With popular culture, it’s often the case that its most enduring products tend to be those that receive the least fanfare when they first appear. Film is a good example of this principle: blockbusters tend to come and go in rapid succession, but the films which stay with us tend to be “quiet achievers” – they win us over with the quality of their writing, filming, and acting rather than the hype which surrounds their release.
One such film appeared a few years ago. Called Keeping Mum, it stars Rowan Atkinson, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Dame Maggie Smith, and possesses the great advantage of being filmed in the English countryside in and around the Isle of Wight. Now, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea – some might find the darker aspects of the film unsettling, or the occasional strong language objectionable. But it’s a film I’m especially fond of, because it combines comedy and drama to explore some deep and universal human themes.
One of my favourite scenes occurs right at the end of the film, in which Atkinson – who plays a bumbling and all-too-serious vicar – suddenly discovers a sense of humour. And in his sermon, he cracks the following joke: An Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman, a rabbi, a priest, and a vicar walk into a bar – and the barman looks up and says, “What is this? Some kind of joke?”
Maybe it’s not the best joke in the world, but it does illustrate an important point: that the purpose of comedy is not merely to make us laugh, but to make serious subjects approachable.
It’s a principle we don’t often apply to Scripture. We tend to be serious and reverential in our approach to Scripture, which is as it should be. But the danger of this approach is that we can lose sight of the fact that the authors of Scripture often approached serious subjects in a comedic fashion. They did so partially because they were aware of the rich irony with which existence is often veined; but also in order to make the subject of God – and how humans frequently misunderstand or underestimate God – approachable.
The Book of Jonah is a case in point. It’s an odd little text, occurring at the end of the Old Testament among the so-called Books of the Twelve Minor Prophets. The story it has to tell is really rather ridiculous: Jonah tries to run away from God’s call to prophesy to the people of Nineveh; after a series of adventures – including being swallowed by a fish and vomited up on dry land! – he does as he’s told; and when the Ninevites repent, Jonah gets angry with God for not bringing divine retribution down on their heads! And then there’s that curious bit at the end about the tree which God causes to grow in the desert to shelter Jonah, only to let it die the next day, so that Jonah suffers from sunstroke and wishes he was dead! What’s all that about?
Well, the first thing I would like to say is that we should approach this text as if it were a comedy in two parts. The first part concerns the foibles of humanity, present in the person of Jonah. The second part relates to the joy of God’s Kingdom, to the unrestrainable delight in God’s gift of grace.
With respect to the first part, we tend to be censorious and superior about Jonah’s reluctance to respond to God’s call. Bad Jonah! You should have responded to God’s call and done what you were told! But in taking this attitude, we are immediately tripped up by the comedic tone of this story, because prophetic reluctance to follow God was, in fact, an established, almost essential pattern. Look, for example, at Jeremiah, and how he protests against God’s command to prophesy. Indeed, look at Moses, and how vigorously he argued against God’s call. So, in some respects, the author of Jonah is setting him up as the reluctant prophet in order to demolish our smugness: afterall, if we were called on to prophesy in the capital of an aggressive nation whose people were the implacable enemies of our people, what would we do? I don’t know about you, but I’d respond exactly as Jonah did – I’d head in the opposite direction!
In other words, the author of Jonah is saying: get off your high horses! We laugh at Jonah and the absurd measures he takes to escape from God – which includes the willingness to drown at sea rather than respond to God’s call – precisely because we recognise in him our own struggles to respond to God’s call.
Last week, I used the story of Samuel to outline my own much-delayed response to God’s call to the ordained ministry of the church. What I didn’t tell you is that there are still moments of resistance, still moments when I have a quiet conversation along the following lines:
- God?
- Yes?
- You want me? You really want me to do this?
- Yes.
- You’re sure?
- Yes.
- But I’m -
- I know what you are. But I want you anyway.
- You’re sure?
- Yes.
- You’re really, really sure?
- Yes.
- But what if I stuff up?
- Trust me, I’m used to it. And I still want you.
And this illustrates why the comedic theme of human fallibility is so important in Jonah. Because underneath it lies a serious – though joyful – message: that irrespective of our imperfections, about which God is all too well aware, God nevertheless desires to work through us, and God will work through us, our stupidity and stubbornness and fear and ignorance notwithstanding. Jonah is a dunce; but he’s God’s dunce, loved by God and thus called by God, an imperfect individual ministering to an imperfect world.
And this brings us to the second comedic element in Jonah: the irrepressible joy of God’s grace, which is explored in Jonah’s reaction to the people of Nineveh – and in that curious story of the tree in the desert.
Because, having been persuaded by the divine equivalent of a clip over the ears to prophesy to the Ninevites, Jonah reacts with indignity when God spares their lives and doesn’t wipe out the city. What’s more, Jonah justifies his anger – and defends his original reluctance to respond to God – on the basis that he, Jonah, knew that God was merciful and would not wipe out the Ninevites! In other words, I knew you were merciful, God, so why have you put me to all this inconvenience just to prove what I already knew? Clearly, however, Jonah does not understand the depths of God’s mercy, because he then proceeds to demand that God take his life, since being a prophet is so unendurable.
The absurdity of the story has now reached fever pitch – and yet God’s response is only a mild enquiry as to why Jonah should be angry. Jonah, on the other hand, chucks a tantrum of monumental proportions, and storms off into the desert. And yet still God spares Jonah, making a tree grow up over him to shelter him from the sun. By this, at least, Jonah is pleased; and yet, when the tree dies the following day, he once more plunges into self-pity and demands that God take his life.
And yet God’s response is to once again enquire mildly as to why Jonah should be angry; and to point out the absurdity of weeping and mourning over a tree when the lives of every person in Nineveh – as well as their animals – have been spared. And of course it is an absurd contrast; but it is a contrast that highlights the joy of redemption, the joy of a people saved from their own folly; the joy of Jonah saved from his folly.
Because, while God might have utilised a certain measure of persuasion in order for Jonah to get his act into gear, God nevertheless prevented Jonah’s first attempt at self-destruction through the suitably absurd guise of the large fish. And when Jonah again tries to end it all by marching off into the desert, God again saves him – once more, through the preposterous agency of a tree that grows to maturity overnight. Jonah comes off as an unpleasant, fractious, self-absorbed individual – but that doesn’t mean his life isn’t any less precious to God. Jonah’s life, in the context of this story, is a metaphor for salvation; Jonah is redeemed not because he deserves to be, but because God wants him to be.
And so it is with the people of Nineveh: they are saved from destruction, not by their act of repentance, but by God’s estimation of their worth. Interestingly, the Revised Standard Version translation says that God “repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them”. Which clearly indicates that God had an estimation of their value, that the people of Nineveh, in God’s mind, were worth saving; not for their own sakes, but because the nature of God is to desire and effect human redemption.
And so we have this comedic contrast between Jonah’s expectation that the Ninevites will be wiped out, and his own demand to be destroyed when this doesn’t eventuate. As if his own destruction would compensate for his disappointment over the sparing of the Ninevites! More to the point, this contrast demonstrates how profoundly Jonah misunderstands the nature of prophecy; which is not to foretell the future, or bring messages of doom down on the heads of sinful people. On the contrary, prophecy is the bringing of God’s word of repentance and redemption to a humanity that does not appreciate how deeply it is loved by God, and how powerfully God desires their salvation.
And the fact that God appoints bumbling, self-interested, even idiotic individuals to this task attests both to the strength of God’s love and to the determination with which God pursues the scheme of salvation. For if as unsatisfactory an individual as Jonah can be redeemed by God’s grace, then so can we all. Beneath the comedic contrasts and improbable exaggerations of the Book of Jonah lies a simple, profound, and humbling message: that we all can have hope in the steadfast love of God.
As I said, it’s an odd little text. And like an unheralded film that disappears amid a welter of overhyped blockbusters , Jonah is like a gem hidden in the midst of more familiar, and more popularly trumpeted, texts. But it’s worth reading in depth and more than once, both for its comic value and for the power of the message it contains. The best comedians point us in the direction of the profoundest truths; and this “divine comedy” points us toward the deepest truth of all: that it is precisely because of who we are, warts and all, that God loves us; and there is nothing we can do or say to alter that.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
