We respect. Jonah 1-4 (selected verses). 06/02/24.
We Respect
Jonah 1-4 (selected verses)
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins
June 2, 2024
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up; call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”
The sailors said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” “I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men were even more afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish. Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto the dry land.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it. But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry? And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”
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A manager of a company used to drive his employees crazy, bossing them around, nagging them, and insisting that they show him more respect. One morning, he brought in a sign that read, “I AM THE BOSS,” and he hung it on his office door. Later that day, when he returned from his lunch break, he found a note taped on the sign. The note said, “YOUR WIFE CALLED. SHE WANTS HER SIGN BACK.”
Poor guy. He’s like the old comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, who made a living telling people the hilarious ways people showed him, “No respect.” Or like Aretha Franklin who famously sang, “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
Respect. It’s one of our core commitments here at the Chapel. Here’s how we frame it:
We respect the beliefs and experiences of others.
What is respect? To find the deepest meaning of the word, let us INSPECT the etymology of the word. What does the prefix “re-” mean? It means “again” or “again and again.” What about “-spect” from both “respect” and “inspect”? It means to “look at” or to “see.” “Respect,” then, means to re-see or to see again and again.
It’s what Aretha Franklin wanted when her man came home . . . she wanted him to see her once again. It’s what we all want. We all want to be seen. We all want a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And, if we want to align ourselves with God’s purposes, we must R-E-S-P-E-C-T other people, even “those people”—the people we find easy to hate.
Which brings me to the curious little book of Jonah. It’s a funny story—a satire—in which everything is upside down. Jonah is the “anti-hero” or in this case, the “anti-prophet.” He’s an example of what NOT to be.
The elephant in the room about the Jonah story (or maybe the “whale” in the room?) is whether to read the story literally or as holy allegory. Good Christian people can read it either way. To me, it comes down to genre. There are many genres in the Bible, there’s history, there’s poetry, there’s wisdom literature, there are letters. So ask yourself: “Does the book of Jonah read more like history or like satire?” Wherever you land on that tired debate, the meaning of the story remains the same.
The story begins when God tells the prophet, Jonah, to go and preach in Nineveh. Nineveh is part of modern-day Mosul in northern Iraq. When the book of Jonah was written, it was the capital city of the Assyrians—Israel’s bitter enemy. Why were the Assyrians so hated by Israel? Well, the Assyrians had conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in all of the ugly ways of war. Then the Assyrians subjugated, taxed, and oppressed Israel’s Southern Kingdom. So it comes as no surprise that Israelites hated Assyrians. Nineveh was not only the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, it was the largest city in the world for several decades.
So when God told Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites, Jonah refused. A good Israelite, Jonah hated Assyria. He hated Assyrians. Therefore, Jonah refused God’s call to preach to the Ninevites, and went the opposite way, boarding a ship bound for Tarshish. But God wasn’t going to let Jonah get away with that. God sent a huge storm, and when the sailors cast lots to determine who God was punishing with this storm, the lots fell on Jonah. Instead of jumping overboard, he wants his death on these sailors’ hands, saying, “You’d better throw me overboard.” They tried to find another way, but the storm was too strong. They threw him off the boat. But instead of sure death, Jonah is swallowed up by a big fish. Inside the fish, Jonah doesn’t repent, but he does thank God for sparing his life. Three days after becoming fish food, the fish vomits Jonah on dry land. Jonah may be out of the fish, but he is not out of the woods just yet.
God once again tells Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevites. This time, Jonah obeys. He goes into the city and preaches the world’s shortest sermon . . . only five words in Hebrew (wouldn’t you be so lucky?) “Nineveh overthrown in forty days!” That’s it! That was his sermon.
Jonah’s passive-aggression is on display in his five-word sermon—he is doing the bare minimum to satisfy God. Why? He still hates the Ninevites. He’s trying to be ineffective. Like when I was asked to mow the lawn when I was a teenager and I “accidentally” cut down a favorite flower of my mom’s. Jonah is trying to fail here. He doesn’t want his message to succeed.
Nevertheless, his message, quite comically, succeeds. The King of Assyria, the most powerful man on the planet, repented and turned toward God. He led the entire nation to repent so that even the Assyrian cows fasted in repentance.
Jonah is LIVID! He pouts to God, quoting God’s own words from Exodus 34:6, saying:
For I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
Jonah knows God’s character, that God is a loving and merciful God, and that God loves the Assyrians. But Jonah would rather die than see the Assyrians thrive.
Let’s stop right there, because this is the whole point of the story of Jonah.
Jonah would rather die than see the Assyrians thrive. This curious little book of Jonah exists to ask its readers one question: “Are you ok with the fact that God loves your enemy?”
The book holds a mirror up to us and invites us to consider if there’s some Jonah in us somewhere . . . if there are people or groups we’d rather die than see thrive.
Jonah had zero respect for the Ninevites. Zero. Zip. Zilch. But God loved them because, to Jonah’s chagrin, the Ninevites were God’s children too.
“Are you ok with the fact that God loves your enemy?”
This is the point of one of the most famous parables Jesus ever told, the parable of the “Good Samaritan.” You remember this story, right? A Pharisee asks how he might inherit eternal life. Jesus replies:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The Pharisee (sounding kind of snarky if you ask me) replied, “Who is my neighbor?” It sounds to me like the Pharisee wants Jesus to identify some people as “love-worthy” and others as “love-unworthy.” So Jesus tells him a little story, the parable of the “Good Samaritan.”
A traveler was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest came along, and passed by on the other side of the road. A Levite passed by and did the same thing. But a Samaritan, a lowly, despised Samaritan, was the one who tended the beaten man, showing him great care.
Jesus asked the snarky Pharisee after telling this story, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The Pharisee said that it was the one who showed mercy. Jesus affirmed his choice and told the Pharisee to do likewise.
In this story, Jesus is poking at the Pharisee’s lack of respect for Samaritans.
In the book of Jonah, the author is poking at the Israelites’ lack of respect for Assyrians.
If part of my job is to challenge those who hear my messages (and I think it is), then I must poke at any kind of “othering” we might do here at the Chapel.
What is “othering?”
We’re all guilty of “othering” from time to time. Our “othering” can take blatant forms, like overt forms of racism and sexism that seem far too in vogue these days. “But we’re Christian people, right? We don’t do that.” Not so fast. The church always seems to have those they wish to exclude because of race or gender . . . the “in vogue” discrimination in many Christian circles these days is around sexual orientation. The recent split in the United Methodist Church is a result of this “othering.”
We distance ourselves, one from another with subtle thoughts like, “She’s old, he’s young / she’s a republican, he’s a democrat / she’s gay, he’s straight / she’s black, he’s white.” I could go for days naming the little ways we distance ourselves, one from another, hoarding our love, our compassion, and our opportunity for deep, authentic relationship.
I’m not sure when we fall victim to the poison of “othering,” but I suspect it’s somewhere between the ages of 2 and 9. This is in no way based on scientific fact, just my keen sense of motherly observation.
Several years ago, before my time at Chapel, my family and I went to worship with a predominantly African-American congregation. My boys were nine and two at that time. I told them before we went, “Hey kids, I’ve got a treat for you today—we’re going to a black church!” (Notice my own “othering” in that simple statement? Why did I have to differentiate this church as a “black” church?)
So we all got ready, my husband, my two boys, and me. When we got out of the car in the parking lot, my husband helped the two-year-old out of the car, and I walked with my 9-year-old. “I’m scared,” he said. “Why are you scared?” “It’s all black people here . . . what if I do something wrong?” I stopped in my tracks, got down on his level, looked him in the eye, and said, “These folks are people, just like you and me. They are no better. They are no worse. We are all human.” I kissed his forehead, rubbed his messy hair, and we walked in together as I wondered if his fear was the result of some subtle form of racism his father and I unintentionally passed on to him. (I hope not. But vile “othering” manifests in ways we often can’t see in ourselves.)
When we got inside, I took my two-year-old to the nursery—black workers, black children—he ran to the slide without even looking back at his mama.
What happens to us between the ages of 2 and 9 that makes us fearful of the other? I’m sure a child psychologist could explain that to us, but I’m a preacher, and I’ll call it, “sin.”
“Othering” is the reason Adam and Eve felt the need for fig leaves in the Garden after they enjoyed the fruit. “Othering” is why Jonah refused to go to Nineveh. “Othering” is the reason you and I lock our doors when driving through certain neighborhoods. The reason we avoid that certain person at the grocery store. “Othering” is the reason for much of our fear, all of our gossip, and at least some, if not all, of our insecurities.
“Othering” is antithetical to the love of God and to the gospel of Jesus, the Christ.
If “othering” is so common, even to people of deep faith (like the Pharisee to whom Jesus had to explain the concept of “neighbor”), and if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all done it, what is the antidote to this “othering?”
R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
We must begin to re-see. To see again and again. To look more deeply at the “other.” To look until we begin to understand, even empathize. And THIS, this is one of our core commitments here at the Chapel:
We respect the beliefs and experiences of others.
When we look deeply at the “other,” we can begin to understand how they arrived at their beliefs.
When we look deeply at the “other,” we can begin to empathize with their experiences.
When understanding and empathy fill our hearts, there’s little room left for judgment and “othering.” Bitterness begins to lose its grip, and before we know it, we’re the one helping the beaten man left for dead instead of passing by on the other side of the road.
Beatrice Bruteau makes this observation in a book about finding common threads in the world’s religions:
“Mutual respect is the only possible foundation for a free, just, equal, and responsible society . . . with freedom from the need to promote oneself—or one’s nation, tradition, or religion—by devaluing others comes a great release of energy. What had been invested in protection is now available for caring for and rejoicing in others.”
So let me ask one more time, “Are you ok with the fact that God loves your enemy?” And moreover, are you willing to “re-see” your enemy so that God’s universal love might bloom in you?
Because the fact of the matter is this: “In Christ There Is No East and West.” “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.”