Christchurch Parish News, December 2015
In the first in a sequence of articles, I explore some of the main themes in the book of Jonah.
The story of Jonah is a story we know too well. When we were children, we would have been told the dramatic tale of this guy getting swallowed by a whale whole. That’s right, children, all of him, in one gulp! Eyes wide open and sharp intakes of breath, especially from all the little boys gathered round to listen. And guess what happened next? Three days later, the whale pukes him out onto the beach! Peals of relieved laughter. That’s some seriously cool dude.
But as we grow older, we start to question the story. Really? Did Jonah really get swallowed by a whale? You’ve got to be kidding, no? What was once a memorable and exciting story for us as small children becomes something that we just don’t know what to do. And as with so many other tales we’re told when we’re young, including other stories from the Bible, we put them in a box marked ‘childhood’ and sentimentally tuck them away in the loft, not quite able to throw them out but knowing deep down that we’ll have no need of them now that we’re becoming grown-ups.
Not, though, if we’re Jewish. For if we are and our families observe the holy days, we will grow up hearing the story of Jonah read on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. That’s every year on one of the High Holy Days of the Jewish calendar.
That fact alone should give us pause. For this is not a story for children. It is one of the most theologically, psychologically and spiritually challenging narratives in the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments alike. It is nothing less than a story for those who wish to become real grown-ups in the eyes of God.
But if you haven’t read the story of Jonah for a few years, why not take a moment now to read it from start to finish. You’ll find it towards the end of the Old Testament. As it’s only got four very short chapters it won’t take you long. Once you’ve have, please read on.
There’s a lot more in it that just the whale bit, isn’t there? Not that it was a whale. You probably noticed that it was actually a ‘great fish’ and there wasn’t a whale in sight. I’ll come to that in the future. But for now, what about the beginning? Isn’t it wonderful the lengths that Jonah goes to in order to avoid doing what the LORD has called him to do. What your translation probably doesn’t convey is just quite how far he goes. When it talks about Jonah getting on a ship to Tarshish, the Hebrew can also be translated to mean that he actually commissions the ship. That’s right. He does’t just pay his fare. He pay for the entire ship to undertake the journey. And Tarshish was a long way away (somewhere on the coast of Spain). It’s like someone in London back in the 1980s, on being told to go to Moscow, instead commissioning Concorde to fly him to New York by himself!
What’s provoked this response in Jonah? The LORD said to him, ‘Go at once to Nineveh’. The LORD says more than that, but let’s just start there. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, an empire that was hugely powerful in the 8th century BC. You can understand Jonah’s reluctance to set foot in that city once you know that the Ninevites had a dreadful reputation for being the cruellest, most brutal military force holding sway in the area at the time. What’s more, they were Israel’s enemy. What Israelite in his right mind would want to step foot in that city, as there would be little chance of getting out alive.
In the telling of the story at this early point, there is a gap and it’s one that’s easier for the storyteller to hide from our attention because Jonah doesn’t say anything at this point. He just does goes down to Joppa and gets on the ship. In fact he doesn’t say anything at all until later in chapter one when he speaks to the sailors. But later in the story in chapter four, when by contrast it’s hard to shut Jonah up, mid-rant he tells the LORD, ‘Is not this what I said while I was in my own country?’ The narrator keeps Jonah’s theological reason for trying to flee the presence of the LORD from us all the way until we’re nearly at the end of the story. For now, we just witness his vain attempts to flee.
At this point, we’re probably having a chuckle at Jonah. How daft to think you can escape from the presence of the LORD just by sailing across the sea. But if we take a moment, we’ll probably recognise that whilst we may not undertake great journeys like his to do this, there are parts of our lives that we’re quite capable of boxing away, thinking that God doesn’t have much to do with that (or that we don’t want God to know about), and thinking and acting as if we are no longer in His presence.
In fact, if we don’t do it in our culture these days, it can become quite tricky for us. Since the Enlightenment (the intellectual movement that started in the 18th century and led to such events as the French Revolution), and partly in response to the religious wars of previous centuries, we have been encouraged culturally in Europe to treat our religion as a private matter and not something that should have too much bearing on our public life, preferably none at all. As a consequence, when we go to work, for example, if we were to bring our faith into a discussion as to why we made X or Y business decision or taught a particular subject this way rather than that way, we would probably find ourselves quickly having an appointment with the HR manager.
But as the psalmist says, ‘Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there’ (Psalm 139). That Jonah can’t flee from the presence of God, no matter where he goes, even when in ‘the belly of Sheol’ is something that we shall come to later on in the story.
But for now, pity poor Jonah. On the one hand, the disturbing prospect of going into the city of the barbarous Ninevites. On the other hand, the terrifying prospect of being pursued across the Mediterranean by the Lord of all creation, who is angered at Jonah’s disobedience and is hurling a great wind upon the sea and sending a mighty storm after him.
Don’t look now, Jonah. He’s gaining on you.