Starting this Sunday we'll spend five Sundays with Jonah, whose story from the Old Testament is best remembered because he gets swallowed by a whale. Actually, the story doesn't specify a whale--it just says "a large fish". Technically a whale isn't a fish, it's a mammal, but those of us who aren't experts in sea creatures can't think of a fish as large as a whale, so that's why we say that, and in any case that's the part we remember.
But there is much to consider in this story both before the "large fish" swallows him up and afterwards. A series of events leads to the aforementioned swallowing--events that involve Jonah being called by God to do something that it seems Jonah really doesn't want to do. Jonah is called by God to go to Ninevah, and instead sets off for Tarshish, which is pretty much completely in the opposite direction, and far far away--Tarshish seems to be in Spain, the whole way across the Mediterranean Sea from Israel.
That kind of thing ever happen to you? You really should do something, and you know you should, but you don't want to? And you do everything you can to avoid it, both in terms of not taking action towards it, and even taking action away from it? Even if we don't factor in a sense that GOD is calling you to do it, you still find yourself running away from doing what you know in your heart of hearts you ought to do?
What makes it that much more of an issue for Jonah is that what God is calling him to do is to go to Ninevah and tell them to straighten up so God will be merciful to them. Jonah hates the Ninevites. He hates them the way the KKK hates Black people. So the last thing that Jonah wants to do is give them a chance to receive mercy. He'd rather see them crushed out of existence. And yet this is what God is calling him to do--proclaim the opportunity for mercy to those doomed for destruction--unless they repent and turn it around and receive mercy.
I hope that the reasons we run away from what we know we ought to do aren't as heightened as Jonah's reasons. I know we are in a very challenging political season in our nation, but I hope that, despite the rhetoric that is out there (and on Facebook) that our feelings are not to that level. But perhaps this climate in our nation can help us understand just how much Jonah doesn't want to do this. And how passionate he is about getting as far away from it as is humanly possible.
We will learn in future weeks that it didn't entirely work out the way Jonah intended it to. And that it seems like he perhaps never got over it.
OLD TESTAMENT Jonah 1:1-10
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ 3 But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. 6 The captain came and said to him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’
7 The sailors said to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.’ So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, ‘Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ 9 ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he replied. ‘I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.’ 10 Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, ‘What is this that you have done!’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.