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​SERVICE 7/11/21
Jonah 3.1-5, 10, Heb. 9.24-end 
​
Until I came across this week’s Old Testament reading, I’d never looked at
Jonah. All I knew was that he is famous for living inside a whale for 3 days
and 3 nights. Thumbing through the OT to find the book of Jonah is like
looking for a needle in a haystack; you need the index. The book is so short
you can read it in a coffee break.
The fragment that Jean read to us comes right in the middle. It has nothing to
do with whales’ tummies, which at first was a bit disappointing. Resorting to
Google: one of the listed questions I found on the subject is: ‘Is the book of
Jonah a true story?’! The latest consensus of experts is ‘Probably not: Jonah
was a real guy, a prophet in the 8th Century BC; the story is satirical’. And in
any case, it was a ‘big fish’, not a whale.
God had asked Jonah to read the riot act to the people of Nineveh, his home
city in Iraq, now a pile of sand. God said to Jonah, “Tell them, please, that
their badness can’t endure. If they don’t mend their ways soon, they will pay
for it.” (Think of Greta Thunberg at CoP 26). But Jonah bottled out. He ran off
and caught a boat to get as far away as he could. God acted to frustrate
Jonah’s escape, culminating in his being chucked overboard by the crew in a
storm and swallowed by a big fish. Inside the fish Jonah reflected on his
purpose, and repented, whereupon the fish coughed him up on the shore.
-
In Jean’s reading this morning, Jonah is given a second chance. This time he
obeyed God, went into Nineveh, and preached. The people of Nineveh
listened, and they changed their ways. And God didn’t bring calamity upon
them.
In the remainder of the book, Jonah has a sulk. He had hung around outside
the city and when the promised disaster did not come crashing down as he
expected, he got cross. He told God: “You see, that’s why I ran away the first
time; I always knew that you’d be too soft to go through with it.” God
responded by putting Jonah through a little test. You can read about it over a
coffee.
The story of Jonah, with his second chance, reminds me of the film:
Groundhog Day. In this story, Phil Connors, a cynical, world-weary TV
reporter, gets another chance to live his day again. Not just once but time after
time. Not through the device of being swallowed and regurgitated by a whale,
or a groundhog for that matter, but simply by waking up each morning to the
same alarm buzzer in a time loop. Phil had an intellect and he had memory:
God’s gifts, which together would allow him to learn, if he wanted to. Stuck
seemingly forever in this loop, he finally decided to engage with the world
around him in a better way. Changing what he did changed the
consequences. It changed his life.
I love this film in the way it shows that Goodness is not intrinsic to any single
act; it only becomes manifest in the consequences. Or to put it in another way:
‘The morality of an action is judged solely on its consequences’. God,
Goodness, plays out on a timeline. So, if we want to be good effectually, we
must make sure that the actions which follow today’s good intentions really do
lead to good consequences down the line.
Right now, for example, as well as the moral will to rein in our damage to the
natural world, we need moral skill. In other words: we want the practical
capabilities that will yield real results. All else is just fanciful. The
consequences of resting on wishful thinking; the consequences of vain talk
that shuns practical reality; the consequences of resolutions that fade when
frustrated, will be our downfall, our punishment. Like Phil Connors in
Groundhog Day, we must be able to acknowledge our mistakes, to learn from
them as we go, and to keep going. We can’t be too proud, too stubborn, or too
lazy. Each of us will need to commit to real sacrifice.
-
The letter to the Hebrews might be one of Paul’s; we don’t know. But more
important than the question of authorship is its purpose. Unlike the Gentiles, to
whom Paul wrote many letters, the Hebrews thought they already had the
inside track on Holy wisdom through grandfather rights. They were stuck up:
proud; hung up on their historic, priestly, high-and-mighty rituals that harked
back to Moses. The writer was seeking to liberate the Hebrews from their
slavery to these rituals, and to open their eyes to Christ’s message and
purpose.
Ritual, and anything else done without thought of its relevance to life, is a vain
pastime. According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus cited Jonah as he faced up to the
religious scholars of the day. He told them, ‘What Jonah was to Nineveh, the
Son of Man is to this age. When Jonah preached to the Ninevites they turned
their lives around. And yet, when I preach to you, all you want is miracles, and
all you do is quibble.’ (Sound familiar?)
Today’s extract from the epistle points out to the Hebrews that Christ didn’t
head straight for their temple’s inner sanctum to lord it along with the high
priests. He didn’t join them in their hiding away, making the same vain
sacrifices over and over again. He went out into the world and mucked in with
real people.
Jesus showed, once, and for all, what sacrifice really means, and what reward
awaits. He showed that every day is a gift of grace; a slice of time in which we
can muck in and realise God’s will.
​
Jeremy Sargent
All Saints, Stone ©2015
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