Today's Scripture Reading (October 4, 2025): Psalm 94
I love the biblical story of Jonah. And my liking of
the story has nothing to do with the whale or the big fish. In fact, I think
the presence of the big fish in the story is actually just a big distraction
that we don't need.
Let me paraphrase the story for you. Jonah is a
prophet of God. And so, God does what he often seems to do with his prophets.
He comes to Jonah with a message and a mission. God says that he needs someone
to go to Nineveh and preach his message of love and forgiveness. If Nineveh
does not change its ways, then the city would have to be destroyed, but it is
evident that God doesn't want to leap to that conclusion. First, God decides to
send Jonah.
However, Jonah doesn't want to go. And why would he?
Nineveh was an evil city. One of the things that the Ninevites had perfected
was how to remove the skin of a person while keeping them alive, at least for a
while. You would die eventually, but you would die in great pain. Jonah is
afraid to go, but maybe even more importantly, he wants God's wrath to fall on
this evil city. He wants God to be the avenger of all the innocents who have
died as a direct result of Nineveh and its Assyrian Empire.
Jonah decides to go to the Southern Coast of Spain
instead of Nineveh. If you have decided to run away from God, the South of
Spain is a good place to go. The South of Spain is a beautiful place to be, but
it also exists near what the ancients believed was the edge of the world. It
was as far from Nineveh as Jonah could imagine going. I question the reason why
Jonah decided to sail to Spain. The seas were a place of chaos, often
recognized as under the control of the gods, but that is what Jonah chose to
do.
Enter the famous big fish. A storm comes up; obviously,
the gods are displeased. Jonah knows with whom God is displeased. So, he
volunteers to be thrown overboard. However, the sailors are principled men, and
so they throw everything else they could think of, including their freight,
first. But then they toss Jonah over the side of the boat. And immediately, the
waves calm, and the ship is no longer in danger.
For Jonah, things aren't quite as bright. A large
fish swallows Jonah, and the prophet spends the next three days and three
nights inside it. Finally, the fish vomits Jonah onto dry land; I guess he didn't
taste very good. Jonah cleans himself up and does what he should have done in
the first place; he goes to Nineveh to preach the message God had given to him.
The people of Nineveh are receptive to the message, and they change their ways.
As a result, God delays his wrath for a season, which doesn't make Jonah happy.
One of the key passages in the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, is found in Jonah 4. At
this point in the story, Nineveh has been saved, and Jonah is sulking.
But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he
became angry. 2 He
prayed to the Lord, "Isn't this what I
said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by
fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate
God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from
sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than
to live" (Jonah 4:1-3)
Jonah wanted an avenging God, just like the
Psalmist, and if we are honest, so do we. But God comes to us and reminds us
that he is a gracious and compassionate God. Sometimes that is good news
because we are Nineveh and we need that compassion. Sometimes we are Jonah and
are being sent to people who need to hear a compassionate message.
The Psalmist wants God to be an avenging God. But
that is a last resort. God is patient, kind, gracious, and compassionate. A God
who wants no one to fall or fail. And he seems willing to keep sending his
prophets (us) into a world that needs that message, whether we want to be the
instrument of that compassion or not. It is a message that even the Psalmist
needed to hear.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading:
Psalm 97
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