As part of a series of sermons on Prophets, Pastor Brooks preached this sermon on Jonah. Listen to it now.
Scripture Reading—Jonah 1:17-2:10
I would like to begin with a parable. There once was a king and his court jester. As it happened, one day the king became bored with his profession. He had conquered every land that his mighty army could reach. He had beheaded everyone he disliked. He had devised every method of taxation imaginable to squeeze the last cent out of the poor. And, to make his glory complete, he had more adulterous affairs than he could remember. So it was that in the bottomless pit of boredom, in a moment of drunken despair, he implored to his jester, “What can I possibly do to rid myself of this disease? Who would have thought that being a mighty king could be such dull monotony?” To which the jester replied, “I wouldn’t know myself for I am just a fool, but I did overhear—well, it was nothing. Who am I to know anything!” The king’s interest was piqued. “I will be the judge of whether it was nothing. Tell me what you heard you nit wit.” With reluctant, halting speech, the fool said, “Well, I don’t know, but if you insist that I tell you, I did hear a priest talking in the courtyard the other day, and I am sure he met no harm, but he said, “The great are not those who carry the sword but those who carry the Word of God.” He then said, “It is for this reason that the prophet is the greatest of all humans.”
The words struck the king with a force that almost knocked him over. In an instant, he knew his new destiny. He would be a prophet king. He would deliver God’s messages to the people. He would become the greatest of all humans. But, he was soon stumped with another question. Out loud he wondered, “Where am I to obtain God’s message?” The jester said, “Well, I wouldn’t know myself, but I did read somewhere—well, it was nothing. Who am I to know anything!” With instant anger, the king replied, “You sure are the world’s greatest nit wit. Tell me right now what you read!” With a rather dramatic air of cautiousness, the jester proceeded to explain a very elaborate ritual involving incantations, herbal remedies, and the saliva of a cat. That night and each following night the king followed the jester’s instructions. Each subsequent morning the king would awake to discover the very words of God written on a piece of parchment lying on the nightstand next to his bed. These words from God gave precise instructions on how to rule the kingdom with often rather lavish benefits for a certain individual. The king was ecstatic over the repeated success of the ritual, but the king was not nearly as ecstatic as the jester for while the ritual made the king a prophet, it also made the jester a king.
I began with that parable because it illustrates the traits of a common literary character: the fool. In Shakespeare, there were two types of fools: the witting fool and unwitting fool. The witting fool was consciously shrewd and clever. This is the fool Isaac Asimov had in mind in his Guide to Shakespeare when he said that “the great secret of the successful fool” is “that he is no fool at all.” Another common characteristic of the fool in Shakespeare is the ability to mock and disrupt the pretenses of the powerful. As one BBC commentator notes, Shakespeare’s fools could “say things that other characters in their social bracket couldn’t possibly get away with saying.” Shakespeare’s fools could “deflate pompous, socially superior characters. They [could] criticize kings.” Such characters had an immense appeal with a particular section of the audience in Shakespeare’s time. Back then, the wealthy members of the audience would sit in the expensive seats of covered galleries, while the poor members of the audience were called “groundlings” and stood right in front of the stage. The groundlings identified with the lower status of the fool, and they relished in the fool’s ability to criticize the higher ups with candor and wit. So that’s one type of fool.
In many ways, I think Jonah was the literary precursor to the other type of fool, the unwitting fool. Rather than consciously and intentionally playing the role of the fool, the unwitting fool quite unknowingly becomes the butt of jokes. The pedagogical method of the book of Jonah is to teach us important spiritual lessons through the bumbling ways of an accidental prophet. Traditionally, in the Hebrew scriptures, prophets are to proclaim the message of God but from the first scene the response of this prophet is to run as far away from God as possible, so that he won’t have to deliver God’s message to Ninevehites. Jonah sets sail in the opposite direction, and when everyone on his boat is in mortal danger amid a violent storm, where is the hero of our story? Fast asleep. When Jonah then seeks to end his life in a bid to appease God and quiet the storm, he even bumbles at this. He is thrown overboard only to be swallowed by a giant fish. It’s after this experience that the prophet who never wanted to be a prophet becomes one of the most successful prophets ever. By simply uttering one sentence about Nineveh’s impending doom, all of Nineveh repents to such a comedic extent that even the animals repent. The king himself disrobes to smear himself with ashes and wear a sackcloth. Poor Jonah was so effective that he inadvertently becomes a false prophet. Nineveh’s fervent repentance compels a change of heart for God. God decides not to punish the city after all as Jonah prophesied. Thus, Jonah’s reputation as a prophet is effectively ruined.
The bumbling nature of Jonah’s career as a prophet doesn’t stop there, however. As Jonah waits in vain for the destruction of the people he would have regarded as the irredeemable enemies of Israel, God provides Jonah with a bush to shelter him. The very next day, however, God sends a worm to kill the bush. Now, Jonah is not only angry that the people of Nineveh were spared as a result of his prophesy but that the bush he was given has now withered up. He is so upset over the demise of the bush that he tells God that he is fit to die. At which point, God provides the concluding moral to the story in the form of a question. God asks how Jonah could be concerned with the death of a single bush that grew and perished in a day while expecting God not to be concerned with the lives of 120,000 people in Nineveh. In essence, Jonah serves as the foil for a story that defines the character of God.
In contrast to the vision of a God who cares only for the people of Israel and who punishes those who sin, the book of Jonah presents us with an image of God who not only cares about people beyond Israel but even cares for Israel’s enemies. Moreover, God refrains from punishing the people of Nineveh because as Jonah himself notes, God is “abounding in steadfast love.” Jonah isn’t always a complete fool. He sometimes gets it right. Our reading for this morning presents Jonah at his most poignant moment. In the belly of the fish, he let’s out a prayer that begins in distress and ends in thanksgiving. The prayer is a pastiche of psalms and for this reason one can rightly imagine Jonah singing this prayer for deliverance. I love this image of Jonah. Just as the fish is carrying him down into the land of the dead that was once envisioned as being at the bottom of the sea, Jonah burst out in song. Jonah very literally sings his way out of the depths of despair.
Perhaps, there is a spiritual lesson in this for all of us. Perhaps, this is the point at which we spiritual groundlings stop laughing at Jonah and start identifying with him. What if none of us were born to be prophet kings? What if all of us possess the same potential to be at once fools and prophets? What if our spiritual journeys are gloriously bumbling and full of spirit-filled accidents? Maybe the key to a fulfilling journey isn’t that we figure out all the mysteries of God’s character and nature. Maybe the key to a fulfilling journey is that even in the worst of times we sing our way home. Amen.