They Listened!! (Jan 21, 2024) Jonah 3.1-5, 10

Imagine with me a beach. The sun is shining, the waves are gently lapping the shore, gulls are sweeping through the sky, crabs and other animals are scuttling along. Somewhere on this beach is a man lying just above the water line, in sort of a shallow depression in the sand, like he fell there. The man is dressed for travel, hair is disheveled, beard a bit scraggly (two, perhaps three, days growth), and boy does he smell. Like something a fish had vomited onto the land. Now this man is beginning to stir. A little at first. A few moans and twitches. Then he begins to check and see if anything is broken. No. Nothing broken. He wishes he could take a bath and be clean, but now that seems unlikely to happen. He takes stock of himself and begins to think, “Maybe this was all a dream and I fell off the ship and was washed ashore.” Then he catches a whiff of himself, and no, this was no dream. The fish had spit him up on dry land and he has the proof in the stench about him. Ugh. If only he were clean. Then, as he is sitting there trying to figure out what to do next, a voice comes to him and says, “Listen up! Let’s try this again. I want you to go to Nineveh and tell them the message that I will give you. Got that? Or do you need another…. lesson?” The man sighs, heaves himself up and heads, reluctantly, toward the city from which he was trying to flee.

Now if you have not already figured it out from the reading, the man is Jonah, a prophet called by God to go to Nineveh. The city that was known for its wickedness. This could be, and would include, worshipping idols, but would also include acts of social injustice such as neglecting the poor, oppressing the weak and putting the undeserving in prison. It could be that God is calling Jonah to be like the prophets God sent to Israel to tell them the same thing: that God was displeased with them and wanted them to turn from their wicked ways.

Now, most of us know the story of how Jonah said, “Of course, Lord, right after I take an extended holiday in the completely opposite direction.” We know of how the storm came on the ship and Jonah was thrown overboard. Here we could tell everyone about how this was when the whale swallowed Jonah and he saw the errors of his ways. Then, for many, it gets a little fuzzy. See, we have made this into a children’s story that can be told with cute puppets and cartoons. But we miss the deadly seriousness of this story. Jonah indeed flees, is tossed overboard, and swallowed (but by a great fish, not a whale.) He is there for three days praying and then vomited onto the dry land. It is here that we come to today’s reading.

Jonah is told again, in the exact same words as in chapter one, to get up go to Nineveh and deliver the message God is telling him to deliver. It is interesting that the phrase “great city” in Hebrew is “great city to God.” What does this mean? Does it mean that it was a great city, one of culture and life? Does it mean that it was a great city because of its size (which we are told it was a three day walk to get across it)? Or is it a great city about which God cares? It might mean all three but look at the last sense of the phrase for a moment. God is telling Jonah to go to the city and tell them that their wickedness is come to God’s attention, and they are being told that something drastic is about to happen to them. God seems to care for the city and is sending a prophet (or messenger) to let them know that this something will happen instead of just letting the something happen.

Now, here we leave Jonah for a moment and learn a bit about Nineveh itself. We are told that “Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.”[1] Archeology tells us that this is an exaggeration, but it is one to let us know that this was a great city, one that contained 120,000 people as we are later told. Some commentators have argued that the three days means a “three-day visit.” This argument states that Jonah first had to give a reason for his visit and have his credentials checked (the first day). Then he would be allowed into the city where he would deliver his message (the second day). Finally, he would pack up and head out of town (the third day). This is a plausible explanation, but the text never tells us anything about this. What we are told is what comes next in the story.

Jonah walks about a day’s journey in the city, a nobody in the big city and stands on a street corner and delivers his brief message one that is only five works in Hebrew, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”[2]Here Jonah does not take the route that most prophets take. He does not state that this is the word of the LORD. He just states his message, probably reluctantly or with a bit of a smirk. Here is something interesting as well. The word “overthrown” is a bit ambiguous. It can mean the sense that we take it to mean, that Nineveh will be overthrown or defeated and sacked. But it can also mean “turn.” Forty days more and Nineveh will turn. What they will turn from is left unstated, but to repent is to turn from what one is doing. But the message is clear, something will happen and will happen in forty days.

Jonah probably thinks that he needs to go further into the city to get his message to the people. But something interesting happens. He does not have to go further because as Douglas Stuart puts is, the people of Nineveh “beat him to it.” They repented before he could even get into the full task of preaching to them. According to the usual expectation of ancient protocol, Jonah would have preached widely throughout the city on the second and third day to all who would listen.”[3]We are told that the people hear the message “believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.”[4] even the animals (notice that they believe God and not the messenger). Sackcloth was a rough fabric that caused itching and was not at all comfortable (think burlap) and was the choice for those who were in mourning or were penitent before God. The people listened to the message and believed that what they were told would happen and so they mourned for themselves and the city.

With this development, Jonah became the most successful of all the prophets. His message turned all the people away from sin and wickedness. All the other prophets struggled to get even a few to listen to them and repent. The majority of them needed be careful that they did not get thrown into prison, tossed out of society all together, or even worse, get themselves killed.

The king of the city hears the message, and he also puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes. He sends out a decree that “No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”[5]Who knows? The end is not in sight and Jonah never says what will happen if the people repent. Who knows what God will do? They can only hope that God will be merciful.

And God is merciful. The text tells us that “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.”[6]God “overthrew” God’s decision to bring calamity and did not do it.

Was Jonah happy that the people listened to his message? If you must ask that question, you truly were not paying attention. These are the enemies of the Israelites. These are not good people. If you know anything about the city of Nineveh, it was the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians were a nasty lot who instilled fear in all who crossed their path. So, no Jonah is not happy. In fact, this is what he was afraid would happen. In chapter four we are told that he says, “Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; 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.”[7] God’s reply is that God cares for the city and why not? God is God and what God will do is God’s prerogative. If a city of 120,000 people turned from their wicked ways, why should God not relent?

I believe we all have our “Jonah moments”. A time, or times, when we hear God calling and decide that we know best and go in the opposite direction. And then after much resistance we go and do what God has called us to do. But do we do it with the right attitude? Do we have the attitude of Jonah, the “These people are not like me and mine, God. Why do you want me to talk to them? They are unclean!! (remember that when Jonah gets there, he’s not too clean himself) They don’t even know you!” Or what I like to call the Moses reaction: “Here I am God, send someone else. I’m not a good talker. I’ll just mess the message up and ruin the whole moment. Nobody wants to hear someone fumbling with words. Just send someone else.” Then there is the Jeremiah reaction: “God, I’m too young. There are plenty out there who know so much more than I do. I have an idea, why don’t we wait until I have had a lot more experience and education, thenyou can call me? Huh? Doesn’t that sound reasonable?” And through all this we hear God saying, “Are you listening to me or yourself? Look at the people of Nineveh. They heard a word from a most reluctant prophet, and they listened because I was with that word. What makes you think that I cannot do the same with you?”

We live in a time when we need a prophet to proclaim to us that we are living in wickedness. We live in a time when the poor get poorer and rich get richer. People are crushed down because to elevate them to the status of human beings would mean that we would have to see them as one of us, to have them be equal with us. We don’t like that. We see people who are different, and we don’t want them around us. Look at how we treat immigrants, those of different color skin from us, the poor, those of different sexual orientation. We need a Jonah who may be reluctant but gets the message out, we need an Isaiah, an Amos or a Jeremiah, someone who calls us to task and tells us that we are wrong. This past week we celebrated a man who did call us to task. He called not just for equal rights (for which he is best known) but also an end to systemic poverty, an end to war, an end to worker neglect. We need another prophet. And we have them. Are we listening?

The first lesson today showed the disciples dropping everything when Jesus called them. They listened to the call, dropped their livelihoods, their families, their whole lives without even asking, “Um…about this gig. What are the benefits? You know insurance, salary, vacation, retirement package. Show us that and we will follow.” No, they dropped what they were doing and followed. They were not in the least like Jonah. They may have had their moments (like where they believed that they needed to be rid of those who were not in “their” camp), but Jesus says to them as well, “Listen up boys.”

Do we feel the call of God in our lives? It does not have to be a call to ministry or to be on the session. It could be a call to help the homeless, to reach out to those who are different, to be a presence of God where there is none. If so, are we like Jonah and trying to run from the call? Or are we listening to what God calls us to do? Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [3] Stuart, Douglas. Hosea–Jonah. Vol. 31. Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987. Print. Word Biblical Commentary. [4] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [5] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [6] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [7] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.