It's hard to read Jonah and not think about all the time that's been wasted on arguing about whether or not it's possible for a person to survive the digestive processes of a big fish or a whale.
Most people haven't heard that the book of Jonah is a Wisdom text, not a book of prophesy like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, etc., etc.
Jonah is a wise and wonderful PARABLE.
God asks Jonah to carry a message of redemption to Nineveh--Israel's historic and bitter enemy. Jonah books passage on a boat going the other direction. When it comes to finding room in his heart for an enemy, Jonah is completely out of his depth.
So what does God do to nurture a bigger love in Jonah?
God sends a storm. God sends a storm that begins to sink Jonah's ship. The storm is a gift to get Jonah in deeper water. The sailors, against their will, toss the runaway prophet into the waves.
Jonah sinks.
God sends a big fish.
The fish transports Jonah in the direction opposite Jonah's heart: The Big Fish swims toward Nineveh, toward the deep end of life.
One of the great myths of our culture is that we love love--that we love love's depths--that we love to fall in love and experience love's depths.
We do love to fall in love. But even then, we resist love's depths. Love's depths are scary and painful. We rarely want to go there. It often takes storms and metaphorical big fish to move us to places where our hearts are challenged to grow, to deepen, to stretch.
An interesting thing about Jonah is that it ends with a question. Jonah, very begrudgingly, has carried God's message to Nineveh. He walks somewhere near the center of town and in a one-off 8 word speech warns the town folk of impending judgment and then walks on through town to find a vantage point to watch Nineveh be destroyed.
It's summer in Nineveh. Hot as hell. Jonah is miserable. God sends a vine to shade Jonah's hard head. Jonah is filled with joy!
God sends a worm to eat the vine. Then God sends a fiery desert wind. Jonah is miserable again and turns as peevish as 4 year old who didn't get his nap. "I'm so uncomfortable I could just die!"
Then God tries one more time to widen and deepen Jonah's heart--with wisdom that ends in a question:
‘Is it right for you to be angry
about the bush?’ And Jonah said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ Then the Lord said,
‘You are concerned about the vine, for which you did not labor and which you
did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And
should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand
from their left, and also many animals?’
The book ends with this question.
Jonah is a parable about God's big love. God sends us lots of wonderful things--storms, creatures of the deep, shade, worms, hot dry winds--all as a heart-deepening gift.
God sends us these little gifts so God can send other people bigger gifts. The bigger gifts God is always preparing to send is us--our own deepened and stretched by big love selves.
Should God not send us these little gifts?
