The Rev. Paul L. Gaston +
January 25, 2015
Third Sunday After Epiphany
& The Conversion of St. Paul
Learning from a Negative Example
January 24/25, 2015
All our lessons today convey a sense of urgency. There is something that needs to be done—and we are
called on to do it.
Our collect speaks of our answering the call of Jesus “readily” to “proclaim to all people the Good News of
his salvation.”
St. Paul, whose conversion we commemorate on this, his feast day, reminds us that “the appointed time
has grown short.” Because “the present form of this world is passing away,” we are to live as though the end of
time is upon us. We should live in perfect indifference to a world that will soon end.
And Jesus summons his disciples with a similar message. Leave what you’re doing and follow me because
“the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”
In the context of these urgent messages we have in our service leaflet a few lines from the remarkable story
of Jonah. They are as follows:
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, "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, according to the word of the LORD. . . . And he
cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they
proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned
from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did
not do it.
In these few lines, Jonah appears as an obedient servant of God, a prophet who successfully warns the
great city of Nineveh that it must give up its evil ways so as to be spared God’s wrath. But these lines hardly hint at
what Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.” For the Book of Jonah is above all about someone who does
everything possible to disobey God, to avoid the call he is given. This entertaining story describes a stubborn man
who disagrees with God’s priorities, decides not to follow God’s command, and shows himself incapable of
learning very much from what he experiences.
A quick summary of the story: God wants Jonah to warn the great city of Nineveh that its wickedness will
lead to its destruction. But Jonah wants nothing more than to see Nineveh destroyed. He thinks he can escape
God’s command by leaving God’s Holy Land, so he pays his fare and boards a ship. As you will probably recall,
God shows his displeasure with a “mighty storm.” When the sailors begin to suspect the reason for God’s anger,
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they throw Jonah overboard. “But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah.” The experience of
spending three days in the belly of the fish finally prompts Jonah to pray, and Jonah’s prayer results in his release
from the fish. The Bible says, “it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.”
And so God says, “Jonah, shall we try this again?” And Jonah does as he is told in the verses we heard.
And Nineveh is saved. But the best part of the story is still to come.
Jonah is infuriated by God’s sparing Nineveh. “Kill me now,” he says. But God says, “Is it right for you to
be angry?” Still holding out hope that God will punish Nineveh, Jonah finds a vantage point outside of the city so
that he can watch.
God is not through with Jonah. He causes a large bush to grow. It gives Jonah shade and makes him
happy. But when the bush withers and the sun grows hot, Jonah once again says, “I’d rather die than live.”
By this point it appears that God has become amused with Jonah. “You’re angry?” he asks the obviously
furious Jonah. “Angry enough to die,” Jonah responds. Then God says, “No, you’re not angry. You’re concerned
about the bush, just as I am concerned about Nineveh.” Fortunately, we hear no more from Jonah.
The story is memorable for several reasons. It demonstrates that God’s authority is by no means place
bound. Even the pagan sailors have more respect for God’s power than Jonah. And it reminds us that the message
of “repent and be saved” echoes throughout the Old Testament in anticipation of John the Baptist’s cry in the
wilderness. I believe the story even shows that God can have a sense of humor.
But the story of Jonah speaks to us today in the context of our other lessons for an entirely different
reason. Jonah is a laughingstock precisely because he is the consistently negative example. By his disobedience, his
hatred, and his anger, he is the very model of what we must strive not to become. It is as though the author is
saying, “pay close attention to what Jonah does and do the exact opposite.”
For instance, there is Jonah’s nutty belief that God’s authority is somehow limited by geographical
boundaries. We may see that as foolish, but we ourselves act at times as though God’s presence were somehow
enclosed by the walls of this church. A post-communion prayer I like asks that God “grant that when we leave thy
house we may not leave thy presence, but be thou ever near unto us and keep us near unto thee.” That means not
separating our lives in the church from our lives in the world—or vice-versa.
Second, there is Jonah’s self-centered insistence that his prejudices somehow make more sense than the
love of God. Jonah knows God to be “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” As
our hymn says, God is “slow to chide and swift to bless.” But Jonah disagrees. And so do others. Back in the
1960s, there were churches in the South that served as centers for resistance to integration. Self-defined
Christians would rise from their knees, walk outside, and shout their hatred to those working for civil rights. The
Ku Klux Klan even today professes to honor and defend what it describes as Christian principles. Its symbol is a
burning cross.
We must understand, as Jonah did not, that while God’s love and compassion and forgiveness are far
greater that ours could be, they are the standards we try to follow. Unlike Jonah, we must avoid projecting our
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prejudices and grudges on God, as though God were somehow a mirror of our imperfect selves. It appears from
their statements that the family that sponsors the so-called Westboro Baptist Church church imagine that they are
serving a God as homophobic and as cruel as they are. That is a terrible mistake to make. That is the mistake
Jonah makes. Even when he reluctantly agrees to do as God commands, Jonah remains hateful. When Nineveh
turns away from evil, Jonah scolds God, “I told you so.”
Finally, we observe from the example of Jonah that while going through the motions of obedience to God
may be preferable to outright disobedience, it does not confer any sense of grace or purpose or direction. After
taking God’s message of warning to Nineveh, Jonah is the same curmudgeon that he was before. His example
reminds us that if we are to grow spiritually and to find favor with God, we must conform not only our actions,
but also our wills and desires to the divine will.
And how are we to do that? We do what Jonah did not do. We listen. We pray. We examine our own
prejudices and desires and ask God’s grace in overcoming them. And we exchange the isolation in which Jonah
lives for faith in community. Unlike Jonah, who consults no one and considers no one, we are members of a
church that teaches us through scripture, liturgy, and fellowship. While our awareness of God’s will is always
imperfect, we find more assurance in that awareness when our discernment occurs as two or three are gathered
together, when our discernment is informed by the experiences of the patriarchs, the prophets, the disciples,
when our discernment lifts us out of our solitary selves so that we may be attentive and respectful.
If we discern properly, we will begin to understand and to share that sense of urgency we hear in all our
lessons today. We will begin to see our responsibility to act in accordance with that sense of urgency. As our
collect says, we must answer the call of Jesus to “proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation.” As St.
Paul says, we should live as though the end of time is upon us. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has
come near,” Jesus says.
Unless we think that a three-day sojurn in a fish’s belly would offer a welcome respite from the winter
weather, we should recall the example of Jonah as one to be avoided and, unlike Jonah, start paying attention.