Scripture: Jonah 2:1-3:1 & Galatians 5:13-24
Given on 08/26/2018
When my older son was younger, maybe a little older than the middle one is now, we tried to introduce CS Lewis’ famed classics, The Chronicles of Narnia, to him and following an extended refusal to listen to them because Mr. Tumnus, the half fawn, half-man, who is the first character one encounters in Narnia, was naughty, he eventually set his keen sense of justice and sharp awareness of right and wrong aside and gave the books another chance. And he loved them. Before long we had finished the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and had moved on to The Horse and His Boy, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and, finally,The Last Battle. Lewis, originally conceived of the stories for his then young Goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, the daughter of a friend of Lewis’s and in the first book, the aforementioned, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis makes the central figure a young girl named Lucy who along with her two older brothers, and one older sister find their way to the mythical land of Narnia. This historical setting of the novel comes at a time in the midst of World War II in which children are being shipped out of London and into the English countryside to persons and families willing to adopt them in the midst of the Blitzkrieg from the German Luftwaffe. In the story, Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter are adopted by a professor who lives by himself in a large and old house, save the presence of a housekeeper, Ms. Macready. Because of this arrangement, the children find themselves in a bleak place, away from their mother, their father serving in the war, and in a strange house with no other kids and interactions amongst themselves as a source of entertainment. At this point in the story, both Lucy, the youngest, and Edmund, the next youngest, have found their way to Narnia and returned home. Lucy, with the excitement of childhood, can’t wait to tell everyone about it. Edmund, cautious after the others presume Lucy to be making up stories, remains silent about his own time in Narnia, until while playing Cricket, the kids break an old stain glass window and the housekeeper comes after them.It should be of note that it is the youngest children who first have the vision to see and get to Narnia and it is only in a time of extreme stress that the older ones are able to get there. From this point forward in the novels, Narnia is only accessible during times of great struggle, times of darkness, in which the only escape is through the portal to Narnia. Lewis, in his wisdom, made the hope and salvation that is found in the place of Narnia only possible when those trying to get there have abandoned all other sense of hope, all other foundations of the past and are able to cast themselves headlong into the a situation that they believe to be otherwise impossible. Held to this side of creation by the belief that the end is bleak, they can never see the hope found in Narnia. It is only when stripped of any pretense of faith in this world can they truly enter into the world that God has prepared for them.
We are told the the word of God came to Jonah to go and preach to the city of Nineveh, to proclaim it evil, and call on all the residents of the city to repent before God and plead for God’s mercy. This is not, as we know, what Jonah did. And because we often sanitize bible stories, we turn episodes like this into children’s tales, made for felt boards in Sunday school classrooms, so much so, that we often use an almost cartoonish rendering of Jonah being swallowed by big fish and spit out back onto dry land. But, in doing so we often miss that the actual power in the story, the greater threat to Jonah’s life was not on a stormy sea, nor in the belly of a fish, but in entering the city of Nineveh altogether. The picture of the city of Nineveh was of a town in which morality did not exist and debauchery was the order of the day. Historically, it was the jewel of the great Assyrian Empire and, for a time, the largest city in the world. A trading stop on the eastern bank of the Tigris River in which sailors and caravan traders would exchange their wares with one another, make a lot of money, and then spend great portions of it, in the bars and brothels that dotted its landscape. So, too, the Assyrian Empire as a whole, was quickly becoming the largest empire in the world. By the time of the composition of Jonah, Sargon II was the Emperor of Assyria and had just ordered some 27,000 Israelites to be removed from their land and brought into a period of slavery in the Empire—what we would call the Assyrian Exile. To make matters more difficult for Jonah, this is during a period in which most cultures throughout the rest of the world were still practicing some form of polytheism in which it was believed that as countries or empires were doing battle on the physical plain, a battle was being enacted at the same time on a spiritual plain, in which the various gods did battle with one another. For Assyria to have conquered Israel would also have meant that Israel’s God had also been conquered. Thus, the order to Jonah, to walk into the heart of the city of Nineveh, in which his brothers and sisters are serving a slaves to the wealthy and powerful and declare their actions, their whole way of life, to be an abomination before a loser God who had just been defeated warring against with the powerful Assyrian gods was a best an opportunity for Jonah to experience derision and humiliation and at worst, a death sentence. This perhaps makes Jonah’s decision to hop the next boat for Tarshish an understandable one.
The scripture for this morning comes as the culmination of a series of unfortunate events in which God tries to steer Jonah back to the city of Nineveh through increasingly forceful measures that end up with Jonah thrown into the water by the crew of a ship bound for Tarshish in hopes that God’s punishment will relent. As Jonah hits the water, the storm immediately passes away and the ship is able to sail on for its destination, leaving Jonah somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the water. And you have to imagine that this felt like rock bottom for Jonah. With no sense that he would ever be able to get back to land, no sense that he would ever be able to get back home. Just floating along in the water. And while there is no timeframe given for Jonah’s being swallowed by the large fish, one has to believe that each moment prior to that swallowing was one in which all of Jonah’s thoughts turned to his decision to not listen to the word of God as it spoke to him. His choice to cower in fear, to run in the opposite direction from Nineveh, all in hopes of escaping the call of God on his life.
We are told that sometime, following his being deposited into the water, Jonah is swallowed by a large fish and again, we tend to sanitize these stories for children and so most artistic renderings of the event suggest that the fish is big enough for Jonah to walk around in its belly, big enough that Jonah is not wholly enveloped by the stomach of the fish, so that he is just hanging out in the fish for three nights and three days but, again, that seems again to miss the power of the image. Rather than simply existing in the belly of a fish like it is a large room, one must really picture Jonah as being in a belly that is only large enough to ingest the whole of his body and no more. And no light can get through so that Jonah is, in all likelihood, laying down, in the dark. In addition, it seems highly unlikely that the fish is remaining stationary this entire time. So Jonah is in the belly of the fish, completely consumed by its stomach, in the dark, with the fish presumably darting from place to place as fish are oft to do. Many, many moons ago, when my wife and I were first dating, we went to Disney World and I don’t think that I am saying anything particularly shocking when I say that I don’t typically do roller coasters. My wife, by contrast, is a mad woman who can’t get enough of them and so while I tried to fight it off for as long as possible, by riding the Winnie the Pooh ride, the slow and peaceful “It’s a Small World After All” ride, several times, Peter Pan, even Buzz Lightyear, it was only so long before we came to Space Mountain. Now, one of the things that she told me to get me on there was that Space Mountain, in comparison to other roller coasters, is a piece of cake. Ok, first, that’s nonsense. For one, you are in almost complete darkness so you can’t even begin to predict what is coming next. For another, there are plenty of twists and turns and drops and flips and speed for anyone this side of sanity and for third, you get in an incredibly tightly fitting car, presumably so that you do not slide out and fall to your death, though I was unconvinced. So to recap, near total darkness, twists and turns and flips and dives, all while in a tight and confined space. Yeah, that’s awesome. I can totally see why someone would subject themselves to such a grand time. But thinking about that harrowing experience has given me a greater appreciation for the situation in which Jonah found himself. In the dark. Cramped. In total chaos. And it is here that he is finally able to relieve himself of the trappings of his former self. Here that he is able to shed any vestiges of the life that he had known before. Here that stripped away of anything else to grab onto for security, for balance, for foundation, that Jonah calls out to God, “Those who cling to worthless idols forsake their own well-being,” Jonah says, “but i will sacrifice to you with a song of thanksgiving. I will fulfill the vow i made. Deliverance comes from God!” And with that he was spit forth back into the world to begin his new life. A life of faithful service to God.
We each have some measure of faith or another. To exist in this world as a fully formed human is to develop faith in something. From our earliest age, we develop faith in the comfort and care of our parents. In nature, mothers are equipped for the sustenance of those in infancy, fathers, often represent protection, safety, security. As we grow, we begin to create our own understanding of faith. Faith in our abilities. Faith in our stories. Faith in the movement of time towards something. Faith that this life, this creation is imbued with some kind of greater meaning. And it is in those earliest years that we develop the narrative, the creeds by which our lives are to be lived. For most, religion plays a key role in telling one’s story. In the Reformed tradition, we tell our own stories, and the stories of the world through various markers along the way. The creation of the universe by God. The fall of humanity from innocent and blissful connection to God. The redemption of the world through the life, death, and new life of Jesus. These are the lenses through which we interpret the events of history. As those lenses develop we begin to see them playing out across the stage of the world. The morning sunrise, the evening sunset, the sounds of waves lapping the sand, the first bird of the morning cutting slowly across the sky. The first star of the evening, piercing the gathering darkness of nightfall. All these become a gift from God. A little message of presence and hope. All these emerge in the creation, created by God. Similarly, we can see the fall of humanity splayed across the screens of our televisions, computers, phones. War and pestilence. Greed and hatred. Violence begetting violence begetting violence. Fear of the other immediately colors every interaction we have with her, with him. And in response to this brokenness, this sinfulness, the redemption of the world by God, not just of me, but of the world, can be seen in those moments in which the weight of our sinful nature is lifted off our backs, those moments when goodness overcomes hatred. When a spirit of cooperation emerges from cultures that have warred with one another for centuries. When a child whose young eyes can see with compassion far better than our own weathered ones, reaches out to the person next to them to offer a smile, a twinkle in their eye, a laugh, an instance of joy for no other reason than they are alive and infatuated with the beauty of the world around them. Those moments give us hope for the future.
So it is, in a world that challenges our ability to see the light shining in the darkness that we have been gifted by the spirit with all that we need to continually peer into the luminous darkness and see the illumination of Christ. It is faith that gives us the eyes to see, not simply the tenets of our religion but the God that dwells behind those tenets. Gives us eyes to see, not just the things that point to God, but to see God. It is faith gives us the ability to let all other things go. Individual hurts, the struggles of the past, the doubts that linger. It is faith that finally allows us to cast ourselves headlong into the chaos, into the unknown, believing that in the end we are as we have always been, children held in the hands of a loving God. And it is faith gives us hope. And Hope gives us the ability to imagine worlds much different from our own. To imagine a world in which all people are treated with love and respect. All people have enough to eat, to drink, to wear. All people have an honest chance to live the life that God has laid out for them. All people can live in peace in and amongst themselves. Hope places on display the potent force of love as the singular reality on which the whole of creation rests. Called forth from the beginning of time itself to infuse an otherwise cold and unfeeling universe with the movement from love and back to love. In our deepest dreams and visions for a new day, it is love that paints the colors on the canvas, that places the notes on the score, the molds the clay. Within the total expanse of history, in the totality of everything that happens on this pale, blue dot, it is love that emerges as the only thing that matters, more than creed, more than color, more than nationality, it is love alone that inspires us to move beyond ourselves and into the world that God has promised us. So it is that faith, and hope, and love, remain these three. And the greatest of these is love. Alleluia, amen.
*-Image credit: Jonah and the Whale by Frederick van Valckenborch (1595)
Taken from: http://www.artnet.com/artists/frederick-van-valckenborch/jonah-and-the-whale-zf0lLjoiwI7DFxFvLjhKcw2