Journeying with Jonah through Easter week

Jonah in Easter week – are you mad? What’s that all about?

Stick with me. Over the next week, I’m about to show you why Jonah is actually the perfect fit for Easter week.

The story of Jonah is a well-known one. This book is undoubtedly the most famous of the twelve books at the back of the Old Testament by the ‘Minor Prophets’ and is different from all the rest. This is a story, a captivating narrative, that may or may not be true. It could have happened; it may have happened. This is God we’re talking about, after all. Jonah is real, a prophet rooted in history as mentioned in 2 Kings.

He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher. 2 Kings 14:25

However, some (many) prefer to think of it as a story with a meaning, a parable of sorts. Either a story someone told based loosely around the character of this prophet Jonah, or perhaps one he recounted himself from a vision or a dream, maybe with some basis in reality, the kind of tale a grandfather would pass on to his grandchildren.

Whether it’s true or not is not the thing to be focusing on and wrestling with here. I believe we can gain far more by absorbing the meaning of this incredible tale and seeing what it has to say to us in a fresh and exciting way as we travel through this Holy Week.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.    Jonah 1:1-3

In these three verses, we see summed up the course of human history.

• God speaks
• God reaches out in love and mercy
• man runs away

God speaks

When God created human beings, He created them to be in communion with Him. When we first see Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, all is well. God walks with them in the garden and communes with them. He talks directly to them. They live in perfect relationship. When God created human beings, He created them in His image, with His imprint, with a soul that reaches out to Him and communicates with Him.

Every human being is born with the essence of God in their soul. Children find it easy to see the wonder of God in the world around them. They’re more open, more trusting, more receptive. That’s why Jesus said things like ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children’ and ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’

It’s as we grow up that we have this child-like faith, this simple connection with the divine, this easy sense of communication, knocked out of us.

But even if we stop listening, God does not stop speaking. God has been speaking to His people from the beginning of time. That’s what the Old Testament is all about: God finding ways to grab the attention of the people, to get His message across. Here he’s choosing this man Jonah: He’s speaking to Jonah with a specific message, because He wants Jonah to speak to the people of Nineveh, the capital of Israel’s enemy, Assyria, on His behalf. God speaks through his marvellous creation, through other people, through our own deep sense of intuition. God created each one of us to be a unique individual with a unique role to play in His world. He has something to say to each one of us about how to live out that role and how to be the most perfect version of ourselves.

God reaches out in love and mercy

God has never stopped reaching out to His people. To each one of us. He longs to draw all people to Himself, to restore that right relationship that this world was created to enjoy. He reaches out in love to the unlovable. He reaches out in mercy to the unforgivable. Here, He’s reaching out to the Assyrians of Nineveh. The enemies of the people of God. This nation that has brought unforgivable atrocities on God’s people. The worst of the worst. The lowest of the low. The most evil adversaries. Maybe that’s what’s so hard for Jonah to accept and understand. God is reaching out to a people that Jonah would never ever reach out to, could never ever bring himself to love and forgive.

It can be a comfort to us that God reaches out in love and mercy. He reaches out to you and to me. But not when He reaches out to our enemies, to those we consider beyond redemption. If we’re honest, we probably all have a list hidden deep within our hearts of people like that, people who we consider to have gone too far, people who don’t deserve God’s love and mercy. But that’s the point, isn’t it? None of us deserve God’s love and mercy. That’s grace.

Man runs away

Jonah can’t handle what God’s asking of him, so He runs away. In this case, literally runs away. He’s lost sight of who God is if he believes there is anywhere he can run to escape from God. But he’s scared and his natural reaction is to run. To hide.

God speaks to Jonah and gives him a specific task to do and Jonah says no with his whole being. The world is full of people saying no to God. So is every community, every home, every church even. Because it’s hard, really hard, to do everything that God asks of us. Like reaching out in love and mercy to those we don’t love and don’t want to show mercy to, for example. In one respect, doing what God wants of us, living in His way, is the most natural thing in the world: living in the way we were created to live leads us into life in all its fullness, a life of joy and love and peace. But something within us fights that, doesn’t it? Something within us loses sight of who God is and questions what He’s asking, believes that we know better, thinks we can run and hide or look the other way and God will just go away and leave us alone. Stop demanding stuff of us. Let us get on with our lives ourselves.

That whole ‘running from God’ thing is what is commonly called ‘sin’. Sin isn’t just those behavioural issues that we get pulled up on and are made to feel bad about  – morality mainly, that’s what everyone likes to have a view on, isn’t it? Sin is every time we turn away from what God’s trying to say to us. Every time we turn away from God. Every single time. That’s why Paul says in Romans –

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God     Romans 3:23

All. Everyone. Pretty much all of the time. (But when we do get it right, when we feel that moment of connection with the one true God and respond openly and honestly and willingly, wow! That is a glimpse of heaven on earth right there!)

And so we run. We hide. We keep busy so we don’t have to listen. We fill every available moment. We distract ourselves constantly. And in those moments where we being to feel God may be breaking through and speaking directly to us, we stand up, we turn away, we start a conversation, we pick up our phone.

Don’t laugh at Jonah for running away from God. We all do it a lot of the time. Resting in the presence of the divine can feel uncomfortable when we’re not used to it. Too intense. Too pure. Too awkward. Too challenging. And so we avoid it as much as we can.

Take some time to reflect on these three points today:-

• God speaks
• God reaches out in love and mercy
• man runs away

Let God reveal the truth of how they look for you in your own life. Right here, right now.

We’re on the journey towards the events of the Easter weekend and this is the place to start. Not in beating yourself up but in honestly facing up to how you relate to the God of love and mercy who is constantly reaching out to you in a million tiny ways (and occasionally in one massively surprising way!) every single day.