April 21, 2002
Mark 1: 14-20
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Jonah 3-4:1
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“The Great Sulk”

The holiest day in the Jewish calendar year is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  On that day of seeking forgiveness and direction for living, the book of Jonah is read in Jewish synagogues and temples.

Of this occasion, and the application of the book of Jonah to it, Maimonides, the great Jewish medieval philosopher and codifier said,

“We are to constantly regard both our own fate –– and, as well, the destiny of the whole world –– as being balanced between acquittal and guilt.  By committing even one additional sin, we effectively tilt the scales of our lives, and of the world, toward guilt and destruction.  Conversely, if we perform even one meritorious deed, we swing the scales toward good, and help to bring about our own salvation as well as that of the whole world.”  (Eckstein; p. 120)

Jonah is a man who is rabid about how people should live and how society should act.  He is particularly upset with the municipal mess in Nineveh, a city on the banks of the Tigress River in the area we now call Iraq.  This city is much too wide open for Jonah.  He can’t handle the debauchery and corruption.  Like some fundamentalists of our day, joy was found in hating the evil place.

I mean: this place is bad. It was like Milwaukee with its pension scandals, its sick-pay settlements and its Mayor who was thinking with the wrong part of his body when he got involved with one who is willing to air all for publicity.  Jonah did what he could.  He wrote letters to the Journal-Sentinel; which was loving the mess.  He appeared on Charlie Sykes, who was quick to give plenty of airtime to one so righteously passionate, and he picketed the Cathedral of St. John, the Evangelist, any time he thought Archbishop Weakland was around.

One day, while relaxing at his lovely home on Okauchee Lake, Jonah sensed that somehow God was asking him to go and proclaim to the city that they had better shape up and believe –– or else, they would be destroyed.

Jonah wondered if God had taken leave of his senses.  There was no way he was going to go to that wicked city and tell them that “they had to believe –– or they would be destroyed.”  Jonah didn’t want any  ‘or’ at all. He would have been much happier just to go and say, “God is going to wipe you all out.”

But Jonah couldn’t shake the feeling that this is what he was supposed to do, so he decided to leave the area, just get away from it all.  He went down to Jones Island and talked his way onto a lake boat that was heading up to Duluth to get some taconite.

Through a series of incredulous events (you can read them yourself in the Bible) Jonah finds himself in the belly of a great fish, as the story goes, and about to be digested.  In desperation and fear he prays to God, who is not too happy with his disobedience.  Jonah amends his decision.  The great fish can’t stomach Jonah any longer, so he is dislodged, safe and sound, on the shore.

Jonah takes all of the righteous anger that is stored up in him and goes and verbally scathes the residents with his fiery rhetoric.  I mean: he was good!  He would have been the most popular speaker at a Pentecostal revival.  He thunders to them “God has had it with all of you, and you’re going to be destroyed unless you repent; mend your ways and follow God.”  Amazingly, the citizens listen.

The city becomes sober and introspective and begins to change.  The city council, ever anxious to be on the popular side, pass an edict, which is read by the Mayor, that the citizens are to change their ways and they are to worship God.  Quickly, they become a different city.  They become exactly what Jonah said they would be.  But, Jonah is angry.

He is beside himself.  He screams at God, “This is why I didn’t want to come here.  I knew you wouldn’t destroy them.  I know you are a gracious God, slow to anger and merciful and abounding in love.  But this is too much.  Take my life from me.  It is better that I am dead.” (v. 6-9)  He storms out of the city, sits down under a gourd plant to get a little shade and, like a little kid who didn’t get his own way, he sulks.

It’s hot, so –– adding insult to injury –– the vine-with-the-gourd withers in the hot sun and dies, and Jonah is ready to faint.  He screams out, “I wish I were dead.  I am angry enough to die.” (4:6-9)

Now, it is God’s turn to preach.  God says to Jonah “What right have you to get angry?  You’re all concerned about a gourd plant which you didn’t plant or take care of.  It grew up one day, and died the next, and you hate that city; yet, in that city, there are thousands of people and many animals.   Should I not be concerned about them?”

The story ends there.  We really don’t know what happened to Jonah, nor for that matter how long the city stayed loyal.  There is certainly the ironic possibility that Nineveh remained a city in which true faith was lived, while Jonah, God’s chosen messenger, never got it right.

It is Jonah who was lost.

It’s a great story, and what really makes it great is that is still happening.  Too often, the ones who are vocal with their righteous pronouncements are the ones who are hiding their own evils.  How often we have seen individuals lash out with pious condemnations, only to fall, later, with their own evils.  I’m sick of TV personalities yelling at me and saying, “I am right, and because I know what is right, you have to live as I tell you should.”

Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, and their multi-million dollar entertainment village –– prior to his imprisonment and their divorce –– did little that was constructive for the Kingdom of God.  Pat Robertson may have run for President of the United States, but his dogmatic statements of what constitutes a Christian life are lost in his dealings in foreign countries where he seeks to reclaim gold at minimal expense levels, and little care for human dignity, or care of ecology.

I’ve had it with the Jimmy Swaggart-type guys who run their wealthy religious empires, spew their message about righteous living and family values, and then get caught with prostitutes –– not once but twice –– and then turn on the water works of repentance for the television faithful.

I see Jonah when I see Jerry Falwell appearing before congress and arguing that the United States needs to maintain an atomic arsenal, so that the world remains in relative peace, in order that the message of salvation in Christ can be preached –– or that the September 11^th tragedy happened because of our acceptance of homosexuals and our being soft on pornography.

I’m tired of picking up the newspaper and reading about unscrupulous pedophiles parading as priests.  I am offended by preachers who are wealthy because of get-rich-schemes in foreign countries, or sales of knick-knacks which will purportedly bless the buyer, because the preacher prayed for them.

Given all that has taken place and is taking place, I am convinced that the Christian Church is divine.  Because if you ran any other organization the way it is run, that organization would collapse in a month.

That is also why I am ever so grateful, every Sunday morning, to walk out here and see that you have come to worship.  You’re here.  You could be any of a host of other places, but you are here –– to learn about our faith and to worship the one who is beyond our understanding.  You deserve the absolute best that a human can give ––    and you deserve the dignity of being able to live what you believe and the freedom to change your thinking as you grow.

Many of you have seen the play or the movie, “Amadeus.”  Salieri is a Jonah figure.  Salieri is absolutely obsessed by the notion that God made a grievous error in allowing that irresponsible, foul-mouthed, conceited, womanizing Mozart to have so much talent –– and most notably, more than Salieri himself.

Mozart is Salieri’s Nineveh.  Unable to accept God’s mistake, Salieri declares war on Mozart and on God.  In one outburst, Salieri shouts at God, “They say God is not mocked!  I tell you man is not mocked!  They say the spirit bloweth where it listeth.  I tell you ‘No!’  It must list to virtue –– or not blow at all.”

And still later, wracked by jealousy, he rages to God, “You are the enemy!  I name Thee now.  To my last breath, I shall block you on earth so far as I am able.”  Then turning to the audience, Salieri says, “What use, after all, is man, if not to teach God his lesson?” (Amadeus, P. Shaffer. P 47)  As with so many others who have hurt the Christian cause, “Do it my way, God, or let me die!

Sounds like Jonah to me.

Jonah is a story for the fiercely righteous, those who hate evil more than they love good.  This is a story for those who proclaim “You’d better do it the way I am telling you, or God will punish you!”

To such people, Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

To church leaders, Mr. Churchman says, “You’re asking me to visit the people down the street?  Not a chance!  One is black, and I know one is a Jew.”  Listen: “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “But they got mad at my kids who, they said, were unkind to theirs!”  “How many times do I forgive my brother?  7 times?”  “No, Peter, seventy times seven.”

“I’m never going back to that Church again.  My Father was the first leader of the Sunday School, and now look what they are doing!”  “Forty years ago, I sang in the choir.  We had dignity and decorum then!  Now look at them, singing that new stuff.”

It isn’t the Sunday School.  It isn’t the choir.  It isn’t the call to visit.  It is “anything that is happening now.”  It’s the attitude!  Frustrated people, who try to control, take out their frustration on God, because if God were doing things correctly, what was happening would agree with them.  Therefore, the Church is wrong –– or worse yet, God is wrong.

To all who think in such a manner, God says, “What right do you have to get angry?  You’re worried about change, about informal dress, or how or what the choir is singing.  You’re upset because the kids don’t sit in rows and pay attention and stay quiet; you’re mad because they are going to a mission where they can work to help other people.  You’re angry because your comfortable way is being challenged.”

God continues, “Don’t you see?  There are thousands of people in this city who don’t know right from wrong? Thousands who have no support from home in their pursuit of education, hundreds who don’t know where their next meal will come from, and hundreds more who live in fear that they will get sick and they can’t afford insurance.  Don’t you think I should be interested in them?”

Maybe one of the reasons why Churches are having a hard time is that too many are trying to manipulate God –– instead of listening to what needs to be done and how it can be done, many are too busy telling God what needs to be done, to whom and how.

Jonah is still alive and well.

Jesus picked up the same message as Jonah and drove it home with humor.  He said, “Before you look for the speck in your brother’s eye, you had better observe the log in your own eye.” (Matt. 7:1-4)

Do you suppose that we are guilty of thinking, “We want to grow, Lord.  We’re preaching and teaching here . . . but please don’t send us any Ninevites?”

“We are quite content the way we are, Lord. Don’t mess us up with new ideas or with leaders who bring new concepts.”  And God says, “They are my creation also.  Don’t you think I should be concerned?”

Whenever we get angry or upset, because our view may not be the view that is being presented, or that the people coming to church may not be the people we would choose if we were in control, or that the worship would be different if I had my way–– then we need to remember the words of Jonah when he was angry with God.  In his anger, he inadvertently expresses our hope.

“I knew that you were a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

 That’s our message!

It’s hard for us to admit that we are human beings, with only a dim view of what is going on.  Our thoughts, as the scriptures say, are not God’s thoughts, even when we think they should be.  So, when things aren’t going the way you would like; when leaders begin moving in a different direction; when new folks are part of the worshipping community or worship styles change, be careful!

It may be difficult, but the real evil is that which is allowed to destroy, and weaken, and blind and consume as in Jonah, in Salieri or maybe in you and me, if we allow it –– and do not work hard on it.

We need to listen to God, because there are two options before us.

Like trying to climb an oak tree: we can study, pray, and work, and climb higher and higher into the branches ––– or we can sulk . . . and sit on an acorn.