Sunday, January 25, 2015 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.

God’s Humor

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 62:5–12
Selections from Jonah 3

We confess you to be a God who calls, who wills, who summons, who has concrete intentions for your creation, and addresses human agents to do your will. . . . As we seek to answer your call, may we be haunted by your large purposes.

Walter Brueggemann

Did you know that in the lectionary—the Scriptures assigned for each Sunday throughout the year—Jonah only shows up as the main Old Testament reading once every three years? And unlike Isaiah or Jeremiah or even odd Ezekiel, the lectionary does not space out his story over a series of weeks. It just plops him down, one time in January, every three years.

And yet it does kind of fit him. Poor Jonah. He is a minor prophet, the fifth one in a series of twelve in the Old Testament. His whole story takes only four chapters to tell. We might almost want to feel sorry for him. But it is hard to feel too sorry for him because he is funny. As a matter of fact, some scholars are convinced that one reason Jonah’s story is included in scripture is to help us laugh (see John Holbert, Thomas Currie, etc.). Fred Buechner wrote that Jonah’s story is one of the rare scriptural instances of God’s wry humor (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures). Jonah’s story is serious satirical comedy. But in order to appreciate it, we need to do a recap.

Act 1

God says to Jonah, “Hey Jonah, get up. I need you to do something for me. Nineveh is getting way out of hand. Greed and nastiness are running the show. The people in charge are out of control. They are using and abusing anything and anyone they can get their hands on. It is ‘trickle down’ exploitation at its finest. Jonah, I need you to go and tell them that I know what they are doing.”

In response, Jonah gets up, just as God commanded. But then, instead of heading to Nineveh, he marches right down to the dock on the Mediterranean Sea and boards a ship going in the exact opposite direction as God’s command. God said head east to Nineveh. But Jonah heads west to Tarshish. Now, did he go that direction because the people in Tarshish were less corrupt? Did he think they would be more hospitable? We have no idea. My hunch, however, is that Jonah did not care if they were less corrupt and more hospitable. All he cared about was that they were not Ninevites. For you see, the Ninevites were on Jonah’s list.

You know what list I am talking about, don’t you? It is the secret or, in Jonah’s case, the not-so-secret enemy list. It is the list we all carry around with us, whether we admit it or not. It is the list that has on it the kid from third grade who humiliated you every day on the playground, along with the names of the middle school “in group” who ostracized you in the lunchroom. It is the list with the names of those whose political or theological convictions are just so completely opposite of your own that you can barely even articulate your distaste and maybe disgust with where they stand. That is the list I am taking about. So in this church space, let’s be honest, we’ve all got one, don’t we.

I imagine that if it were just you and me, you would be able to give me at least three names off of your secret enemy list. You might even be able to tell me where they sit on a pew or where they work, their feelings about the upcoming mayoral election here in Chicago or their stance on the protests that followed Ferguson. Or perhaps you would tell me the name of the parent who hit more than they hugged, or the name of the acquaintance who stole your innocence and trust. Those names would be on the list, too, attached with great pain. Most, if not all, of us probably have a secret enemy list—although given what I sometimes read on Facebook and on other social media platforms, I’m not so sure many of our lists are all that secret anymore. I’m also not so sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Jonah would have probably blogged about who was on his list and published the top five reasons he hated them. He had zero motivation to keep it secret, and the Ninevites were enemy number one. He could not stand the sight of them or even the way the word Nineveh felt in his mouth. Now, Jonah had excellent reasons for such a strong reaction. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire—the empire that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and held the southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal state for almost one hundred years (Beth Tanner, “Commentary on Jonah 3:1–5, 10,” www.workingpreacher.org, 25 January 2009, http://bit.ly/1C7twJ2).

One biblical scholar claims the word Assyria became shorthand for brutality in the ancient world, perhaps like ISIS has become for us. “The Assyrian Chronicles,” writes Callie Plunket-Brewton, “describe horrendous acts of torture which were employed to create fear and, thus, submission in the enemies of the empire” (Callie Plunket-Brewton, “Commentary on Jonah 3:1–5, 10,” www.workingpreacher.org, 22 January 2012, www.bit.ly/1CYDqtf). Nineveh stood for everything that the Jewish people detested and dreaded. Yet God tells Jonah to go his enemies and to preach to them. But Jonah decides God is crazy if God thinks Jonah is going to go and do that. So he runs down to the dock and boards the boat to Tarshish.

Act 2

The big storm arises on the sea. It is such a big storm that even the ship itself threatens to break up (remember, this is satire). The sailors cannot figure out what is going on until Jonah finally confesses to them he is fleeing from God. They don’t want any part of that so they toss him overboard to save their own skins and to appease the storm. In response, God provides a large fish to save Jonah’s life by swallowing him up.

And while Jonah is sitting in the belly of the fish, he finally decides to start preaching. And he launches into this very-well-put-together sermon—a sermon, by the way, that uses the first-person singular (I, me, or my) twenty-six times in eight verses, even though it is theoretically a psalm of thanksgiving for what God has done. Sounds like Jonah the preacher might have been just a tad narcissistic. The fish must have thought so too, because as soon as Jonah says Amen, the fish coughs him up onto the beach.

Act 3

If we ever need examples of God’s extreme patience, we don’t need to look any further. As Jonah sits there covered in fish goop, God comes back to him a second time and says, “Get up, go to Nineveh, and I will tell you what to say.” So Jonah gets up and finally trudges to his enemies’ territory. And as he starts walking, he begins to reluctantly deliver his sermon. But unlike the sermon from the belly of the fish, this one is extremely short.

He walks and yells five Hebrew words over and over again that, roughly translated, mean “Forty days and Nineveh is toast.” “Forty days and Nineveh is toast.” He walks and yells and walks and yells, making his way into the center of the city. Now, we must notice his sermon is not exactly brilliant or soaring in its lofty rhetoric. It does not even reference God in any way. Furthermore, it is in Hebrew, which the Ninevites may not have even understood. And yet—and this is where humor begins to raise its head again—in direct response to Jonah’s five-word, flat and boring, foreign-language sermon, the Ninevites do the impossible.

They repent. This minor prophet preaches a minor sermon in a minor key and all these horrible, evil, worthless, enemy-number-one people immediately respond. They repent. They are willing to turn from who they have been and turn to God. They believe what Jonah says, that the direction they are headed leads only to death. But not only do they believe their destruction is on the way, they also believe if they can change course and repudiate their violent ways of living, God will give them a second chance.

So these no-good, no-account Ninevites declare a fast, put on sackcloth, and dress for full repentance. The king even takes off his royal robe to put on sackcloth and sit in ashes. They even dress the dogs and cats and cows in sackcloth. They have little puppies in sackcloth chasing little kittens in sackcloth chasing little mice in sackcloth all around the ashes. Do you hear the laughter yet? There is not another group of people in scripture who respond so quickly and completely to God’s word as the people of Nineveh. Their entire reality changes because of what God does with a minor prophet who preaches a minor sermon in a minor key.

And guess what else: the Ninevites were right in their assumption that God’s mercy could include even them. God looks and sees what has happened and God changes God’s mind. What should we think of that? Not only do the people of Nineveh change, but God changes plans and decides not to toast Nineveh after all.

Act 4

Well, we might think Jonah would be excited that the people responded to his sermon in such an over-the-top, amazing way. If he were a Southern Baptist preacher, this would be the ultimate altar call. This would be like a Billy Graham revival times a thousand. They heard the word; they repented; and they were born again. Thousands upon thousands streaming down the aisle of the revival tent singing “Just as I Am.” Jonah is on his way into the Prophets Hall of Fame.

But is Jonah happy his proclamation changed lives? No. Not one bit. Quite the contrary. Jonah is mad, mad, mad. Listen to how the Hebrew puts it: “It was evil to Jonah, a great evil, and his anger burned. ‘I knew it. I just knew it,’ Jonah huffs. ‘I knew it would turn out this way when you called me and that is why I ran away. I knew, God, that you were gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. And now, thanks to all that, I do not get a ringside seat at Nineveh’s Armageddon. I just knew you would end up loving them and showing mercy. Just let me die.’” (He’s funny.)

Jonah adeptly takes a psalm of thanksgiving for God’s mercy and love and turns it into a psalm of complaint. He is beyond aggravated because Nineveh hears the Word and changes. He is outright angry, because in the way his world works, they are not allowed to be transformed people. They are supposed to stay in their place on his list—enemies, people he could not stand to talk to, look at, associate with, or even share the same air with.

But they messed all that up by having the nerve to change. And then, as if that were not enough to completely torpedo Jonah’s worldview, God changes God’s mind. Once again God lets God’s mercy be the last word and God welcomes them home. So the people of Nineveh change the way they live. God changes God’s mind. But by golly, Jonah isn’t going to change one iota of anything. He would rather die than make room in his theology or religion for God’s mercy for those people.

Act 5

Jonah continues with his ranting, and by this point I think God decides to have some fun with him. Have you ever had the experience when you are in the middle of feeling mad and sorry for yourself that if someone makes you laugh, it somehow helps take away the sting? I think that is what God is trying to do for Jonah. God tries to help Jonah laugh. God watches as Jonah goes to the top of the hill to water his grievance garden and to cry in his drink. Then God causes a plant to grow up and Jonah discovers that he has a nice little shade under which he can more fully and comfortably sit and sulk. But then God causes a worm to attack the plant so it withers away, leaving Jonah’s head to bake in the hot sun. God is being playful, but Jonah cannot handle it.

Rather, Jonah grows even angrier and even more hurt. “Come on now, God. You don’t follow through with your promise to smite my enemies and now you take away my shade? Seriously, just let me die.” But God refuses to give into Jonah’s wish and responds, “Oh Jonah, let’s get some perspective, shall we? If you can feel sorry for a plant dying, can’t you feel any compassion for the Ninevites who were clueless when it came to faithful living? Can’t you feel something other than pure hatred for them? What about the cows and the puppies and the kittens and lambs? Didn’t you get a kick out of seeing all of them wearing sackcloth and ashes? It was a brilliant move by the king. Have you ever seen something so funny and so heartwarmingly earnest in your whole life?”

• • •

The End. That is where Jonah’s story ends. Right there, with God’s question. Right there, with the cliffhanger of “Did Jonah laugh?” What do you think? Do you think Jonah laughed? I hope so. I hope Jonah found his laughter. I hope Jonah realized how messed up it is when one is threatened more by God’s mercy than God’s judgment. I hope Jonah was able to release his anger and to let God be God even if it did not seem fair or even right for the Ninevites to be redeemed.

Because then maybe as his laughter came to an end and he sat next to the withered plant, he took out his enemy list and prayed it might wither up and die too. Perhaps he prayed for the same kind of extravagant mercy to wash over him as had washed over the Ninevites. Maybe Jonah was able to realize that carrying around an enemy list only hurt him as it slowly destroyed his humanity from the inside out. Perhaps Jonah came to the same conclusion that I heard writer Anne Lamott claim one evening: “You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do” (heard at an “Arts and Letters Live” presentation at the Dallas Museum of Art, 17 February 2000). That is similar to what Jonah had been doing—trying to make God small and tame and controllable.

We don’t know if any of that happened for Jonah. We don’t know if he laughed. But, just as we did for the Ninevites, we have good hope that he, too, might be saved from his own destruction. Perhaps Jonah might be able to change after all.

See—it is a funny story. A seriously funny story.