Reluctant Discipleship John M, Buchanan
Jonah ~ Selected Portions Broad Street Presbyterian Church
January 25, 1976 Columbus, Ohio

It requires real genius to make the Old Testament bering, (See Hugh Kerr,
Theology Today, July - 1975, p.13). Consider, for instance, the brief Book of Jonah,
A mere two pages, it can be read in a few minutes, Yet it includes all the ingredi-
ents of a first-rate short story: action, adventure, imagination, a hero of sorts,
and an unforgetable three-way encounter batween God, a most accommodating whale and a
reluctant disciple,

The trouble is, few of us seem to get past the creative, or outlandish, literary
framework in which the author chose to speak his message, Serious Old Testament |
scholarship is unanimous in the observation that Jonah is ili-used and terribly mis~
understood, One scholar wrote, "This is the tragedy of Jonah; that a Book which is
made the means of one of the wast sublime revelations of truth in the Old Testament
should be known to most only for its connection with a whale," (G,A,Smith), Actually,
the whale in Jonah is identified as a big fish and is incidental to the point of -the
Story, a literary device, In fact, if it is necessary to determine a sub-title, it
would be better be "A Tale of Two Cities"; for that is really what the story is about;
Nineveh, where God wants Jonah, his reluctant disciple, to go; and Tarshish, whete he
tries to go instead,

Every school boy knows the story of Jonah, or at least the exciting part. We
heard it as children: we marveled and fantisized and perhaps giggled about the
ridiculous predicament in which Jonah found himself: a story vaguely paralleled in
Pinnochio - who, you will recall, also spent some time inside a whale as a result of
an ethical indiscretion, Unfortunately, that ie all we heard of Jonah, or all wa
remembered and when we gained a bit of intellectusl maturity we didn’t know what to
do with it, In the words of an Qld Testament professor, "The one thing more inered-
ible than the story of a fish swallowing aman, is a man swallowing the story of a
fish swallowing a man." A “pre-Jaws" comment, " obviously, We know, yet still hesitate
to tell our children, that the story was never intended to be read as an historical
account, It was written, by an anonymous auther in the fourth century B,C, He chose
for his setting the eighth century B,C, and an obscure prophet by the name of Jonah
who is mentioned in II Kings, as the main character,

The story must be read and understood in its context, The fourth century B,C,
was a difficult time for Israel, The nation was ruled, for the moment, by the Greeks,
the most recent conquerors in a list which included Assyria, Babylon, Persia, It was
a time when theological expectation looked for the righteous wrath and justice of God
to fall upon the Gentile and heathen enemies of God's special people. There was ‘a
renaissance of law and ritual and piety, all pointed inward toward the purification
and renewal of Israel itself. It was a time of narrow patriotism and provincialism,
And so, when fourth century B.C, people read about a prophet of Israel being sent to
the very capital of their worst Gentile enemies, they would have been startled: that
alone would have gained their immediate attention,

Let's look briefly at the story, God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital
of Assyria, a city noted for its wickedness; and to warn the people of Nineveh that
unless their conduct improved they were headed for disaster. Jonah did not want to
go: not that he was squeamish about being a prophet of doom, for later he proved
rather effective in that role, He simply didn't want to ge to Nineveh: a pagan,
enemy stronghold: a city - a center of secular life, Theologicatly, the idea that
God should care about the Assyrians was not a popular idea,

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Instead of obeying God, Jonah boarded the next ship for Tarshish, in the words of
the text, "to get away from the presence of the Lord." The choice of Tarshish was not
insignificant, Nineveh was at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, Tarshish was on
the southwest coast of Spain, It was a seaport, possibly a colony of Semitic people:
it was the furthest point accessible by ship, literally the end of the world, If one
wanted te get away from God - or anybody - Tarshish was just the right choice,

Shortly after embarking, a storm threatened to sink the ship: Jonah confessed his
responsibility for the crisis and with the reluctant agreement of the crew - allowed
himself to be thrown overboard, Apparently drowning was preferable to going to Nineveh,
But the fish interceded: inside the fish Jonah prayed, not, however, the prayer of
desperate penitence we might expect, In fact, Jonah's prayer, uttered in this unusual
environment is a rather pious and traditional rubric dealing with God's mercy and good-
ness, Never once did he utter that familiar prayer: "Get me out of here and ['1l do
whatever you want,"

The fish delivered Jonah to dry land: God called again and this time Jonah agreed
to go ~.a prudent decision. He did the job: he warned the Ninevites of their impending
doom and retired to watch them get what they had coming, But Jonah had done the task
so effectively that the entire city, from King on down, repented, donning sack cloth
and ashes. God, as a result, changed His mind and spared the city, At this, Jonah
became angry and petulant, As he sulked in the heat of the day a plant provided him
shade, The next day the plant died and left Jonah exposed to the sun, with Nineveh,
his old nemesis, prospering in the valley below, It was more than he could bear: his
frustration erupted and he asked God te die, And the story concludes with God patiently
reminding Jonah that if he could care so much about one plant, certainly he could under-
stand why God should care so much about the people of Nineveh, ‘The Book's last sentence
is a classic: "Should [ not pity Nineveh, that great city, im which there are more than
a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left,
and also much cattle,"

That's all there is: the question remains unanswered. We don't know whether
Jonah came down from his hill to live his life in Nineveh, or whether he boarded the
next ship to try, one more time, te escape the unpleasantness of the life God was
calling him to live, I do know, hoever, that this story which too frequently is ‘dis-
carded as childish, has a great deal to say to us, I do believe that it containg the
Word of God for us,

The author's intent was “to remind them (the Jews) that they were chosen by God
in order to be a light to the Gentiles,"\ (J, Elliot Corbett, The Prophets on Main
Street, p71). The story is a sharp reminder that God's people exist for the sqke
of others, and that being God's people often means doing some Ehing we don’t want ‘to do,
It is also a very old testimony fo the universality of God's lcve, a love revealed in
the coming of Jesus Christ for the reconciliation of the whole worlds a love which
constantly calls His people to expand and broaden their love: all of which [ find
rather contemporary in impact,

Return for a moment to the idea of the two cities: Nineveh, capital of Assyria,
bustling, vulgar, threatening, dirty, crowded and Tarshish, remote, safe, distant,
removed, quiet. Let Nineveh stand for the place God wants us to be, and Tarshish for
the place we go in order to avoid being where God wants us, The Book of Jénah was a
pointed reminder to God's people in the fourth century B, CG, that they existed as His
people for the sake of the Ninevehs of the world,but that they had become obsessed
with Tarshish - the safely remote geography of their own internal affairs,

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Allow that to address us - God's people in this time and place. I read recently
about 4 scene in a motion picture, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, ‘the explorer Pizarro
and his men are confronted by a deep abyss in the mountains of Peru, Across the abyss
stretches a flimsy rope bridge, Even the bravest among them tremble with fear, Pizarro
looks over his disheveled band, In the rear stand the clergy. He issues the summons:
"The Church goes first," One assumes that in this instance the church did go firgt,
leading the way across a dangerous abyss, But it occurred to me that the scenario is
not repeated very frequently, Called to be God's servant people, commissioned to. be
His reconciling agents, the Church of Jesus Christ is caught too often remaining in the
rear: following only after someone else has tried the bridge. Zt teok us a full centu:y
to turn our attention to the evil of Yacidl segregation, And when we ventured across
that abyss in the 1960's it was hesitantly, tentatively and only after other organiza-
tions had preceded us,

Even more immediately, this congregation is called by its Lord to be God's special
people here - in this Nineveh: where hunger and poverty and unemployment and crime are
daily realities, And it is so very tempting to take the first ship to Tarshish, to
repeat the error of God's people twenty-four centuries ago and immerse ourselves in our
own internal affairs,

it is not an easy word of God in the Book of Jonah, Rather it is a hard word that
may be judgmental, a word that indicts us for our timidity: a word that calls out of us
courage and strength and real faith, "Faith, one writer suggests, "is not getting
your house exterminated, then locking it tightly, It is inviting into your life worthy
concerns and necessary commitments, Faith is not washing your hands, expecting them to
stay clean, It is getting them dirty in the service of God and of human need." (Models
for Ministers, 1/25/76) —

It has never been easy to be God's people, The Israelites had to be taught that
difficult lesson time and time again, God saves people in order to use them: God summons
people in order to send them out into the world, Every time Israel sits back to enjoy
being the Chosen People, God tells them to do something they don't want to do in the
world - like being a light to the Assyrians, There can be no hesitance about a Chris.
tian's commitment to and involvement in the world, For that is why God has called us:
that is why He has saved us. It requires, on the bottom line, a willingness to ba led
by God into the world in the name of His Son, And more often than not, the part of the
world into which God calls us will be no more pleasant nor appealing than Nineveh was
for Jonah, ‘

Consider these people who two hundred years ago created a revolution, many af them
out of deep religious conviction, It wasn't easy, It wasn't always totally clear,
Good arguments could be presented for the crown as well as the patriot position, ‘ Men
struggled with that: and many must have wished a way to avoid the decision: many tried
to be neutral, Listen to this paragraph from Presbyterians and the American Revolution:

"John Joachim Zubly, pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah,
Georgia, was involved in colonial politics, He served as a delegate from Georgia to
the First Continental Congress at which time colonial grievances were discussed, In
Georgia he was taken into custody by the Council of Safety, and was banished in 1777
with the loss of half of his estate," (Journal of Presbyterian History, Volume 52, ,
Number 4, p,425)

Having decided for the patriot cause many found that it took them to places they
didn't want to be, John Adams had no desire to live in Boston: he was perfectly content
te confine his practice of law to rural New England, But he went to the eity and

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helped to make a new nation, Many paid dearly - with their lives; And all would have
preferred not to be involved: to avoid the decision, the commitment,

Invoivement in the world, for us, may never be quite as dramatic as it was by
necessity for the patriots of 1776, Tt may never be quite as clear, But it is a
decision each person must make, God wants His people deeply and passionately and lov~
ingly involved in His world. He cails them back from every ship to Tarshish, John BD,
Rockefeller, III, in a speech one time, urged people "to become involved personally and
positively in the great drama of our times rather than feeling ouwselves to be weary
and impotent victims of imponderable forces, The antidote to despair,'' he suggested,
*is to be involved," And Jesus said, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

God calls His people to go to Nineveh: and the journey may not be far, Because
He loves the whole world God summons His people to involve themselves in the complexi-
ties and ambiguities of the life of the world. One of those places, I would suggest,
is the whole changing landscape of morality, My, it is tempting te take the first ship
to Tarshish when it comes to the issues of abortion, and integrity in public life, and
corporate political contributions, My, it would be comfortable to retreat to the ethical
simplicity of the past when our young people ask the hard questions of sexual morality,
And that, too frequently, I fear, is precisely what a lot of people and a lot of
churches do: avoid the issues; back away as quickly and as far as possible: or assume
the stance of smuz arrogance that is certain of its own rightness and the total wrong-
ness of everyone else, We may not have agreed with conclusions reached by Mrs, Ford
several months ago, but she demonstrated an admirable candor and willingness to deal
with moral reality, God calls His people to involvement: God calls His church to be in-
volved in the painful moral dilemmas of our day: to bring the Light of faith and hope
and love to the difficult matter of defining and doing what is good,

Jonah boarded the ship in order to get away from the presence of the Lord, That
act, clearly, was intended to represent the corporate decision of God's people to avoid
obeying His will, by hiding behind their religion, Sometimes I think the religiosity
of our culture invites that, The fourth century Jews were so involved in the rituals
and rules of their religion, that they were unable to know God's presence, to perceive
His love, or to hear His voice, And I wonder if, in fact, a lot of the popular piety
in our culture dees not accomplish that same end, An article in the Entertainmept
Section of the New York Times last Sunday asked why the serious questions of theplogy ~
the questions of God, death, forgiveness and hope are rarely dealt with by Amerirfan
film producers, and when they do appear it always seems to be with a singular lack of
sensitivity or intelligence, The best we can do, for all our religiosity, are cari-
catures of bumbling and effeminate clergymen, silly references to the man upstairs,
and maudlin portraits of popular ecclesiatics, The real questions of religion keep
popping up in European films and of all places films produced by Marxists, who at
least have the courage to ask the questions, even if they come up with wrong answers,
The article inferred that American Christians have become intellectually lazy about
what they profass to believez that we don't openly deal with the issues which have
troubled the mind of man since the beginning of time, because we have to think
too hard,

It is tempting to resist intellectual involvement in the difficult questions of
life: to garner one's theology from Billy Graham's daily newspaper column, to find a
church that requires the depositing ef all critical faculties, all intellectual

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curiosity outside the door, and which is content providing answers to questions no
one is asking any longer, But God calls His people, His reluctant disciples, to
involvement, And every time we try to take a ship to Tarshish; every time we turn
away from the tough and difficult issues, every time we fail to be His people when
He needs us most, He calls us back,

God's love for the whole world and all the people of the world is at the heart
of the story of Jonah: not just Jerusalem - but Nineveh: not just the churches, but
the court rooms and the department stores: not just the green mountains and lovely
meadows, but the teeming ghattoes, and the nervous suburbs, God loved Nineveh r
and He loves Washington, and Columbus, and London and Moscow and even New York,

God loves the whole world so much that He sent His Son into it, The incarna-
tion which we celebrated a month ago happened not in the lovely countryside, but in
a cow barn in the middle of a census, And the supreme act of God's love occurred,
not at the altar of a quiet cahtedral, but on the city garbage dump, outside a
major metropolis, on a hill called Golgotha,

To be God's people is to learn to love the world as He does: the process of
becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ is the process of opening our arms and heaxts
in love to other people - people we don't Like, people we don't trust, people who
appear to be our enemies,

The story of Jonah is the Gospel ~ the Good News that God loves the whole |
world so much that He sent His Son into it, The summons of Jonah is the call to
Discipleship, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men, |!

That is what God has always wanted of His people: it is what He asks of you
and me: a love wide enough te embrace the whole world: a love deep enough to
follow where He leads, Amen,

God, our Father, we are capable of loving more, and doing more and giving
more of ourselves, Forgive us when we look for ways to avoid Your call: pardon
our reluctant discipleship, And by Your love for us make us Your joyful and
faithful people. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen,