“Swallowing Jonah”
A Sermon for the Vigil of Easter
April 7, 2007
Jonah 1:1-17, 3:1-10, 4:1-9 and 2 Corinthians 5:16 - 6:2
Rev. Larry Lange
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Green Bay, Wisconsin
I was speaking the other day with a whale. Not just any whale, mind you, but the whale who swallowed Jonah. This being a busy week and all, I felt I needed all the help I could get with the sermon. I thought it would be interesting to get some deeper insights into Jonah, the man. I thought that even if I didn’t manage to find the actual whale who swallowed Jonah, I might tap into some universal whale lore about Jonah passed down from generation to generation—sort of an oral tradition thing.
That I actually did manage to speak with the whale who swallowed Jonah was just a fluke.
I found him quite informative. He is, as I discovered, a rather well read whale. After I introduced myself to him as a preacher, he knew immediately what I was after.
“I’ve been waiting approximately 2300 years for you, for someone, for anyone, to get my version of the tale,” said the whale. “Tomorrow is the Resurrection of Our Lord, is it not?”
“Why, yes,” I said, “it is. How did you know that?”
“I come from a long line of liturgical whales. The lectionary is very near and dear to our hearts. You might call us Episcowhalians.”
“I see,” I said, “So tell me about Jonah. What was he like?”
“It was the most miserable three days of my life. You have no idea what it’s like having a human being living inside of you.”
“I certainly do,” I interrupted, “I’d like to think there’s a human being living inside my skin right now.”
“Quite so,” the whale conceded. “Then let me put it this way: what if you had a whale living inside of you?”
I had to admit that would be somewhat uncomfortable.
“You see,” the whale went on, “we animals and you humans are quite different creatures—entirely, qualitatively different creatures. We animals are, in fact, far superior to you humans. I remember quite distinctly the day the Lord came to me with his request to swallow that repulsive wretch of a man. It was an absolutely stunning day--clear, calm, the sun shining as a hot spot on my back, the water rushing so refreshingly about me as I sported with my family off the coast of Africa. I remember the Lord’s detailed instructions as to how to find the foundering ship upon which Jonah was sailing in that tremendous storm on the Mediterranean. I remember dreading the danger of being tossed upon rocks in such storms. I remember the exquisite timing necessary to save Jonah. Were I to have been just seconds late, there would have only been eleven minor prophets and not twelve. I remember the Lord telling me to be gentle, not to crush the poor nincompoop in my jaws. I remember wondering what it was that the Lord saw in these insufferable imbeciles he had created. Not that I am envious, oh no, not I. I am the grandest of all creatures. I am the Leviathan whom the Lord made for the sport of it, for the sheer spectacle it is to see me surge up out of the seas and displace a thousand gallons of sparkling spray. I could never stoop so low as to envy the scurrilous, vicious creatures you humans are.”
“Far be it from you, indeed,” I said, “to spout off about your obviously superior qualities.”
“Quite so,” quoth the whale. “As I was saying,” said the whale, “before I was so rudely interrupted. We creatures are not the rebellious sort. In the beginning, when the Lord spoke to Earth asking her to bring forth vegetation, did she bring forth volcanoes? Did she say, ‘Oh, not today Lord, I have a headache?’ No! Immediately this wondrous creature Earth obeyed and brought forth vegetation, and just so did the sun and moon and the stars in their courses obediently shine, and just so did I obey. I found Jonah sinking fast into the vast deep, and I gently swallowed him and carried him off safely in the direction exactly opposite to the one he had chosen in direct disobedience of the Lord. I suffered three days with Jonah in my belly. How miserably he pounded his fists against the walls of my tender stomach. How I longed to take a little laxative to send him on his way. But no, no: orders are orders: I was commanded by the Lord to retch him up on the shores of Nineveh, so he could preach repentance to the people there. All he did the three days he was inside me was moan and groan about how those people in Nineveh were such great sinners and never, ever did Jonah think of what a great sinner he was himself! Never, ever did Jonah remember that he had just disobeyed a direct order from the Lord God Almighty himself. Here was hypocrisy of biblical proportions!”
The whale by this point had worked himself up to such a dither that I feared I was about to be eaten by him myself. My, how whales can blubber! Finally, he calmed himself.
“The human being’s highly evolved brain is highly overrated in my estimation,” said the whale. “We creatures would never imagine disobeying the Lord. If the Lord were to tell us we were supposed to worship each week, why, we would do so without questioning, without complaint, without fail. Ever since Martin Luther discredited the idea of earning salvation by good works, you Protestants say to yourselves, ‘Why do them?’ And although you have been quite happy to dispense with the idea of having to do good works to earn your salvation, now you feel you’ve earned salvation just because you believe there is a God of some sort somewhere. Now, I think, you have turned faith into a work. You think that just because you have an occasional pious thought, you’re on the stairway to heaven. Just because you prayed the other day that you would not be caught speeding, you think you’re on the stairway to heaven. You think that just because you make endless speeches expressing your moral outrage at all the evil people around you, you’re on the stairway to heaven. Oh, these pious thoughts and prayers and your moral outrage do make you feel better about yourself. You feel these feelings entitle you to church membership. You feel these feelings will save you from burning in hell. This,” said the whale, “is most certainly NOT true. Yes, you have turned faith into a work you feel saves you. And having saved yourselves, you feel you are the grandest of all humans and that all the rest of the people in the world are just as evil as Jonah felt the people in Nineveh were. You human beings are all Jonahs, every last one of you!”
The whale paused, feeling greatly satisfied with himself that he had laid bare the essential self-righteousness in the soul of every human being. “However,” he paused again, now feeling tremendously proud that he was about to convey to me the tiny sliver of hope I had for salvation. “There is hope for you. You have been baptized, I presume.”
I told him that as far as I knew I had been baptized. Or at least I had no reason to doubt that I was baptized. I had a piece of paper that was presumably signed by a person who was a pastor that indicated that he had baptized me, although having been an infant at the time, I have no way of really knowing for sure whether I was baptized and that…
“And that will do,” said the whale. “It’s always helpful to have a bit of faith when it comes to these things. When you were baptized, hope for you was born in Christ. As the Apostle Paul has written, ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation!’ In Christ you can become the righteousness of God. In Christ the old you passes away, so Christ can raise up a new you!’”
I said I thought a new me would be pretty cool, because the old me seems to be falling apart at the seams what with my bad back and my bad sinuses and my bad hearing and my bad digestion…
“Yes, yes, you would think the new you is all about you. This also, is most certainly NOT true. The new you is all about Christ. The new you is about obedience to Christ. You can tell if there’s a new you inside of you if you are preoccupied with someone other than you! You can tell if there’s a new you if you start saying to yourself, ‘It’s no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me.’ As the Apostle Paul advises: ‘Don’t accept the grace of God in vain,’” urged the whale, “Accept the grace of God for your not insignificant number of failings. Accept the grace of God for the Ninevite in you or the Jonah in you. Christ will be very happy to have a bit more room in you to stretch his legs. And Christ will change you. You and he will dive together into the baptismal ocean, just as I swim in the grand ocean of the earth. You will be part of the greatest life giving force there is, a force that embraces the earth just as the ocean does. You will, in summary, be as close to as wonderful as I am as you can be!”
The whale looked at me as I sat thinking, frowning. He said, “I know that’s a lot for you to swallow. But believe me, it’s much better than swallowing Jonah.”
And to that I could heartily say, “Amen.”
I was eager to point out to the whale that he’d just made the connection between Jonah’s story and the Gospel story about the envious workers in the vineyard, but the whale beat me to it.
“It’s very much like the envious workers in the vineyard in today’s Gospel lesson,” the whale continued. “When they saw that those hired at the eleventh hour had also received a days’ wage, they thought that since they had done more works, they were better; they thought they should get extra credit; they thought they had elevated themselves to a spiritual plane above everyone else; they were just like Jonah, who looked around himself and despised all the sinners around him and who never once noticed the disobedient sin in his own heart, who never once noticed that he was full of envy, because God was generous. The part of Matthew’s Gospel from which this vineyard story comes is all about people, the disciples especially, attempting to establish how great and wonderful they are in comparison to everyone else around them. Just before today’s lesson, a whole troop of silly scampering children had been brought to Jesus and those great spiritual masters the disciples tried to send the children away, because Jesus obviously wouldn’t want to take time away from the great spiritual masters the disciples to talk to a lot of silly children, but Jesus outrageously treated those children with the same loving kindness as the greatest of disciples. And who,” asked the whale, pausing to take a great breath, “who is the greatest of all human beings, but Jesus, who was God inside the skin of a human being? And what kind of extra credit, what kind of earthly honors and accalades and powers did Jesus receive? Did Jesus ever stop and look around him and say to himself, ‘Oh, I’ve done so many more healings than anybody else in the whole world; I must deserve a really big reward. Did he ever say that? He did not. Jesus was more gifted, more perfect, more wonderful than any other human and he just simply and always just shared that no matter what, no matter that, as he tells the disciples in the verses following today’s Gospel, no matter that his reward was to be beaten and nailed to a cross to die of asphyxiation. That’s extra credit. And so, when James and John’s mother asks Jesus if her nice boys could be seated at the right and left of Jesus when Jesus conquers the Roman Empire, Jesus tells her that the greatest among them would be a servant, a slave, an obedient one, one who simply gives, one who simply empties himself for the sake of others, not one who is envious and constantly scrapping for recognition and status and honor. And maybe that is the root of the problem with you poor wretched human beings,” said the whale. “Maybe at the very deepest level you are scrapping for recognition and status and honor in spiritual ways and in your workplaces and politics and everywhere else, maybe you’re constantly scrapping with each other because you don’t believe you already are God’s beloved and precious children,because you don’t believe that whatever mistakes, whatever regrets, whatever failures you have stacked against you are forgiven. Gratefully believing that, gratefully clinging to that forgiveness, human, that faith is the foundation of all good works; that grateful faith is the foundation of servanthood, of obedience, of salvation.”
The whale looked at me as I sat thinking, frowning. He said, “I know that’s a lot to swallow. But believe me, it’s better than swallowing Jonah and having him inside you.”
And to that I could heartily say, “Amen.”