Need a Mulligan?

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” [Jonah 3:1-2].

Because of you-know-what, our family, like yours, could not celebrate Christmas 2020 in the usual manner. For Jane and me, there was no packed Duke Chapel for Handel’s Messiah, no crowded church service on Christmas Eve, and no hustle and bustle with last minute gift errands. Because the weather forecasts for Christmas Day here in Durham weren’t promising, the extended family (children, spouses, and 7 grandchildren) gathered on the Tuesday evening before Christmas at–not inside–Zambrero’s, a new restaurant in the University Hill (formerly known as South Square) area.

Adjacent to the restaurant is a large, covered porch. Adjacent to that porch is a large commons area with artificial turf. It was cold that evening, but the cousins–particularly the younger five–didn’t mind at all. At one point, Everett, age 4, and Andrew, age 5, decided to see who could race the fastest to the other end of the “grass.” I was standing nearby when Jack, their 14-year-old elder, said “Go.”

Everett raced forward about five steps, tripped, and sprawled out, laughing, on the turf. I went over to him, helped him up, and said, “Everett, looks like you need a mulligan.”

He looked at me quizzically and said, “Pop, what’s a mulligan?”

I replied, “Oh, uh, it’s a second chance, a do-over.”

As I read the Old Testament lesson for this upcoming Sunday [Jonah 3:1-5, 10, the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year B], I can’t help but think that during the time of Jonah, one of the Twelve Minor prophets, those who lived in Nineveh really  needed a mulligan. Only thing–they didn’t know it.

Indeed, Nineveh was on everyone’s bad list, including Yahweh’s. It was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. That’s the crowd that, by Jonah’s time, had already conquered Israel, the northern kingdom. They had also waged war against Judah, the southern kingdom, although it would be the Babylonians, one hundred or so years later, who would actually conquer and destroy Jerusalem.

The Nenevites loved warfare and torture so much that they wrote about it in what survives as the Assyrian Chronicles. They were experts in using fear and intimidation. They practiced mutilation and all sorts of horrific acts. And even though Yahweh had made no covenant with them, Yahweh was fed up. Like Sodom before, Nineveh was a blight on humankind. It needed to be destroyed. And so, Yahweh told Jonah to call out against them, a task that would require a face to face confrontation.

Jonah books a charter boat not to Nineveh, but to Tarshish, which is in the opposite direction. At first blush, Jonah appears to be afraid of the Ninevites. As we later learn, however, he’s actually irritated with Yahweh.

We all know the story of Jonah and the storm, particularly Jonah’s encounter with the great fish [Jonah 2:1]. Most of us recall that he was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Some of us might even remember that while he was inside the fish, Jonah prayed to Yahweh for a mulligan. And Yahweh gave him one.

That’s where this week’s lesson begins. “And the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, …” [Jonah 3:1, emphasis mine]. This time, Jonah heeded the LORD and “got up and went to Nineveh,” where he preached the shortest–and yet most effective–sermon ever: “Forty more days and Nineveh is overthrown” [Jonah 3:4].

Miracle of miracles, Jonah’s half-hearted altar call was answered by 120,000 people–literally everyone in town. Although Jonah hadn’t told them that there was any way out of their predicament, they decided to trust Yahweh [Jonah 3:5; note the verb; they didn’t choose “to believe” in Yahweh and become subject to him]. They all put on sackcloth. They even dressed their livestock in sackcloth [Jonah 3:8]; that’s a funny picture. The king said, “Who knows? Perhaps God will turn back and relent and turn back from His burning wrath, and we shall not perish” [Jonah 3:9].

Then, of course, the real miracle happened: God saw their acts, that they had “turned back” from their evil way, and God “turned back” as well, and did not destroy them. And so, Jonah agreed to give the homily at the next political gathering of the leaders in Nineveh, right? No! Jonah stomped off fuming mad–and mad, not at the Ninevites–but at Yahweh [Jonah 4:1-2].

He tells Yahweh that this was exactly why he initially headed toward Tarshish, and not toward Nineveh:

for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in kindness and relenting from evil [Jonah 4:2]

Jonah says something like, “I know you, LORD. You’ll forgive anyone–even those in Nineveh. And just like that fish the other day, I just feel sick to my stomach.”

I don’t think that those of us who read this text in the 21st century can truly get a sense of Jonah’s anger at Yahweh; I’m not sure I’d have been that brave/stupid. His anger takes on the flavor of righteous indignation. Now that’s hubris! Can we see that in Jonah’s statement referencing God’s graciousness and compassion, Jonah is actually hurling–I think quite sarcastically–Yahweh’s own words back at the Creator God? These words, uttered on many occasions by Hebrew worshippers as a creed, had first been pronounced by Yahweh himself as a statement of Yahweh’s self-understanding:

And He [i.e., the LORD] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness; maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin [see Exodus 34:6-7a].

We come to see that when Yahweh looks at himself, Yahweh sees a God who gives out mulligans. Can we also see into Jonah’s mind? He concludes that although Jonah deserved a mulligan, a second chance, those in Nineveh did not. In that way, Jonah is serving himself up later to our Lord, Jesus Christ, who will–I think–use Jonah as the model for the brother of the Prodigal Son. That brother boils over when both grace and forgiveness are extended to the brother who had left, squandered his inheritance, and then returned home in ruin. Like Jonah before him, the brother who had stayed behind looked at his father and said, “How dare you show grace and forgiveness to someone with whom I am displeased!” Jonah, of course, puts it even more tersely. He looked at his Heavenly Father and said, “How dare you be the kind of God that you promised You’d be!”

The Jonah story challenges those of us who are righteously indignant to put aside our moral superiority and take on instead the character of God, who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in kindness, and whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. I pray that in the days ahead, our nation learns that the cycles of violence and blame–on both sides of the spectrum–can only be broken when mercy and forgiveness are extended.

Can we live with and serve a God who has this strange habit of extending mercy to the least deserving who wander through the door? Before we lash out at God (and others) for so freely passing out mulligans, might we at least stop to discern whether we need one too?