Jonah: "...some mighty restless times and a whale of a depression."
So Jonah rose and skipped town, fled to the seacoast town of Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish (Spain), the opposite direction from Nineveh. His action would at once capture the interest and sympathy of his Israelite people--to whom the very thought of salvation for these pagans was abhorrent. Jonah was doing just as his people would expect him to do.
But God followed him onto the waters of the Mediterranean and hurled a mighty tempest in the sea so that the ship was likely to be broken up. Jonah was fast asleep in the bowels of that ship and the captain came to him asking Jonah to pray to his God for calm. The sea captain knew a theological sea storm when he saw one! Jonah knew exactly what to do. He knew that the Hound of Heaven was still chasing him and he still didn't want to go to Nineveh, so he nobly offered to be thrown overboard, in the midst of the storm in order that the sailors might be saved.
So the men picked up Jonah and tossed him into the sea. But God didn't give up that easily. So a great fish, a whale we call it now, was appointed by the Lord to swallow up Jonah. Now Jonah was in its belly three days and three nights.
But, as one theologian writes, "No matter how deep it dove and no matter how dark the inside of its belly, no depth or darkness was enough to drown out the sound of Jonah's prayer: 'I am cast out from Thy presence. Oh, Lord, help me.'
"That intractable old man called out from sixty fathoms. I'm sure that Jonah's relief at being delivered from the whale can hardly have been any greater than the whale's relief at being delivered from Jonah, for Jonah had a disposition that was enough to give any whale acid indigestion. Three days was enough to stomach a Jonah and he was promptly vomited up on dry land close to Nineveh."
Jonah was given this second chance by God and so he reluctantly went to Nineveh. He entered this great city described as being a three-day journey in breadth (sixty miles across) and delivered what is perhaps the shortest prophetic message in the Bible--eight words: "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
Then an amazing thing happened. The people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth and ashes--from the King down to the lowliest peasant. The King said as he sat in an ash heap, "Who knows, maybe God will repent and turn his fierce anger away from us if we shape up." God did repent. He changed his mind, we are told, and accepted the repentance of the Ninevites.
Well, Jonah hated every minute of it all, saying angrily, "I knew you were a gracious God. I just knew you would be merciful and slow to anger and abounding in love and forgive these heathen." So he went out to the edge of Nineveh and sat down under a God-given leafy plant to shade him from the blistering hot sun. But inside he was still smoldering.
It was an opening that God could not resist, so that rather than destroy Nineveh, he sent a worm to destroy the plant that shaded this overheated Jonah. Jonah was so angry that the plant was destroyed that he could have died. So God said: "Here you are, all upset out of pity for one small plant that has shriveled up, and yet you can't have pity on a whole town full of repentant rascals who don't know their left hand from their right. How come you don't care for them as well?"
So Jonah had a taste there and then of what it might be like to feel God's wrath as well as his compassion. And there the story ends. It leaves us hanging with Jonah sitting in the midday heat, wondering what it was all about. And what does this all mean?
Two points--one historical, one universal:
To the fifth-century Israelite, the story of Jonah was written to give to the people of Israel a proper conception of their role in history and their responsibility to their world. It was not sufficient that Israel should live in its ghetto, under its leaf plant sheltered from the midday sun just meditating on their law. They had a responsibility for the great secular cities by which they were surrounded and for the Gentiles amongst whom they lived, and who did not know their left hand from their right. Jonah is, at this level, a history book of God's astonishing compassion for the world.
The Book of Jonah is also an old Jewish folk tale that has meaning for all time and all people. It is a tale seasoned with humor and irony and mirrors for all who read it a deep truth about the human condition. For Jonah is not just a fifth-century antihero, he is every man who struggles with the call of God to love our neighbor.
It is about we who would rather flee to the ends of the earth than respond to God's call to reach out to the world of people all about us.
Most of us are not called to carry a prophetic message across the sea to modern-day Ninevites. But we are all called by God to live our lives in a way which transcends our self-centered interests and reaches out in love to those in need about us.
It can be as simple as a loving word to a troubled friend, a call home, sharing of your goods with those in need, or indeed a word to someone who needs to hear a truth given in love and respect.
Jonah, like many of us, had the illusion that life could be lived by doing what he wanted to do and avoiding what he knew was God's call to go beyond his personal needs. What Jonah experienced in his avoidance were some mighty restless times and a whale of a depression. And I believe that the restlessness and depression that Jonah experienced in avoiding God were not so much punishments as they were mirrors of a soul in conflict with God's call.
Jonah discovered on his journey three simple truths:
l) We cannot escape from God's call to reach out and love our neighbor.
2) We are called to deny our own self-centered concerns and to give up our self-righteous judgment of others.
3) We are called as Israelites or Christians to be evangelists, to be channels of God's word and love to the world about us.
So if you find yourself bobbing about on restless seas...if you are feeling swallowed up by some unknown dark depression, consider the possibility that God is calling you. Calling you out of yourself and into the world around you--a world of people who need to hear God's loving compassion, even the worst of us who don't know right from left. Amen.
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