Delivered on Sunday 27 August 2006 in St George's Chapel

Jonah 1 & 2

The story we heard this morning from the Book of Jonah is part two of a two part story and although I suspect part one is very well known, I thought it might be no harm to hear it again. It goes something like this:

1. And the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2. Arise, go to the great city of Nineveh and call out against it; for their evil has come up before me. 3. But Jonah arose and fled to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went down into the ship, to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the LORD. 4. But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. To lighten the boat they threw its cargo into the sea. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. 6. The captain of the ship approached him and said to him, "Why are you fast asleep? Arise, call on your god! Perhaps the god will take notice and we will not perish." 7. The sailors said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us". So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8. So they said to him, "Tell us, please, who is responsible for this evil coming upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? 9. He answered them, "I am a Hebrew. I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." 10. Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, "What is this that you have done!" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them so. 11. Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that the sea may calm down for us?" For the sea was growing more and more stormy. 12. He said to them, "Pick me up and hurl me into the sea so that the sea will calm down for you, because I know that the great storm has come upon you on account of me." 13. Nevertheless, the sailors rowed hard to bring the ship back to dry ground, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. 14. Then they cried out to the LORD and said, "Please, O LORD, we pray, do not let us perish because of the life of this man. Do not hold us guilty of killing an innocent person! For you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you." 15. So they picked Jonah up and hurled him into the sea; and the sea ceased raging. 16. Then the men feared the LORD still more, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. 17. But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

And it's at that point that we join the story this morning. The first thing we learn is that Jonah prayed to his God from the belly of the fish, and following that prayer the Lord spoke to the fish and the fish vomited Jonah out onto the dry ground. It's a good story, such a good story that I suspect even people who have relatively little knowledge of the Bible will know the gist of it. But while it might be well known, it is certainly a curious story and it's hard to know what to make of it.

The Book of Jonah, you will remember, is one of twelve books comprising what we now call the Minor Prophets, and as such it is clearly put before us as the book of a prophet. But unlike all the other prophetic books, this is not so much a record of what Jonah said, more the story of what happened to him. And on that front, the obvious thing to say about him is this: he was not your regular prophet. The book begins conventionally enough, with the Lord directing Jonah to 'arise, go the city of Nineveh and call out against it'. Prophets received similar instructions throughout the Old Testament. Elijah, for example, was told to 'Arise, go now to Zarephath' and he set out immediately. Jonah, by contrast, arose ... and ran away. Instead of heading towards Nineveh which lay to the East he fled to the West, to Tarshish. He was off, heading in the opposite direction, hoping to steer clear of the presence of the Lord. But his hopes were quickly dashed for no sooner had they taken sail than the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea causing consternation on board. Consternation, that is, for everyone except Jonah who had quietly and unobtrusively gone down into the hold and fallen fast asleep. He was awoken by a furious Captain who, in words similar to those spoken to Jonah by the Lord, ordered him to 'arise and call', although this time he was to call out in prayer. It would appear that once again Jonah ignored these instructions and it was left to the sailors - whose fear was growing moment by moment - to challenge their curious passenger; they bombarded him with questions. Jonah answered them: 'I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land'. Now if that answer was supposed to inspire confidence, it failed miserably, for on hearing this, the sailors were now petrified! They asked Jonah how they might calm sea and he suggested that they hurl him into the waves. After all, if you are fleeing from the presence of the Lord drowning would look like a safe and secure solution. So the sailors hurled him in ... and the sea ceased raging. The grateful sailors then offered up prayers to the Lord and made vows to him; they had come to understand that the Lord really was the one who had made the sea and the dry land.

Meanwhile, Jonah, was spending three days and three nights in the belly of a large fish. And it was while he was there that he finally turned to the Lord and offered up a prayer. It was a poetic piece of prayer and we shall turn to it in a moment, but the result of the prayer would seem to be that Jonah ended up on dry land. He had - for most of the story so far - been trying to run away from the presence of the Lord: he had fled to Tarshish, he had slept through the storm, he had asked to be hurled into the raging sea, all in an effort to keep out of the Lord's sight. But there, in the belly of the whale, he had a change of heart. In fact, the language and imagery is of death and resurrection: he 'went down' to Tarshish, he 'went down' into the hold', he 'went down' into the sea, he 'went down' into the belly of the fish, ... he was 'thrown up' unto dry land. He had chosen the path that led to death but on turning to the Lord he was placed firmly back unto the avenue of life. There are echoes here of the opening paragraph of Augustine's Confessions where he wrote: 'our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you'.

Now that might be a good place to bring this sermon to a close. The message is clear: try as you might you cannot flee from the presence of the Lord, and it is only when you acknowledge His presence that you encounter life and peace. And, of course, that is one sensible productive reading of the text, but it is not the only one. I want now, very briefly, to offer you a supplementary reading of these two chapters. You will have noticed that our first reading has taken into account the fact that Jonah prayed but it really doesn't matter much what he actually prayed - the key point is he prayed and therefore turned back to the Lord. This observation has led some critics to say that the prayer itself is an addition to the text and not part of the original story. That, mind you, is by no means a certainty and we can just as legitimately assume that the prayer is as much a part of the original story as the rest of it. So what role does this prayer play in the story? We would be forgiven for thinking that here is a prayer of repentance and thanksgiving but if we look more carefully we'll see that nothing could be further from the truth. The very first words signal trouble: 'I call to the Lord'. We are reminded that that is exactly what the Captain of the ship instructed Jonah, but we also remember that he did no such thing. And now when he does call he has a rather interesting view of events. He claims that the Lord has cast him into the sea: his choice of the word 'cast' alerts us to the fabrication. Throughout the story the verb 'to hurl' has been used, time and again, but now we hear a new verb: 'to cast'. It alerts us to a dissonance, a distortion: it was not the Lord who cast Jonah into the sea; it was the sailors who hurled him out into the waves. He also has the audacity to claim that he had been driven away from the Lord's sight; he had not, he had run away, sailed away, even to the point of choosing drowning, anything but stay in the Lord's presence. Jonah's prayer depicts a distortion of reality. That distortion reaches a crescendo when he compares himself favourably with those who go after idols, while he, it is claimed, remains loyal. The words sound very hollow, especially when we already know of the piety of the sailors and when, in the next chapter, we learn of the repentance of the people of Nineveh. Jonah may well end with the triumphant words: 'Deliverance belongs to the Lord!' but from his mouth they have a nauseating effect. And sure enough the fish vomits him up. The Hebrew language has other options for bringing forth; it is surely no accident that the verb chosen is 'to vomit'.

The point of this reading is not to make Jonah out as the villain; he is no more and no less than an ordinary mortal. The point is to recognise another insight from the great theologian Augustine: we do not know and cannot know who we are. Whether we like it or not our story of ourselves and of the world as we see it, like Jonah's, is ultimately soiled by deception. We pride ourselves on our objectivity and our great intelligence but in reality we are entangled in the snares of deception. We are, as Augustine says, incapable of providing true accounts of ourselves. And yet we need not despair for in God, there is "endless wisdom, [and] boundless power". We sang earlier "My God, how wonderful thou art, Thy majesty how bright"; we could sing with confidence because we know that it is only in God that we are fully known. These opening chapters of the Book of Jonah, teach us the good news that there is One who loves us, not as we think we are, but as we really are: the Lord God, Almighty!