It's Not About The Fish

The Book of Jonah - It is not about the Fish

 

Kurt Vonnegut was an influential twentieth century author and WWII soldier. He was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. While a prisoner he survived the Allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden.  In one of his books he suggests that humans can conduct wars as horrible as anything that you have ever seen or read about and the only thing that we can do about it is just not look. Vonnegut suggests that it is actually very easy for us to detach ourselves emotionally from lostness and oppression that are near or far from us. That raises some issues for me and perhaps for you as well.

It makes me wonder if God cares about the people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or Syria ? Is God interested in pagan people who do not believe in him? Is God bothered by inhumane governments? Does the Good News of Jesus have anything to do with the social and political problems that face the world?

When we think of oppressive governments various totalitarian regimes come to mind in current and past history. One particularly brutal nation were the ancient Assyrians. Their practice of waging war and then displacement and settlement along with their methods of torture set high water marks or perhaps low water marks for all who would follow them. In the book titled Ancient Near Eastern Pictures shows a picture of a stone relief (which is a picture carved in stone) taken from the wall of ancient Nineveh which was the capital of Assyria. It shows the attack of the powerful Assyrian army against a little village in Palestine.  The battle rages on in the picture. But in the corner of the picture there are three prisoners stripped naked and each one has a spear thrust into their chest. One end of the long spear is put into the ground. The prisoners are suspended in midair with a spear holding them up. That picture is typical of Assyrian brutality and oppression. These are savage actions that Israel itself knew very well.

Thus it is striking when the book of Jonah opens with God’s command to send his man to go to Nineveh. The very capitol of wicked Assyria and to go there and call them to repentance. The God behind Jonah is the God who sends out his messenger outside of the saved Israel to a place of oppression. The behavior of Jonah raises questions about our own attitudes about other places near and far and our responsibility towards them. Unfortunately many people never get to the message of Jonah. The book poses a problem for many people because of the business about the fish swallowing Jonah that comes in the middle of the book.

Many have spent their time debating the size of the fish’s mouth or discussing if Jonah could get enough oxygen in the belly of the whale to survive. Artist have had a wonderful time with the book. There is a twelfth century cathedral in Ravello Italy that has two stair cases in front of the worship area in church building. One staircase is a picture of Jonah being swallowed by the whale and the other is a picture of Jonah being vomited up by the whale.  I am told that in Bohemia there are a few whale pulpits. There is one, that I am told, was built in 1730.  It is a large model of a whale on the front of the stage that is about twenty feet long. The head of the whale is up and its mouth open and there between the teeth stands the preacher to deliver his sermon from the mouth of the whale. Other whale shaped pulpits have been built so that the preacher has to climb up through the belly to reach the spot to deliver the message. I for one am glad that this has not caught on.

Someone once told a story about a wealthy prince who fell in love with a poor girl. He enjoyed the good life and all the things that go with it. She had nothing.  In order to express his love to her he got a large sapphire and wrapped it up in beautiful paper and tied it up in a large beautiful ribbon. When the girl received the gift she was so enthroned with the ribbon and so caught up in the wrapping paper that she never got to the real gift and a sapphire got lost on the floor. Well, there is more to Jonah than the fish. We often get caught up in the wrapping that we miss the gift, the point, the lesson of the story.

The story line of Jonah is very easy to follow. In chapter one God calls Jonah to go preach to Nineveh the capitol of the wicked Assyrians. Instead of going east to Nineveh he gets on a ship headed west towards Tarshish. It is not clear why Jonah heads to Tarshish. According to the books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah Tarshish was a place where a person could get filthy rich. It was a place of trade and industry. Perhaps Jonah had a different goal in mind then God. Perhaps he wanted to mingle with the import and export dealers in Tarshish rather then look for a pulpit and an audience in faraway Nineveh. Perhaps he would rather get lost in the vast market places of Tarshish rather than deliver an embarrassing and likely unsuccessful message over in Nineveh. Perhaps he had preferred the Mediterranean cruise with its delightful ports of call then to make the long trip across the wilderness to horror city. At any rate he had choose to ignore God’s mission. He had decided to go to a city where nobody would remind him of God’s request. Where nobody would remind him of God’s calling and nobody would remind him of his God. Yet no sooner did Jonah get on board then he fell asleep. Sleeping is the one thing that Jonah does with great success in the first chapter of the book. Sleeping Jonah hears no evil, sees no evil and dreams sweet dreams while wickedness increases in Nineveh. Jonah has put out the do not disturb sign.

Yet, God does not give up on his servant. God sends a storm that frightens the sailors and gets them praying to a variety of gods. Then Jonah, the one sent by God, has to be told by the pagan ship captain to wake up and pray to his God. Jonah gets his second call. The first by God and the second by a pagan. It becomes apparent that the storm is a punishment on Jonah or at least a reminder that hiding in the belly of a ship does not mean that God has been out foxed. It is ironic that the one sent to rescue the pagans in Nineveh now endangers the pagans on the ship by his disobedience. When the sailors see the storm they cast lots to see who is responsible for the storm. Jonah gets picked. The pagans try to row to shore but it does not work. So they ask Jonah a series of questions. Who are you? Where are you from? Jonah answers like a good Hebrew. That he is a follower of the God who made the sea. This confession comes at the cost of exposing his hypocrisy. Jonah is saying that I believe in the God who made everything but I am hiding from him on this ship. I fear the Lord but I am not going to do his will. I believe God made the sea but it is to the sea that I am running away. I believe God made the dry ground but there is no way that that God is going to get me to go ashore. Jonah says he fears God but he has to be awakened from his sleep. He believes in God but the pagans are the ones doing all the praying. Jonah says he believes God is all powerful but it is the pagan sailors who try to row their way out of the storm to try and save Jonah. Jonah says he fears the Lord but it is the pagan sailors who try their best to be obedient.

In a very ironic way Jonah’s misery leads to the conversion of the pagan sailors, who after throwing him overboard, spend the rest of the day offering sacrifices to Jonah’s God. From the inside of the fish the prophet prays to God. The prayer is found in chapter two. In chapter three God again calls Jonah to go to Nineveh. Here we find three people that changed their minds. First, Jonah changes his mind and goes to Nineveh. Second, Nineveh changes its mind. They repent and turn to the Lord. Third, God changes his mind. He chooses not to destroy the city because of their repentance. Jonah’s response to all of this is found in chapter four and it is a response that we did not expect. The preacher is upset that so many people have responded to his invitation. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh but when he did he expected God to carry out his threat. Wipe them out God they deserve what they have coming to them. They are not Holy Israel so blot them off the face of the earth. Don’t give them a reprieve. Don’t let them off the hook. Jonah gets so upset with God’s compassion that he wants to die. Jonah goes and builds a little hut out in the suburbs of Nineveh to watch and see what is going to happen to the place. Jonah then complains that it is too hot so God arranges for a little tree to offer Jonah some shade. It is the only time in the whole story when Jonah is really happy. But then God has the tree destroyed and that angers Jonah again to the point that he wants to die. And God wonders out loud why Jonah has more pity for a dead plant then he does for the metropolis of Nineveh. The book ends with God asking Jonah whether it is better to have compassion on people or plants.

Well, what’s the point? What does the book have to do with us? What might this story have to say to you and me? When the sailors learned about God they spent the rest of the day worshiping him. When the wicked people of Nineveh learned about God they ripped off their regular cloths covered their bodies in signs of repentance and refused to eat any food.

But when God’s man learned what God wanted he became angry. Because it imposed upon his thinking and his own little life style. It called for a change in his agenda. Jonah sat in his little house in the suburbs of Nineveh and was angry because the whole city was saved. He only found joy when the air conditioning finally came on. When the air went off, when his comforts where removed, when his life style was altered, when his affluence was threatened, he complained and groaned about great the hardship that God was putting him through.

There seems to be two messages in the book of Jonah. Both are about missions. One is that God has deep compassion for the masses of pagans in the world. Where ever they are. Be it ships in the Mediterranean or in the wicked Ninevehs of the world. Two, God’s hardest mission field is his own people. Followers of God who get so involved in themselves that they fail to see God’s mission. So God has to send missionaries to his own people to get them to become missionaries to the rest of the world. So Jonah tells us that the hardest people to crack with God’s message are not salt hardened sailors, not the people in heathen cities of pagan countries but the hardest people to crack are the good folks like Jonah. They don’t share God’s sense of compassion and mission. Jonah says that the most difficult hearts to turn are not sailors with a women at every port, not the terrorist intent on their brutality but the most difficult hearts to turn are those who say they are God’s people and then refuse to do his will. Jonah tells us that the hard hearted people of the world are not those who serve other gods, not those who practice inhuman aggression but the hardest hearts are those whom God has blessed with hundreds and thousands of things and then have the audacity to tell God you go get somebody else to do your work for you.

Jonah tells us that the most obstinate people on the planet are not the unknown masses but those who sit comfortably under their own vines crying warm tears because God does not act the way they think he should. It is not pagan sailors facing another storm that God has trouble reaching it is the affluent Jew on his cruise ship that sleeps through God’s mission. It is not the leaders of totalitarian governments that resists God it is people who keep the Good News boxed up in little red brick church buildings.

The story of Jonah also tells us that the common excuses that we give are not correct. It is not the lack of time that keeps us from God’s world mission. Like Jonah we have time to sleep, like Jonah we have time to sit in our cool huts with our vines and enjoy the good life. It is not a lack of time. It is our Jonah like half hearted resolves and indecision, absent mindedness and confused souls.

            It is not a lack of money that keeps us from God’s mission. Like Jonah we have the money to pay the fair for the cruise. Like Jonah we know where Tarshish is because we live in the middle of it. It is not the lack of money. What it is like is Jonah’s half thoughts, semi-resolve, indecision, absent mindedness and confused souls. Anybody who wants to be on God side will find the time. Anybody who wants to support God’s work will find the money.

Two things stay with us from this book. First, God never gives up on his people. It is striking that everything in the book obeys God. The storm, the sailors, the fish, the people of Nineveh, the animals of Nineveh, even a cast of plants obey God. Everything that is except Jonah. The cows of Nineveh are more faithful to God then Jonah. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that when the hypocritical Jonah says that deliverance belongs to the Lord – the fish vomits him up. Jonah is neither not nor cold. But God is not finished. He handles Jonah with compassion and care. He hopes for Jonah’s change of heart as much as he does the hearts of Nineveh. Even on the wrong ship, headed in wrong direction, with the wrong attitude, God finds Jonah. Second, the book has no ending. The wrestling match between God and Jonah lasts all the way till the end of the story. It ends with God asking Jonah a question but we do not get to hear Jonah’s answer. The book ends with God waiting for an answer. It ends with God wondering how will my people respond? Perhaps it is fitting that it has no ending because the answer will be played out in our lives. Will we set a higher standard or be like Jonah and lack compassion? While the book of Jonah has a very critical message it is still a message that needs to be heard. A message that God wants his people to wake up from their deep sleep. Who will overcome their petty anger, who will step outside of themselves and imitate God’s deep concern for all people everywhere. The book is a call to go, a call to mission, a call to be God’s man/God’s women. How will you, your family, your church community respond to God’s question?