Text used – Jonah 3:10-4:11

And now the end is here
And so I face that final curtain
My friend I’ll make it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more
I did it, I did it my way

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
I saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much, much more
I did it, I did it my way

Yes, there were times I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself then he has naught
Not to say the things that he truly feels
And not the words of someone who kneels
Let the record shows I took all the blows and did it my way[1]

• There it is, right? The Frank Sinatra classic.
  • Lyrics written by Paul Anka → new lyrics to a French song he heard on the radio while at his home in France
    • Anka = acquaintance of Sinatra’s → knew he was considering retiring → wrote the lyrics as a combination of Anka’s own story and Sinatra’s story – Anka: “The song became a composite of my life and his, but mostly his.”[2]
  • Recorded by Sinatra at the end of 1968 → highly successful
    • Debuted at #69 on the Billboard chart in Mar. 1969 (highest new entry that week) → climbed as high as #27 in 6 weeks and stayed there for a while
    • Reached #5 in the UK → spent 124 wks on the UK’s singles chart
      • Longer than any other song ever!
    • Taken back to the charts numerous times by numerous artists/groups covering this song
      • US charts
        • Brook Benton – 1970
        • Elvis Presley (released posthumously) – 1977
      • UK charts
        • Sid Vicious/Sex Pistols – 1978
        • Shane McGowan/The Pogues – 1996
      • Even a part of the recent animated hit “Sing”[3]
  • Clearly, these lyrics have carried weight and meaning for thousands over the years. Indeed, in many of the articles and opinion pieces written about this particular song, it’s declared “an anthem” – for the generation into which it was first released but also for many who followed after. But after reading our Scripture passage for this morning, I think the power and applicability of Sinatra’s song could stretch backward in history, too. Really, couldn’t this be Jonah’s anthem as well? → [reread lyrics] Oh, yeah … that’s definitely Jonah!
• Let’s talk about Jonah as a book for a moment.
  • As part of the biblical cannon, it’s considered one of the 12 minor prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachia … and Jonah) → But unlike the other 11 minor prophets, the language and literary layout of Jonah is wholly different.
    • Other prophets: almost entirely records of the words of the prophets → their dire warnings for the people of Israel and their praise of the goodness and justice of God
    • But then you have Jonah … which is told as a story.
    • Scholar: Jonah is a difficult book to decide how to read. It is surely prophetic. It has been included among the twelve prophets at least since Qumran [and the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls]. Its main character is presumably the eighth-century-BCE prophet named in 2 Kings 14:25 [“{Jeroboam} reestablished Israel’s border from Lebo-hamath to the Dead Sea. This was in agreement with the word that the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke through his servant the prophet Jonah, Amittai’s son, who was from Gath-hepher.”], and [Jonah] begins with the conventional prophetic formula, “The word of [the Lord] came to Jonah”. However, Jonah is a didactic narrative or a parable, a short story about the fabulous adventures of a(n anti-) prophet, not a collection of prophecies.[4] → So we have another place in Scripture naming Jonah as a prophet who actually lived and prophesied in the history of Israel, and yet in the book of Jonah, we find this fanciful tale that we know so well from Sunday school coloring sheets, right?
      • Jonah = called by God to deliver a message of/demand for repentance to the people of Nineveh → And it’s important to remember that at the time, Nineveh was considered a place of lawlessness and evil.
        • Modern day equivalent = Tortuga from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies → town built upon the wobbly, flawed legs of drunkenness, debauchery, brawls, gambling, and general piracy
        • And it’s to a place like this that God calls Jonah to deliver a message of repentance. God says, “Go ahead, Jonah. Tell them what they’re doing wrong and remind them that they’re better off with me.”
      • Jonah’s response to God’s call: NO WAY!! → thinking he can hide from God, Jonah hops on a ship headed in the opposite direction
      • God causes a storm to rage up around the ship → those aboard draw lots to decide who’s brought this horrible fortune on their voyage … and guess who draws the short straw? Yup … Jonah.
      • Jonah fesses up → gets tossed overboard → swallowed by a giant fish → spends 3 days and nights in the belly of the fish before repenting and promising God he’ll go wherever God tells him to go → fish pukes Jonah up on the shore just outside of Nineveh
      • And then Jonah actually does as God commands. He goes into Nineveh. He called on them to repent: “Just forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!”[5]
        • Notice: not promise of God’s love or grace or forgiveness → just condemnation and warning
      • And miracle of miracles, the people of Nineveh actually listen! They repent. They declare a fast. They put on sackcloth and sit in ashes, the rituals for mourning and deep repentance. From the lowliest citizen all the way up to the king of Nineveh himself.
• Okay, so that brings us up to today’s portion of the story.
  • God can see that the people’s repentance is sincere – text: God saw what they were doing – that they had ceased their evil behavior. So God stopped planning to destroy them, and he didn’t do it.[6]
  • Jonah’s response = full-on toddler meltdown! – text: Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Come on, Lord! Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land? This is why I fled to Tarshish earlier! I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy.  At this point, Lord, you may as well take my life from me, because it would be better for me to die than to live.”[7] → Truly, y’all, only Jonah can make thing like mercy and compassion, patience and faithful love sound like insults!

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
I saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much, much more
I did it, I did it my way

• • God tries to reason with Jonah, but Jonah chooses to continue his pouting on a hillside outside the city
    • One thing to point out: Jonah is beyond upset about God’s tendency to forgiveness → BUT without that same forgiveness, Jonah would still be in the belly of that fish! → It’s okay for Jonah to receive that forgiveness, but it’s not okay to witness anyone else receiving it.
  • And friends, this next part may be my favorite part in the whole Bible because in it, we are privy to a substantial picture of God’s sense of humor. It’s a little bit dry. It’s definitely ironic. And it’s saturated in a profound lesson to be learned.
    • God grows a shrub up over Jonah for shade → Jonah is happy
    • God sends a worm → worm attacks the shrub
    • Shrub dies → Jonah’s discomfort level and anger rise simultaneously

Yes, there were times I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself then he has naught
Not to say the things that he truly feels
And not the words of someone who kneels
Let the record shows I took all the blows and did it my way

• • • And then we get the lesson: [Jonah] begged that he might die, saying, “It’s better for me to die than to live.” God said to Jonah, “Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?” Jonah said, “Yes, my anger is good—even to the point of death!” But the Lordsaid, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night.  Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”[8]
      • God to Jonah: “You can pity a plant – a plant for which you did zero work but still benefitted. But you can’t pity a whole city full of people? And not only that, you’re going to begrudge me for pitying this city of people that I made? People that I love? People that have come back to me? Really, Jonah? Really?”
      • Scholar pinpoints both the humor in this and the point undergirding the humor: In rhetorical terms, … humor has the ability to disarm those who encounter the story, since laughing at others opens one up to accepting in the end that the joke is on oneself. … the absence of a final response from Jonah transforms our laughter at the petulant prophet into the nervous laughter that fills our own silence in response to the query that comes, when we realize the joke is ultimately on us.[9]
• You see, that question that God asks Jonah is where the narrative ends. It’s where the whole book of Jonah ends – on that hanging question about whose view of when repentance is appropriate and when it isn’t is correct. Is it Jonah’s way – a way of judgment and punishment and “comeuppance”? Or is it God’s way of compassion and mercy and second chances?
  • Question that needs to be asked in this day in age when we’re so focused on pointing fingers and holding a magnifying glass to others’ faults and flaws → Which way will we strive to follow: our own way of human misintention and misunderstanding and bias … or God’s higher way of trust and compassion and wholehearted forgiveness? Is it more important to see people taken down for their sins? Or is it more important to witness salvation? What’s the ultimate aim of faith: retribution … or repentance? Does God call us to convict … or to love? Amen.

[1] “My Way,” recorded by Frank Sinatra at Western Records, Dec. 30, 1968. Original melody (“Comme d’Habitude”) by Jacques Revaux, Gille Thibault, and Claude François. Lyrics by Paul Anka.

[2] https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/frank-sinatra-my-way-story-behind-song/.

[3] “Sing,” written and directed by Garth Jennings, produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures, Dec. 21, 2016.

[4] C. Davis Hankins. “Proper 20 (Sunday between September 18 and September 24 inclusive) – Jonah 3:10-4:11 – Exegetical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, vol. 4. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 75 (my own clarifications added).

[5] Jonah 3:4.

[6] Jonah 3:10.

[7] Jonah 4:1-3.

[8] Jonah 4:8b-11.

[9] Timothy B. Cargal. “Proper 20 (Sunday between September 18 and September 24 inclusive) – Jonah 3:10-4:11 – Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, vol. 4. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 77, 79.