GOD BOXES

I love this ancient story of Jonah.  This story delivers a timely and crucial message to us in our time.  The book of Jonah addresses something that I believe to be a universal problem.  It's a problem that has characterized every generation, every culture, and every religion - and that is the human tendency to put God in a box.  We all have our God-boxes of a million varieties.   

Jonah had a God-box. Jonah had God-in-a-box.  That's the crux and meaning of this story.  But this story is not about an individual named Jonah.  In its original context Jonah was a metaphor, an allegorical symbol for Israel.  Just as Jesus told parables to make a point about the kingdom of God, Jonah was a story told in Israel to make a point about the ways of God.

The book of Jonah is a short story about a nation that had lost its prophetic vision (soul, purpose) and had put God-in-a-box.  It's a cleverly written story that drips with irony and dry humor.    

The passage that was read appears in the middle of the story, so let's review the first part of the story so we can see it in context.  The story begins with Jonah receiving a directive from God to go to Nineveh, a city that symbolically represented Israel's enemies down the through the centuries.  He was to go to Nineveh, the enemy camp, and call upon the residents of that great city to repent.  "Holy cow! What a calling…"

…and Jonah wanted no part of it, so he tried to run away from God's call.  He booked passage on a ship going to Tarshish, a remote community located up the coast of the eastern Mediterranean.  Surely God wouldn't find him in that God forsaken place - or so he thought - how naive - he didn't realize that that's where God often turns up - in God-forsaken places.  Anyway, after they set sail a great storm arose that threatened to sink the ship, and everybody on board was desperately praying to their various gods to save their lives. 

The sailors decided that their peril was the result of somebody's angry god; that somebody on that ship was the cause of their desperate situation.  In those days the way to figure that out, they believed, was to cast lots.  So they did. Guess who threw "snake-eyes", guess who drew the ace of spades; guess who pulled the short straw?  You got it - Jonah.  Jonah confessed that indeed he was the culprit running from his God and was the likely cause of the storm.  He even told the sailors to throw him overboard so that their lives might be spared.  

At first, the sailors valiantly tried to row their boat through the raging storm, but the harder they rowed the worse the storm got, and the more their jeopardy increased.  In the end they threw Jonah overboard anyway, and of course, the storm ceased and they were saved.

Jonah, on the other hand, no more that hit the foamy water when a big fish came along and swallowed him up.  But that fish found Jonah to be literally indigestible (here comes the humor) and after three days the great fish vomited Jonah up on dry land.     

The fish was a symbol too - a symbol of God's grace - expressed for a prophet - and for a nation that had repeatedly acted in childish ways and had tried to run away from God's call many times.  Jonah was hard pill to swallow, but God saved him anyway - through the fish of grace. 

This brings us to today when Jonah got a second chance to go to Nineveh and call upon the people to repent.  So Jonah went, and he must have been a pretty good preacher, for the people of that great city repented.  And guess what, God changed his mind and God showed grace and mercy to the people of Nineveh.  One would think that Jonah would have been ecstatic with such a great response to his charismatic preaching.  But guess what, Jonah was anything but ecstatic.  He was really ticked off (angry, enraged) that God changed his mind  and showed grace and mercy to the Ninevites, and Jonah descended into the darkness of a childish, angry, pitiful pout - a pout that had actually started when God asked him to go to Nineveh in the first place. 

You know what Jonah said to God at this point?  Jonah said, "Lord, I knew this was going to happen from the very beginning.  I just knew it.  I knew you were going to show grace and mercy to those despicable Ninevites, and I wanted nothing to do with it then, and I want nothing to do with it now!"

And off Jonah went  whining that he might as well be dead.  What an opening for the dry humor of God. While Jonah was stewing in his own pout, God caused a great plant to grow up and shade Jonah from the scorching sun, (I think it was also to cool him off from the internal heat generated by his own anger at God). The next day a worm attacked the plant, and the plant died and Jonah's anger intensified even more, and he now he even expressed concern for the plant. (displaced anger it is called)  Of course, he really wasn't concerned about the plant but angry that God had extended grace and mercy to his bitter enemies.

The story ends with Jonah pathetically wallowing in his angry pout under the scorching sun; angry that God showed grace to the Ninevites; angry that plant died and he was getting second degree sunburn.  But it was really his heart (and soul) that was scorched; scorched because God simply would not be confined to the prison of Jonah's little box, Israel's little box - or for that matter anybody's little box. 

This is a story that emerged in Israel and confronted their attitude to put and keep God in a box; to think and believe that God's favor was reserved only for them; that God's love and grace was only as large as the boundaries of their little God-box.

This also is a story for the ages which means it is a story for us, and that we too are Jonah when we build our magnificent God boxes.  We build our boxes out of the raw material of our viewpoints, opinions, sectarianism and denominationalism.   We use the fasteners of tradition and even throw in the glue of prejudice and fear to hold it all together.  And we become so enchanted by our God-box that we are blind to all the other God boxes out there beyond ours, and we convince ourselves, perhaps out of our own pervasive sense of insecurity, that our box is the only authentic box and all the rest of the boxes are frauds.

I believe the story of Jesus, perhaps more than anything else, is a story of what a human life can look like when it is set free from living inside a God-box.    

Mark tells us that Jesus came into Galilee preaching a short sermon, "The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the good news."   And when we follow Jesus' life through the gospels we see that he more than preached the kingdom of God; he embodied the kingdom of God; he lived the kingdom of God; he died for the kingdom of God - and he invited others to follow him and live it and embody it, and maybe even die for it as well. 

He spotted Simon and Andrew casting their nets and he said, "Follow me."  And then Mark very carefully describes their response.  Mark says, "They left their nets and followed." 

Jesus preached, "Repent and believe."  Simon and Andrew, “Left their nets and followed.”  I believe Marks intends for us, his readers, to see a correlation between those two phrases.    “Repent and believe” = “left their nets and followed.”    The response of Simon and Andrew to Jesus' invitation is what Jesus' short sermon looks like when embodied in real human lives.

Simon and Andrew, "left their nets", which is another way to say they left their box.  They stepped out of their box.  Jesus invited them out of their box into a new adventure and a new mind-set. That’s what repentance is.  To repent is to leave the box in which I have been confined - in which I have confined God in there with me, and as long as I stay in that box God is no bigger than me. 

And they followed, says Mark which is what faith ultimately comes down to.  Faith is not belief in certain creeds, doctrines or ideas about God.  The gospels define faith as following a person - faith is trust in a person and where that person leads - the person

Faith is getting my feet moving even if my mind is unsure and my heart is afraid.  Faith is getting my feet moving following Jesus.  He is a person who leads me out of my box, and he leads into "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth."  He leads us into the adventure of living and embodying God's kingdom of love, compassion and justice in this world. 

What scorched Jonah was that God's love, mercy and compassion was a threat to Jonah's God-box.  Jonah believed in God's love all right, but not for the enemies of Israel - not for the Assyrians; not for the Babylonians, not for the Persians, not for the Macedonians, not the Hasmoneans, not for the Romans; not for any of Israel's enemies.   And the last we see of Jonah is Jonah sitting in the squalor and bitterness of his own anger because God broke his precious little God-box. God was bigger than the box in which Jonah, Israel and often you and me confine God.  

Jesus does the same thing.  If we risk responding to Jesus' invitation to follow he will break open whatever God-box in which we have confined God; and lead us far beyond into uncharted territory.

When we follow Jesus we are following the radical love and compassion of God. Jesus embodied God's insatiable desire that all oppressed by power in any way are to be set free.    

And what our God-boxes do is put limits on God. Our God boxes restrict God's love.  Inside our boxes God is a God of love all right, but not for everyone and each box has its own version of limits on God's love. 

Our God boxes restrict God's desire that the oppressed be set free.  Inside our various boxes God is a God of justice all right, but only for some - not for all - especially not for those whom we don't like - or hate - or hold a prejudice against - or those we want to exploit. 

When we look at the history of Christianity we see all too disturbing pattern.  Oh, we see a Lord Jesus Christ who was willing to die for the love of God, but all too often we see his so-called followers not ready to die and give their lives for the love of God, but ready to kill to defend their God-box - and if not kill literally, then kill figuratively. 

Jonah was scorched because God messed with his box and extended grace to the bitter enemies of Israel.  What's our response going to be, you and me, when we hear Jesus invite us to follow and then we realize that following the radical love God embodied in Jesus means stepping out of and leaving our sacred God-boxes behind?