A Man, A Plan, and A Fish

     This is not a story about a man being vomited out of a fish. That wasn't central to the original story when it was passed from generation to generation in fireside chats. This is the story of a prophet named Jonah. But it is actually the story of a nation.

      There was a young man named Jonah. He was probably a little off his rocker. Pay no attention to if he existed or not: it doesn’t matter. It is likely, however, that he was an actual person because the book of Jonah begins that he was the son of Amittai.  Whenever the Hebrew scribes included a genealogy, they were trying to establish that this was a real person in history.  But that doesn't mean we have to believe the events in the story were literal.  I've seen many debates over how it is possible Jonah was swallowed by a whale and survived.  They miss the point of the story. Instead, this is a story of an average guy who was later called a prophet.  He felt that he heard the "still small whisper in the quiet of his soul."  It told him something outrageous.  A city, Nineveh, was in trouble.  It was about to be laid waste by some unnamed enemy.  Jonah got a God-itch and was supposed to go and warn them.

    This doesn't seem all that outrageous until you realize that Nineveh was an Assyrian city.  A huge one.  But the Israelites didn't get along well with the Assyrians, to say the least.  The two nations had a long history of mutually imposed massive loss of life when destroying each others' cities.  And this was very unpleasant destruction - laying siege.  Did you ever see the part of the "Lord of the Rings" movies when the forces of Saruman with their half-orc warriors laid siege to the human city they called Rohirrim? The people retreated to the inner fortress called Helms Deep.  It was a horrible and terrifying event.  When laying siege was successful, the people trapped inside (husbands and wives, daughters and sons) would watch each other starve to death one by one until they relented and gave up the city.  Can you imagine watching your family members starve to death? We don't have anything like it in the modern world.  I realized just how terrifying this would be to my two year old daughter when we went to a Fourth of July Parade and some actors who do anachronistic battle reenactments were fake sword-fighting on the back of a float.  My daughter was terrified.  And they were just acting.  The Assyrians were hated and feared by man, woman and child. To the Israelites, they were ruthless killers. And the Israelites had responded in kind. That's the kind of bad blood that lay between Assyria and Israel.

    So God tells Jonah in the still small whisper in the quiet of his soul to go warn them.  Jonah, quite understandably, runs the other way.  He takes a ship and heads in the opposite direction.  Not sure why he didn't just stay at home.  But these prophets tend to be pretty strange ducks.  At any rate, our hero Jonah, heads in the other direction on a boat with a bunch of sailors from some foreign land: 

"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 1:3 NRSV)

A storm comes up and they all fear for their lives and ask Jonah why he has brought this upon them by running from his God. The story says, 

"...such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” [Jonah] replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

    Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him again, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”  (Jonah1:7-1:17)

 Jonah told them to throw him into the sea. Then there are a bunch of

machinations in the story, including being swallowed by some sort of large fish and being vomited out on dry land.  Basically, the story is saying, in all this storm business, that God changed Jonah's mind.  Which is more miraculous than any large fish with digestive issues.  But we’ll see later that God wasn’t successful in changing Jonah’s heart - yet.     

    Still Jonah makes up his mind, at least, to go to go to Nineveh now. Jonah goes to Nineveh and warns them and immediately the foreigners with foreign Gods repent to Jonah's God.  The king even sends out a decree to do so. And the city is saved from its impending destruction.  But Jonah's heart hasn't changed for them.  Jonah gets angry that they were saved.  And then even depressed.  He asks God to take his life. Then Jonah has an encounter with a plant that shaded him when he was depressed that was killed by the sun. He loved that little plant for saving him from dehydration in the hot sun and it was dead. He got more angry and sad.  He was angry at himself, angry at the world, and angry at God.  I can see him weeping over this little plant.  And the still small whisper in the quiet of his soul says, "that's how God feels about about Nineveh."  God was angry and sad that the Assyrians were going to be destroyed. It was the opposite of Jonah's anger. God weeps, like Jonah did, over his plant: Yes, your people hate them.  Yes, they have done unspeakable things to you all.  But God loves that you saved them.  This is a lesson for all of Israel.  Love your enemies, even if they hate you.  This means we are to get off our butts and actively look out for their best interests, like Jonah did.  He risked his life by setting foot in that city.  We are to make sure to help our enemies any way we can.  God will show us how. Jesus reminded us all of same thing later a little more explicitly.  He said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  Jesus did not include an exception clause for people we don't like.  So it is a lesson for us.  But more interestingly, in the wisdom of the Old Testament, it is also a lesson for nations.

    We all would do well to pay attention to Jonah and his fish.  He got out of his comfortable home and risked life and limb and almost died, just to go and warn them. If we pay attention to Jonah, our nation will do it.  Then other nations, full of people, will do it.  And presto, no more besieged terror.  No more men, women, and children in war.  I fully believe that the more this message spreads, the faster we will never see the modern versions of Helm's Deep again.  We can all just do our part by loving our neighbor.  It's not cliché.  It is not less than a revolution carried out one person at a time.  The "Love your neighbor and your enemy" plea from Jesus, when followed by one single person, spreads. It will lead inexorably to Heaven on Earth. Stuff like this has a tendency to spread: It starts with one person.   It can start with you, now, today. That is why we still have the wise words of Jesus.  We can each do our own little part, and pass the message on through our actions.

    How is this possible?  Jesus never says how we can love our enemy.  It is understood: avoid demonizing them.  I must recognize that the people that dislike me are people just like me.  They are people with faults and failures, but also strengths and things I can love about them.  This shift from focusing on the bad in them to trying to search for the good totally reverses my interactions with them.  I hang out at the gas station a lot, smoking in my car and listening to music.  I have a Smiths sticker on my car.  This guy I had never seen before pulled up and yelled "The Smiths!? Rubbish! Morrisey is crap!"  Morrissey was the lead singer of the Smiths from Manchester, England.  But instead of taking offense, I laughed.  It was actually terribly funny when he said it in his British accent.  We have since become good friends.  He is actually from South Africa, and lives in an apartment that backs up to the parking lot behind our little house.  He throws all our lost tennis balls back over the fence for my daughter when she throws them over while playing fetch with my dog, Sarah. He loves music and we have this love in common. Instead of focusing on the offense, I focused on the good in him as a fellow human being who loves music.  Interactions like this at the gas station teach me a lot about people: People have a core desire to be heard and loved and accepted, even the ones that hate us.  It doesn't have to stay that way.  God changed Jonah's heart.  God is changing mine.  If one person's heart changes, it will spread. Guaranteed.