The Urge to Flee Jonah, Matthew 5:43-46

Batman says to Robin,
"O.K. Robin, I want you to march right into the Joker's hideout
and let him know someone cares and that if he'll just say he's sorry
I'll put in a good word with the commissioner, no hard feelings."
The Lone Ranger says to Tonto,
"We caught those rustlers red-handed, Tonto.
Let's ride straight into their camp and let them know
that if they put the horses back where they found them all is forgiven."
God says to Jonah, "Go at once to Nineveh....""
Holy injustice, Batman! Have you been in the Bat Cave too long?
"Ho, Kimosabe, have you been smoking a little tumbleweed?"
What are you thinking, God? If I go to Nineveh they'll surely kill me,
and if they don't kill me they might repent!
Then what?

It's part of our fallen human condition that we have to have enemies.
If we can't find them we manufacture them.
If we don't have an enemy to blame for our misfortunes,
if we don't have a bitter foe to whom we can direct all our frustration
then we might have to blame ourselves, and that's no good!
The problem is, this preoccupation we have with enemies is like standing too close
to a beautiful mosaic. We tend to obsess on one fragment of tile
and miss the larger, grander design.

When we first meet Jonah, it's at the point of his initial charge.
God says to him, "Go to Nineveh, for their wickedness has come up before me."
Now, you might think Jonah would be happy to deliver
God's message to the Ninevites.
After all, they were Assyrians, residents of the capital city of the country
that had overwhelmed tiny Judah and Israel with military intimidation
and taxed them almost into oblivion.
But instead, Jonah ran.
God wanted him to go East.

He hopped a boat going about as far West as one could go in those days.
But it's not until chapter 4 that we learn the real reason that Jonah ran
In chapter 4, after he has been swallowed and regurgitated by the fish,
after he has reluctantly gone to Nineveh and had a greater response
than he could have imagined,
THEN he says to God, "See! See! THAT'S why I ran toward Tarshish!
THAT'S why I wanted no part of preaching your message.
Because I KNEW, I KNEW that you are a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,
AND ready to relent from punishing!"

Jonah's tale is the kind of tale a jester might present for the King's amusement.
It's full of humor and unexpected reversals but also deep truth.
Jonah's story is a tangle of unexpected twists, things we don't see coming.
There’s that thing about going West when God says to go East.
Next the foreign sailors on his ship
turn out to be more devout than he, the prophet.
Then Jonah gets swallowed by a big fish,
and instead of being upset, it's the only time in the whole story
that he expresses gratitude to God instead of whining and sulking.

Jonah finally goes to Nineveh, but he obeys in the most minimal way.
He just walks down Main Street yelling that in 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown.
A trained parrot could do as much.
But his success is overwhelming, if you want to call it success.
The Ninevites, all the way up to the king and all the way down to the livestock,
tear their garments and sit in ashes and repent of their sins.

You'd think he'd be happy, you'd think he'd feel proud,
but remember, Jonah has lost an enemy,
and a good enemy is a valuable commodity.
A good enemy must be cultivated, nursed over time.
It’s hard to invest so much hate in an enemy
and then have that investment suddenly taken away.

What is it that we are to take from this fish story?
The Lectionary readings use this story of Jonah’s reluctance to follow God’s command
as a backdrop for the story of Jesus calling his first disciples
and their eagerness to drop everything and follow him.

Others want to make this story into more of a mandate for evangelism.
They make it a motivational speech about the responsibility we all have
to spread the good news of God’s love to the four corners of the Earth.
Both of these are legitimate themes worthy of attention.
But I've clearly chosen a third alternative.

I've chosen to emphasize the enemy angle,
to marvel at the fact that God commanded Jonah, a Jew
to take a chance for God’s mercy to his arch enemies, the Ninevites.
And I’ve chosen to highlight Jonah’s response
to God’s tendency to blur the distinction between enemy and friend.
His response, of course, was to get angry.

Most all of us have the tendency to construct our own version of reality,
to decide how things are and then marshal evidence to support our views.
To Jonah, Ninevites were bad, pure and simple.
Hadn’t they as a nation trampled weaker nations in a drive for world dominance?
Hadn’t they as a nation shown no mercy in pushing their agenda?
Israel and Judah had tried to resist the Assyrians and that didn’t work
but if they couldn’t fight them they could at least let them stew in their own sin!

Most all of us have the tendency to construct our own version of reality,
Of course, we also tend to ignore the evidence that supports a different view.
We don’t want to hear anything that contradicts what we’ve already decided.
We’ll go to great lengths to preserve our cherished notions
even when a little voice inside is telling us there might be more to the picture
than just the stark blacks and whites we’re so fond of.

Jonah was willing even to be thrown into the sea rather than face his sworn enemy.
But God, in God’s mercy, didn’t abandon Jonah to his stubbornness.
God sent the big fish to turn Jonah around.
God didn’t force Jonah to go to Ninevah.
God simply made it too costly for Jonah NOT to obey.
God showed to Jonah the very forgiveness that Jonah knew God had in store
for the Ninevites and, as mad as it made him,
he couldn’t help but be grateful.
He couldn’t help but go.

I grew up watching Batman and the Lone Ranger,
Gunsmoke and Hawaii 5-0.
Today teenagers play video games with titles like Doom and Mortal Combat
with all too realistic graphics of bloody fights.
What the old TV shows and the new video games have in common
is that the let us indulge our fantasy that the world can be divided
into white hats and black hats, good guys and bad.
They nourish our need for enemies
and assure us that we're on the right side.

If it was just reserved to television or video games it wouldn't be so bad
but nobody needs a scorecard to know
that this trait we have of playing innocent while we paint the other guy evil
carries over into our politics AND our personal lives.

Joppa, the port city from which Jonah tried to run away from God,
is the site of the modern-day capital of Israel – Tel Aviv.
That’s where I’ll be landing in a little over a week
to begin my two week tour of Israel.
That’s also where a member of the militant Islamic Jihad organization
blew himself up Thursday in a fast food restaurant injuring 16 people.

I bring this up not because I’m having second thoughts about going,
but because it helps put into stark relief just what God was asking Jonah to do
and why Jonah felt such an overwhelming urge to flee.
You’ve seen the struggle – the checkered history of tit-for-tat violence
in the area some call Israel and some call Palestine.
They've got this enemy-making instinct down pat!

So, for God to ask Jonah to go to Ninevah
is literally like asking an Orthodox member of the Likud party of Israel
to take a message of salvation and hope to an Al-Qaida cell in Baghdad.
But that’s what God asks.
And God’s asks it of Jonah as much for Jonah’s sake as for the Ninevites.
The Ninevites respond to God’s mercy.
But by the time the story ends we still don’t know if Jonah can.

Jonah’s story is a humorous story with a sharp point.
It hit’s you and me squarely where we live,
forcing us to consider those whom we call our enemies
and what God may be asking of us.
Later today at our retreat, the Session will be studying the final report
of the Presbyterian church’s "Peace, Unity, and Purity" Commission.
This is the commission of twenty Presbyterians from across the theological spectrum
who have met together for four years to try to sort out
how God is calling us to quit making enemies of one another.
The reality is that it took four years of meeting, of studying the Bible together,
of sharing communion for them to be able to let go of their preconceived notions
and find their common connection in Christ.

Our community has been troubled recently by a clash of different world views.
Each side of this struggle has cast the other side as the enemy.
It’s understandable. It feels like there’s a lot at stake.
The question for Christians though, is how is God calling us to see the situation
in light of what we know of God’s penchant for forgiveness and peace.

Letting go of our enemies is tough.
Surely a little hate in our hearts isn’t TOO much to ask!
But there it is, plain as day - those words Jesus said to his disciples
in the sermon on the mount.
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
But I say to you, 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be children of your Father in heaven,
for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good."
The Ninevites responded to God’s mercy.
Now the question is, "Can we?"