One summer my family and I were vacationing in Panama City Beach, Florida. After a full day of fun in the sun, we came back inside, showered and got dressed for an evening out on the town. I was a teenager at the time, which would have made my youngest brother, Ben, around 6 or 7. He was tired and cranky, and resisted every step from the beach to the car. We parked the car near out favorite hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant, nestled in a strip mall. What followed became an iconic family moment for us. Ben stepped one foot out of the car, saw the lines of stores, stomped his foot and emphatically yelled, “WE’RE NOT GOING TO THE MALL!”, refusing to take one step further. The book of Jonah is a story of a similar temper tantrum.
Jonah is a unique book in many ways. First, it’s the only prophetic book that is not focused on the words OF a prophet, but rather is a story ABOUT a prophet. And while some other prophetic books, like Jeremiah, do give a glimpse of the prophet’s experience, this is one of our best insights into the inner workings of someone who is on a journey to follow where God calls him to lead. Jonah appears one other time in Scripture, speaking to the not so great king Jeroboam II in 2 Kings 14:23-25, promising him God’s favor. This almost passing reference hints that Jonah might not be the prime example of God’s messengers, though. If we read more, we learn that the prophet Amos appeared before Jeroboam II with almost the exact opposite message, saying God’s justice would be against the horrible king (see Amos 6:13-14)(i) . So something is a bit amiss about this prophet. And when you read these four chapters in the book of Jonah, you get a sense of why. One commentary categorizes the story of Jonah as the “subversive story of a rebellious prophet(ii).”
This summer, our reflections together have all revolved around different aspects of travel, but today’s text prompts us to think about those times when we don’t want to go anywhere. There is a clichéd list of places, of course, from the DMV to your in-laws to the dentist; places we dread going, try to avoid, or even throw a tantrum about being there, whether it’s external in a parking lot, or just inside of our heads. But there’s also a resistance, I think, that we sometimes have to those places, literal or metaphorical, where God is calling or leading us in our lives. The book of Jonah becomes a mirror to us that reflects some truths about the difficulties of following God. It’s hard work. Sure, it sounds good to say we are following God, as long as God’s will lines up with ours. But when God asks us do something that takes us out of our comfort zone or preferences, we don’t always want to do it.
Sometimes, we are also rebellious prophets, or at least wayward disciples, too. We run in the other direction entirely. “Sure, God, we’ll follow you . . . anywhere but there, that is.”
When we meet Jonah, he’s been given a simple instruction – go to Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire, and was known for being a place of sin and evil, the bitter enemy of the people of Israel. We don’t know why Jonah doesn’t want to go, but we can imagine any number of perfectly legitimate reasons: he was afraid for his own safety; he didn’t like the Ninehvites; or maybe he just saw them as a lost cause, not worth the breath of the words he was to say to them. So he gets up to the booking agent in Joppa and instead of going east, it’s as if he picks up a map and goes as far away as he can get in the other direction and puts his fingers on – Tarshish. I recall doing something similar as a high school senior, threatening to my parents that I was going to apply to go to college at the University of Alaska. When things get bad in the children’s book, the main character Alexander declares, “I think I’ll move to Australia(iii).” The truth is that some of us are so stubborn, or frustrated, or scared, that when the option comes to face difficulties head-on, we’d rather turn in the other direction instead. Jonah gets so comfortable in this decision and new path that he is even able to fall asleep in the cabin of the boat.
But God won’t leave us sleeping, continuing to ignore God’s call and pretend like it doesn’t exist. When God calls, God is persistent. For Jonah, God sends a wake-up call in the form of a storm, which rattles the pagan sailors to the point where even they believe in the divine. Then, when that isn’t quite enough and Jonah is tossed overboard, God sends a giant fish to swallow Jonah up and give him the most epic “time-out” of history. During this time, Jonah is able to reflect on what has happened and gain some insights that open him up to what God is actually trying to do in his life.
In the cartoon VeggieTales movie adaptation of this story made, this is where a gospel choir comes in, full chorus, singing that “our God is a God of second chances!(iv)” And while this is a viable and good message to take away from Jonah’s time in the belly of the fish, it’s a bit too small thinking. The reversal in chapter 2 comes in a time of prayer, but in that prayer Jonah doesn’t actually seem to confess, but profess the nature of God; namely a God who hears prayers and does not leave us in the pit. Jonah’s prayer points us to bigger realities at work in this larger-than-life story, particularly relating to God’s mercy. It reminds us that there is no place, not even the far ends of the earth, not even the completely opposite direction from where we are supposed to be traveling, that God cannot and will not go to embrace us with love and mercy.
Now, this is the part of the story that most of us know, and where many stories end. We mark this as the tale of “Jonah and the Whale,” and tie it up neatly with a bow. But it’s so much more than that, particularly if we read the entirety of the book – and we’re already halfway there. But before we move ahead, there’s one more thing we need to note about this unique prophetic book tucked into our Bibles; it’s not really a story that most students of scripture get caught up in arguments about whether or not it happen. Most believe that it’s not a factual, historical account, but rather was written for another purpose. The key to unlocking it, ironically enough, lies in the belly of the whale, our best modern understanding of the Hebrew description, dag gadol, which really means “great fish.” Jonah is a fish tale, indeed, written in an over-the-top, larger-than-life way where hyperbole and stock characters take center stage. Everything is big and exaggerated in order to clearly illustrate the point of the story, which takes almost a parable-like feel. For these reasons of language, the book on the whole is often classified as satire, meant to put unbelievable characters in extreme circumstances to convey big truths through humor and irony.
The first two chapters of Jonah aren’t just a story unto themselves; they are a set-up to what follows. God puts Jonah back on the beach, and repeats the instructions, “go to Nineveh.” And this time he does, but we might imagine him doing so with a “hurmph” or a “fine,” because he delivers his message in a pretty succinct and non-descriptive way. Five words in Hebrew. Clearly whatever was his struggle with going to Nineveh is still at work. He’s abandoned all of the typical prophetic structures. There is no mention of “the Word of the Lord” or a listing of the Ninehvites’ sins or what will happen in great detail. He doesn’t even mention God! Again, Jonah reaches unruly prophet status.
But even in spite of Jonah’s lackluster performance, the people of Nineveh repent. The ruthless king repents. Even the cows repent (remember how this is meant to be over the top and a little ridiculous?). And God spares the city from the calamity intended. This is a prophetic victory; you would think that Jonah would be thrilled, or doing victory laps around those who had changed their ways. But instead, Jonah pouts. He complains to God, making the argument that if this was going to happen, his trip had no purpose. He sarcastically says that he knew this was the character of God all along. It’s meant as an insult, offered as an excuse for why Jonah ran away in the first place. He cannot imagine a God whose mercy would be so big and wide that it could even include the people of Nineveh. This same Jonah who had received such wonderful mercy in the belly of the great fish, can now not seem to accept that mercy shown to others, much less extend it himself. The story shifts from Jonah’s protesting “I’ll go anywhere but there” to “Show mercy to anyone but them.” The rest of chapter 4, which I’ll leave as your homework assignment this week, gives another example as God tries to help Jonah see the ridiculousness of his anger – you might view his request to God to kill him as a melodramatic teenager who screams that her parents have ruined her life. The end of the book leaves Jonah sitting outside of the city, still pouting, still a cranky prophet who just can’t seem to get where God wants him to go.
The ending to the book is so open-ended that it points directly back to us, the readers. It begs us to consider what the Ninevehs are in our own lives. Where are those places that God is nudging us to go, but we are stubbornly resisting? Who are the people that we can’t imagine God loving, so we sit and pout instead? Can we handle a God whose love and grace and mercy is so deep and so wide? It’s a great thing to think about when we’re in prayerful contemplation in the belly of a fish, but when we really put it into practice it often contradicts many of our righteous sensibilities. The story of Jonah is one about how radically God pushes the limits of grace and mercy. Will we run in the other direction? Or maybe, we can learn from Jonah’s journey, and get out of those ships heading in the other direction, or bellies of great fish, or hillsides next to the city, and embrace the kind of radical love God is offering to each of us, and to the world. As Jonah reminds us, we have a God who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2). Let’s not run from that.
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford, July 9, 2017
[i] For an excellent overview of the entire story of Jonah, including some of these critical textual notes, check out this video produced by The Bible Project: https://thebibleproject.com/explore/jonah/. Accessed 7/8/17.
[ii] “Jonah,” The Bible Project: https://thebibleproject.com/explore/jonah/. Accessed 7/8/17.
[iii] Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. (Antheneum Books, 1987).
[iv]Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, LionsGate, 2003.
