Anthem *A Mighty Fortress Is Our God* Sermon *Essentials: Reforming* David Spain
Recorded on October 27, 2024
In the early 1300’s Dante Alighieri wrote what would become a classic in western literature—The Divine Comedy. A long narrative poem begun during the year Dante was exiled from Florence, the story traces the soul’s journey in the after life to hell, purgatory, and paradise—an imaginative journey in which the consequences of one’s living are explored in the context of divine justice and the hope of moving toward God. There is humor in the poetry—especially who gets consigned to the levels of hell that Dante depicts. Humor notwithstanding, it is also a sobering subject, not the kind of literature one might consider comedy, which was its original title—Divine being added later. Comedy in this context is less ‘the joke’s on you’ and more about the type of literature and a less formal style of writing, in which the story concludes with a possible happy ending; whereas the other type of literature from the period—Tragedy—tended toward just that and a more formal style of writing. Dante’s imaginative work does what this kind of literature is meant to do, using allegory and irony inviting people to reflect on life and faith.
Long before Dante penned his classic story, another divine comedy was written, this one by a prophet named Jonah. Unlike other prophetic books, which contain harsh judgments against Israel, the book of Jonah focuses on the world’s worst prophet God ever called—whose personality could curdle milk, a hapless Danny DiVito/Don Rickles disposition.The story really is funny—but like all great humor, it is comedy that helps us see something essential about life and faith, which may or may not stir laughter, and that is its power.Jonah’s story does what Jesus’ parables do—disarmingly surprising stories that can reform our living.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when Jonah was written, but probably after Israel had returned from exile and was re-establishing itself. That is important—when a people or a religion or a nation thinks about itself, one measure is by comparing itself to others.What makes us special, exceptional, superior? Jonah is written against self-serving tendencies—whether that is personal, religious, or nationalistic. Frankly, Jonah is an amazing piece of faithful literature because it invites people to do what people are often reluctant to do—reflect, revise, reform.
Jonah is the poster child for faith as reluctance. One of the rich levels of comedy in the story is that Jonah’s reluctance comes from his knowing who God is and what God does. Yet, Jonah’s reluctance does not keep God from calling, which is exactly where this story begins—God calling Jonah to go to Nineveh, presumably to do something that Jonah would love to do. He gets to tell Nineveh they are wicked and that in 40 days God will level the whole city unless they reform their ways, which Jonah certainly believes they would never do. Jonah has in his own thinking condemned the whole city as lost causes.It is a lip-smacking opportunity for Jonah to lay it on thick, and then sit back with satisfaction as God wipes Nineveh off the map. Who does not love a good telling off when we are doing the telling and others are the ones told off! Jonah has good reason to abhor Nineveh—an enemy of Israel who had done to Israel at times what Jonah hopes God will now do to Nineveh. We have no trouble understanding Jonah’s perspective—most people have their Nineveh—another person, another city, another religion, another polity. And yet, we remember Augustine’s insight who once asked “Why do we think our enemy can do us more harm than our enmity?” (quoted in GodStories, p. 129)
Despite the opportunity to give them what for, Jonah books passage on a ship headed west toward Tarshish on the other side of the Mediterranean, where once on board he falls asleep in the hold of the boat. As the story is told, God raises a ruckus on the waters, and the crew of this S.S. Minnow begins tossing things overboard so they would not be lost. When the winds continue increasing and the ship is further tossed, the crew gets out their magic dice and learns that Jonah is the cargo that needs to be given the heave-ho. Jonah admits he is the problem and says if you get rid of me the seas will be smooth sailing. It is a fine solution—Jonah can save a different group of heathens and then not have to go to Nineveh, a roll of his own dice. Jonah would rather die than tell the Ninevites that it matters to God how they are and what they do, and that God is even willing to give Nineveh a chance to reform. The sailors oblige, the seas calm, they convert, Jonah retires to the watery depth, and the clock ticks ever closer to midnight for Nineveh. Perfect, a world absent the power of God’s newness.
This of course is when the story gets really fun. In the divine comedy that is God’s love that will not let us go even if it has to swallow us whole—and how else can God or anyone else take us except as we wholly are—the great beast in the sea provides three days sanctuary.God is sanctuary, and God is more than sanctuary; so, while God loves us as we are God also loves us too much to leave us as we are. God is not content to leave Jonah stewing in his own acidic juices, reminding us that God’s purposes may be diverted for a time but that God’s truth abideth still and will not be forever thwarted. Jonah is beached like a whale—not in Tarshish but near Nineveh, where he reluctantly decides that the only way to get God off his case is to deliver the message. It takes three days to walk across Nineveh; after one day in, Jonah can longer stomach the whole adventure, so he spews his vitriol onto Nineveh. It is an 8-word sermon that says they have 40 days to repent or else, after which Jonah beats feet to a nearby hillside to watch the delicious calamity that will soon occur, anticipating the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”
Only, that is not what happens. Before Jonah gets to the outskirts of Nineveh, the inhabitants start making their way to the market to buy sackcloth and ashes, with which they not only cover their own bodies as the king leads the way; but just to make sure they haven’t missed anything, all the sheep and goats get doused as well. Nineveh repents, reforms, and God changes the forecast of a 100% chance of raining fire and brimstone. This is a good…repentance, change, renewal. But there is one who will not come to the party, there is one who will not reform, there is one who would rather die than live in a world where God’s mercy could hold sway even over one’s enemy. Jonah prefers to keep stewing in his own juices.He is angry that when it comes to the tension between justice and mercy, he prefers his own sense of justice to God’s just ways of mercy. It is not that God lets Nineveh off the hook—they repented and reformed. It’s just that for Jonah (who stands in for any inflated self-righteousness be that a person, a religion, or a nation), he wants no part of a world where God will not conform to his way of thinking.Jonah despises the Ninevites with a perfect disregard—you would think God could do the same. Jonah reminds us of what writer Anne Lamott once wrote—“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.” (Bird by Bird, 22)
Like a story Jesus later told about a prodigal Father, God is not deterred by Jonah’s sulking. God receives Jonah’s prayer—poor Jonah, he struggles with preaching and praying—but in both cases God’s truth comes through, for Jonah knows he cannot put a limit on God who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing.” If mercy applies to Jonah and Israel who have had their own list of failings, then is God not free to apply mercy to Nineveh as well? In a final twist of humor, the book ends with God providing shade for Jonah; then a worm cuts the stem of the plant so that Jonah no longer has shade, after which embittered Jonah says, ‘take me now Lord.’God asks, are you more upset about the loss of your shade than you would be the perishing of all the inhabitants of Nineveh? Jonah is the only book in the Bible that ends with God asking a question. We have no benefit of Jonah’s answer, which means we supply our own responses.
How shall we respond to the book of Jonah? At one level, we can laugh at it because as theater of the absurd it does reveal our human foibles and our tendencies at times of seeing the self as deserving mercy and others as deserving condemnation. If there is anything we share in common, it may well be that tendency. The story reminds us God is God and Jonah is not. More deeply, it is a reminder that while there are very good reasons to be over and against something or someone, that position can morph into an ideology that can poison or an embittering that can bias. Jonah may not have wanted justice to reform; he may have wanted vengeance to annihilate. Vengeance stewed with certainty and righteousness is a delicious meal, but ultimately it devours from the inside out. Jonah reminds us that it does not take a lot of energy to hate, to find fault, to blame. Yes, of course it is important to advocate for what is just, right, and good for all—this is the necessary and discerning work of faith. However, as Dr. King reminds us “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Self-constructed high horses proclaiming hate and condemnation masquerading as faith only serve the self, and not the well-being of God’s world.
The historian Ken Burns recently delivered the commencement address at Brandeis University. It was wide-ranging as such speeches are apt to be, but the crux of his speech was the same message as Jonah’s story. He warned that as individuals and as a nation, we are dialectically pre-occupied, and that preoccupation is imprisoning. We need the checks of conscience to remind us that simplistic either/or thinking only creates enemies. He pleads for the kinship of the soul, a kinship that begins with self-examination. In their great courage and wisdom, our ancestors in the faith gave us Jonah’s story as an essential reminder—that faith is always reforming, that God does not give up on us but always invites us to become more fully who God creates us to be, that the church formed and reforming responds in every hour as we sing in a hymn celebrating God’s spirit with us. This is the divine joy, the divine comedy, that in spite of us and beyond us, God’s way among us is to redeem, restore, renew. What’s not to laugh…no joke!