do not wish them harm. When we have the courage to pray for God to bless them, in my experience those are the prayers that God infuses with power for change. Maybe in the life of the one being blessed, maybe a shift for the one doing the praying. If Jonah had prayed for the Ninevites, prayed for their well-being, nothing may have changed for the Ninevites. Their repentance was not based on his prayers. But how might it have changed Jonah? if he had prayed all that way, if he had brushed the whale slobber off his clothes and prayed, Lord, have mercy all the way to Ninevah. And then upon arriving, had he blessed each person and animal he passed, the crops and the water, pressing on and traveling through the whole city, I think he would have fallen in love with the Ninevites. He would have been changed, because once we are graced with the eyes to see as God does, our anger melts away, and we are startled to see with love everywhere we look.