Jonah. It is a very small book, seemingly insignificant, one of the shortest books in the Bible, and yet it is important. Jesus even references it in trying to make sense of the Resurrection. What is it that Fr. Mapple says in Moby Dick? He says something like "it is one of the shortest strands in the great cable of Scripture." He goes on to say what a significantly important strand it is and gives a sermon on the spiritual richness and depth of Jonah. The problem with Fr. Mapple's sermon is that he stops after Chapter 2, after the great scene in the belly of the whale. That makes sense since it is in the story of Moby Dick, and he is not alone in doing that. Most people stop after Chapter 2. The first two chapters are important: the word of the Lord came to Jonah and told him to get up and go to Nineveh and cry over it because their evil has risen up to me. Jonah gets up and goes in the exact opposite direction to a place called Tarshish. He gets on a boat and goes down to the belly of the boat. They set out to sea, there is a great storm, and ultimately the sailors through him overboard. God sends a great big fish to swallow Jonah and thereby save him. From that belly of the whale Jonah cries out to God and offers a prayer of thanksgiving for saving him. This is an important part of the story, but it is only half of it.
As we heard in the first reading today, the story continues in Chapter 3. The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time and says the exact same thing: go to Nineveh. This time Jonah goes to Nineveh and cries out over it. He says in forty days the city will be overturned, and the remarkable thing is that the people believe him. They recognize that they have been doing something wrong. I think they already knew they were doing it, which is why it is so easy for them to recognize it when Jonah says it. The people repent. The lectionary leaves out this funny bit when the word gets to the king, and the king issues a decree to a people who were already in sackcloth and ashes, already repenting, and tells them all to do it. He says all people, from the greatest to the least and all the animals, which leads to a very funny image of all the people, from the oldest to the youngest, and all the cattle in sackcloth and ashes, fasting and repenting for what they have done wrong. As the story says, the people of Nineveh stopped doing the evil thing. The repent and they relent from this evil. It says, therefore God did not bring the calamity upon them. In Hebrew the word for calamity is the same word as the evil, so people stopped doing evil and God does not do evil in response. Instead, God forgives them for what they have done. He gives them another chance. It is a profound and beautiful image of grace.
But the story is not over yet. It continues on. It says this was evil to Jonah. We have the image of the people who let go of their evil, God lets go of God's evil, and Jonah looks at it and says that looks nice to me, and he puts it on like a cloak. He stomps out of town, bitter and angry that they didn't get their comeuppance. It is interesting because what he cried out over them is that Nineveh be overturned. And what you see here is that Jonah took it to mean they would be destroyed. But now we see the overturning was not going to be the city destroyed kind of overturning, but was an overturning of their hearts. Jonah can't abide by this, so we have a scene where Jonah is grumpy and stomping, like an upset toddler. God has an object lesson with a bush and a worm, and the whole story ends with the question: Shouldn't I care about these people that I made, and also their animals? This is a rhetorical question. The answer is, of course God should. It is interesting we don't get any response from Jonah. It ends with this open-ended question. How is Jonah going to respond? Ultimately, how are we going to respond as well?
We hear this story today because the theme of today is "call". We have in the Collect for today, "Give us grace, O Lord, to readily answer your call." We hear in the Gospel today the beautiful story of the calling of the Disciples. And here we have the story of Jonah's call. We get just one little snippet of the second call to go to Nineveh, but when we step back and look at the Jonah story in its fullness, in its short fullness since it is only four chapters, we see the call isn't limited just to going to Nineveh. The call in the story of Jonah is the call to love. If we follow Jonah's trajectory, we see it is an invitation to him to love those he doesn't want to love. He doesn't go to Nineveh in the first place because they are his enemies. He is upset at God that God would be willing to forgive them because they are his enemies. What God is saying, what God is doing, is inviting Jonah to love them.
We also see that call to love in God's response to Jonah, because the story is also of God's profound love for Jonah, a love that is going to call him in the first place, a love that is willing to follow him out to sea and bring him back and save him when Jonah ignores God. This call of love calls Jonah a second time, and then the love that God has for Jonah is shown by his continuing to work with Jonah after he becomes obstinate and grumpy while waiting for God to destroy the city. There is a profound love that God has for Jonah that keeps pursuing him when Jonah isn't doing what God wants. It is similar to the Psalm we heard last week, Psalm 139, that says wherever I go, you are there, O Lord. If I go to the heavens or go to the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning or go to the outermost parts of the sea, like Jonah, you are there. This profound poem that we heard last week of God's love for us is the same love we see in Jonah's story when God continues to pursue him. We have this love that God called Jonah to try to exhibit, and this love that God has for Jonah, the love that God has for the Ninehvites by letting them know what they are doing wrong, calling them to account, inviting them to repent, and offering them grace.
It is a profound love that God has for all of creation. It is that call of love, that call made to Jonah, that call made to the people of Nineveh to stop doing their evil and to love. It is that same call of love that God calls to us, to you and to me. God invites us into that love, that love of neighbor, that love of enemy, that love of self. God calls us to that love. However we respond, if we go in the exact opposite direction, or we try and get grumpy about it, God will still be with us, inviting us in, asking us the question: are we going to love, and shouldn't I love them as well? The call of love.
So, my friends in Christ, heed this call to love and to walk in love.
AMEN
