Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Carol Swanson.
Once again, we have a tale filled with humor and irony, the memorable Book of Jonah, to teach us some unexpected and surprising lessons. It was written in a time when people were circling the wagons, so to speak, turning inward to fend off what they feared. A humorous story in a different setting can cut through that fear, act as a mirror so that we can see ourselves in our own reality.
The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (under “Jonah Book of”) tells of the background:
“The book is now mostly held to have been written ca. the fourth century B.C. by an unknown writer who shared the view of Second Isaiah that God’s concern for [humankind] was not confined to the Jews but was as wide as the world itself. About that time in Jerusalem, Nehemiah and Ezra…had been pursuing their policy of racial exclusiveness, narrow nationalism, and religious intolerance in a misguided attempt to preserve the unique heritage of the Jewish faith. The book of Jonah, like the book of RUTH, is designed as a counterblast to that policy. Its message is that the real vocation of Israel as the people of God is to spread the good news of God’s love among the Gentiles, and not to hoard its religious legacy.”
Racial exclusiveness, narrow nationalism, and religious intolerance. It sounds like the same problems we face in our world today. Can we see ourselves in the story of Jonah?
Jonah is the reluctant prophet who turns away from God and from his calling. He runs away and catches a boat going to the far ends of the earth and sleeps (another way to shut out the world). He does not want to go to Nineveh!
I read on the website MyJewishLearning.com, “There’s an irony here that can’t be seen in the English. The city of Nineveh is represented in Cuneiform by a symbol of a fish within a house. Jonah did his best to escape one great fish, only to be swallowed by another.”
In Process-Relational thought, “All things are interconnected; no human is an island; things are present in one another even as they have their autonomy.”
Jonah is fighting the interconnectedness of creation. He tries to isolate himself from God and from the world. The sailors are put in jeopardy by his actions, and they are the ones who work to save everything and who finally turn to the Hebrew God for help. The wind and the sea and the big fish remind us, too, that our interconnectedness to nature plays a key role in our reality. Yet Jonah would rather die than live and be a part of this world.
But God doesn’t give in to Jonah, doesn’t give up on Jonah. God doesn’t lose Jonah but provides the big fish.
In chapter 2, Jonah is in the big fish and prays a lovely Psalm, recognizing God’s grace and compassion even as he feels himself being overcome by the waters and the weeds and falling into death. God has him.
And God speaks to the fish who spits Jonah out onto dry land.
More on the story of God, Nineveh, and Jonah tomorrow. Let us pray:
Gracious God, through your grace and compassion, lead us out of our fears and anxieties and into hope and new possibilities of wholeness for ourselves and our world. Amen
Footnotes:
“Once again”—Last year I wrote devotions on the importance of humor in Esther and Hogan’s Heroes (Dec 6,7,8).
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jonah/ by Rachel Scheinerman
What Is Process Thought? by Jay McDaniel, p 20.