The tale
of Jonah in the Old Testament is often thought of as a children's story
complete with a whale & a great adventure.
In fact, as a college student, I recall attending a Sunday morning
service in a Baptist church in which there was a tent fashioned into a whale at
the front of the church in order to re-enact the story of Jonah. All of the children entered it in order to
simulate the fantastic journey that Jonah took, & they seemed absolutely
thrilled to do so.
Yet, the real message of the
book of Jonah is a very adult one that gives us all an opportunity to stretch
our understanding of God & his salvation. Today’s first reading tells of
God's 2nd call to Jonah and his less than enthusiastic response.
God tells Jonah "to go to Nineveh,
the great city." Nineveh was the
capital of Assyria, the nation that had destroyed the northern kingdom of
Israel and held the southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal state for almost one
hundred years. Assyria was a brutal occupying force that forever changed
Israel's future. Jonah is called out by God to go and prophesy to the capital
city of Israel’s enemy.
We could berate and criticize Jonah for his little faith. However, it
might be more helpful for us to identify with Jonah for a moment rather than to
criticize him, to empathize with the seemingly impossible mission to which God
has called him. With the tasks we are
called to do in our modern world, we could consider Jonah a patron saint to
whom we ask for intercessory prayers.
The message we receive from our modern secular world is that we cannot
make a big difference in the world, that we might as well just fall in line and
make the best living we can for ourselves and our family. Our calling from God and our values may tell
us we need to head East to Nineveh, but we all too often turn around, walk
away, and get on the boat with Jonah as a means of escape. Perhaps we find it too difficult or too
lonely to walk the way of our faith, to choose the path of faith over the ways
of our secular world. And by running
away, perhaps we find ourselves in the belly of the whale, or out of touch with
our calling from God, or very distant from a sense of meaning and purpose.
We need to think about those things that
we try to flee in our life of faith, things that we are being called to do by
God, but we are scared or uninterested or just don’t have the inclination to do
what God is asking us to do. This story
of Jonah’s calling gives us pause to think, doesn’t it?
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