The Beloved Fugitive
Nineveh Repents, God Relents
Jonah 3:1-4:11
Text:
Who knows? God may relent and change his mind;
he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
—Jonah 3:9
Introduction
This morning we’re focusing our attention on that great, great Old Testament Bible story of Jonah, who is reportedly swallowed by a huge whale while trying to flee from the presence of the Lord. The end of the first chapter of The Book of Jonah concludes with this verse: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. [i]
For me, this verse is reminiscent of the song from the Broadway musical Porgy and Bess:
It ain't necessarily so
It ain't necessarily so
The t'ings dat yo' li'ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Fo' he made his home in
Dat fish's abdomen.
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale.
On the Run
And what’s that all about? Jonah, an obscure Galilean prophet from Gath-hepher, doesn’t want to do what the Lord has commanded him to do, doesn’t want to go on the mission on which the Lord chooses to send him, and chooses instead to flee from the presence of the Lord. Here’s how the story begins:
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh (which was the Assyrian capital), that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish (the opposite direction from Nineveh) from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. [ii]
A fellow staff member recently reminded me of the quotation: Life’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.[iii] Certainly one can make a case for the stupidity of rebelling against a divine commission and attempting to flee from God. Undoubtedly we recall Francis Thompson’s expressing the same sentiment in his poem The Hound of Heaven:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.” [iv]
Ninevah! Ninevah! Who in heaven’s name would ever want to go to Ninevah?! The people there have no idea what time it is, can’t tell their right hand from their left, have flagrantly discarded their moral compass, are egregiously engaged in evil doing, have lasciviously cozied up to wickedness as to a clandestine courtesan in secluded chambers, have turned their world topsy-turvy so that bad means good and good means bad. Ninevah! Ninevah! Evil-doing is their quotidian fare, evil-doing is their meat day and night, evil-doing is their captivating sport and unmitigated delight; violence is their synonymous term for tenderness, violence is their lurid source of enchanting amusement, violence is their common cause for contentment and their brazen means to self-satisfaction.
Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it;
for their wickedness has come up before me.
Ninevah! Ninevah! I’d sooner be in the belly of a whale!
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years . . .
Send me to Iraq or Syria. I could literally lose my head at the hands of violent men in Ninevah as I most definitely would in ISIS. I prefer a fast boat to Tarshish . . . or a slow boat to Tarshish, to the very edge of the earth, away from those strong Feet that follow me with unhurrying chase and unperturbèd pace, shielded from that relentless Voice that beats more instant than the Feet . . . to Tarshish or anywhere away from the presence of God and His unreasonable demands.
Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it;
for their wickedness has come up before me.
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. . . .
Hysterical laughter, ironic laughter, uncontrollable laughter when the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land, [v] confirming the uncanny, inexorable truth that deliverance belongs to the Lord! [vi] On the beach, on dry ground, looking around: So where’s Tarshish? Tarshish. If I’m not dead and if I’m not mistaken and if my memory serves me right, that great city in the distance is—Ninevah. [vii] Ninevah! Ninevah!
Get up, go to Ninevah, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.
Nineveh Repents, God Relents
One day’s walk into that great city Ninevah, which in its entirety requires three days to traverse . . . one day into it—as solemn as the soothsayer to Julius Caesar: beware the Ides of March; as accusatory as the blind seer Teiresias to Oedipus the King: I say that you are the murderer whom you seek--as solemn and as accusatory as these, Jonah cried out, “Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown! Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!” Much to Jonah’s surprise—he’s completely and utterly aghast!—and much to Jonah’s consternation—he’s thoroughly and profoundly annoyed!—the people of Ninevah believed him . . . believed God, the text says. Not only that, the King of Ninevah—when the news reached him—also believed Jonah and took action [unlike some politicians we could actually name]: rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.[viii] He issued an inviolable edict that no human being or animal shall eat or drink, that all shall be covered with sackcloth, and that all shall cry mightily to God, turning away from evil and violence . . . for Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish. In other words, in response to the words of this recalcitrant prophet, who fled from his mission and attempted to flee from God’s presence, Ninevah repented.
Ninevah repents, God relents. There a bit of poetry here! Or at least a wee bit of rhyme: Ninevah repents, God relents. But actually Jonah found no rhyme or reason to this sequence of repentance and grace. In point of fact he was way beyond displeasure and irritation: he was angry, irate; and his subsequent prayer was anything but docile: “O Lord! Is this not what I said when I was in my own country!” Then he issues a revisionist’s retrospective: “That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” In other words, I am played the fool.
As one staged portrayal of Jonah scripts it: “Here after all this the King himself takes my personal word that in forty days it is the end of the world; and what happens? The forty-first day is proclaimed a national holiday. Government stock rises, and I am the biggest bloody fool in the Middle East. I am a laughing stock, that’s all, a laughing stock. I don’t move. I’m going to sit here until I get a sunstroke.” [ix]
But no sunstroke for Jonah, for God planted a huge bush and caused it to grow up over Jonah to shade him, and Jonah was happy; but the next day God made a worm to attack and kill the plant, and Jonah was again angry enough to die.
The Moral of the Story
Sure enough, the story of Jonah is the stuff that good morality plays are made of, and every morality play has to have a moral. Jonah is no exception: Deliverance belongs to the Lord. [x]
By this little experiment God is saying, if you feel sorry for the tree, which after all didn’t cost you anything, why shouldn’t I, the Lord God, feel sorry for Nineveh, that great city, in which there are one hundred and twenty thousand human beings on whom after all I have taken a great deal of trouble even if they still don’t know what time it is, or their left hand from their right hand. [xi]
Conclusion
I can speak only for myself, but I suspect the same is true for you: Every time I have turned to my own way and attempted to flee from God’s presence, and every time I have resented God’s mercy shown to those whom I detest, the words of the psalmist pierce the stillness of the night and hound me at the deepest, darkest depths of my self-righteousness--
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Let only darkness cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to thee,
the night is bright as the day;
for darkness is as light with thee. [xii]
So in the spirit of the Halverson Benediction:
You go nowhere by accident. Wherever you go, God is sending you. God has put you there, He has a purpose in your being there. Christ, who dwells in you, has something He wants to do,
through you, where you are. Believe this, and go in His grace and power and love. [xiii]
There are many among us today who have received a divine commission to work in God’s vineyard during the next few months. But these mission servants are not attempting to flee from God’s presence but, rather, to serve as representatives of his grace and conveyers of his love in the name of Jesus Christ, the bread of life.
g g g
Notes
[i] Jonah 1:17
[ii] Jonah 1:1-3
[iii] Attributed to John Wayne
[iv] Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven, stanza 1
[v] Jonah 2:10
[vi] See Jonah 2:9
[vii] Wolf Mankowitz, It Should Happen to a Dog, Religious Drama 3: An Anthology of Modern
Morality Plays, p. 103
[viii] Jonah 3:6
[ix] Mankowitz, p. 132
[x] Jonah 2:9
[xi] Mankowitz, p. 134
[xii] Psalm 139:7-12
[xiii] This is the benediction used by the late Rev. Richard Halverson (1916-1995), former chaplain to
the U.S. Senate.
Nineveh Repents, God Relents
Jonah 3:1-4:11
Text:
Who knows? God may relent and change his mind;
he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
—Jonah 3:9
Introduction
This morning we’re focusing our attention on that great, great Old Testament Bible story of Jonah, who is reportedly swallowed by a huge whale while trying to flee from the presence of the Lord. The end of the first chapter of The Book of Jonah concludes with this verse: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. [i]
For me, this verse is reminiscent of the song from the Broadway musical Porgy and Bess:
It ain't necessarily so
It ain't necessarily so
The t'ings dat yo' li'ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Fo' he made his home in
Dat fish's abdomen.
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale.
On the Run
And what’s that all about? Jonah, an obscure Galilean prophet from Gath-hepher, doesn’t want to do what the Lord has commanded him to do, doesn’t want to go on the mission on which the Lord chooses to send him, and chooses instead to flee from the presence of the Lord. Here’s how the story begins:
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh (which was the Assyrian capital), that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish (the opposite direction from Nineveh) from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. [ii]
A fellow staff member recently reminded me of the quotation: Life’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.[iii] Certainly one can make a case for the stupidity of rebelling against a divine commission and attempting to flee from God. Undoubtedly we recall Francis Thompson’s expressing the same sentiment in his poem The Hound of Heaven:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.” [iv]
Ninevah! Ninevah! Who in heaven’s name would ever want to go to Ninevah?! The people there have no idea what time it is, can’t tell their right hand from their left, have flagrantly discarded their moral compass, are egregiously engaged in evil doing, have lasciviously cozied up to wickedness as to a clandestine courtesan in secluded chambers, have turned their world topsy-turvy so that bad means good and good means bad. Ninevah! Ninevah! Evil-doing is their quotidian fare, evil-doing is their meat day and night, evil-doing is their captivating sport and unmitigated delight; violence is their synonymous term for tenderness, violence is their lurid source of enchanting amusement, violence is their common cause for contentment and their brazen means to self-satisfaction.
Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it;
for their wickedness has come up before me.
Ninevah! Ninevah! I’d sooner be in the belly of a whale!
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years . . .
Send me to Iraq or Syria. I could literally lose my head at the hands of violent men in Ninevah as I most definitely would in ISIS. I prefer a fast boat to Tarshish . . . or a slow boat to Tarshish, to the very edge of the earth, away from those strong Feet that follow me with unhurrying chase and unperturbèd pace, shielded from that relentless Voice that beats more instant than the Feet . . . to Tarshish or anywhere away from the presence of God and His unreasonable demands.
Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it;
for their wickedness has come up before me.
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. . . .
Hysterical laughter, ironic laughter, uncontrollable laughter when the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land, [v] confirming the uncanny, inexorable truth that deliverance belongs to the Lord! [vi] On the beach, on dry ground, looking around: So where’s Tarshish? Tarshish. If I’m not dead and if I’m not mistaken and if my memory serves me right, that great city in the distance is—Ninevah. [vii] Ninevah! Ninevah!
Get up, go to Ninevah, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.
Nineveh Repents, God Relents
One day’s walk into that great city Ninevah, which in its entirety requires three days to traverse . . . one day into it—as solemn as the soothsayer to Julius Caesar: beware the Ides of March; as accusatory as the blind seer Teiresias to Oedipus the King: I say that you are the murderer whom you seek--as solemn and as accusatory as these, Jonah cried out, “Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown! Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!” Much to Jonah’s surprise—he’s completely and utterly aghast!—and much to Jonah’s consternation—he’s thoroughly and profoundly annoyed!—the people of Ninevah believed him . . . believed God, the text says. Not only that, the King of Ninevah—when the news reached him—also believed Jonah and took action [unlike some politicians we could actually name]: rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.[viii] He issued an inviolable edict that no human being or animal shall eat or drink, that all shall be covered with sackcloth, and that all shall cry mightily to God, turning away from evil and violence . . . for Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish. In other words, in response to the words of this recalcitrant prophet, who fled from his mission and attempted to flee from God’s presence, Ninevah repented.
Ninevah repents, God relents. There a bit of poetry here! Or at least a wee bit of rhyme: Ninevah repents, God relents. But actually Jonah found no rhyme or reason to this sequence of repentance and grace. In point of fact he was way beyond displeasure and irritation: he was angry, irate; and his subsequent prayer was anything but docile: “O Lord! Is this not what I said when I was in my own country!” Then he issues a revisionist’s retrospective: “That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” In other words, I am played the fool.
As one staged portrayal of Jonah scripts it: “Here after all this the King himself takes my personal word that in forty days it is the end of the world; and what happens? The forty-first day is proclaimed a national holiday. Government stock rises, and I am the biggest bloody fool in the Middle East. I am a laughing stock, that’s all, a laughing stock. I don’t move. I’m going to sit here until I get a sunstroke.” [ix]
But no sunstroke for Jonah, for God planted a huge bush and caused it to grow up over Jonah to shade him, and Jonah was happy; but the next day God made a worm to attack and kill the plant, and Jonah was again angry enough to die.
The Moral of the Story
Sure enough, the story of Jonah is the stuff that good morality plays are made of, and every morality play has to have a moral. Jonah is no exception: Deliverance belongs to the Lord. [x]
By this little experiment God is saying, if you feel sorry for the tree, which after all didn’t cost you anything, why shouldn’t I, the Lord God, feel sorry for Nineveh, that great city, in which there are one hundred and twenty thousand human beings on whom after all I have taken a great deal of trouble even if they still don’t know what time it is, or their left hand from their right hand. [xi]
Conclusion
I can speak only for myself, but I suspect the same is true for you: Every time I have turned to my own way and attempted to flee from God’s presence, and every time I have resented God’s mercy shown to those whom I detest, the words of the psalmist pierce the stillness of the night and hound me at the deepest, darkest depths of my self-righteousness--
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Let only darkness cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to thee,
the night is bright as the day;
for darkness is as light with thee. [xii]
So in the spirit of the Halverson Benediction:
You go nowhere by accident. Wherever you go, God is sending you. God has put you there, He has a purpose in your being there. Christ, who dwells in you, has something He wants to do,
through you, where you are. Believe this, and go in His grace and power and love. [xiii]
There are many among us today who have received a divine commission to work in God’s vineyard during the next few months. But these mission servants are not attempting to flee from God’s presence but, rather, to serve as representatives of his grace and conveyers of his love in the name of Jesus Christ, the bread of life.
g g g
Notes
[i] Jonah 1:17
[ii] Jonah 1:1-3
[iii] Attributed to John Wayne
[iv] Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven, stanza 1
[v] Jonah 2:10
[vi] See Jonah 2:9
[vii] Wolf Mankowitz, It Should Happen to a Dog, Religious Drama 3: An Anthology of Modern
Morality Plays, p. 103
[viii] Jonah 3:6
[ix] Mankowitz, p. 132
[x] Jonah 2:9
[xi] Mankowitz, p. 134
[xii] Psalm 139:7-12
[xiii] This is the benediction used by the late Rev. Richard Halverson (1916-1995), former chaplain to
the U.S. Senate.