Imagine going to the stronghold of ISIS and giving a brief mention of coming overthrow.So here is Jonah, marching into Nineveh, near Mosul in Iraq, in our time. He tells the people in this capital of empire that change was coming, but change; the empire would be overturned in 40 days. This was the empire that despoiled Israel and was at the gates of Jerusalem. To Jonah’s astonishment and ours, they do change. It would be like preaching to the Taliban or the mullahs in Iran and seeing an immediate mass conversion to become Mennonites.
Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh, the seat of the dreaded Assyrian empire that had destroyed the Northern kingdom, depopulated it and imported with alien cultures. He has the most successful short sermon imaginable. Would he die if he brought the message of repentance? He would rather die than have it heeded, perhaps. I picture him more than halfway hoping that Nineveh will be overthrown and punished. He may have hoped it was a look into the future, not an opportunity for repentance. Instead, it stops everyone in their tracks, and all of these pagans repent. In Hebrew, we read of Nineveh, a city great to God. Great could be size but it could point to other interpretations, obviously such as import and power I find the exaggerated description of Nineveh’s size to add spice to the story itself, an extension of the fish story where the catch keep getting bigger; a three days walk across is one big town. It is a version of the country bumpkin visiting the big city; three days walk matches three days in the great sea beast.
Jonah is an extraordinarily persuasive evangelist, The response of the city is a mass conversion of everyone to this short sermon that puts preachers in a spasm of envy. The entire community of Nineveh follows ritual prescription of repentance. So, unbelievers teach the people about the quality of their own worship and their response to the call of the liturgy and the prophets.
Instead of the stereotype of the angry OT god,we see a merciful God whose character is set in Exodus 34:6-7. God’s wide mercy moves toward the enemies. Jonah runs, in his realization that God could have mercy on the Assyrians, and he can’t live with that. If they listen, if the enemies repent-what does it say about us? We are in a world of satire. The evil Assyrians take the message seriously, and we don’t. Jonah is designed to have us look around with a challenged perspective. If the enemy can change, so could we. It is a perspective shift to see that the enemy can indeed change and fast, but we are slow to respond to God,
Instead of flight from the world, God keeps calling us back into this world, filled with all of its irritants, annoyances, and troubles. We so want spiritual life to somehow be above the noise and the difficulty, for spiritual life to remove us from the fuss of life and into an ethereal realm. As people of the Incarnation, Christian spiritual progress is pursued in the muck and mire of the real world, with real people, of all possibilities. Our paths may well move through difficult territory on the road to the celestial city. In Christian theology, we are a called people as well as choosing creatures. God guides, entices, pulls us toward finding a purpose, even a destiny, that we would not choose, be it Harry Potter, or Frodo, or Jonah. It’s been said by rabbis, “if you wish to make God smile, pray. If you wish to make God laugh, share your plans.” Jesus Christ always enters enemy territory, not only places of threat, but also the rough terrain of the human heart and mind. Barth called it the journey of the son into the far country. Indeed the early call stories to the first apostles do not seem to be planned tours as much as encounters. Put differently, Jesus has the goal of teaching and healing, as the situation it will dictate.
No comments:
Post a Comment