Jonah & the comedy of Faith

“Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth
and call loudly to the Lord…” (Jonah 3:8)

The book of Jonah is collected with the prophecies of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament, but it contains no actual prophecy, instead it is a comical short story about what it means to be a prophet.  It is such a simple story it feels like a fable. And because it is so very familiar to all of us with its story of a man swallowed by a whale, we feel like we know it, even if we’ve never read a word of it.  But, I challenge you to open your Bible and find it (between Obadiah and Micah) and take a few minutes to read it.  It truly is a SHORT story. Four brief chapters, in my New Jerusalem Bible Jonah takes up two pages; if the print in your Bible is larger it may stretch to three. But you can definitely read this story in about 10 minutes.  I highly recommend it. Ten minutes will rarely be spent more productively and delightfully.

It is a masterpiece of comedy. A satire about an unwilling prophet and his efforts to escape God’s call, it also contains a beautiful message of hope about the mercy of God and His transcendent love. 

The basics of the story are this: God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach to them about their wickedness. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, a nation that had been terrorizing the world (and the Israelites) for a century or more, sacking, looting, plundering, dragging people off to slavery and worse.  Jonah doesn’t want to go, so he runs away from God’s call and tries to hide in a distant land. That is where the whale comes in and before long Jonah is spit out on the shore and walking the streets of Nineveh proclaiming that the end is near!  But the people of Nineveh hear this and take it to heart and they repent and God relents and shows them mercy and Jonah falls down in the dirt like an angry child and says: See!  I knew you were going to do that! That’s why I didn’t want to come here in the first place.

What I find so fascinating in this tale isn’t the famous whale that swallows the prophet and vomits him up on the beach, but the depiction of a man (Jonah) trying to escape God’s call, because he thinks he knows better.  There is a great deal of spiritual sustenance to be found in this tale. Heck, even Jesus found it important enough to mention it a couple of times.  But, you have to read it yourself.  Let yourself get lost in the story. Let yourself laugh at the foolishness of men, and the strange wonders of God’s workings. Let it seep down into your soul. And when you get to the part about even the sheep and cattle dressing up in sackcloth and ashes, see if you don’t find yourself grinning at least a little. 

Something we too often forget is that reading the Bible can also be fun. If you are curious about reading scripture, this story is a great place to start.  And when you are done, you may want to look up the charming Veggie Tales movie version, too! I love those darned pirates who don’t do anything, and their catchy theme song.