“The Runaway”

Jonah 1:1-3

June 26, 2005

Today we begin our five week sermon series on the book of Jonah. Before we read the text for this morning, let us spend a few minutes getting acquainted with this book and the context in which it was written.

The book of Jonah is the fifth book among the books of the twelve Minor Prophets from Hosea to Malachi, which make up the last twelve books of the Old Testament. It is not clear from the text when this story takes place. It is believed to be set during the eighth century, during the time of the Assyrian empire, but it was most likely written sometime in the fifth century B.C and maybe as late as the second century B.C. It is also not known for sure who wrote the book. There is a Jonah son of Amittai spoken about in 2Kings 14:25, who was known as a prophet from the Northern Kingdom during the days of Jeroboam II from 786-746 B.C., but there is no indication that this Jonah is the one who authored the book of Jonah.

The story of the prophet Jonah is quite unlike the other eleven books of the Minor Prophets. These books, for the most part, gives the messages delivered by the prophets and contains few references to their personal history, however, the book of Jonah is a story about the prophet himself with the only record of his message being eight words long.

There is also another even more glaring difference between Jonah and the other eleven prophets. In all the other books, the prophets willingly and faithfully go and proclaim God’s judgment that leads people to repentance and most of the time to their own people, the people of Israel. But this is not the case with the book of Jonah, as we shall see over the next five weeks.

The book of Jonah is a remarkable book. It is the parable of parables. The author masterfully sets up and plays out a drama that puts the reader directly in the story so much so that we cannot help but see ourselves in the character of Jonah. This book is more than just a story about Jonah and the Ninevites, it is first and foremost a story about God and Jonah and therefore it is also about us.

Let us know turn to Jonah chapter one and begin our story. Read Jonah 1:1-3

And so our story begins with an inauspicious start. God has called Jonah to go to Nineveh to speak out against it, but our hero runs away. In a vain attempt, he flees not only from his calling, but also from the presence of the Lord. With this short introduction, the author has set up the tension and conflict that will run all the way through the story until the very end. Nothing more is said. God calls. Jonah flees. We are only left to wonder why Jonah would do such a thing.

Have you ever been told to do something that you knew deep down that you did not want to do? Have you ever been told to do something that was contrary to everything you believe? Something that was contrary to the core of your values? Something that had the potential to compromise the integrity of your character and how others would view you? If you have, then welcome to the world of Jonah. In order for us to get a clearer picture of just what this calling meant for Jonah, we have to take a look at who Jonah is and what he believed, and we also have to talk about the place where Jonah was called to go – that great city of Nineveh.

Who is Jonah? For the author, Jonah represents all those Israelites who are world class nationalists. These world class nationalists believed they and they alone were and would forever be God’s people. Through the history of Israel, the people of God had been ransacked and overthrown, destroyed and exiled. For these nationalists, the people of Israel were the insiders and everyone else was an outsider. For them, nationalistic pride was the rule of the day, devotion to their faith was the framework of their lives. God was on their side and their side alone. This is Jonah – a nationalist, a religious fundamentalist, and a hater of foreigners, especially those who attacked, pillaged, and exiled his people.

What about that great city of Nineveh? In the Bible, the greatest enemy of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah was Assyria. In 722 B.C., the Assyrians attacked and captured the Northern Kingdom of Israel, destroyed its cities and deported its people as slaves. Assyria nearly captured Jerusalem some years later. The capital of Assyria was a major city called Nineveh. Nineveh was located on the east bank of the Tigris River just a few miles downstream from the Kurdish mountains. The ancient site of Nineveh is still part of another modern day major city, which you are probably familiar with, the city of Mosul in the country of Iraq, which is Iraq’s second largest city.

During its peak of power, the ancient Nineveh was known for violence and terrorism, and it was a symbol of all that opposed God and God’s people. Those whom the book of Jonah was written to would most likely have had ancestors who suffered under the cruelty of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire. Is it any wonder why Jonah fled? For Jonah to be told to go to Nineveh would be like asking a holocaust survivor to go to downtown Berlin during the height of the Nazi regime. What God had told him to do was to go to the seat of the power of his greatest enemy and speak out against it. What God had told him to do went against everything Jonah believed, everything he knew to be true, everything he thought was right.

So Jonah flees. His prejudice and hatred of outsiders were too powerful for him to overcome and put aside. He would not follow God’s call. He will not deliver God’s message. He would not be a party to this divine madness. Jonah does the only thing he can, the only thing that his prejudices and hatred will allow him to do, he runs from his office as a prophet of the Lord. He goes to Joppa, pays his fare, hops on board a ship, and heads to Tarshish – the completely opposite direction from where God had called him, as far away as he could possibly get. Our hero is now the runaway, and we are left with a serious conflict between wills, between God’s will and Jonah’s will. God wants Jonah to go to Nineveh. But Jonah ain’t going. Who’s will and purpose will win out in the end? Will Jonah get away from God? Will his disobedience and flagrant insubordination go unpunished? Or will God do something else? Will God show Jonah just what kind of God he is? Will God show Jonah the way? Right now we can only wonder what will happen to Jonah.

But what about us? We like to think that we have everything all worked out about God, ourselves, and others not like us. We like to think that we have a good handle on how God deals with all those “outsiders” in the world. Maybe these three short verses point us to the questions we need to ask of ourselves as continue to hear this story about Jonah. What prejudices, hatreds, and nationalistic viewpoints do we have that keep us from heeding God’s call? That keep us from going to where God calls us to go? That keep us from being who God calls us to be as God’s people? These are not easy questions to think about or even believe about ourselves, but this story was written for a purpose, a purpose to show us who God is, and that we might see ourselves in it and become different people through it. Amen.