Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide
Jonah 3:1-5
Sarah M. Foulger
4-28-13 The Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor
The fish was this big – this big! Creative exaggeration is essential to any good fish
story and the story of Jonah is no exception. Jonah is a short but mighty parable
about human bigotry and stubbornness and God’s relentless mercy. Jonah is asked
by God to go to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, to bring these rotten
people to God and he doesn’t want to do it! His heart is filled with bitterness
toward the Ninevites. He wants them to be destroyed, not saved. In his heart is the
same terrible ferocity and violence we witnessed in Boston1, indeed, the same
deadly enmity we find throughout the world, historically and currently, between:

the Tutsi and the Hutu;

the Christian and the Jew;

the Jew and the Muslim;

the Protestant and the Catholic;

the Sunni and the Shia;

the Turk and the Armenian;

the Serb and the Croat;

the Sudanese and the Chadanese…
The list is endless but it does change from time to time. When I was kid, we hated
the Russians. Now, there is life-saving cooperation between Americans and
Russians (if only we will listen). When I was a teenager, I had neighbors who
hated the Vietnamese. Some of those same neighbors are now grateful to the
Vietnamese for a robust economy that is supporting their portfolios. By the grace
of God and the knowledge that, as Jesus put it, “I have other sheep that are not of
this fold,”2 we can grow beyond our destructive bigotries.
Jonah, however, is a tough nut. Jonah is the sort of person who stubbornly resists
turning any such transformative corners. He rather enjoys hating the Ninevites and
cannot imagine what God would want with such vermin. And so, he runs as fast
and far as he can, mumbling, "Nineveh? You've got the wrong fellow!"
It would be as if God asked an Israeli citizen to go preach to the people of Iraq. In
fact, that is exactly the dynamic. The modern-day location of Nineveh is Iraq and
the enmity between these two peoples is ancient and entrenched. This is one hatred
1
2
Boston Marathon Bombings: April 15, 2013.
John 10:16.
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that has, unfortunately, not changed. The point of the story of Jonah is that God is
the God of all people, not just a privileged few or a chosen few or a well-behaved
few or the ones who pledge allegiance to Jonah’s flag or to any particular flag.
But, you see, Jonah cannot bring himself to believe any of that. He doesn’t want to
believe it. He can’t stomach the Ninevites. And that is precisely what makes him
such a powerful figure. By God’s standards, he is uniquely qualified for this job
precisely because he is that the last person on the planet you’d expect to find
helping out a Ninevite.
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This big fish story was written within the Hebrew community after the Hebrews
returned home, having been exiled and enslaved for generations. There was great
and understandable hostility among the Hebrew people after the exile, including
hatred toward those who had held them captive for so long. There was a widely
held sentiment that their captors were deserving of God's severest judgment &
punishment.
But this amazing story bravely challenged such thinking and reminded the Hebrew
people that God is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, that
God is the God of all people, loves them all, and wants to redeem them all. This
simple message is surely just as pertinent today as it was so long ago. The God we
worship is the God of all people, not just those who live where we do or wear what
we wear or eat what we eat or think as we do or believe as we do. There is no caste
system in the economy of God's love and mercy. This message is as important
today as ever: All people are God's people, God's children.
Jonah, having pronounced eight little words to the Ninevites, "Forty days more
and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" had the whole town in sackcloth and ashes,
ready to live more godly lives. In Hebrew, it was just 4 words: arba’im yom
Nineveh haphak. It was the shortest most effective sermon on record preached by
someone who had no interest in preaching it. Even Jonah, with his bad xenophobic
attitude was a productive agent of God’s mercy.
And so, when you are feeling as angry as Jonah about certain horrible groups of
people, whoever the Ninevites du jour are, may you be reminded that our judgment
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and God’s mercy are not even close. When you are ready to string up every ethnic
Chechen or Muslim who ever lived, think of the uncle of those boys who, from his
home in Maryland said,
“I love this country, this country which gives a chance to everybody else to
be treated like a human being, and to just be a human being to feel yourself
human being.”
When the very thought of your enemy throws you into the belly of the whale
where it is dark, hostile, and unbreathable, think of what Cardinal Sean O’Malley
preached in the wake of the bombings. He said, “ In our own hearts when we are
unable to forgive we make ourselves a victim of our own hatred.” Better yet, think
of what Jesus preached to a crowd that was hoping the Messiah would come along
with a big deadly sword to smite the Romans. To such as these, he preached:
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. In this way you
become God’s children. Haven’t you noticed God makes the sun rise on the evil
and on the good, and sends rain to the righteous and on the unrighteous. If you
only love those who love you…”
…well, then, you are a very small fish indeed.
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