Kendall's Notebook Page 47
The Jonah Syndrome
Jonah 3: 1-10
By Kendall Brown
January 22, 2006
The story of Jonah contains a powerfully sad picture of pathos. It is difficult to imagine another Biblical portrayal of a moment from a person’s life more pathetic than the dismal scene from Jonah before us today.
Jonah, a Hebrew, had been sent by God to the city of Nineveh to preach and seek the city’s repentance. Jonah only reluctantly went to the city and half-heartedly finished his divine assignment. We are told that Nineveh was such a vast city that a three day’s journey was required to traverse it. Well, Jonah, arriving at the city gate, dragged his feet for a day into the city. Still a day’s journey from the center, far removed from the marketplaces, forums and courtyards where people gathered and would have heard him - perhaps in some safe, dimly lit, lightly traveled back byway, Jonah announced, (maybe in a whisper), “In forty days, God is going to destroy this place.”
He only delivered half the message. He didn’t breath a word about repentance. Then, satisfied that he had technically fulfilled the requirement s of his assignment, he beat a retreat out of the city.
We have all been Jonahs. We had had our Jonah moments as depicted and vividly presented in these verses.
Jonah’s story is so often relegated to our work with children that I cannot help but recall a few childhood associations this morning. My mother often cooked on Saturday. It was serious business as her kitchen produced pies, cakes, cookies, brownies, rolls and bread. She often sent baskets of baked goods to our neighbors.
One rainy day when I was about four, my mother wanted me to take a couple baskets to Mr. Forsyth and Mrs. White, two of our neighbors and Dad’s parishioners. There was only one problem. I didn’t have a raincoat because I wasn’t in school yet. My sister had one because she was in school. You couldn’t go to school on the coast of Maine without a raincoat. Her coat was one of those red rubber unisex deals with little gold buckle snap-hooks down the front. My mother told me to wear Sharon’s coat. Well! I wasn’t about to be caught dead wearing my sister’s raincoat. I took the two baskets of baked goods and exited the kitchen to a back shed on the old, huge parsonage. In the shed was a little used back stairway to an attic over the el of the house. I holed up on those stairs and over two later, my mother finally found me with the undelivered cookies. What was left that I hadn’t eaten! I never did deliver cookies that day. It was a Jonah moment for me!
Time and again, I can remember my parents saying to me, “Now, Kendall, you go and apologize to your sister.” I’d go. Do my duty. Then I would report that the mission was accomplished by my saying, “I’m sorry.” I was usually about as sorry as my little toe!
The Jonah syndrome is not limited to those under the age of 18. I’ve had a few Jonah moments much more recently. The ones 40 years ago are much less embarrassing.
Anyhow, in spite of the fact that Jonah delivered the message to the city in a very weak way, the message took hold. The message soon spread like wildfire throughout the city. If God desires to use us, we will serve God’s purposes no matter how much we might drag our feet or make it difficult for God’s plan to unfold. The city repented and was spared as God had promised.
When Jonah realized that the city was not to be destroyed, he was upset to say the least. “But it displeased Jonah and he was angry.” The Apostle Paul, who took the Gospel to city after city and was often despised and thrown out of the city or into a prison, would have rejoiced at just a portion of Nineveh’s response to Jonah.
But what did Jonah do? When he saw that the city was to be saved and that his message had been well received, he went out, sat under a broom tree overlooking the city, and pouted. He had what my wife calls a hissy fit and my mother use to call a canipshun fit. You can tell that Jonah and I have few things in common.
What a wretched, pathetic, little person Jonah was.
The Bible contains many stories of human failure. There is: The murderous violence of Cain; the deceit of Jacob; the chaotic confusion of King Saul; the treachery and unfaithfulness of King David; the cowardliness of Peter; the betrayal of Judas. But the story of Jonah is just pathetic.
At the end of the story, we can picture God, looking at Jonah, and with dismay and disappointment saying, “Jonah, I just can’t believe you.”
Usually we assume that religion is all about what people believe in God. We should give more attention to the things we do that make it difficult for God to believe in us.
Being pathetic is being unbelievable to God. Jonah must have had God in a state of dismay, if we are to allow ourselves a bit of adding human qualities to God’s being.
So often we use the word, “pathetic” in a loose and inaccurate way. Pathetic to us is the skid row drunk slithering from lamp pole to lamp pole. Street children in Bombay or Brazil live pathetic lives in our minds. The accident victim left without arms or legs. The desperate drug addict who steels Sudafed from the local Schnucks Store and blows up his own house with his drug making apparatus. These are pathetic folk in our minds. There are others.
The pathetic persons in this world are not those whose lives are filled with sorrow because of some human or natural calamity. The pathetic are those who give God cause to shake a heavenly head in dismay, saying, “I can’t believe you.”
Why couldn’t God believe in Jonah? Why did Jonah sit under a tree and sulk? Why would have he been happier to see Nineveh destroyed by an earthquake or fire?
Nineveh provided something for Jonah. The city served a purpose in his life. Nineveh with all of its wickedness made it possible for Jonah, like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable to go to the temple and pray, “My God, I thank thee that I m not like these others, extortionist, thieves, cheaters, the citizens of Nineveh.” As long as Nineveh was there for comparison, Jonah could feel pretty good about himself.
There’s a little Jonah in each of us. We are born insecure. So often, instead of simply accepting God’s love, which is the only thing that can make us whole, we try to affirm ourselves. We build our own sources of security. One false source of self- affirmation is putting down some one else in order to build our selves up. John the Baptist preached about how he must diminish in order that Jesus be increased. That self-diminished is also the way of Christ to which our Lord calls us.
A bureaucrat makes a big issue over some trivial regulation. The big fish in the little pond terrorizes a client or customer with the rules. A wedding is being planned involving families from two different churches. All of a sudden one family starts making a big issue over where the wedding is supposed to happen. Those who are secure in their faith are a bit amused and wonder, “What is the big fuss?” Are not all churches God’s churches?
In the Jonah narrative, there is another level of meaning above the story of God’s call and disappointment. Often the story of Jonah and the Whale is relegated to the Children’s Story and. We think of it as a cute, magical children’s story about a man who was swallowed by a whale. I think the whale’s spitting Jonah up is just another indication of what a wretched sour person Jonah was. He was so bad that even a whale couldn’t stomach him.
Anyhow, Jonah is a piece of literature with several other literary companions in the Old Testament. Another story in this genre is the story of Ruth. The story of Esther can also be added to this collection. A common thread in these stories is the theme that God can be found working outside the Hebrew community. The Hebrew community of the Old Testament had a very exclusive attitude towards their neighbors, such as the Ninevites or the Moabites, Ruth’s family. This genre of literature challenges the exclusive cliquishness of the Hebrew people, reminding readers that God’s love is for people outside themselves, even for many people considered “beneath” the Hebrew reader.
Noah is pathetic. At the heart of his pathos is an inability to love anyone other than those just like him. The spiritual life goes hand in hand with our outer lives. If we know that God loves us and affirms us, that is enough. We don’t have to put others down to build ourselves up. We can go to Nineveh and offer the love we have received to others beyond ourselves.
God has made us all equal. Being equal doesn’t mean we are all the same by any means or have the same gifts. It is God’s unending outpouring of love for us that is the grand equalizer.
God loves you. Because of that love, you are free to love yourself. And if you accept God’s love for you, how can you not love yourself and how can you not love others? You don’t have to size up your neighbors to see if they have more or less than you. You can let go of whatever it is that you might clutch hoping to build yourself up.
Live and be in the love of God and to God alone be all praise!