The greatest miracle in the story of Jonah isn’t the big fish. It’s never been the fish. It’s not the fish for two reasons. Firstly, we’ve all heard fish stories before and we know how they go. Secondly, and more importantly, God has always done what God needed to do to get human attention. Bush on fire, but not consumed? Check. (Exodus 3) Fleece is wet, but the floor is dry? Check. (Judges 6) Donkey refuses to move until you listen to the angel visitor? Check. (Numbers 22)
Why didn’t Jonah listen in the first place? For reasons that made good sense to him. Nineveh was a significant location for trading routes crossing the Tigris River on the great road between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. In this important location between east and west, Nineveh, as a major city and eventually the last capital of the Assyrian Empire, amassed wealth and power from many sources. The Assyrian Empire was the big man on the Mesopotamian campus, until it was overthrown.
The overthrow of Assyria took concerted effort by the forces of Babylonians, Chaldeans, and Persians, along with other significant local players, with the Babylonians ending up as the new regional power. Remember, also, that Assyria was the nation that carried the 10 northern tribes, or the nation of Israel, off the map. Nineveh was a large city in the middle of a not-beloved region and God calls Jonah, a Hebrew prophet to them.
Jonah doesn’t want to go. How could he hold his head up with his people again if he was known as the prophet to Nineveh? If he survived and returned, how could he possibly tell anyone where he’d been sent and then what God did?
And Jonah doesn’t want to go because he was aware of how God operated (and operates). Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love? For the Ninevites? For Assyrians? Absolutely not.
When people talk to me about the “God of the Old Testament”, hardly anyone ever mentions this story and what Jonah knew about God’s reputation. We have here a prophet, one of God’s own chosen people, who knows that God’s reputation isn’t destruction, but mercy. Not rejection, but welcome. Not endless devastation, but relentless justice and restoration. Jonah may not be able to answer why bad things happen to good people, but he is refusing to be part of how good things happen to bad people (in his mind).
So, he goes down to the docks and buys passage to Tarshish. To give you some perspective: Nineveh was located where we see Mosul, Iraq on a map, about 500 miles east of Jerusalem. Tarshish was on the southern coast of Spain, about 2000 miles in the other direction. For Big Timber, that’s close to if God told one of us to go to Bismarck, North Dakota and we went to Juneau, Alaska instead.
Jonah flees. His disobedience endangers everyone aboard the same ship with him. Cargo is thrown overboard, and the boat is in distress. When the sailors narrow down that Jonah is the problem, they go wake him up from his nap to tell him. He says for them to throw him over the side, and they only reluctantly agree to do so. He’d still rather drown than tell God he’ll go to Nineveh. Enter the fish.
Jonah spends three days giving the great fish indigestion, He seems repentant of his disobedience, so God has the fish vomit Jonah out on the beach. There, while he’s still covered in slime, the word of the Lord comes to Jonah for a second time. Any time the Bible makes it clear that God is repeating Godself, one should listen. Jonah trudges off. I say trudges because his behavior in the final chapter of this story makes it clear he still wasn’t joyful about this assignment, and he has no intention of preaching with any enthusiasm.
Yet, after barely one day into a three-day journey, the Spirit has begun to move among the people of Nineveh. They’re repenting en masse. No one is saying “not all Assyrians”. No one is saying, “Well, I wasn’t part of the problem.” No one is starting a countermovement or trying to reframe the story about the sins of their ancestors or their neighbors, but definitely not them. Every single Assyrian realizes that there’s a societal problem and they all choose to be part of the solution, part of the hope, part of the repair. They all want better for Nineveh, for all their children, for the land, for every animal.
This goes all the way up to the king, who joins in the repentance movement and becomes its leader. He does not blame his opponents. He does not point fingers, call names, or reject responsibility. The king understands that the hope of Nineveh is for everyone and everything to turn from their current behaviors toward the expectations of Jonah’s God.
Does this turning toward orthopraxy- a right, holy practice- include monetary honesty, liberty for captives, equity among citizens, justice for all? Does it mean slowly transforming a stratified society, attention to the reasons behind poverty, care for the mentally and physically ill? Does it mean that the capital of Assyria must recognize that with great power comes great responsibility? We don’t know the specifics of the change of heart, but we do know that every single Assyrian- every adult, every child, every cow (representing all the domestic animals)- repents.
Repentance here isn’t mere apology but is a clear turning of hearts and minds toward behavior that is pleasing to God. They all do it. To a person and to a bovine. And that’s the great miracle in this Bible story- it is possible for an entire society to change its ways. God can do it. God has done it. God will do it.
The Scripture says, then, that God provided a bush for Jonah, to give the prophet a little shade. Jonah liked that very much. The next day, God sent a worm whose day’s work was to destroy the bush. God turned up the wind and the heat and Jonah was now extremely unhappy.
And then comes the very best scene in the Bible outside of the gospels:
[Jonah] begged that he might die, saying, “It’s better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 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?” (Jonah 4:9-11, NRSVUE)
Look, God is saying, you don’t have to like them, but the Ninevites are as much my people, part of my beloved creation, as you are. They may make bad choices, they may be caught in a web of their destructive ways, but I love them. I have compassion for them. I want better for them. I will not give up on them.
And if I won’t, says the Lord in my holy imagination, then you don’t get to do so either. You don’t get to place laurels of righteousness on your own head if you refuse to be part of my desire for healing in creation. I’ve got bigger fish than you, Jonah, as you well know. You don’t have to like the Assyrians, but you have to love them. In this case, loving them means acting in their best interest- telling them that there is a way to avoid destruction and to live in hope and a just peace.
In this story, perhaps you have imagined yourself as Jonah. Maybe you know the people or person to whom you have been called to share the good news of Jesus Christ- a message of hope and not condemnation, of justice and not rejection, of community action and not individual isolation. Are you listening to that call or are you in a boat in the other direction? Are we as a church listening to that call? To whom have we been directed to speak a word from God, but have kept silence? Have we hoped I, as pastor would do it alone- even though there’s no “I” in Christian community? (Well, technically there are three, but you know what I meant.)
Or, in our own time, we may be the Assyrians, pre-repentance. We may well be stuck in denying our role in any societal failures or breakdowns. It wasn’t me or my parents, why should I repent? We look away from leaders whose personal choices are genuinely harmful because they, currently, aren’t harming us. Societal repair, in this situation, means making things smooth for me and the people I know, especially the ones who vote like me, spend like me, work like me, and make choices like I do. That way of thinking is destructive, rotting a society from the inside out. And it has no place among Christians who claim to have said yes to Jesus’ call.
Fishing in Jesus’ day was a way of life- sustaining a community with food and financial resources. It involved everyone- netmakers, boat builders, market stall owners, traders, and others. A call to “fish for people” wasn’t about collecting souls, but an invitation into an equally important type of community sustenance- the care and thriving of the soul of a community. It is the call that comes to us all, through our baptisms, which draw us into work together. Work together, I said, not an individual silo of one saved person without other cares.
The story of Jonah is a story of one prophet who represents a whole people, the people of Judah, during a time of nationalistic attitudes when most everyone wished to keep the country’s resources to themselves, including and especially their relationship with the Creator of All. That’s what was happening when Jonah was written and it’s that nationalistic, closed-in attitude that the book addresses in its own time and in ours.
We don’t get to resist the call to serve others. We don’t get to flee from the Spirit’s urging to care. We don’t get to say it wasn’t me. If we’ve come to understand who God is and what God’s about, we ignore that work at our peril. And we better not pray, “Let thy will be done on earth as in heaven” if we’re not willing to participate. Like Jonah with the sailors, our refusal to listen, trust, and obey can and will endanger others.
Insert for Nineveh any country, any political party, any ideology, any race, any creed, any social group, any person. And remember that someone, somewhere has had to have God say these same words about you to them. The greatest miracle in Jonah isn’t the fish. And it never has been.
It’s that the Spirit of the merciful God can change the hearts of a whole nation, including the king and the livestock, and can use the most reluctant of followers to do it.
Amen.
