TEXT: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The
Power of an Unwilling Voice
When I was younger, back when I still
admitted to watching cartoons, the one I loved to hate was “The Roadrunner and
Wile E. Coyote.” You remember the
hapless canine who was always trying to catch the elusive bird with one or
another of the endless supply of ingenious devices ordered from ACME
Manufacturing. And they were perfect
schemes – a boulder suspended over a pile of food; a bomb timed for the precise
instant of passage; a camouflaged pit, a mechanical trap, an artificial road
that led into a brick wall – or off a mountain cliff. Clever and carefully executed, the plans were
almost guaranteed to succeed until just at the last possible instant the
Roadrunner inexplicably managed to slip the noose.
I had an affection for the
Roadrunner; I wished him no ill. But I grieved with the Coyote who, despite his
diligent efforts, not only came up empty handed, but was inevitably caught in
his own trap – squashed beneath his own rock or charred by his own
explosion. It just never seemed fair.
Jonah must have felt like something
of the Wile E. Coyote of the Biblical world.
Feckless in his efforts to elude the call of God, he is just as
disappointed in his efforts to eradicate the objects of his contempt.
Let’s face it, that doesn’t happen
very often and when it does there is something satisfying about it. Isn’t that finally the justification for the
Death Penalty? Countless studies have
shown that it has no preventive or deterring effect. It isn’t really about eliminating such
criminals for the protection of society – there are lots of far-less-drastic
ways to do that. For those who support
its imposition, it just seems to satisfy that basic equation of justice. This kind crime deserves this kind of
punishment.
Last Sunday night in this very space,
David Wilcox included in his concert a satirically macabre but funny song about
a guy matter-of-factly but brutally satisfying his everyday frustrations. When people get in his way or violate his
sense of traffic etiquette, according to the song, he simply pulls out his
pistol and blows them away. Yes, as
Wilcox himself admitted after singing it, it is a terrible thought. Offensive, repugnant, reprehensible. We in the audience felt more than a little
guilty laughing at the lyrics. But let’s
be honest: if you don’t experience even
the least little sense of vicarious satisfaction at the thought of some
inconsiderate road hog who cuts you off meeting at least a flat-tire’s worth of
justice, then I’d like to get a graft of your DNA. The world needs more of you.
Jonah, for his part, was ready to see
justice served. Mustering up his full
froth of righteous indignation, he wades his way half-way into the city and
begins to spit out the bad news.
Dangling no carrot of the possibility of mercy, nor even swinging the
stick to encourage repentance, Jonah simply announces immanent
destruction: “Forty days more, and
Then something occurs that Jonah
never fathomed: the people
listened. Everyone – from the King to
the cows – outfits themselves in sackcloth and smears ashes of repentance on
their face. They are sorry for
everything – really. And they vow to
change their ways – sincerely. And
inexplicably, unconscionably as far as Jonah is concerned, God buys the whole
exhibition! Can’t God see that they are
just trying to save their skin? So there
you have it: despite all that Jonah has
gone through; despite the Ninevite’s unquestioned deservedness for all the fire
and brimstone, all the weeping and gnashing of teeth they’ve got coming to
them, God, who is always a sucker for remorse and confession, lets them
off!
This is precisely the kind of thing
that gives God a bad name. This, along
with that terrible story that Jesus told of the Workers in the Vineyard, in
which a group of laborers who started their job in the last hour of the day
were paid the same amount as those who started when the shift whistle blew
first thing that morning, goes a long way toward explaining why Christianity
will never finally make sense to an awful lot of people. Deep down inside, people have a need for life
to just be fair, and while we know that it seldom works out that way, we at
least ought to be able to count on the fairness of God, and these stories just
trample any logical calculation of it.
The events they describe and attribute to God are just not fair. “Fair” is that you get what you deserve.
But of course even as we say such a
thing out loud we recognize how ludicrous is the claim. Nobody gets what they deserve. I watch Katie Couric and Matt Lauer almost
every weekday morning, but nobody deserves the kind of money they are paid to
chat it up with newsmakers and celebs. I
like a good football game as much as anybody, but there is no justice involved
– hardly anything even rational – about paying professional athletes what we
do. And is Tiger Woods’ endorsement of a
clothing line really worth the millions he is paid, or is Julia Roberts really
worth $10 million per movie? Is that
“fair” by any logical measure? And I’m
not the first to admit that if we were rational about it teachers would be on
the high end of the pay scale and entertainers would be somewhere below
that. That’s not to diminish the value
of entertainment, but rather to honor the value of those to whom we entrust our
children and our own intellect and imagination.
There is nothing “fair” about the way we order our civilization.
And when I’m honest with myself, I have
to admit that my pencil is the sharpest when I am calculating fairness applied
to other people. Lucky breaks or
charitable gifts in my life are “blessings.”
In the experience of someone I disrespect or begrudge, those same good
fortunes become tainted goods; bitter fruit; ill-gotten gains. The truth is that my tolerance level for
“unfairness” goes way up when the benefactor is me. Come to think of it, I don’t really want to
get what I deserve!
Which is to say that maybe grace
isn’t such a bad thing after all. As
long as our estimations of worth or redemptive possibilities; as long as our
verdicts about the ultimate value of our fellow kind are not the gold standard;
as long as our judgments are trumped and revised by the one who not only
breathed first breath into Adam and Eve, but has the power to breathe new life
into each of their descendants, then this world just may manage to survive
us.
And as long as we speak the words God
gives us to say, and offer them to the neighborhoods of issue, residence, or
sinfulness to which God points us, there is no telling what transformation may
be wrought, even through what may, on occasion, be unwilling voices. For as Jonah well teaches me, the power lies
not in my opinion or agreement, but in the recreative spirit of the one who
calls me and employs me in this holy and redeeming work.