Jonah 3-4

A Sermon by the Rev. Davis Taylor

for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem, NC

September 24, 2006

This sermon was presented in three parts: The gist of Chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Jonah were sung by the choir in the anthem “Jonah”; Chapters 3 and 4 were read by service leader Marjorie Gelbin from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, a paraphrase by Eugene H. Peterson, professor emeritus at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia; and the sermon proper was delivered by Dave Taylor.

I want to take an informal, unscientific survey. Before today, how many of you had heard of Jonah and the Big Fish? “That's right, it says a big fish" [quoting from the anthem]. Before today, how many of you had heard of how Jonah got into the belly of the big fish? Before today, how many of you had heard of Jonah, mad as all get-out, sitting pouting, under a bush, yelling at God because things didn't turn out the way Jonah wanted them to turn out?

Most of us, if we think of Jonah at all, think only of the big fish. We mutter, "He couldn't have lived three days in the belly of a fish." So we dismiss Jonah and go our merry ways. You're right, no one can live three days in the belly of a fish. But the big fish is only incidental to the story we see in the book of Jonah. The story is a parable. The fish is a literary device the writer uses to get Jonah from the middle of the sea to the Assyrian coast near Nineveh.

In the parable, Jonah has an extremely emotional reaction when he's directed to preach to the Ninevites. He boards a ship to Tarshish, in the opposite direction to Nineveh. With his emotional reaction Jonah tells the Lord, "I'm not preaching to those Ninevites, Lord, they're the ones who destroyed your people Israel." Remember Jonah telling the Lord in the parable, "I knew all along that's what you'd do!"

A third clue that Jonah is a parable is the name Jonah itself. Jonah in Hebrew means "dove." The dove is one of the biblical symbols for Judah. So Jonah, the book, is a parable written to the people of Judah. It tells them, "Quit being so exclusive. Even the Ninevites, the destroyers of Israel, can repent. I, the Lord, can include anyone I want to."

We human beings have more trouble with that idea than with any other idea that exists. The people of Judah had a terrible time with the idea of including the Ninevites or anyone else. That's why we have the book of Jonah to sing about and read today.

You and I don't have any right to think of ourselves as better than the people of Judah on the topic of exclusiveness. At least I don't have any right to think of myself as better than the people of Judah. I was raised bigoted and homophobic. I never saw a black person except in a servile position until I walked into my room in flight training in Pensacola, Fla., and discovered that I had a black roommate. He was smarter than I was, a better athlete than I was, a deep thinker. He wasn't a better pilot than I was.

We became friends on the base. In Pensacola, Fla., in 1955, off the base there was no place I could go that he could go or he could go that I could go. I became unbigoted through personal contact.

Through my life I knew only one man who I knew was probably gay. No one admitted to different sexual preferences in those days. My uncle certainly didn't. My uncle was much beloved by me and the rest of the family. No one ever mentioned his sexual preference. I doubt if his mother even knew he had a sexual preference. I never knew anyone who was openly gay or lesbian until I joined Anne in attending the UU Fellowship. But I knew a lot of persons who probably were. I became unhomophobic through personal contact with my uncle and the gay and lesbian UUs I enjoy knowing.

My denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has wasted more time and energy and money on exclusiveness than I would ever have imagined possible. Who bore the brunt of the exclusiveness? Women could not be ordained to office in the old Southern Presbyterian Church until July of 1963. African Americans: Some of us tried to exclude African Americans from office and even from membership. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals – Presbyterians waste time and energy today arguing about them.

Inclusiveness is one area in which the UUs have it over everyone else. I'm proud of you. It's a pleasure to be associated with you. But you know what? In a UU congregation in Austin Texas, I attended a class on Emerson and felt very strongly the exclusion of a certain retired Presbyterian pastor named Dave Taylor.

I think we all board our ships to Tarshish when we know whom we need to include and don't want to include them, or when we know what we should do and don't want to do it. How do I know what I ought to do? I don't know about you, but I know a lot more about what I ought to do than I'm willing to do. But then, like Jonah in the parable, when we decide to do what we know we should, we want to control the results. In effect, Jonah tells the Lord, I want you to work this out the way I want it worked out.

That's what we do with the Bible. The writer of Jonah resembles a good psychotherapist. A lot of the Bible is that way. Those portions of the Bible just won't let you or me off the hook. If you've been to psychotherapy, you know it isn't much fun. The good psychotherapist helps you discover stuff about yourself that you would just as soon not know, but in order to grow you need to know the stuff and deal with it. A lot of folks just quit going to psychotherapy. We do the same thing with the Bible. In the case of Jonah, we pick out an incidental part of the story, the big fish. We ignore the important parts of the story: inclusiveness, not trying to control the results. Then, because no one can live in the belly of a fish three days, we ignore what the story tells us about ourselves.

We don't want to include the persons we know we should include, so we ignore that part. We board our ship to Tarshish. If by some reason we do what we know we ought to do, what do we do? We think we should control the results. I think I should control the results. 

What does the parable tell us? The parable tells us that your job and my job is to do what we know we should do. And the results are not the results – are never the results – controlled by us.

Inclusiveness – doing what we should, not trying to control the results. And one more thing the parable of Jonah tells us: We live in the abounding steadfast love of the divine. If anyone ever tells you God doesn't love you for any reason, if anyone ever tells you God doesn't love that other person for any reason, that person, trying to control God's love, doesn't know God.