It is, after all, one of those stories we teach to kids in Sunday School. In my estimation, this is probably the one story that captivates a young boy (girl) enough so that it stays in their imagination. And what's not to remember? Jonah gets a word from God: "Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come before me". Ninevah is an ancient and powerful enemy of Israel. Jonah makes a beeline in the opposite direction (the story doesn't say why yet) and sails away from the city. God raises a storm that endangers the whole crew. Jonah has them throw him overboard. Now this would normally kill Jonah. But God sends a fish to swallow him, and Jonah remains in its belly for three days and nights. Jonah prays for deliverance, and God commands the fish to spit Jonah onto dry land.
And that's where most of us tune out from Sunday School.
Jonah -- the Pinocchio of the Bible.
Thing is, this is only half-way through the story. God reiterates the command. Jonah obeys this time. He goes and proclaims, "Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown". The king, too theologically naive to know that an immutable God can't take things back, advises everyone, "Who knows? Maybe God will take it back", and the people repent. And guess what! God takes it back.
That should be the happy ending to this whale-of-a-tale.
But it's not.
Jonah gets pissed. He prays -- actually, he vents: "This is why I fled! For I know you're a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment. Kill me now -- I'd rather die than live". Jonah stalks out of the city and waits, hoping something bad will happen to Ninevah. Nothing does. Instead, God starts sending new things to Jonah -- little irritating things: Providing a plant for shade, then sending a worm to kill the plant. Sending a pleasant wind, then a punishingly hot sun. The story has become a farce.
The book ends with God lecturing Jonah like a spoiled child: "You care about some stupid plant that you didn't even grow. Am I not supposed to care about Ninevah, and its innocent animals, and its 120,000 clueless people?" The moral of this story is basically that God loves the enemies of his people Israel, whether Israel likes it or not.
Of all the books that make it into the Bible, I'm always amazed at Jonah. This is a humiliating story.
And yet it demonstrates a people's remarkable character that it's included. It's downright phenomenal that it would end up in its own Bible. And it's just incredible where Jonah shows up in the New Testament: "Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to [Jesus], 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.' But he answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth'" (Matthew 12.38-40).
I know that glosses over most folks, but I always do a double-take here. Jesus, comparing himself to Jonah?!?
Sure, I know that Jesus is using the Jonah story to talk about crucifixion and resurrection.
But why Jonah?
Why a whiny runaway?
Why not Jeremiah, or Ezekiel?
Why use the worst story of the Hebrew prophets?
No prophet, in prophet school, was ever taught to be like Jonah.
Why take an impressive sign like resurrection and sully it with Jonah the loser? That's like Jesus doing signs and wonders and then comparing himself to Penn and Teller.
Here's why I think Jesus does it. And it's why when I preach this text -- when anyone preaches this text -- there are two twin misconceptions about God that need to be turned over.
First, you often hear that people are loving and God is strict, especially in the Old Testament. That's why belief in God is an obstacle to world peace. But think about it: Aren't we pretty harsh on those who oppress us? Like Jonah wanted to be? Jonah runs away because he knows that if Ninevah repents, God is too compassionate to follow through on his threat.
All I have to mention is France's response to the Charlie Hebdo stuff. Or America's response to 9/11.
Jonah, though -- Jonah tells all that very differently. Jonah didn't so love Ninevah that he gave them God. God so loved Ninevah that he gave Jonah. God sent Jonah to Ninevah, not to condemn it, but that it might saved through him. (And Jonah didn't like it one bit.)
Second, you also often hear that the one Jesus calls "Father" is the one who holds a grudge against all humanity, and that Jesus is the nice one. The Father is fearsome and angry. We want Jesus on our side to soften him up. Jesus has to take the whipping that I deserve.
But that's not how Jonah -- or Jesus! -- tells it. After all, what makes us think that love of God's enemies is something that comes effortlessly to Jesus? This is a guy who's living under Roman occupation. His own puppet king has overseen a mass murder of his fellow two-year-olds (think Matthew 2 here). Every day he sees Roman abuses of power against his people. By the time he's thirty, how many horror stories do you think Jesus has accumulated that would make your blood boil?
Forgive the Romans? Proclaim peace to Israel's oppressors? Are you kidding?
Forgive the Muslim extremists? Proclaim peace to our oppressors? Are you kidding?
Because, truth be told, even Jesus is reluctant to forgive "outsiders". He can be rather short with Gentiles, and when he does help them, he usually tells them that they are beyond the scope of his original mission. The only argument Jesus ever lost, he lost to a Gentile woman!
And we don't have to work hard to imagine Jonah's Ninevah or Jesus' Rome.
Maybe the Father isn't the bad guy after all, but the steady source of Jesus' sacrificial love and compassion. "God so loved."
But does all that mean that Jesus -- like Jonah -- has issues?
Well, wouldn't you?
Don't you?
I mean, look at the world. I know I honestly have a problem with the world as it is.
Think for one honest minute about what we do to each other in this world. And then ask yourself why Jesus should have found it easy to forgive the Romans who are crucifying him like they have crucified so many who came before him, and would soon destroy his homeland.
On the night that everyone betrays and denies and sentences and abandons him, Jesus tells his few remaining companions, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26.38). Those are Jonah's very words after Ninevah had repented and God had withered Jonah's favorite plant. Once again, we see Jesus putting himself in Jonah's place. He has issues.
Here's the truth about Charlie Hebdo and 9/11 (and Nigeria and ... well, you get the idea) that no one wants to talk about: Suffering from sin forces us to harden our hearts.
That's the real tragedy of the world. Suffering from sin forces me to harden my heart.
This puts me in the position of the scribes and Pharisees who demand a sign from Jesus. They have legitimate issues too. So they are demanding that Jesus show himself to be their kind of deliverer. They want a movie hero. Their hardened hearts want vengeance. That's what makes them "an evil and adulterous generation". Sorry, Jesus says. My sign will disappoint you. It will trouble your souls even to death, as it troubles my own.
Jesus is promising the sign of Jonah. He will be the gift to "the world God loved". Even to Ninevah. Even to Israel's enemies. Even to us.
Sure, Charlie Hebdo left me feeling less warm and fuzzy about the world. It's hard to be optimistic when you're a Christian. Because when I'm honest, I know just how hard my sinful heart is.
And it's just at that moment that the sign of Jonah becomes the concrete hope that I -- and the rest of the world -- need.
It helps that the pray Jonah prays in Jonah 2 sounds so much like the prayer that Jesus prays: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
To get to the "Do not be afraid" of Sunday, I need that prayer.
When I see all over again that we don't have it in us to love enough, that I don't have it in me to love enough, it helps to know that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are unspeakable love for their world, unconditional love, unpleasant love.
A friend asked me last night what I thought about all the Charlie Hebdo stuff. And all I could this was the story of Jonah.
If God's love for the world is anything less than this story, then we're without hope. The world's evil will triumph over it. It will force us all to surrender to the rage we feel at the rage of others.
Jonah learned obedience through what he suffered. Jesus did too. But for all the similarities, there's a critical difference. God's love triumphed over Jonah. Jesus is "greater than Jonah" (Matthew 12.41) in that God's love triumphed in Jesus. God "gave his only Son". Jonah arose from the deep, but he pouted until the story was over. Jesus arose from the tomb, and promised to go with us (Matthew 28.20) as we bring his peace even to our enemies.
Think about that. Because for all my pacifism, I have to admit: It doesn't begin in me because I'm a nice guy. I didn't choose to be nonviolent.
I'm nonviolent because the God I know in Jesus Christ is nonviolent.
That's the Good News.
There's another text from the Bible we grow up hearing. It's one that tells the Jonah story in brief. It goes like this: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him".
We Christians can either celebrate that, or we can pout about it. But we can't bomb our enemies.
You can surrender to the hate if you want. But in surrendering to the hate, you will lose. Even if you win.