A Gem of a story
Tucked away amid the longer books of the prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the fairly short books of the prophets such as Amos and Hosea, lies the Book of Jonah. This little book can be read in very short time. It is the combined work of a storyteller and the Holy Spirit who give us one, easily remembered image: a man being swallowed by a whale, living inside the whale for three days, then being vomited up onto a shore. Only once in the three years of the Sunday scripture cycle do we hear Jonah—and it happens next Sunday, and we hear the last part of Jonah's story, where we find him in the city of Nineveh, just off the shore where he was landed on the beach. I wonder if I can prevail upon you to get your Bible out and read the story of Jonah before Sunday 22 January? I promise you a great read and some help for life today.
The first lines move quickly to the heart of things: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh the great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me’ ”. This Jonah is apparently not a well known person in his town or time. Like most us, he never expected to hear the voice of the Lord quite so clearly, let alone be told to set off across mountains and deserts to find the city where powerful enemies of his own people live, then tell them to repent. What I ask you to do - read the Jonah story - is easy in comparison.
Jonah does set out immediately but in the opposite direction, towards the seacoast. At Joppa he buys a ticket for Tarshish, probably a city at the far end of the Med, and boards the first ship out. God is not pleased and sends a mighty storm as soon as the ship at sea. The crew is not only seasick, they are terrified. First they pray to their various gods, then they lighten the ship by throwing their cargo overboard. Jonah misses the action because he is down below, asleep. Seasickness is, I believe, a terrible thing: its said that on the first day you are afraid you are going to die, while on the second day you are afraid you're not going to die! The captain rouses Jonah and tells him, sick or not, get praying to your god. Still the storm rages and they toss a dice to find out who has brought this storm against them. Jonah realises that the game is up and he admits he is running away from his God. “Throw me into the sea”, he says “and the ship will be saved”. It is a bit drastic, but the situation demands drastic measures, so they toss him overboard.
Act three is the part everyone knows. Jonah is gulped up by a huge whale, and for three days and three nights he is held there. Jonah, still alive (well, it is a story!) turns this into a short of shrine and prays to God. Missing from the prayer is any reference to what God has asked Jonah to do in the first place: remember that visit to Nineveh? But the whale (or to be strictly correct, the huge fish) vomits Jonah up onto the beach, and the Lord starts all over again. One thing we notice about God is that he is persistent: “Go to Nineveh!” This time, Jonah goes! Perhaps he reasoned that the next episode might not have such a good ending.
So we come to Act 4, part of which we hear in the reading next Sunday. So large is the city of Nineveh (which still exists, now called Mosul in northern Iraq) that it takes three days to cross it. After he has been there for a single day, Jonah calls out the one and only line of his preaching in this story: “Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed”. Now, think for a moment of all the prophets God sent to the people of Israel and the people didn't listen to them; think of their anguish when they were unheeded. But here we have one line from a reluctant Jonah and the citizens of Nineveh, high and low, rich and poor, proclaim a fast. The ruler of Nineveh decrees that everyone will fast, repent and cry to God for mercy: “Let us turn from our evil ways and from the violence that its in our hands.”
And the story says that God also turns round and does not do to Nineveh what had been intended. The story isn't finished though, and the last Act could not be expected, so why not read the whole thing for yourself!
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