One of our running jokes is that every evening has to end with something whale-related. At one level, it’s just a joke, but like many jokes, it half-veils something serious. Many of us cherish the story of Jonah and the Whale; it’s such a powerful story, and it opens us up into something much more powerful than picking out a kernel of “the moral” and throwing the husk away. We want to live into stories like this, live into the reality in which, no matter what happens to us, God is faithful.
Act 1: Jonah Flees from God
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ 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.
Jonah 1:1-3
It was a sunny day in Autumn when Jonah bar Amittai first heard the word of the Lord.
Jonah was a moderately prosperous merchant, dealing in incense from Arabia, amber from the far north, and spices and silk from the lands far to the East.
Every day at lunchtime he would leave the marketplace where he kept a well appointed booth, and make his way down to the port, and eat his lunch of bread and cheese and olives. There he would watch the porters carrying bundles of precious cargo onto the ships, and wonder about their destinations. What would it be like to take ship and go to Achaia, or north to the grain lands of the Pontic Steppes, or down to Egypt? But the most mysterious of all was Tarshish, far away on the shores of both the middle sea and the great ocean. Further than that, the oared ships which plied the middle sea could not go.
And then, his lunch eaten, he would traipse back up to his market booth and see what his assistant had been up to while he was away.
One day, while dangling his legs over the edge of the pier, enjoying the sea breeze, a strange, insistent, perhaps even intrusive, thought came to him.
Go to Nineveh.
He looked around to see if someone was talking or something, but there was no-one nearby. “But I could have sworn…”
Jonah. Go to Nineveh.
There it was again.
He looked around again, but nothing but water lapping on the pier and the seagulls crying, and the distant sound of the porters on the shore.
Why on earth would he want to go to Nineveh? They weren’t a natural trading partner for the Judeans – what they wanted, they tended to take. And what they wanted, mainly, were slaves to build the great walls of their city, and iron, to make the swords that provided the slaves.
No amber, no precious jewels, no spices. Just hardened mud and millet and blood and iron.
He shook his head, as if to empty water out of his ear, and hurried back to his booth.
That night, lying awake in his well-appointed house, he heard the thought again. Only, now it was worse.
Go to Nineveh.
He groaned noisily, waking his wife, and grabbed a pillow and covered his ears with it, hoping that maybe that might make a difference.
He fell into an uneasy sleep, disturbed by brilliant coloured dreams. In one of those dreams he saw himself walking into the House of the Lord in the silent evening. And there, like Ezekial, he saw the hem of the garments of the Lord filling the whole temple, and a great silence filled the space, and he heard the voice of the Lord in the sound of complete silence, and it said: Jonah! Go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.
He woke up in a cold sweat. To go to Nineveh was to walk hundreds of miles across the burning desert, into a land where Jews were definitely not popular, where he would very probably be taken as a slave and set to work making mud bricks without straw, like his ancestors in Egypt. And even, if by some remote chance, it didn’t, what were the chances of the Ninevehites responding to this call? And think of the damage to his business were he to neglect it for months on end.
In short, Jonah very definitely did not want to go.
However, Jonah knew his Scriptures. He thought to himself: I will strike a bargain with God. I will take myself off to the farthest corner of the world on a long overdue business trip. The sea air and the hearty country fare will, no doubt, clear my head of these sick fancies. And then if I still feel like God wants something from me, then I will do what he asks.
So, the very next day, he realised what assets he could, sent his wife and children to stay with her parents, and went down to the docks, and bought a ticket.
It was time to go to Tarshish.
Reflective question:
We don’t always hear from God in an obvious way. Sometimes it is as though someone has called your name out in the marketplace. Sometimes it’s something more subtle. Sometimes you feel as though life itself is summoning you to… something. To start something, to give something up. To love someone, to undergo a journey of suffering. To persevere in a hard task, or to allow the new thing to come into being.
What is the Nineveh to which life, or perhaps even God, is calling you?
Act 2: The Sea, the Sea
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. 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…So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging…
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
Jonah 1:4-5, 15-17
One golden evening, a few days into the trip, the ship had anchored in a sheltered cove, and Jonah and the captain shared a companionable amphora of wine. In a confiding moment Jonah admitted to the captain that he was fleeing from the face of the Lord. The Captain, a worldly man, knew little of such things, but filed the information away for later, because on never knew. But, on the whole, people fleeing from promises they had made from a dozen different deities were not an unknown phenomenon on the ship to Tarshish, and he had always come through it before.
The next morning dawned clear, with a gentle breeze urging them out to sea, and so they had weighed anchor and headed off in good spirits, keeping the coast in good sight on the port side.
But since then a powerful wind had been building, pushing them further and further out to sea. At first the sailors hadn’t seemed too worried, and had cheerfully made sail and made good time towards Tarshish and other points west. But as the day had gone on, the wind had grown stronger, howling in the rigging, and kicking up huge waves.
Given the suddenness of the storm, it was felt on board that it could only be divinely caused, and so, given that, the rational thing to do was to work out who had annoyed which god, and therefore to work out what they needed to do to make things right, and save their lives. So, clinging onto whatever they could find, the oldest man in the ship cast the lots. Over and over they cast them, until, finally, the lots were unanimous. This whole thing was, in fact Jonah’s fault.
Jonah knew that the gig was up. Throw me into the sea, he begged, because it is better for one person to die than for all of us.
But the captain was a humane man, for all that he was a Canaanite, and he brushed Jonah’s offer aside, and they tried once again to row to shore. But the weather just got worse and worse, with thunder crashing all around, and the terrifying lightning lit up the sky. The boat was leaping around like a young camel, and great lumps of water were smashing over the sides.
Jonah clung to the mast, and waited.
Finally, the crew couldn’t wait any longer. They grabbed him, the captain made the ritual prayer for this sort of business, saying “forgive us oh Lord for this innocent blood”, and they threw Jonah over the side.
Immediately he hit the water, the wind stopped, the clouds cleared, and it was calm.
Jonah, would couldn’t swim, began to sink – and the last thing he saw was the side of the boat shining in the sun, when suddenly, all was dark. And damp. And smelled unpleasantly of fish.
And he knew that his problems were only just beginning.
Reflective Question
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Stanza 1
Sometimes you don’t need to be fleeing from God like Jonah was. Sometimes you can be just pottering along, living your life, and then something happens, and everything changes. Sometimes, like Dante, you find yourself baffled in a dark forest, with no clue how to move forward.
To be in the belly of the whale is to be constricted, constrained, unable to make progress. There is little to do there but to think, to pray, to be transformed. It’s much more like being a seed buried in the ground than it is like thinking your way through a problem.
Sometimes what is called for is transformation, rather than a neat solution.
It goes by a lot of names. Dante thought it was like being lost in a forest. Sometimes people call it the “night journey”. And sometimes it is a lot like being swallowed by a giant fish.
Have you ever found yourself in the belly of the whale?
Act 3 – On the Beach
Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land…The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
Jonah 2:10, 3:1-5
Suddenly, instead of fishy smells and rancid tasting water and dampness, all was light and sand and fresh, cool air.
Jonah blinked, a few times, getting used to the sudden glare.
He was lying on the golden sand of a beach, with the waves gently breaking behind him.
No-one was around, and he knew what he had to do.
Nineveh.
Jonah got up, and started walking.
Reflective Question
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139:7-12
There are many things to draw from the story of Jonah, but here is one: God never abandons us. Even if we flee from God, even if terrible things happen to us, God is still there with us. Cast up on the beach, all alone, filthy from the inside of the giant fish, God always pursues us.
Have you ever found yourself washed up on the beach like Jonah?
Image: Swanson, John August. Jonah, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56549 [retrieved September 27, 2023]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.