Jonah Chapter 3 - Walls

Something a bit strange happened this week as I was preparing for today.

I started off thinking about whales and ended up thinking about walls. Not an immediately obvious connection, I know, but hopefully by the end of the sermon you’ll see where I’m going

In particular I was remembering a poem by Robert Frost called “Mending Wall” which I’d like to read to you.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

I’m guessing that those of you with land and beasts to manage will find yourselves agreeing with Frost’s neighbour, and I don’t mean to decry the value of a good sturdy wall. Walls demarcate and protect and defend and we need them for all those reasons.

The walls I’m interested in this morning aren’t physical. They’re the walls we construct within our hearts and minds.

Frost says: “something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. I want to argue that within the human heart the very opposite is true. There’s something within us that loves a wall, because our walls let us know who’s in and who’s out; who’s right and who’s wrong; who’s one of us, and who’s one of them.

Growing up in Northern Ireland, I’m all too familiar with walls. The grey barricades of Belfast’s so-called peace line, and the murals adorning the gable ends of terraced houses are a visible manifestation of the ancient divide that runs through the heart and soul of the province I was born in.

My best friends when I was growing up were two wee Catholic lads who stayed just down the street from me. We were virtually inseparable for years. But we always knew that we were different.

And I remember us being in stiches one day because my wee brother didn’t know there was a difference between Catholics and Protestants. If you’d asked us what that difference was, we couldn’t have told you. We just knew there was a difference. There was a wall between us.

I didn’t ask for that wall to be there within me. It just was. And it ran right through me, even though our family are about as moderate as it comes in the Province.

Dangerous things, walls. If you build them high enough you can even forget what the person on the other side looks like and then it becomes terribly easy to stereotype, or even demonise them. That’s when the bullets and the petrol bombs start flying.

I don’t know how high that wall would be now, if I’d stayed. But I know that travel and education knocked some lumps out of that particular edifice and I’m more than happy with that outcome.

Years ago I did a gap year working in a church in Glasgow and went on outreach work to Spain and Morocco. Travelling through Morocco remains, to this day, one of the most stressful experiences I’ve ever had, spiritually and culturally. And I remember returning to Spain, sitting in the Catholic Church in San Roque, a wee Ulster Proddy, looking up at Christ on the cross and thinking “I’m back home now”.

I still struggle with the veneration of Mary, prayer to the saints, transubstantiation, papal infallibility and all that stuff. But it’s the same guy on the cross, taking away the sin of the world. It’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we both worship. We’re not as far apart as our walls would lead us to believe.

And yet how many times across the world have we seen the same thing played out? How many walls are built and defended to the death over differences of hair-splitting proportions? Taking the whole world into consideration with all its cultural variety, is there really much difference between Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda? Sunni and Shia in Iraq? Free Church and Free Church Continuing in the Western Isles!

We love our walls. But I’m not so sure God does.

And the story of Jonah is one of the reasons I’m prepared to say that today.

Let me ask you a couple of questions – not hypothetical.

If you define wickedness as turning your back on God and going your own way, then who’s wicked in this story? (Both Jonah and the Ninevites)

And who does God love in this story? Who does he pity and have compassion on? (Both Jonah and the Ninevites)

And have either Jonah or the Ninevites done anything to merit God’s love?

The Ninevites repent, sure, but God’s love was already on them. He loved them enough to send Jonah not once but twice to bring them the message that was going to save their lives.

Can you see what’s happening? All his life Jonah’s been working with a worldview that says “people on my side of the wall are fine with God, people on the other side of the wall are fuel for the fires of hell.” “People on my side of the wall are loved. People on the other side of the wall are hated”.

And God’s saying – “That wall needs to come down, Jonah. You don’t set the boundaries of my goodness or my grace. I love all that I’ve made and I want to see it made right. Don’t assume you or your people are better just because you’ve been chosen. You’ve been chosen for service, not for privilege. The nations are depending on your witness. So don’t get above yourself. You have a job to do, and up to now you’ve been making a pretty poor fist of it”.

And so, standing there on the shore, still rubbing his salt sore eyes, Jonah’s commissioned for the second time – “Go to Nineveh, that great city’ – words that in the Hebrew almost convey a sense of admiration for the human endeavour that put Nineveh together. “Go, and proclaim to the people the message I have given you”.

And in contrast to Chapter 1 – Jonah follows the instructions to the letter. He gets up, he goes and he proclaims what is quite possibly the shortest sermon ever preached – 5 words in the Hebrew. Would that any of us could preach for so little time to such great effect!
Wholesale repentance, we’re told, and God relenting of his plans for destruction. Why such a profound response? We’re simply not told.

But here’s the rub. Has Jonah really changed as a result of all this? Has his wall come down? Or is he going through the motions, doing what he’s been ordered to do, but still harbouring hate in his heart? Piling stone on stone to build his beloved wall higher? I think you already know the answer to that, but we’ll find out for sure in chapter 4.

But more importantly, what about us this morning? What walls have we raised to keep others at arm’s length?

Who are we avoiding just now? Who are we giving short shrift to?

Who are we closing down on – and giving nothing away to?

What prejudices do we carry around within us which stop us seeing that person or those people, however misguided, as God’s beloved?

Are there walls you’ve built so high that you’ve lost sight of the person behind them? Does it comfort you to live with your caricature of them, rather than dealing with the complexity of the real person?

Is the wall you’ve constructed actually designed to keep God at a safe distance?

The story of Jonah isn’t really about whales. It’s about walls.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall and maybe, when it comes to the human heart, that Something is nothing less than God himself.

Pastor Bill Carter sums up chapter 3 of Jonah beautifully when he says:

When are we going to get it straight that the love of God is for all people? That the judgment of God is laid upon every human heart? That the mercy of God can forgive every sin and give second chances to every person? When are we going to get it into our heads and our hearts that the Creator in heaven wants nothing more than to stand face to face with every creature beginning with us, but not ending there.

God is willing to love anybody. Even Jonah. Even you and me. The difficulty is not in telling ourselves this is true. The difficulty is believing it's true for everybody else.