Jonah: A story of God's extravagant love and Costly Grace
Sermon I gave on Tuesday September 26, 2023
As a child, I loved the Jonah story. I mean what’s not to like: a giant whale coming out of nowhere to eat the main character, animals dressed in sackcloth, and the main character being so angry over the death of a plant that he is willing to die. Jonah is a very funny story. And as a child I loved how each children’s book had a different take on the giant fish, and how they accentuated the absurdity. I was less thrilled with some of the interpretations of my Sunday school teachers.
The focus of the interpretations I heard as a child and to be often still hear, tend to focus on how awful Jonah was and extolling us to be better than Jonah or else we would face God’s wrath. To be sure, that is a valid interpretation. Jonah is written as incredibly selfish and cowardly. Plus, another absurdity of the story: how did he think he could run away from God? While some people during his time period may have believed that the gods were bound to specific areas or to controlling specific functions of nature, the God of the Hebrew Bible, is overwhelmingly presented as one who exists outside of the confines of time and space, and who controls over all. So running away from God is typically not a good idea.
Yet focusing only on how horrible Jonah is, ignores the larger message about the need for repentance, and a God whose extravagant love leads them to chase after us and a God who calls us to re-evaluate our understandings of justice and mercy.
I also want to take a minute to defend Jonah a bit and I also want to briefly call out and push back against some Chritian interpretations of the book of Jonah that reinforce anti-semitism.
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, in his book, entitled, The Book of Jonah: a Social Justice Commentary explains that some early Christian commentators interpreted the book of Jonah as evidence of Christianity's superiority. Rabbi Dr. Yanklowitz, explains, and I quote, “they” (early Christian commentators) suggest that Jonah rejects God’s call to Nineveh to repent because the people of Nineveh were not Jewish. For them Jonah was the quintessential ethnocentric tribalist that Christianity comes to uproot and replace-a critique of the affluent and self-centered Jews living in Jerusalem during the time of the early kings of Israel...”. End quote.
This interpretation of Jonah, which sadly is not regulated just to early Christian commentators but can still be found preached from today’s pulpits and in some fairly recent Christian commentaries needs to be rejected. Any interpretation that denigrates Judaism is a distortion of the Biblical text and needs to be firmly called out and discarded.
In addition, I feel like Jonah gets an overly bad rap. I argue that while it was incredibly silly to try and outrun God, his reasons for rejecting the mission make sense. Jonah didn’t run away because he had a personal spat with a few Assyrians. He wasn’t running away because he thought only Jewish people should be allowed to repent and find God’s grace. But Nineveh was the capital of the powerful Assyrian Empire. And while all empires have different cultural characteristics based on their time period: empires across history tend to have a few things in common and that includes: conquest, and oppression over those they have conquered.
Empires, including modern ones, (cough cough) typically don’t gain their power and wealth because they are somehow morally better than those they conquer or because they nonviolently persuade others to fall under their command. Empires use various forms of violence and terror to gain power and the Assyrian empire was no different.
A quick google search brings forth both academic and nonacademic sources detailing the brutality of the Assyrian empire. I will spare you the gory details, but it is sufficient to say that Assyrian domination and consolidation of power did not occur because the Assyrians asked nicely.
As a result, I don’t fault Jonah for desiring God’s wrath to fall down on the Assyrian empire rather than risking that they would repent and receive God’s mercy. And to be frank, those on the receiving end of oppression are allowed to be angry at their oppressors. Dare, I say it, they are allowed to cry and call out for the overthrow of their oppressors. After all, there are numerous stories within both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in which God either promises to overthrow oppressors and liberate the marginalized or actually does so. Plus, i a good majority of the book of Psalms is about demonstrating anger over one’s oppressors and enemies and asking God to overthrow them. I believe Jonah’s reactions is very understandable and human.
It’s very tempting to look at the story of Jonah and use it to try and silence the anger and voices of the oppressed. “Oh the story of Jonah is about forgiving our enemies and allowing God to save them.” Ok, meanwhile those on the receiving end of oppression are left to say? What about us? What about our liberation?”
Some Christians have used the concepts of forgiveness and grace not to bring about liberation and justice, but to benefit those on the receiving end of the oppressive status quo. I’m going to say it again. The concepts of forgiveness and grace have been weaponized in ways to silence the marginalized while allowing the cycle of injustice and abuse to continue.
Stories, like that of Jonah, are interpreted in ways that reinforce cheap grace. What is cheap grace? Well, the term cheap grace was coined by Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He termed the phrase in reference to white US Christians tolerance and even endorsement of white supremacy and Jim Crow. Dietrich Bonhoffer, known for his outspoken resistance against the Nazis and his eventual martyrdom, attended Powell’s church and continued to build and expand the concept. Bonhoffer argued that while God’s grace was free, it was not cheap.
Bonhoffer explained, and I quote. “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate...” end quote. For Bonhoffer we are called to embrace and embody what he called costly grace. Costly grace meant following Jesus. Costly grace yes advocated for the forgiveness of the sinner, but it did so while also condemning sin. Costly grace demanded repentance.
The book of Jonah, does NOT embody cheap grace. Instead, in the passage right before today’s reading we see the Assyrians repent-every single living being in Nineveh repents, even the cattle. Can you imagine a sheep wearing a sackcloth and fasting? But of course, the point in this exaggeration is to demonstrate the level of repentance. And to be honest, knowing how cruel and violent the Assyrian empire was-that level of repentance and sorrow was necessary.
In the last few years, a lot of Churches have talked about the necessity of reconciliation. They talk a lot about the divisions of our country-divisions along racial/ethnic lines, economic class, and political beliefs. And it is true, our country is becoming increasingly polarized. Some people assert our polarization is on the same level as the polarization that occurred during the Civil War. That doesn’t bode well for our country.
However, the talk about reconciliation often falls flat. Preaching reconciliation without repentance reinforces injustice, it doesn’t put a stop to it. In order for reconciliation to occur in the US, there needs to be hard conversations regarding racial injustice and economic exploitation. Saying I’m sorry is not enough. Having beautiful reconciliation church services are not enough. If our structures of injustice remain in place, then reconciliation is impossible. We might get pacification, in which tensions are pushed further underground, ignored and left to simmer, until they explode to the service in a couple of months or a few years. But we will not get peace, we will not get reconciliation.
It’s tempting to look at the Assyrians and say, but the United States is different. Our nation does not need to repent. We have laws, we have rights, even in war we have rules of engagement. But remember what I said earlier. Empires may differ in specifics, but when it comes to earning and maintaining wealth and power they do so at the expense of the most vulnerable. We see this every day. In the continued attempts to pass legislation that gloss over the US’ long history of racial injustice, in the continued stripping away of the Voting Rights Act, in the dehumanization of undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, in the allowance of police brutality to continue unabated, in the cutting of what little economic safety net we have in order to feed the mechanisms of war.
The US, as a nation, needs to repent and those who benefit from the societal structures that deem some lives are worth more than others, also need to repent. Individually, we need to ask ourselves if we benefit from the oppression of others and we need to repent and change.
But you may say, “Ok Naiomi, we get it. repentance is necessary. But in the Biblical text the Assyrians repented. Jonah was being so hard hearted. He disobeyed God. He didn’t want them to repent.He gives a lackluster call for repentance and then he throws a fit over a dying tree rather than the thought of hundreds of thousands of people facing God’s wrath. And God calls him out. You need to talk about that.” Fine. I will. But I am going to give it a slight twist. Instead of condemning Jonah and using this passage to lecture people on the receiving end of injustice to just be quiet and forgive, I am going to talk about how God’s expansive love nudges us towards an understanding that brings liberation for all. And liberation very rarely, if ever, comes with the total destruction of human life.
True God calls Jonah out, but unlike in other Biblical texts where God reacts harshly to disobedience or even the mere questioning of God’s demands, in this text, God allows Jonah to be mad. God doesn’t strike Jonah down with a skin condition like God is described as doing when Miriam and Aaron questioned Moses’ leadership. Jonah also doesn’t meet some of the disasters that for example, the Biblical text says befell the Israelites in the wilderness when they refused to obey God. The various Biblical texts emphasize different aspects of God’s character based on what the author wishes to convey.
And in the book of Jonah, the author is seeking to describe God’s extravagant love and grace. I mean even the giant fish swallowing Jonah is a demonstration not only of the author’s sense of humor but is meant to convey God’s love and grace. Instead of letting Jonah drown, God saves Jonah and gives him space to think and process his next step and God’s calling for him. I’m sure most of us would prefer a less disgusting atmosphere to process and think about a calling God gives us that we don’t particularly want to do.
But even after Jonah gets spit out, his attitude still reflects anger. And again I already stated, I personally don’t blame Jonah. Did I mention how horrible the Assyrian Empire was? But God keeps on pressing Jonah to reconsider his understanding of God’s justice and mercy. Because let’s face it, it isn’t doesn’t seem fair that the Assyrians got to spend however many centuries they were in existence, wrecking havoc and causing destruction only for God to offer them the chance to change and repent. Jonah’s understanding of justice is one that says that the Assyrians need to experience the same level of pain and destruction that they inflicted on others. But the type of justice Jonah advocates, while understandable, doesn’t actually bring about liberation for anyone. It only reinforces cycles of violence and subjugation.
Oftentimes when an empire is violently overthrown, even by those who were victims of their subjugation for centuries, the end result is a new empire established only with different people being scapegoated. We see this repeatedly throughout history: one horrific, violent empire is overthrown, and the next system of government often relies on the same methods of violence to enforce “peace.” And so a new class of people is victimized, and then they rise up, and overthrow the new empire, and then they come to power and so on.
One of the toughest aspects of advocating for a more just and equitable world is to do so without repeating the cycle of violence and destruction. It means reconsidering our notions of justice and separating justice from revenge. It means believing in a God whose love is powerful enough to transform. It means working to end injustice and tyranny while hoping for the transformation of those causing harm. It means recognizing that one of the reasons why injustice is so hard to combat is because it is so complicated and intricate. We can both be victims and perpetrators of injustice. We can be on the receiving end of one form of systemic injustice while endorsing other forms.
For example, I have Puerto Rican ancestry, and if you know even a little bit about Puerto Rico’s history, you know it is filled with genocide towards the indigenious population and the importation of enslaved people. Additionally, Puerto Rico continues to suffer the effects of colonialism as we saw after Hurricane Maria, where the island was left devastated, and where it appeared as if the US government cared more about providing subsidies and tax breaks to corporations to buy land and push out locals, then in rebuilding the island. and yet even with that continued experience of colonialism, racism still exists.
Black Puerto Ricans experience discrimination at the hands of lighter-skinned Puerto Ricans who often not only endorse individual acts of racism but also systemic racism. We can be both victims of injustice and its perpetrators. Recognizing that reality can hopefully help us realize that what will stop injustice is not the absolute total annihilation of those doing harm, but their transformation, their repentance. Or in many cases OUR transformation. OUR repentance.
A critical and honest examination of history leads us to acknowledge that at various points in time we have been both Jonah and the Assyrians. And yet no matter where we find ourselves, God’s extravagant grace reaches us. God’s grace has the power to transform and liberate. It has the power to stop the cycle of destruction.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, one of the core themes is God’s challenging of the status quo often in unexpected ways. In the New Testament, Jesus, whose teachings on God are based on the version of the Hebrew Bible he had access to, talks a lot about the Kingdom of Heaven. And what does this Kingdom look like? It looks like a kingdom that is completely the opposite of earthly empires, which in the New Testament case, it was the Roman empire that was being heavily critiqued.
.The Kingdom of God was not to work alongside the Roman empire, it was to replace it. Again, the Roman empire, while there were significant differences from the Assyrian empire and other empires, based its rule on violence, inequality, and subjugation. And yet Jesus preached that despite its massive power, the Roman empire would face God’s judgment. Jesus also called his followers to reject empire values of hierarchy, violence, and tyranny. Jesus preached forgiveness and grace, and yet also the need for repentance and rejecting the systems and values of this world.
The story in Jonah presents a similar message. It calls for all of us to reject the values of this world which favor: violence, oppression, and death. God calls each of us to value life. Again, I don’t think the Jonah story should be reduced to, “Jonah was a horrible person and people who refuse to forgive their oppressors are horrible and just like him.” Instead, it is a story of God’s love and an example of how God nudges all of us toward a path of liberation. And we each have to make a decision about whether we will follow God’s calling or reject it.
Image: Blue ocean background with two images of whales. Text: Jonah is a story of God’s love and an example of how God nudges all of us toward a path of liberation. And we each have to make a decision about whether we will follow God’s calling or reject it.