11 They said to him, “What will we do about you so that the sea will become calm around us?” (The sea was continuing to rage.) 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea! Then the sea will become calm around you. I know it’s my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” 13 The men rowed to reach dry land, but they couldn’t manage it because the sea continued to rage against them. 14 So they called on the Lord, saying, “Please, Lord, don’t let us perish on account of this man’s life, and don’t blame us for innocent blood! You are the Lord: whatever you want, you can do.” 15 Then they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased its raging. 16 The men worshipped the Lord with a profound reverence; they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made solemn promises. 17 [a] Meanwhile, the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. (Common English Bible)
“Friends Don’t Let Friends…A Lent
Alongside Jonah,” Week Two
Four
had suddenly become three. The fish tank
that sat in my childhood bedroom was suddenly bereft of one of its little
swimming inhabitants—one of the two that belonged to my younger sister (whilst
the other two were ostensibly mine).
My
sister, who was maybe six at the time, was convinced that it was because of my
fish had eaten her fish, and even at age six, she stood for no injustice. “HE ATE BUTTONS!” she screamed in righteous
indignation to our parents while I just sort of shrugged. Yes, Buttons was missing, but who’s to say
that it wasn’t all a magic trick, or that the little fishie Rapture had just
occurred and my own miscreant fish had been left behind. In MY mind, at least, there were a myriad of
explanations to this seemingly open-and-shut case of maritime murder.
But
in my first murder trial as an unlicensed, ten-year-old attorney, I lost, and
my fish was sentenced to being returned to the pet store, which I am sure
completely baffled the same poor goof who told us that the fish would all get
along great together (which, in retrospect, is a pretty dumb question to ask a
store clerk: I mean, they’re tiny little fish, not puppies).
But
this meant that, over time, as we went through more and more pet fish, that
this one fish of mine attained a status unto Elijah for me…you see, Elijah is
the only Old Testament hero not to die (Enoch also doesn’t die, but he is
simply attested to in the Genesis genealogies and that’s it); he gets driven up
to heaven in a chariot of fire instead.
And so this fish became the only fish I ever owned to not eventually be
flushed down the toilet, but to be driven off to heaven in a chariot of fire. And by “heaven,” I mean the pet store. And by “a chariot of fire,” I mean my
parents’ 1995 Saturn station wagon.
Because
that’s what happens when you blame the fish.
The poor fish gets completely set apart.
This
is a new sermon series for a new church season: traditionally, the forty days
prior to Easter Sunday make up a worship season called Lent, and those forty
days correspond to the forty days that Jesus spent fasting and being tempted in
the wilderness. Lent is a season whose
primary themes, then, are largely about denial of selfishness and repentance
from our own past selfishness. And
really, there is no better story about selfishness in Scripture than that of
the prophet Jonah. Sure, you have
individual stories about selfishness in Biblical heroes like Samson and David,
but none of their stories involved getting belched out of a giant future sushi
roll. And really, selfishness is what
defines Jonah, even more so than any other Biblical character. He is the original prodigal, the original heir
who renounces his Father hundreds of years before Jesus tells us His parable of
the prodigal son in Luke 15. So for Lent
this year, we will be reading through, verse-by-verse, the entirety of the
Jonah narrative. It’s only four chapters
long, so going verse-by-verse is definitely doable in a five-week series, and
we’ll come out the other side all set for Palm Sunday and the beginning of the
Passion narrative. We kicked off this
series last week by expositing Jonah’s predicament: God calls Jonah to preach
in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital in modern-day northern Iraq. Jonah says “I DON’T WANNA!” and runs in the
opposite direction, towards Spain. Along
the way, he pays fare for a boat to take him the rest of the way, they run into
a storm, and they ascertain by casting lots that Jonah is the one responsible,
and that is where today’s Scripture passage picks up.
Now,
as you could probably glean from the sermon’s title and the story I just told
you, we’ll be focusing on the role of the giant fish here today, but there are
a couple other potential misconceptions about this part of the story that I
want to nip in the bud as well: firstly, this is, in case you missed last week,
a story about Jonah and a fish, not Jonah and a whale. After all, most whales are endangered, and I
imagine God would not be so cruel as to risk one to a massive case of
indigestion just to make a point.
More
importantly, though, this is that also not a story about human sacrifice, even
though Jonah tries to turn it into one with his demand to be thrown
overboard. The conscientious sailors
eventually acquiesce to his patently self-destructive request, but not before
collectively absolving themselves of this massive breach of maritime ethics in
making someone walk the plank.
It
would be easy to say they do this because it is okay in whichever moral and
spiritual spheres these non-Israelite sailors live, but as the passage conveys,
these sailors end up worshiping YHWH. So
that cannot be why they eventually cave to Jonah’s entreaties—in fact, Jonah,
in whatever zealous selflessness inspires him to be thrown overboard, is
completely misguided in this sacrificial urge because, that is, in fact, not
what God wants. And it never was.
In
spite of what the story of Abraham and Isaac might lead you to believe—the one
where God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac upon a Grillmaster, only to pop out
and shout, “JK! JK! LOL!
ROFFLECOPTERS!” –human sacrifice has always been banned in Jewish
law. Leviticus 20:1-5 bans the practice
of sacrificing one’s offspring to “Moloch,” a pagan god of the Ammonites,
Phoenicians, and Canaans, whose cult demanded human sacrifice. Since the covenant between YHWH and Israel is
akin to a father-child relationship, you can see why human sacrifice would be
banned—throughout the Old Testament, even God’s wrath still left room for
resurrection.
And
God leaves room for resurrection here, for Jonah, because I think contrary to
popular belief, this giant fish that is sent is not sent as a means of
punishing Jonah—it is sent as a means of protecting Jonah. The sailors are not able to sail to land,
meaning they are dumping Jonah out in the middle of the sea. He will die of hypothermia or drown before
anybody reaches him.
But
God does. Through the magical gigantic
fish. That swallows Jonah whole and
somehow manages to keep him down for three days and three nights (and you’d
think if God were truly omniscient, He’d have negotiated some sort of product
placement deal with Tums/Mylanta/Pepto in here). And while this three-days-and-three-nights
business makes it awfully tempting for us to see in Jonah a foreshadowing of
Jesus, I would hesitate to interpret this text that way.
See,
Jesus, while certainly reluctant at moments (especially Gethsemane), is still
ultimately subservient to God. Jonah
really is not. Jonah does have some
admirable qualities that I mentioned last week—he is clearly honest to a fault,
and abundantly blessed with
determination—but someone who is ready, able, and willing to surrender himself
to God he is emphatically not—at least, not yet.
And
so while Jesus is in part a prophet—in addition to being Messiah, rabbi, the
Christ, and so on—Jonah is really more, as Yale’s John Collins puts it,
something of an anti-prophet.
Which
means that while Jonah might be prepared to offer himself up in sacrifice to
God, he is not, in fact, spiritually mature enough to realize that this is not
what God really wants. God does not want
human sacrifice; if He did, it would have been simple enough to just let Jonah
drown.
To
return to the Jesus metaphor, it would have been simple enough to just let
Jesus remain dead.
But
in either case, it wasn’t. It isn’t. With God, it is never as simple as
dying. There always remains a second
chance at living. Even the eventually-willing-to-throw-Jonah-overboard
sailors realize this. They worship God
upon seeing that they have been saved from the storm.
And
in this way, the sailors and Jonah are figuratively in the same boat, even if
literally they no longer are. They are
protected from the elements by a God who still watches over them.
There
is another possibility to all of this, though: that Jonah is so determined to
escape God that he will sacrifice anything, including his life, to achieve that
ends. Through this lens, Jonah’s
willingness to be chucked overboard is not a magnanimous gesture towards some
good-natured sailors he befriended, it is a final act of defiance against his
Creator. And the sailors’ initial reluctance
to throw him overboard reads not as an intervention of moral scruples but as a
determination to see this man live long enough for God to take justice upon him
Himself.
If
that sounds like me just getting up here and saying, “Ta da! Everything I just told you about this
Scripture passage is a lie,” I promise you it isn’t. Because as we will see next week, after Jonah
has had his three days and three nights to think about things in the maw of a
giant future piece of sushi, Jonah realizes that he does need the sort of
deliverance that only God can provide—deliverance not simply from the elements,
from a storm at sea, but deliverance from oneself. Deliverance from our worst impulses, deepest
prejudices, and destructive tendencies.
That
is why there is no point in blaming the fish here. There is no justice to be had in pointing any
fingers at it, because as a divine instrument, it serves not as a weapon with
which to destroy, but as a tool with which to rebuild. And that has worth even to this day.
As
I was putting the final touches on this sermon over the weekend, I read the
news that Fred Phelps Sr., the founding pastor of Westboro Baptist Church (the “God
Hates F*gs” people who picket funerals), is on the brink of death himself at
the age of 84. I was raised a mere hour’s
drive from the Westboro Baptist Church in eastern Kansas, and it was not
uncommon for some hate-motivated stunt of his ilk to make the papers or the
evening news in my hometown.
His
reported demise perfectly coincides with the message I am trying to convey
here. Jonah too does not want to
minister in God’s name to a people he despises.
So he runs from God. But after
three days and three nights within the giant fish, Jonah realizes how low he
has sunk, and he pleads with God for deliverance from his darkest self.
If
ever there were a pastor in dire need of a few days inside of a giant fish, it’s
Fred Phelps. But that salvation from our
darker selves is a salvation we all need, whether we know it yet or not.
May it be so. Amen.
May it be so. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
Longview, Washington
March 16, 2014
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