Jonah Chapter Two And The Hard Work Of Regret

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So Jonah chapter two.
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You guys remember probably last week, those of you who were able to join us, Jonah chapter one was an interesting tale.
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You have Jonah here, told by God to do something very, very specific.
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And you have Jonah without even thinking about it doing the opposite, turning right away from what God wanted him to do.
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And he ends up on a ship, and uh that ship runs into chaos of a storm on the sea.
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Uh the mariners eventually have to throw him into the water, for he is to blame for that storm.
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Uh and he ends up in the belly of a big fish.
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We always say whale, but it actually says big fish.
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And are there any biologists out here?
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Any other problems with the calling it a whale?
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A whale's a mammal, you see, not even a fish.
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I found that funny.
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You didn't find that funny even this much.
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I guess I'll save that for biology class.
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They're the ones who will find that interesting.
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In any case, it's this kind of weird farcical tale.
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You know, feels more like a parable than prophecy from the prophet Jonah that comes across in Jonah chapter one.
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Chapter two, now we have this whole other Jonah, this very sincere prayer about having gone against God.
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And now he's back at God's feet.
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He's seeking forgiveness, he's grateful uh uh for the grace that God has been giving him.
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In other words, it is totally different Jonah than the one we see in chapter one.
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So you may be seeing a little bit of why the scholars feel like this might have been written later, somebody inspired by the journey, by this story that Jonah was on.
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But Jonah there is in the midst of his regret, the belly of the big fish.
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It comes with the big question for today.
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Are you ready?
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Have you ever made the mistake?
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That big mistake, maybe sinned even, and had to live with that result.
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Have you been there?
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The metaphor of this of this big fish, it might feel really, really appropriate, right?
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In the moment of that big mistake, it's like it's all around you.
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Everywhere you turned, you're enveloped in this.
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Well, do you remember the feelings when you're in that space?
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The the the panic, the anger, the regret?
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Right?
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And you're you're looking desperately for ways to fix whatever it is that happened.
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You become highly committed to finding some sort of gap in the time space continuum so that you can go back in time and just do it differently.
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Have you been there?
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Right?
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You're like, there's gotta be a way that I don't need to sit in this space of guilt.
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Guilt and regret.
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We have complications with that emotion of guilt, I think, in our society.
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Might even have more complications with things like penance, right?
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Of working through and making things right.
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We don't really like it.
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I think a lot of it is because our culture has spent a lot of time trying to develop appreciation for self-esteem, right?
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We need to like ourselves.
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That's an important part of our psychology and our makeup, right?
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Our self-esteem's important.
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In our religious culture, our Christian culture, we we kind of have a similar emphasis.
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We use different language.
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We talk about grace, the unconditional love of God given to all.
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God, the creator of all that is, finds you worthy.
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Right?
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We have that language, that Christian language that builds on self-esteem and appreciation for the self.
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But in the midst of all of that grace, there's this dark reality that lives.
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The dark reality that we're not perfect.
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We sin.
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We don't always do what God wants us to do.
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The thing we know is the right thing to do.
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So guilt, because we are imperfect, is kind of this reality of the human existence, a reality that we either process and ultimately grow from, or maybe we rationalize a little bit to make the pain, the difficulty, the complication a little less challenging, or maybe we even deny the guilt altogether.
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I didn't do anything wrong.
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Those people didn't get anything they didn't deserve.
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Right?
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And we live in those places.
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Our tendency really is to kind of push guilt away, right?
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I'm not bad, I'm good.
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Don't bring me down.
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Don't bring me down.
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I work hard on my self-esteem.
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I saw it played out a bit just recently in our celebration of 250 years of declaring our independence.
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Maybe you like me, you were uh noticing maybe a little bit of disappointment in our celebrations, right?
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Some were noticing they were kind of muted in a way that was maybe a bit disappointing.
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There were people saying we realize not everything, not everything is perfect, but can't we just be positive?
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At least for a 250th celebration.
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Meanwhile, others were saying, Positivity is a challenge right now.
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It feels like we're returning to some of the problems, the challenges, the sinfulness, past mistakes we used to make.
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We're going back.
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Can you see the the wrestling with guilt here?
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Can you see how it's kind of the arena that we're we're in and we're wrestling with this?
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Some of us want to walk walk right past that burden of the guilt.
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For others, they can't find their way out of that guilt.
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I'd argue that a lot of our problem as a society is that we aren't really practiced in dealing with guilt.
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We've spent so little time with it, we aren't really sure how to work through it.
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All we see is the big frit big fish belly prison.
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This ugly thing, this thing that some of us want to avoid at all costs, even the cost of learning how to process guilt.
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And others are just so unpracticed at things, at working through it, they never find their way out of it in any meaningful way.
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There's a dilemma to guilt, isn't there?
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At what point am I keeping myself grounded and aware of my weaknesses?
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And at what point am I just weighing myself down, punishing the spirit I'm supposed to be sharing with the world?
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It's all these points of challenge and dealing with this inevitable thing that we have, this guilt.
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Because we are imperfect, we are going to do things wrong.
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And there's going to be times where we are guilty and need to process it.
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I remember on some vacation, I was struck by an example of guilt in Europe.
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And I know we have travelers here, so I'm guessing that you have seen similar things.
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While I was going through Germany, while I was going through different parts of that area, you'd be walking along and you would see these plaques, and they were affixed right into the stone, right?
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They were there.
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They were not going anywhere, planted in the cobblestone, and they would be these stories.
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These stories of a person or a family.
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It might have a date.
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It might have the story of how it happened, but you were could be told that these people were taken off the streets during World War II, vanished.
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I could tell you the date of when it happened here on this plaque.
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Sometimes they would even know what happened to that family, and that was on the plaque too.
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I'll remind you, these plaques, they could be right out in front of the place you were going to get your coffee that morning.
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Right out where you might be going to mail some letters to somebody, some postcards.
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They were that prevalent and obvious.
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My instant reaction was shock.
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Why in all the world would you want to remember such a horrific thing?
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But then the answer comes pretty quickly.
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Because we we can forget that we have the capacity to do horrific things.
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We can forget that.
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And if we don't stay mindful of this part of our humanity, of our sinfulness, we're much more likely to repeat it.
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I'd like to think that these plaques are a sign that the guilt is being processed and processed in a good way, and that they will continue to be processed.
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But it was a living example for me that popped up when we're talking about this guilt.
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It makes me wonder.
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I wonder if part of what this chapter of Jonah is trying to teach us is that the big fish is not really what we think it is.
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As it reads in our Bible, this big fish really is kind of incidental.
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It's just serving a purpose.
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You know, the outer story, chapters one, two, or one, three, and four don't deal with this big fish much at all.
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Chapter two, really, the one we have today, didn't really even deal with a big fish.
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This moment could have been dealt with really anyway.
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But the way our stories go in our culture, we're trained to see that big fish as this big thing, and we focus in on it, it's this place of punishment.
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You go here to the big fish because you were bad, and it was time for you to get punished, and God's going to make sure that that happens.
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But what happens?
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What what what if that's not the point of the big fish at all?
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What if the big fish, it's it's really just a place, a metaphorical place, but a place for Jonah to work out his guilt.
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This fish's belly isn't the high security prison cell that we often think it is, this cell that's full of mirrors on all sides, so all you can do is look at who you are and what you've done and live in it.
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That is not this fish's belly.
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Instead, maybe it's this place of Jonah's weakness.
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Your weakness, your sinfulness.
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This place where you're able to be with God and with yourself.
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It's likely a place that you recognize.
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Maybe you even fear it.
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Or maybe it's a place that you once feared, but now you've you've done some work in life, some work to be able to ground yourself in that space.
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It doesn't overwhelm like it once did.
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In any case, it's this place.
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A place where you can say, This is not who I was created to be.
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This is not who I want to be.
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So how did I end up here again?
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What is it about me that points this direction to this place?
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And maybe some good questions for us Christians.
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In what ways do I need God for support?
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In not only keeping from coming here again, but working my way out of it now.
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In what ways is God already offering support, present, offering places of healing and redemption.
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I think some of the beauty slash genius of this prayer is that it has notes of all of that.
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These words from Jonah, they show a person who is processing his guilt.
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You can hear the humility, the turn to God, but you can also hear the hedging, the judging of others in the prayer.
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We see the guilt, we see the gratefulness of God or for God, but we also see these odd comparisons to others.
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You can tell he's in the middle of it, he's processing it.
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In some ways, he's moving toward that redemption, in some ways he's still fighting.
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I think that place is our invitation today.
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That invitation to not fear that place, that dark, dark place that we find ourselves in, but to get more practiced at finding where God and redemption lay in there.
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It's an invitation to be ready to do the work to find our way out.
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And hopefully we find that way out with a wisdom that will help us with our weaknesses, but also a strengthened sense of ourself, not only ourselves, but our role in this world, our role in building the kingdom that Jesus tells us we're to build.
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You know, maybe a 250th year celebration isn't the time to be working all of that out.
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Maybe there is room to be able to enjoy that celebration.
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But we do need to figure out a time.
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The time where we do that work.
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Because that's how we can continue on this journey to our wholeness as individuals, as a society.
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The journey to being who God wants us to be, and hopefully to being who we want to be.
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Amen.