Reluctantly Created Anew

Rebecca Heilman
(Jonah 3: 1-10)

It was a summer day, I was probably around seven or eight years old, and I had had enough of my older siblings bickering and picking on me. They were driving me nuts and apparently my mom too. While they were sent to their rooms as punishment, I hid in my closet listening and infuriated by everyone! Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? So, I grabbed a duffel bag and packed up a few important items – my beanie babies and my blanket. I peeked around the corner of my room. The coast was clear, and I snuck out the back door. I remember opening my arms wide, feeling the warm, humid breeze on my face. I was running away, and no one was going to stop me! I made it as far as our giant magnolia tree around 200 yards from our house. I climbed to the branch shaped enough as a recliner, hung my duffel on the branch and thought, yes, I could make a life for myself here. No siblings, no bickering, no nuh-uh I won’t be bothered here. I closed my eyes, reclined back and the guilt started to sink in. I didn’t last 10 mins before I was dragging my duffel behind me back up our driveway and into my room. Until now, my parents never knew. I’m sure we all have our stories of running away from or towards something. Maybe your story also comes from your childhood, maybe it’s a story from your adulthood, maybe it’s a story you’d rather not talk about. Whatever it is about running away, we’ve all been there in some shape or fashion, notes written or leaving the door hanging wide open behind us. Jonah is a classic example of a beloved child of God, running as far away from God and God’s call as humanly possible.

Now, we might expect more from Jonah if we knew the meaning of his name and his father’s name. Jonah means dove and throughout the Hebrew Bible, a dove is a sign of God’s peace. Jonah’s father’s name is Ami-ttai, which means faithfulness.[1] So, the first line of Jonah reads, “Now the word of the Lord came to dove, son of faithfulness...”[2] With these names and their meanings, we might expect an eager and willing prophet ready to go and do God’s work... that’s exactly what we do not get. Jonah is called as a, one tiny prophet to go to Nineveh, the most powerful, militant, full of wickedness metropolis of the Ancient Near East. And Jonah is supposed to tell them to turn towards God for change or risk destruction. Jonah instead flees and boards a ship in the opposite direction of Nineveh. While he is fleeing, a severe and dangerous storm crashes into his means of transportation. As Jonah sleeps through the raging storm, the captain desperately shakes Jonah awake and says, “Perhaps, your god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”[3] At this moment, Jonah still does not speak, Jonah still does not act. So, the crew cast lots and it fell on Jonah. They interrogated him, asking him question after question about what he has done to cause this storm and although, Jonah has been called as a prophet to speak God’s words, it’s not until this point that Jonah, the dove, speaks. He says, “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land...Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”[4] So, they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, yet, another opportunity for Jonah to escape God. This is when our children’s Bible storybooks show us that God used a large fish to swallow Jonah from the depths of the sea. And Jonah sits in the belly of the fish for three days bellowing out his prayer to God, “I called out to the Lord in my distress, and YHWH answered me. From the belly of the underworld I cried out for help; you have heard my voice.”[5]

If we are not challenged by Jonah’s story yet, more is still to come. The Lord spoke to the fish and it spewed Jonah out upon dry land. So God spoke to Jonah for the second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city....”[6]

Covered in sand, dirt, fish guts, and probably embarrassment and guilt, Jonah trucks the three days to Nineveh, preparing with shaking knees to face the wicked Assyrians. One theologian writes about the great city, “Nineveh would have evoked powerful impressions of the Assyrian empire that dominated the ancient Near East as the ruling superpower...Nineveh remained for centuries a powerful symbol of an evil empire.”[7]So, no wonder, no wonder, Jonah, a small prophet, call by God was reluctant to go t...