Jonah: On Finding It’s Not All About You
Jonah 3 & 4
January 21, 2007

I take up the subject of Jonah this morning and with it I want to say a word about why we are here.

Why are we here?

If I were to take an instant survey of you right this moment, I am reasonably sure that the reasons you say you are here might include the following:

Have I kind of covered the territory?

Let me probe a little deeper. I suggest to you that we share another reason why we are here. We are here because we sense that perhaps here we will get to know a little more nearly, a little more dearly (as the old hymn goes) the God everybody keeps talking about – the God who loves us; that God rarely mentionned polite company – that God who will walk us through the valley of the shadow of death, that God whose marquee proclaims a love that is slow to anger and abounding in mercy.

Are you with me so far? Anybody want to know that God a little more nearly and dearly?

Moreover, I suggest to you that there is companion reason why we want to be here. We want to be in the company of others who seek that God.

Finally, I suggest to you that it is that love and that company alone who will change our world.

And, by the way, exploring that love and that company is the subject of our church retreat on Friday, February 2 and Saturday, February 3. The title of the retreat is What’s God Got To Do With It? I hope you will sign up on the retreat sheet in the Parish Hall during coffee hour. Member, friend, guest – whomever – come.

Anyway – are you with me so far this morning? At least can you go with me to see where I’m headed?

Let’s bring Jonah back into the picture, because here’s where the story gets complicated. Remember that Jonah was a reluctant prophet. Other prophets like Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and so on just wondered if they were good enough. Jonah just plain didn’t want anything to do with the plan. God, you remember from Sunday School days maybe, God said to Jonah early in the story: Go east, young man, and preach my word to the nasty city of Ninevah. And Jonah got up and went west as fast and as far as he could and ended up, you remember, in the belly of a whale who spat him up on the shore back in an easterly direction. So much for free will. What God wanted to do with Jonah wasn’t a suggestion! None of this, OK, God, thanks, I’ll think about it and get back to you in the morning!

You have to give Jonah this much credit. Jonah, he got that God was serious, he just didn’t want any part of the plan.

So here’s where we pick up Jonah’s story this morning. God is giving Jonah a second chance to speak to Ninevah, and this time Jonah drags his weary carcass east to Ninevah – which, by the way, is in northeastern Iraq! And this time Jonah gets into the spirit of the thing and calls hellfire and brimstone down on the sinful city of Ninevah.

Lo and behold – fire and brimstone -- that sounds biblical, doesn’t it?? Lo and behold, what happens? The people of the city get the message right away, listen and turn their lives around! God is delighted!

But Jonah is not! Jonah turns to God in frustration and says: So, God, what was that all about? If all you wanted to do was show how slow to anger you are and abounding in mercy, what did you need me for? Now you get great press and I look like a fool!

At this point, I would expect God to look Jonah in the eye and say to Jonah, Jonah, shut up and get over it. But what does God do? God says, No, no, no. Come over here, Jonah. I’ll build you a nicy shady front row seat, kind of a skybox here on the hillside overlooking the city, and you watch what I do in Ninevah and celebrate with me, because the people of Ninevah were blind, but now they see.

Jonah, who is nothing if not consistent, is not buying it. In one of the great emotional insights of the Old Testament, it says that Jonah sits down and sulks.

It’s like when I was young. I was the oldest of four brothers and when we got into a fight, invariably my mother would abound in mercy on my “poor” younger brothers on the theory that as the oldest I should have known better and – yes, that’s how I remember it – and, yes, that would put me in a blue funk of righteous indignation! I would retire to my room and sulk until – well, until dinner time.

God does an interesting thing at this point in the story. God is not done with Jonah. God snatches away the shady place and brings Jonah back out of his sulk and – oddly – says: Jonah, was I not merciful to you when you wanted no part of my plan? Did I swat you like a fly? How can you still not want to be part of the plan? Do you have a better plan than mercy? Is your own plan more important to you than taking part in something bigger and deeper and more lasting than you are?

And then there’s that last tag line, God’s last last word in the Book of Jonah: Jonah, it’s not all about you. Jonah, can you forgive me if I care as much for my cattle as I care for you?

Whew. Cattle? As in chickens, pigs and cows? As in barnyard and pigpen and chicken coop? God, I just don’t know about this. Can I think it over?

So the Book of Jonah is sort of a goodnews/badnews scenario. The good news is that God is a mighty God, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. That’s very good news! The bad news is that it’s not all about you and me and our plan and what we deserve. The invitation from God is to participate in a work in the world that will be unimaginably deeper and longer lasting than we are.

Wow. That’s a Wow, as my daughter used to say!

And that’s why we’re here. Because we sense that God’s work in the world is real even if it doesn’t always square with how we would deal with the world. And because we would like to become transparent to a love that is taller than our faults and longer than our lifespan. That’s right – transparent. I mean, that people can see we get the plan even when it doesn’t work to our benefit.

I received a poignant email this week. It’s ironic that the email is from Baghdad right after my sermon about the Iraq war last week. First email from Baghdad I ever got. I admit that the email was not to me alone. My wife Beatrice and I went to a conference down in Virginia a couple of years ago. The conference was about dealing with trauma in the world after 9/11, and though the conference was small, there were people from all over the world – Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Chile and so on. There were perhaps twenty-five people. Among them was a couple from Baghdad. They were very recently married. He a dignified, solid, secular Sunni, an intellectual, a psychiatrist in fact who had been especially building a clinic for women in Iraq. His name was Dr. Alharith Hassan. His spouse’s name was Maysa Jaber and she was younger and she was all fire – a passionate critic even in 2004 of American mistakes in Iraq. They spoke beautiful English, both of them, and, of course, Arabic their home tongue, and some French, and some Farsi. Sometimes our news presents Iraqi’s as either crazy people or dumb victims – cattle. Alharith and Maysa are people of the world.

I have wondered what has happened to them in the months since they returned to Baghdad. Where are they? Did they flee into exile in Jordan or Syria? What happened to the clinic? Have they too withdrawn behind ethnic walls and bitterness?

The email is dated January 17, and this is how it goes, in part. It is addressed to all the people who attended that conference in Virginia (and remember that Maysa writes in English. This is not a translation):

Greetings,

With a heart full of sadness and sorrow, I tell you my friends that Dr. Alharith A. H. Hassan has been killed; assasinated on the 6th of December at 9am by unknown armed men while he was going to his office at the Psychological Research Center/University of Baghdad.

Dr. Alharith was one of the well-known doctors, professors, and scientists in Iraq. He dedicated his whole life to knowledge and goodness. He served people through numerous ways as a consultant neuro{psychiatrist} whose patients came from every place of Iraq from the North to the South; as a university professor whose students have become PhD holders, and as a writer whose writings in varioius branches of knowledge are available for people to make use of. But above all he is a human being, a soul full of truthfulness and generosity, a heart full of virtue and peace and mind full of so many brilliant ideas.

This tragic event is part of the series of horrifying violence Iraq is undergoing. It is part and parcel of the well-organized process of assasinating the Iraqi mentalities {Here I think she means intellectuals}; those who are bright, moderate, and working for the good of Iraq with no ethnic or religious bias.

Today, I speak to you my friends and my heart is breaking with indescribable pain and would love to share this sad story with you. I was with him when the hideous hands {listen to her choice of words in English – the hideous hands} pulled the trigger to shoot him, and I was with him when we took him to the hospital, and I was with him when he said his last word “I am a doctor.” I have not lost a husband like any wife mourning a husband; I have lost a lover of unique type, as we lived together the most wonderful love story, a soul mate, a friend, a brother, a healer, and a human being that sums up the true meaning of humanity and represents everything I had an have in this world.

Please, my friends, remember Alharith in your prayers as a man of love, his heart was full of love, sincerity, and benevolence to all humanity. A man who kept calling for LOVE, PEACE, FORGIVENESS and the power of KNOWLEDGE. Please remember that Alharith lived and died for this message.

Maysa goes on in the letter to talk about a book her husband was writing that has the most interesting title. I’m not sure whether she realizes it, but the word profession has two meanings in English. The title of the book, a sort of miscellany, part biography, part meta-physical commentary, part prophetic harangue, is My Profession As A Human Being. The word profession means both a vocation – a calling, a job – and it also means, a statement of what one is and one believes. So the most important thing Dr. Haran had to say about himself was that he was a human being – no less. It was his profession.

She closes the letter saying May God bless Alharith’s soul, Blessings and peace to you, my friends.

Some stories go on and on. In part they are bad news. Murderous zealotry goes on. Conflict and civil war goes on. Terrrible, terrible mistakes on an inconceivable scale, go on and on.

But in some part, good news abounds. Some people profess being human beings above bitterness or cynicsm. Some people do not flee to safety. Some people are transparent to love, peace, forgiveness and knowledge. Some people die for these things wishing death were not part of the plan, but willing to go even that far.

The letter is a Jonah story. I can hear God saying: Once upon a time long ago, I did a work of mercy in Ninevah to show all people that I am a God slow to anger and abounding in mercy. Today I can show you a work of mercy in Baghdad, a few hours drive south of Ninevah, show you once again how I begin my plan. Look, Christian, I can use a secular Muslim to announce my mercy. He died, but the work is not finished.

Christian, can I also use you? Can I use you where you are? Or will you flee and sulk like Jonah?

And what will our answer be? After all, isn’t that why God has summoned us all here this morning – to answer that question?

Amen.