Whenever I read the book of Jonah, it takes me back to an early spring day when I was about 4 years old. It was a clear, cold morning with a breeze that stung your cheeks. My father and I were in our family's blue Chevy driving down the main road that ran the length of Long Beach Island, a barrier island four miles off the coast of southern NJ, where I grew up. We were on our way to see the great fish, a whale that the ocean had heaved onto the beach during the night. I was so excited that as soon as we parked the car, I ran all the way over the dunes and down to the water's edge. There it was... an enormous deep purple-blue, gray whale as still as the sand it was lying on. Perched on my father's shoulders, I looked the whale in the eye and imagined it looked right back at me. I leaned into that great gray slab, touched it and put my ear against its icy, cold flesh.
I was sure I heard groaning. Surprised, I held my ear against the whale a little longer and then took in a sharp breath of air. I heard the groaning sound again. Now I was certain. It was Jonah, inside the belly of that whale. Jonah, a character deeply ingrained into my psyche by my Sunday School teachers who served up his story again and again as a model for Christian obedience. But of course, that's not the full Jonah story ... which shows a prophet who refuses his initial call, gets angry at God and in the end leaves much unresolved.
When I told my father what I thought, he smiled and shook his head from side to side as he said "No." Then still perched on my father's shoulders, we walked around to the other side of the whale where he pointed out the source of the groaning. There was Larry, an eight year old boy who was bent over leaning against the whale, his father and two older siblings forming a protective circle around him. He had just partially heaved the contents of his breakfast onto the beach. The loud groaning signaled a fuller response was imminent. Context I learned was important. It's important to the book of Jonah as well.
You have to look at the whole book to get the full story of Jonah. That's true about much of the bible. Context is important. As the book begins, Jonah hears the word of the Lord, but resists following, instead taking the first boat in the opposite direction of where God wishes him to go. God, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land, creates a great storm. Jonah ends up begging to be tossed into the raging sea in order to spare the more faith filled crew from drowning in the swells of the waves. A great fish (a whale is never mentioned), swallows Jonah who remains inside the fish for three days, praying to God for deliverance, and then is spewed out on dry land. It is at this point that today's text begins with the word of the Lord coming a 2nd time to Jonah. He now hears and obeys delivering a cryptic message of warning which, to his astonishment and dismay, the people of Nineveh heed — an authentic repentance (sackcloth and ashes). In response, God also repents and spares Nineveh. Jonah becomes angry at this turn of events. The last chapter of the book finds God speaking firmly, but compassionately to the prophet about the concept of justice tinged with mercy, like a mother would to a sulking child.
Jonah is definitely a character, difficult to figure out, and scholars are still divided over so many issues in the book. Jonah's reputation as a prophet has seen mixed reviews. Early rabbinical writings chastised him severely for his less than stellar actions throughout much of the text, but later rabbinic commentary revealed a more positive spin on his behavior to the point that the book of Jonah is the haftorah (a lesson read from the prophets) for Yom Kippur afternoon worship, that holy day in the Jewish calendar set aside for fasting, prayer, and repentance.
The early Church fathers understood Jonah in a special way as well. They saw him as a forerunner of the risen Christ and his mission to Nineveh as a foretaste of a post-resurrection effort to preach the good news to the Gentiles. Thus succeeding generations of Christians, mostly from more evangelical and fundamentalist traditions like mine, were taught only Jonah's reluctant repentance in a formulaic way. It was meant to be copied and admired, weaving as it were a tale of prophetic destiny in which word and response never were broken or hampered by any means. So much for the full story of Jonah in which the favor of a response, whether resistance or compliance or anything in between, far more easily allows us to find our way into the story. God forbid it should show a tale where living out the complexities of a relational faith mirrors the ebb and flow of the human, spiritual struggle.
The sanitized Jonah story was the mantra passed down to me as a child from the boxed in world of my fundamentalist faith. I was taught there was only one way to acknowledge God's word. When the word of the Lord was interpreted and spoken through my Sunday School teachers or minister, it was meant to be heard and enacted immediately. No one got in the way of the word, no one argued with the word either. There was no dialogue with God. Thus, the definitive word of the Lord as spoken by my church leaders time and again was that Jesus wanted me for a sunbeam; a sunbeam that shone 24/7 in an effort to please Him at home, at school and at play. No matter that my response was not to be a sunbeam. There was no arguing with that kind of performative word of the Lord. A shining sunbeam was to be my fate if I was going to be a faithful follower. I can laugh today. But then and now, it still remains a convenient way to stifle discussion and inquisitiveness among the faithful—substituting rote compliance for genuine response. This isn't unique to conservative Christianity. We progressive and liberal Christians sometimes play the same interpretive game only with different messages. This isn't the Jonah story either.
Yet, if all we had to go on regarding that story of Jonah was today's reading, we might conclude it was a model of mechanical obedience too. After all, when the word of the Lord given in imperative commands came to Jonah a second time saying arise, go, and proclaim, the text tells us that Jonah arose, Jonah went and Jonah proclaimed. This would appear to be the performative word at its best; God's voice and the response of the prophet a perfect oneness. Just the way I learned it in Sunday School. No questions asked, no stopping, no obstructing...the word goes in and the word goes out...like a divine-human gumball machine.
The result of Jonah's seemingly impeccable obedience to the word was that all the people of Nineveh from the greatest to the least, including their animals, then turned from their evil ways to believing in the Lord. And for that response, the Lord repented as well, deciding not to overturn the stones of the city in destruction of life and property.
But you have to look closely at the text. At the center of this episode, is the Hebrew verb for repentance which can mean both to be turned as in reversing one's course with intent to change behavior and to be overturned as in destroyed or annihilated. Redemption or ruin—that kind of wordplay gets lost in the English. The meanings of this verb are at the heart of relational, covenant faith—one life giving and the other life ending. It's a word in the text open to the richness of transformational possibility. Its significance comes only in the choice that those who hear this word will make. Thus, paradox exists in the living word of the text and of course in the living out of this word in life. Meaning waits openly for the favor of our response. And so does God. In the story, God never abandons Jonah whose response to the word is less than divine, but certainly human.
Jonah needs to be seen in the context of his paradoxical relations with God. He is a figure whose response of conscious resistance and struggle is not unlike our own at times. The course of living out the word of the Lord that is spoken to us each and every day is a choice we all must make. At the heart of hearing the call of the Lord is the understanding that we lay down our expectations of what and whom God loves and God hates... and widen our vision of God's love-soaked mercy and grace. It's mercy that can hold reverberating resistance just as well as resolute commitment.
The biblical story of Jonah ends without resolution, with God speaking a question, and Jonah remaining unresponsive in the face of divine compassion. "And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"
That question still remains open to the richness of transformational possibility. Its significance will come only in the choices that those of us who hear this word will make today and tomorrow and the day after that. The God of mercy calls out to us, longing for an authentic reply, and waits for the favor of our response to continue the dialogue.
Thanks be to God.