DON'T GET DOWN IN THE MOUTH Gerald J. Gregg
Jonah, Chapter 1 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

May 4, 1980 . Columbus, Ohic

Do you ever wonder where preachers get their ideas for sermon titles? TI could
tell you about today's title: it was originally an employee's safety sign on the wall
of a pillow factory. No, it wasn't. I just made that up. It really is intended as a
reminder of the punchline about Jonah: “When you're down in the mouth, remember Jonah.
He came out all right."

I choose deliberately to begin in this vein because that is the way the story of
Jonah begins. Jt is full of humor and exaggeration and irony, some of which I hope will
become clear as we talk about it.

Most people would quickly say, sure, they know the story of Jonah, It's all about
that man long ago who was swallowed by a whale and lived inside him for three days
before escaping. Some people would laugh off the story as being ridiculous: "I tell you,
that's a whale of a story!" Others would defend the whale to the end as some sort of
proof of their orthodox belief: "I would believe Jonah swallowed the whale, if the Bible
said so!" In fact, though, the whale is only a minor character.

Today's scripture Lesson was just the beginning of the story. To see what was
going on, it is helpful to know that the name "Nineveh" was like saying Hitler and Nazi.
fo the Old Testament people that city was the embodiment of corruption and evil. Jonah
refused to go there and instead turned tail and tried to run away from God. That is not
the way we expect a prophet to act. When the raging storm threatens to sink the boat,
Jonah is found sound asleep below deck. The pagan sailors turn out to have more faith in
God's power than Jonah has shown, Finally they do what has to be done: Jonah goes over-
board. immediately the sea calms and the pagan sailors offer their spontaneous worship
to the true God.

But Jonah is not to be allowed to escape his mission, not by running away, not by
sleeping through the storm, not even by drowning. The fish swallows him and, after
three days, deposits him on dry land. The story continues as God again commands Jonah
to go to Nineveh, to denounce the Ninevites for their sinful ways. This time Jonah
obeys. He enters the huge city and publicly pronounces Nineveh's doom, The effect is
instantaneous! The whole pagan city turns to God immediately. Even the king of Nineveh
joins in the act of penitence. Everything imaginable is done in the hope that the Lord's
wrath may yet be turned away. One touch that I like especially is that the king makes
a great proclamation that everyone must put on sackcloth as a symbol of their sorrow
and repentance, And not only people, but also the animals--all the animals--must also be
dressed in sackcloth, according to the king. Now, I can imagine a horse in sackcloth or
even a dog. I've heard of dogs in mink jackets, so sackcloth seems fairly reasonable.
But can you imagine chasing down all the mice and rabbits and forcing them into sackcloth
garments so repentance would be one hundred and ten percent complete? That picture
tickles my funny bone.

At any rate, the story continues: God is moved by this mass conversion. He holds
back on the doom and punishment and instead He forgives the people of Nineveh. And that
makes Jonah mad. He now comes clean on the reason he refused to go to Nineveh. It was
because he knew that God is a compassionate God and all along Jonah was afraid it might
turn out this way, with the evil Ninevites winding up all forgiven. Now those hated
enemies of Israel are not going to be destroyed after all.

So Jonah goes into a long-distance pout. He prays to die rather than see Nineveh
saved, but God pooh-poohs the idea. So Jonah angrily stalks out cf the city and takes

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up 4 position where he can watch, just sitting out there in the hot sun, hoping against
hope that God will destroy the city anyway,

In the last act, God causes a large plant to grow up overnight and it shades Jonah
from the burning sun. But the next day God has a worm eat the plant and it withers and
dies, Exposed to the heat and sun again, Jonah gets even madder and rails against God
for senselessly destroying the plant, an innocent plant. Then God asks the last
question: "If you can feel pity for this helpless plant, should I not take pity on this
great city with its multitudes of innocent children?"

The story ends with that question. Certainly it is much more than the common
legends about big fish or sea monsters. This is a story which, in spite of its humor,
has a very important meaning.

There have been some attempts to prove that the Book of Jonah is historically
factual. But to me, all the evidence is on the other side. The story is a parable,
much like the parables of Jesus. It was written to teach a specific lesson. And, Like
the parables of Jesus, this one also traps the listener, for it turns out really to
be about us,

The book was written in the fourth century before Christ. At that time the
Israelites had returned from exile. They had worked hard to rebuild their nation--
restoring the wall around Jerusalem, rebuilding the Temple, constructing homes, With
all that done, now they were concerned to protect and preserve. All their energies and
thoughts were focussed on themselves. They were totally concerned with domestic affairs,
business, economics, thé housing market. The official position was isolationism--toe shut
themselves away from any outside force in order to protect and preserve themselves and
all they had.

But they were, after all, the Chosen People, God's people, chosen for a purpose.
And that is the reason the Book of Jonah was written. It was a strong blast against
Israel's coneern only for itself. Instead, the story of Jonah reminded the Jews that
Israel was to be the “light to the nations". To be the Chosen People meant to be
chosen to advance God's love in all the world.

But Israel was refusing to take that role, just as Jonah refused to go where God
wanted him. To be a light to the nations does not mean isolationism, quite the reverse.
It means to take the risk of contact. It means standing for God's love in international
affairs, even with enemy nations. Jonah wouldn't face up to that; he rebelled against
God's command, And when the Israelites in the fourth century originally heard the story
of Jonah, they first laughed at this so-called prophet, this ridiculous figure who did
everything he could to avoid God's call: they laughed at the whopper of a fish story;
they laughed when the prophet pouted because he got more success than he wanted--they
laughed until they realized they were laughing at themselves. Jonah was Israel. The
parable had trapped them with its truth.

Does the parable of Jonah still work nearly twenty-three hundred years later?
How about us who read it now? Are we somehow Like Jonah? Do we know some command of
God but don't fulfill it because something inside us rebels?

I think life is full of just such instances, at least it is for me personally.
Plainly there are times in our relationships with children or spouse or close friends,
times when what we clearly know to be best and right and true goes against the grain.
Maybe the day has been long and the job has been rough 2nd home becomes a place to
escape, including to escape from the family. It's much easier just to sit in front of

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the tube or behind the newspaper instead of communicating, sharing the day's happenings
with wife or husband. On another track, what if I did injure someone's feelings a
little bit yesterday? It's too humiliating to apologize now. It was unintentional and
anyway, he's a big boy; he can stand life's little lumps. He probably had it coming.

I find there are many occasions when my best self would lead me in one direction, but

I stubbornly go the opposite way, like Jonah.

Then when Jonah sets out to escape from God, a strange situation comes about. He
boards the ship and goes below deck and falls fast asleep, There were mighty forces
stirring around him. A storm was sweeping across the sea which threatened the ship and
all aboard. But Jonah was fast asleep.

Have we also been asleep? Our children are growing so fast, but are we awake to
them as persons? Or are we so concerned with giving them the things we want them to
have that we too easily excuse our failure to give them ourselves? A marriage goes on
day after day, but are we awake to the depth of sharing it should have? When a ship like
Jonah's breaks up in the storm, you can hear the loud creaks and groans and it is hard
to sleep through it. But when a marriage is breaking up, the main sign may be the
silence, the lack of communication between husband and wife. It is easy to sleep through
that silence until marriage is wrecked, Or we may simply sleep away a lifetime, never
coming wide-awake to the truth that each day is made to be lived fully.

Besides such personal, individual issues, there are other matters we are called to
face together. One was brought home to me more forcefully than ever about ten days ago.

Together with twenty-three other Presbyterian ministers between the ages of forty
and fifty-five, I spent a week in Ypsalanti, Michigan, a town which this year did not
receive a single nomination in the category of “cultural center of the western world",
We were there for our Mid-Career Seminar and we wondered if that meant "over the hill”.
We were extremely fortunate to have for leadership one of those rare, far-ranging minds
which can sort through all the bits and pieces we read and hear about the future and
present a coherent, understandable picture, and do it all with a historical perspective.

{[t was not a comfortable picture, by any means. Never far in the background of
our discussions was the factor which is brand new with our generation: that mankind
now has the easy capability of destroying itself. We looked at the whole concept of
work and realized how much we rely on the work we do--all of us--to determine our sense
of value as a person, What will that do to our world when we reach fifty percent un-
employment because machines can do the work faster and cheaper? In fact, machines now
can direct other machines to make the machines which produce and manufacture--no human
beings needed except to get it started and for maintenance to serve the machines.

And what happens as we become more and more isolated from each other, as electronics
makes it possible for us to carry out life functions from the isolation of our homes?
The movie "Being There” is a most graphic illustration of how television already
conditions every aspeet of our life. You don't even have to worship with other people,
for there is the Electronic Church in your own private home at the twist of a dial. With
computers involved increasingly in production, many will find no need to go to work and
mingle with other people; they can stay home and push buttons on their own private
terminal. Already, much of banking can be done from your home phone-~no need to stand
in line or talk with a teller,

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This picture of isolated, faceless individuality at first depressed us at
¥psalanti. We wondered if maybe we mid-career ministers could squeeze thraugh to
retirement before it really hit. Sort of like Jonah not wanting to go into threatening
territory. Then we realized the church is called to minister to whatever worid it
confronts, that God is working to bring about His Kingdom in all that happens, no
matter how threatening that may seem to us. We reviewed history and saw how that has
happened over and over again as new orders, new civilizations, new understandings were

brought into being,

Now, the church can try to run away from it all, Jonah-like, Or we can accept
God's command to venture bravely into the alien territory of the Brave New World,
whatever that is to be, It may be that the church family will become the major pozat
of contact among people; congregations may become the real community and family grouping
to heal increasing isolationism, increasing separateness. What a challenge and
opportunity that will be! I got to thinking about just how well equipped Broad Street
Presbyterian Church will be to accept that challenge. There is already a strong sense
of family here, a strong foundation to build on. Then I began to feel very positive
about the future and the possibilities we share. ‘The challenge is exciting that God
will work through our efforts as He worked so magnificently through Jonah's efforts
in Nineveh.

No question about the storms around us. No question but that the ships we ride
are being tossed about and threatened--marriage, family, work, community, church.
Hurricanes of revolution and threats of war shake our world. But God has worked through
storms before, repeatedly, That is what the parable of Jonah is all about. We must not
run away from God's commands. We must not try to sleep through the storm. Remember, He
is the strong God who could use even the weakness of a reluctant Jonah to change the
world, Now He proposes to use us to make a difference in our world. Don't get down
in the mouth.

Give us vision, 0 Lord, to see that You are the all-powerful God, the Lord even
of today's world, no matter how threatening and difficult it seems to us. And then
give us courage, not to run away or hide from the changes, the storms, but courage
to be and to do what You command us, courage to work for You to infect our world with

the spirit of Jesus Christ.
Amen.