A story about a guy who gets swallowed by a fish, only to be regurgitated three days later, is bound to be a good story.  It’s little wonder, then, that Jonah is popular with writers of Sunday School lessons.  For years, I knew Jonah as the guy who was called by God, disobeyed, got eaten by a fish, and then went on to do what God had called him to do.  End of story, right?

Wrong.  Jonah is not a story of a man who messes up, but then ends up as a hero.  Far from it!  As my knowledge of the Bible extended beyond the reaches of those Sunday School lessons, I saw that Jonah is not all that heroic.  I was moved by the way that this story testifies to the depth and the breadth of God’s great love for all the world.  It’s a great story, easily worth a month of sermons.  Each week this month, we’ll read a chapter of the book.  I hope you’ll find this story as meaningful as I do.  Let us turn now to the first chapter of Jonah. 

[Jonah 1:1-17]

 Jonah is more fun to read in Hebrew.  The English version I just read from has God saying to Jonah, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me” (v. 2).  And then, Jonah hits the road and heads for Tarshish.  Already, we’ve lost something in the translation. 

In the Hebrew, God says “Qûm! (Arise!)  Lēk (Go) to Nineveh, my great city, and ûqrā (call out, preach) against it for its evil has come up in my presence!”  You weren’t expecting to learn any Hebrew, were you?  But here are three words you can learn.  [Qûm! (Arise!)  Lēk (Go)  ûqrā (call out, preach).]

They’re imperatives, or commands; when God says these words to Jonah, it’s clear that Jonah’s supposed to obey.  He should arise, and go, and preach.  So – what happens next?

In the English text, it’s not very suspenseful.  After the English version tells us what God says to Jonah it reads, “But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord ” (v.3).  From the very beginning, we know that Jonah is about to mess up because it says “But Jonah…”  It’s not like that in Hebrew.  In Hebrew, it says, vayaqam – which could mean one of two things: “and he arose” or “but he arose”.  (You see, in Hebrew, the word for ‘and’ and the word for ‘but’ is the same word, and you don’t really know which one it’s going to be until you get through the sentence.) 

So – in Hebrew, the book begins with God saying Arise!  Go!  Preach!  But Jonah arose; and Jonah arose...  In that instant, we do not know what Jonah is going to do next.  It’s a moment filled with tension: will he obey?  Jonah is out there on a precipice, and he takes us with him.  It’s a great moment, one that’s totally lost in English.  He teeters there… and then we get to the next word in the story, and we know that Jonah is not going to Nineveh.  Jonah may be a prophet, but he disobeys God.  We quickly learn that not only is Jonah going to go his own way, but he’s going to try and flee from the presence of the Lord .  It’s an ominous beginning.

What’s interesting is that we don’t know why Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh.  The writer of Jonah does not tell us why Jonah chooses to disobey God.  (We’ll find out about that in the fourth chapter of the book, so be sure to be here on the 24^th when we talk about Jonah’s reasons for doing what he does.) 

For now, we have to leave the questions of Jonah’s motivations unanswered.  What we do learn about in this first chapter is the incredible effort that Jonah is willing to put out in his attempt to flee from God’s presence.  Jonah wants to escape from God’s calling, and he’ll go to great lengths to do just that.

This first chapter of Jonah is a story about a man who knows where God wants him to be and what God wants him to do, but who tries to be somewhere else.  Indeed, today’s reading is a story about a man looking for the exit signs, trying to escape.  This makes me wonder about the role that escape plays in our own lives.  Surely there have been moments in each of our lives when we longed to be somewhere else.  Perhaps some of us are better escape artists than others, but I’m guessing that most of us have managed to walk away from where we ought to have been at some point in our lives.

Jonah is someone who can help us to think about how it is that we try to escape.  Jonah’s first plan – plan A, you could say – is physical escape.  God wants him to be headed to Nineveh, so he’s going to head somewhere else.  He goes to Joppa, and boards a boat headed for Tarshish.  He wants to be somewhere else.  We may not board ships that often, but we have other ways of being in the wrong place, don’t we?

Perhaps some of us are at work when we ought to be at home.  Perhaps we’re at home when we ought to be at work.  Perhaps we hide in the back of the house when we ought to be with our families.  Perhaps we seek out the company of others when we ought to be alone, in prayer and reflection.  I don’t know how it is that you try to physically escape from where you ought to be, but you can fill in those blanks for yourselves.  We all do it, at one time or another.

Trouble is, God follows Jonah.  God hurls a great wind on the sea, endangering Jonah and the ship’s crew.  It was clear to Jonah that his plan of escape wasn’t working; God wasn’t going to leave him alone.  When Jonah knows that his first plan isn’t working, he goes for plan B.  I would term plan B ‘psychological escape’ – Jonah goes to sleep.  What a great way to avoid a situation, eh?

How is it that you folks make a psychological get-away?  Reading the paper?  Putting on headphones?  Watching TV?  Sleeping, like Jonah?  Simply choosing not to think about something?  There are so many ways to not be present to what it is that’s going on in our lives, or in the lives of those we love.  Sometime this week, try to spend some time thinking about how you make your psychological escapes when the going gets tough.  Again: we’ve all been there.

At this point in the story, things get pretty rough.  The ship’s crew figures out that Jonah’s at fault; he tells them as much.  In fact, Jonah makes an offer to the ship’s crew: throw him overboard, and God will make the storm stop.  It seems like a rather unselfish thing for him to do, doesn’t it?  But I don’t think that Jonah’s being unselfish at all. 

Here’s my interpretation of the story: Jonah’s request to be thrown overboard is a death wish.  Jonah knows that God is forgiving; surely he could have prayed on that boat:  “God, I’m sorry I tried to flee from your presence.  Please spare this boat.  I will repent and go to Nineveh.”  Personally, I think that would have worked.  But Jonah will do no such thing.  He’d rather die than admit he’s wrong, and repent.  When fleeing the scene and going to sleep don’t work, Jonah opts for the ultimate escape: death. 

When it comes to Jonah’s death wish, I don’t know how your life connects with Jonah’s.  I am sure that some of you have contemplated ending your lives, and that others have not.  But I know that we all find ways of using everything we have to turn from God and from our neighbor – those moments of deep despair, death wish or no, when we just want everything to stop.

In all of this, Jonah reveals quite a bit about us, about our capacity to try and escape who it is that God wants us to be.  But this first chapter of Jonah isn’t only about fleeing God’s presence.  This first chapter also reveals something about God.  After all, God plays a fairly active role in this story. 

After all, God first calls Jonah.  When Jonah flees, God tries to get his attention with a storm.  And in Jonah’s darkest moment, God appoints a whale to swallow Jonah, thus saving him from himself.  You know, people have asked me whether or not I believe that there was actually a fish that swallowed Jonah, or whether I think it was “just a story.”  My answer has always been this: I don’t really care; I don’t think it matters.  Whether or not there was actually a man in a fish’s belly really doesn’t change my life one way or another.  The real truth in this story is that God is present with Jonah, even in his darkest moments.  God is steadfast, and Jonah is unable to flee from God’s presence.  This is the good news that we find in the first chapter of Jonah.

Just as God is always present with Jonah, God is always present with us.  There is nowhere that we can go where we can hide from God.  As the psalmist says,

Whither shall I go from your spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me.

The story of Jonah starts with a word from the Lord, which comes to Jonah.  Maybe we don’t all get a word as direct as Jonah’s, with Qûm! Lēk, ûqrā.  But we’re all called to open our hearts to God’s grace.  We’re all called to share that grace as best we can.  We’re all called to love God, and to love our neighbor. 

Remember that moment in the story when we’re not sure what Jonah’s going to do?  Jonah arises, and for that moment we’re left hanging, unsure of what he’ll do next.  Well, here’s an idea for you to play with in the next week: in every instant of our lives, we live in that moment.  That precipice where Jonah teeters for that split second: that’s where we live.  Always, God calls us to live in the fullness of God’s grace.  And always, we have to make a choice about how to respond. 

So remember those words that God says to us: Qûm! Lēk, ûqrā (repeat).  And when God says to us, Qûm! Lēk, ûqrā, or whatever it is that God says to us, let us not try to escape.  And if we do try to escape, and find ourselves in a frightening place – let us remember that we are not alone.  Our God is still with us.  Thanks be to God.

Sermon delived by Sara Olson Dean on April 3, 2005.