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"A Reluctant Prophet and the Persistent God"
Jonah's call comes like most prophetic calls. But the object is different. Jonah is not called to speak to the people of Israel, but to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, a people responsible for many of Israel's greatest disasters. Nineveh was the symbol of all that Jews hated. So our prophet flees from the call! He does not conduct himself as we would expect a faithful prophet to do. Told to go east, he flees west: "Away from the presence of Lord." Apparently Jonah thought he could create space between himself and God, but it could not be done. Israelites were a land people; there could not be a flight more remote. The sea was for them a symbol of chaos, arrogance and restless rebellion against the will of God. The sea produced a feeling of distance and strangeness. But our prophet is desperate.
Why this most peculiar reaction? To preach judgment against Nineveh ought to be congenial. Jonah did not flee because he was afraid or because of hardships or personal danger. He is not a coward. He is afraid, yes, but not for himself, but for what might happen to Nineveh! He gives answer in 4:2. He is afraid that God would be gracious and forgive. If Jonah could be sure God would stick to strict justice and punish those evildoers, no doubt he would have gone. But Jonah did not trust God's love, which was apt to forgive the wrong people. Jonah's action springs from his knowledge of God. By instinct he knew God intended something else other than Nineveh's destruction. The story is about a conflict of wills and purposes. What Jonah wanted and God wanted were entirely different. Jonah doubted God would bend to Jonah's will, but would fulfill God's own purposes. Our prophet knows that God's warning to Nineveh is preliminary to an endeavor to save Nineveh if God could. God would redeem, Jonah would destroy without mercy. Jonah fears the everlasting mercy. So Jonah tries to escape. Notice, Jonah is confident, secure and fast asleep. But he can not escape. God catches up. It is ironic: the foiling of Jonah's plans comes in the form of pagan sailors who according to Jonah had no right to expect mercy or salvation at the hands of God. And to make matters more poignant the captain of the vessel tells our prophet to pray. They have to find out what is going wrong. By lot the crew identifies Jonah as the problem. Amazingly the sailors try to save Jonah. They do not want to throw him overboard. And so they attempt to beach the ship. They appear in a very favorable light in contrast to Jonah. The sailors recognize the need to pray each to his own God and Jonah sleeps. Jonah identifies himself as a Hebrew who fears the Lord the God who made heaven and earth. He uses the confession at the very time when he is in full flight from God and a rebel against God's will. Jonah thinks he can turn a deaf ear to God's bidding and yet count himself a true believer. He trusts God's grace! There is too a note of pride in the evident superiority of his God to the gods of the sailors, pride but not much understanding. In these sailors, Jonah sees the heathen turned to the fear of the Lord. All that he has fled to avoid happens there before his eyes and through his own mediation. But Jonah is not all bad. He offers a solution: a sacrifice. What a picture, 2300 years old, of the classic answer to prejudice and exclusiveness. Here a crisis of survival shakes people down to common humanity. Jonah has himself thrown overboard to save lives. The sailors are no longer pagans, but persons. If that had been the end of Jonah, no doubt seaports over all the world would be dotted with little Jonah chapels, dedicated to the brave Hebrew prophet, who gave his life to save the lives of pagan sailors. But God still had Nineveh on God's hands. God was not through with Jonah either. It is a sad thing: Jonah didn't learn anything from his experience. He had no real change of heart. He merely regrets his flight has been unsuccessful and dangerous for others, without repenting of his disobedience to the Lord, and his atrocious prejudice. What can we learn from this reluctant prophet? What is the author of this marvelous story trying to get us to see? It asks of us… A deeper, broader conception of God. Jonah reveals the subtle ways in which we human beings all try to domesticate God, limiting the scope of God's care to ourselves and others like us. Too many people try to make God fit their narrow little conceptions instead of stretching their minds to the measure of God's love. Never is that peril greater than among people of some religious maturity who know something about what they believe and why and who fall into the trap of thinking that the only way God thinks is our way. They tuck God neatly away in their theological pocket and start manipulating: deciding who shall and shall not be saved, determining whether this group or that is actually worth our time and patience. Narrowing exclusivism is a perennial human problem. It is the belief that God is in our camp, on our team, packaged in our church. Our concerns are God's concerns and God's concerns are ours. And because that is so we are guaranteed God's exclusively favorable relationship to us. What is at stake is the scope of God's grace and mercy. Jonah is thankful for his own deliverance but resentful at Nineveh's inclusion within the mercy which ought to be restricted to God's chosen. But God is the creator of all, and all people command God's interest. God's grace and love and forgiveness are as available for the people of Nineveh. The prophet is running away because his theology has gone bad at a major point, and it needs changing. Jonah received God's grace and wants to limit that grace. It is okay for individual Jews or Christians to have mercy in individual cases, but not God. The story asks of us a deeper recognition of the love of God. But there is more. It asks of us… A deeper, more open, attitude toward other human beings. This humorous, serious tale is a constant rebuke to pretensions, narrow judgments and divisions. The story sets the meanness and foolishness of human beings against the background of the greatness and goodness and love of God. Too often Christians turn in on themselves as if they were the only people in the world upon whom God could possibly look with favor. The first reaction of all selfish people in any situation is always personally selfish. How will it affect me, my wealth, position and future, rather than how will it further the general good? There is too little concern for others and too little recognition that we human beings are members one of another. There is too little conviction of solidarity and interdependence, and too little recognition of common humanity. God is not through with Jonah or us until we are transformed, renewing our minds until they become as large in their loves as God. God's love is not an exclusive love and concern for one people, class, color or race. Do not be ridiculous. God loves the most incongruous, most improbable of all people - God even loves old Jonah. Jonah knows, but refuses to accept the breadth of God's love. But God plays God as God sees God, not as Jonah sees God. And that means the abandonment of cherished hatreds, nurtured antipathies, cultivated tastes, snide comparisons by which groups and classes and persons maintain their own flattering images, their own sense of superiority and exclusiveness. There is a bit more. The story asks of us… A broader perspective, a new vision. It asks us to look at the world from God's perspective, who envisioned it, created it, and in love sustains it. It is our world, because it is God's world. All its people are our people, because they are God's. God loves them and it, even when we can not: we must let this at least temper our unlove. Jonah professed maximum ideals, but he was content with a minimum of action to achieve them. That will not do. To share a vision is to act to make that vision a reality. There are a lot of people like Jonah around: courteous, considerate, and yet not so gentle people of prejudice who draw lines of class against their fellow human beings. The tragedy of Jonah is that after 2300 years with God's mind meanwhile having been made perfectly clear for us in the crucified and risen Christ, Christians are still tempted to be reluctant servants like Jonah. God goes on the assumption that within every person is the capacity to respond to God's love. This is the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in us. God grant that it may. |
F.
Harry Daniel