Amazing Grace
When he was in college, my brother worked with some marine biologists on the coast in Biloxi, MS. Everyday they went out and caught fish, brought them back, opened them up, and examined their stomach contents. He loved the water, he loved the sun, he loved the air…except when they were gutting fish. He did not love fish contents.
Jonah is lying on the shore, not loving fish contents, and the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time. And God says, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” Now really imagine the scene, Jonah lying there on the rocky shore, all slimy and stinky, and probably a little worse for wear after the last few days, and God says, “Get up.” (shake head) This is the parental I love you, you have NOT done what I told you, in fact you have done exactly the opposite of what I told you and now you are covered in mess, lying here pitiful, and yes (sigh), I love you…“Get up.”
Get up and go to Nineveh. For the second time, go to Nineveh. Jonah’s problem is not with being a prophet. Jonah’s problem is not with speaking God’s message of grace. Jonah’s problem is not with God giving second chances. Jonah’s problem is with Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria. It an urban setting with all the slimy and stinky of a crowded, busy port city. “The Assyrians were not too popular in Israel because in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., they plundered Palestine looting and burning its cities and deporting its inhabitants. In 722-721 B.C., the Northern Kingdom of Israel passed out of existence as a result of Assyrian conquest.” (Rev. Dr. William Carl, III, “Tickets for Tarshish,” 11-09-08, Day1.org)
And the Assyrians were brutal. This is the translation of an Assyrian War Bulletin from around 1000 B.C. “I destroyed, I demolished, I burned. I took their warriors prisoner and impaled them on stakes before their cities…flayed the nobles, as many had rebelled, and spread their skins out on the piles [of dead corpses]…many of the captives I burned in a fire. Many I took alive; from some I cut off their hands to write, from others I cut off their noses, ears and fingers; I put out the eyes of many of the soldiers.” Another account reads, “I slew two hundred and sixty men; I cut off their heads and made pyramids thereof. I slew one of every two. I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chief men of the rebels, and I covered the wall with their skins. Some of them were enclosed alive in the bricks of the wall, some of them were crucified on stakes along the wall; I caused a great multitude to be flayed in my presence, and I covered the wall with their skins. I gathered together the heads in the form of crowns, and their pierced bodies in the form of garlands.” (Assyrian War Bulletin (1000 B.C.), TimeFrame 1500-600 BC by Time-Life Books, www.public.iastate.edu/~cfford/342worldhistoryearly.html)
Jonah is sent to speak God’s grace to people who have done these kinds of atrocities to his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. For hundreds of years, generation after generation, Assyria had been beating up on Israel. They were the bully. Israel, the people of God, hated Assyrians.
Sadly, it is not hard to think of modern day illustrations of the same kinds of atrocities being committed by one group against another group.
Jonah’s problem with going to Nineveh is that he knows what God is like. Jonah does not want to go to Nineveh because Jonah knows God is going to speak grace through him to THEM. Jonah’s problem is that he knows that God gives second chances. (Moan/groan) Really? Really, God? Amazing grace is not a sweet sound when it saves wretches like THEM.
Everything was fine, it made sense. The Assyrians have been horrible to the Israelites. The Israelites are the people of God. The Israelites hate the Assyrians. The Assyrians are not the people of God. Jonah doesn’t want God to speak grace to them. No, they are the “NOT people of God.”
And so the first time God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah boarded a ship headed the opposite direction – to Tarshish, going due West, when Nineveh was due East. And you know the story, a storm brews and the swells are so massive that the verb translated as rowing is actually digging with the oars, and Jonah says, “It’s me.” Storms, remember, represent chaos, sin, and evil. So they finally, after some reluctance, throw him overboard, and the waters still.
Jonah should be over right then and there. But, a big fish swallows him and three days later throws him up on the shore. Grace abounds; he is saved from a watery grave, set back on dry land. Slimy and stinky now, but alive.
And the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time. He has not escaped it. He boarded a ship headed the opposite direction, he plummeted to the depths of the ocean, and as he coughs and sputters and wipes the fish vomit from his eyes and nose and mouth, and the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time with an unsympathetic yet fully understanding and disappointed, “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. Sulking, I imagine, as he went, mumbling to himself, “What choice do I have? You’re going to tell me the message. I know what it will be, same as you always send, ‘repent, change, I still love you, I want to be reconciled,’ I’ll be lucky if they don’t kill me on sight and stick my head on a pole in the center of the city. And God loves them – grace, really, amazing.”
When Jonah arrives he walks in the city, and he preaches ,what is in Hebrew, a 5-word sermon, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
The Ninevites believe God, they are all fasting, and everyone, from the king to the tiniest, poorest baby with only a rag for a diaper puts on sackcloth.
The Ninevites assume a posture of humility. They discipline themselves fasting. When you are fasting, you think about food, and every time you think about food you turn your thoughts to God. They tear their clothes and put on these itchy, uncomfortable sackcloths made from black goat hair. They lie prostrate on the ground and heap ashes upon the head and then sit in the dust. Even the king did, and he issued a proclamation that all Ninevites would, even the animals would. So, no animal could eat or drink and even the animals had sackcloth to cover them.
Jonah has seen it all. And so has God. And God insists on showing mercy to whomever God chooses. God is a God of second chances, for everybody. So, God sees how they turned from their evil ways and changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
The story is not over for Jonah, just like it is not over for us. Jonah has a hard time with God’s grace extending even to people who were wicked, who were mean and violent, who had hatred in their hearts and actions, who had done horrid things and laughed about it. Jonah is angry; I can relate. He prays, “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 (and he quotes from Exodus the description of God that is revealed to Moses at Mt. Sinai), I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Shoot me now; I knew you’d forgive them.
There is a little Jonah in all of us. It is hard to accept that God is the God of second chances for all of the people in the world. But, God is. God’s example in the face of atrocity is to pray, “Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” God’s response to Jonah’s anger, God’s response to us when we are so hurt we want to destroy and not seek to redeem, “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?”
God is a God of second chances, for all. Amazing grace. Amen.