Q.What must you know to
live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A.Three things:

first, how great my sin and misery are;
second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;
third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.

Reformational Christian Psychology

I was recently invited to give a presentation for a sociology class at a public university on the myth and ritual of Christianity. In this context I understand “myth” to be the narrative we inhabit, and “ritual” to be the means by which we appropriate the myth and live within it. I used the first two Lord’s Days of the Catechism as a template for “ritual”.

For Christians our ritual is not actually the Catechism, it is Christian worship in the Christian community. People create and sustain their belief worlds in community and Christians are of course no different. What each of us needs to do, however, is to emotionally process these beliefs in the context of our individual lives. I find this template of misery, deliverance, gratitude to be an extremely helpful emotional template through which to process the loss and decay of normal living. Just as Q/A 2 suggest, if you really want to live withing the great declaration of Q/A 1, you need to know, really push down and live, the three things of Q/A 2.

Jonah

Jonah is one of God’s great treasures to humanity. In this little book we gain a radical insight into the heart of God amid the complexities of a cruel and bloody world.

Because there are some dramatic elements to the book, we are often distracted. We imagine the book is simply about obedience. The book has something to say about obedience, but one of the amazing things about the book is that it is really about the emotional relationship between God and one of his prophets. This prophet stands in for his people and that includes us. 

The Emotional Triangle of this Broken World

Each of us lives in a very difficult emotional triangle.

I am the first person, or we. We live as selves at the center of the experience we call life. We have ideas about how we want life to be, how life should go, and how things around us should unfold. When things go the way we want we are happy. When they don’t go as we would want we are sad and or angry. We feel ourselves entitled to happiness and favorable circumstance and to one degree or another we use whatever power or influence we have to bring about what we desire. We are choosers with limited power.

The second person in this triangle is God. He is the “you” to us. God has all power, and he says he’s good, but the world around us is full of pain. loss and injustice. I want God to use his power as I believe it should be used. I’m supposed to trust that God will do so, but I see examples all around me that lead me to believe God is either unwise, unjust, negligent, or simply not paying attention.

The third party in this triangle is the rest of the world especially other people. This is where I experience joy and heartbreak, acquisition and loss.

I see myself as the center of my story. I tend to see God as the tool by which I can control the third party. This story is what I call my life.

The LORD Said to Jonah

“Arise, Go (immediately) to Nineveh, that great city and cry out against it because it’s wickedness has come before my face.”

Given that Jonah was from the Northern Kingdom, the kingdom that would be destroyed and dismembered by the Assyrians, the capital of which was Nineveh, we would imagine that this would be welcome news to Jonah. God is finally going to give the evil Assyrians what they have coming.

The Bible is not like TV that focuses quickly on the character’s face. We have no initial take on Jonah’s reaction to this command. We will have to wait for this in the second half of the book, but what we do see are his actions.

Jonah indeed arises, and goes, but he goes the other way. Ninevah is north of Israel, and Jonah heads for the port to go as far west as he can.

Jonah’s Rebellion

Our bias towards simplistic moralism has groomed us towards reading this book as a simply morality play. The book is far more subtle than that.

Everything up until this point has been about the face of God. Jonah, as a prophet, has lived in close intimacy with God. God speaks to Jonah something closer to what God does with most of us. Jonah hears God’s voice clearly and in this case Jonah clearly does not like what Jonah hears. Jonah has heard that the wickedness of Nineveh has reached (Jonah probably silently mutters “finally!”) the FACE of God and God is about to take action. Jonah will be his messenger, which is again, what prophets do.

Jonah rebels, however, and the direction of his rebellion is AWAY from the FACE of God. He wants to go where God has no face, to a place where Jonah’s presence, unlike the wickedness of Nineveh will escape the face of God.

If we analyze Jonah’s rebellion it makes no theological or practical sense. We know from lots of other places in the Bible that God’s face cannot be avoided. Doesn’t Jonah know David’s Psalm 139? “Where can I go to flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there…”

We don’t have a picture of Jonah’s face, yet, but early indications are that he is angry, and in his anger he is doing what angry people do, something irrational. Jonah is angry with God and he decides that Tarshish is a good candidate for getting as far away from the face of God that he can get.

Jonah’s angry rebellion is not a yelling one, it’s a quiet protest of disobedience, of rebellion. On the outside no one thinks a thing of Jonah. He doesn’t look like an angry man. He quietly buys a ticket, and since Tarshish is not immediately available to him as a refuge from God, the hold of the ship will have to do until then.

Hurling A Great Wind

Apparently the LORD’s face is not so easily escaped, and what God does in response to Jonah’s quiet, angry rebellion is to hurl a great wind upon the sea. Remember that word “hurl”. It is a visual, dramatic, evocative word.

We should also notice that it is a GREAT wind. Jonah has fled the GREAT city, and God has responded by sending a GREAT wind.

Innocence and Ignorance

In the midst of this hurling and greatness we find the sailors of the ship. These men are not part of the people of Yhwh, they are ignorant polytheists who simply do what seems right to them. They didn’t volunteer to be a part of this narrative, they are just trying to get by. Now, however, they are in the grip of this storm and each of them cries out to their own god to save them, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

They first try to lighten the ship, but that doesn’t help, then they decide they need more gods. Does anyone have a god that can save the ship? They didn’t need Jonah to help with the sailing, nor the cargo casting, but they need him for the work of searching for a god who might rescue them. The captain is irritated at Jonah for failing this, his most important task, and rouses him from his slumber. As the story is laid out, Jonah hasn’t arisen and gone for Yhwh, why should he do so for this sea captain?

The author of the book is very intentional in his language. This is the second “cry” in the book. Jonah was commanded to “cry out against” Nineveh, and he rebelled. Now the captain “cries” to Jonah, and Jonah doesn’t arise. Jonah doesn’t respond to the cries. Yhwh has responded to the cries of the victims of Nineveh, but Jonah won’t respond to the cries of the captain to help save the ship.

The sailors cast lots and it falls on Jonah. There must be some revelatory god behind the lot casting. Now the captain and the sailors won’t take “no” for an answer.

While the expert sailors fail at their craft in their defense from the wind hurling god, the expert god manager is sleeping on the job at his. He is now forced to give an account.

Jonah’s Best Moment

While the sailors are failing at their expertise, trying to play at god management, the expert god manager now reveals his hand. While they’re frantic, Jonah knows the score. Jonah’s rebellion was irrational and the irrationality is revealed. Jonah is perhaps in a strange sense relieved to have his irrationality exposed. He is the expert, and he knows exactly what is happening here.

When the men heard we have our third “great”. They were greatly afraid! What was cool, calculated rebellion against Yhwh for Jonah, was unthinkable for them.

Now that the men have heard his terrible story they to know the fix, the solution.

Jonah tells them, but the solution is ghastly. Sacrifices won’t do it. Bargaining won’t save them. Jonah must be thrown in the sea which will certainly mean his death.

These pagan, ignorant men in a strange way have more reverence, respect and fear of Yhwh than Jonah does. Jonah is familiar with Yhwh, he knows him well, even if he is in denial. They try rowing back to land, doing their expert seaman things, but nothing will prevail. They finally acquiesce. These pagan sailors now

Yhwh hurled a GREAT wind at the sea. The sailors have felt a GREAT fear at the story of Jonah and now they HURL Jonah into the sea, and the sea becomes calm. Jonah has offered up his life for the ignorant, pagan sailors.

Misery, Deliverance, Gratitude in Act 1

In response the deliverance purchased by Jonah’s sacrifice the pagan sailors now feared the LORD, with a GREAT fear. Their fears have been changed, however, because what they yielded were sacrifices. Jonah is the strangest evangelist we could imagine. It will get stranger still.

What we see, however, in the story is the first appearance of the Reformational psychology of Q/A 2. The sailors were miserably lost in the storm with no hope of deliverance. Their deliverance came at the threat of Jonah’s life. Once they saw their deliverance, they responded with the gratitude of sacrifices for the deliverance God had brought. They now feared The LORD.

Why Did Jonah Save?

Jonah had for some inexplicable reason offered his life to save the pagan crew. Why? That’s an important question.

Given what I know about the end of the book I want to see Jonah as a selfish, small person, someone without love in his heart or mercy for his fellow human beings. On the basis of the story in chapter 1 I don’t think we can say that about him. Jonah is neither a bad man nor a bad prophet, but Jonah is a human being. His irrational rebellion against God was clearly a part of his character, but not all of his character.

Was it perhaps that in the midst of the tempest, at the sight of these grown, strong men crying out that Jonah had pity on them? Was he in fact responsive to their cries like Yhwh has been responsive to the cries of the victims of Nineveh?

Jonah had an intimate relationship with Yhwh and some of Yhwh had rubbed off on Jonah. Jonah knew what to do and he offered his life for the pagan sailors. He was a good man, a very good man, who even in a short time loved the pagan sailors enough to lay his own life on the line for them.

The Fourth Great

Yhwh, apparently, was not finished with Jonah. The cries against the GREAT city had arisen to his face, and so he called Jonah to cry out against the GREAT city, but Jonah went the other way.

Yhwh hurled a GREAT wind and a GREAT storm against the sea and the ship, and this evoked a GREAT fear in the sailors for Yhwh. Now Yhwh appointed a GREAT fish to rescue Jonah from the sea.

The Prayer of Jonah

Jonah was both the villain and hero of Act 1 but now we see another side of him. We see a side of him that many of us can identify with. He’s afraid. There’s a lot of “calling out” in this book, but only here do we have a prayer. Jonah, having offered his life as a ransom for the ignorant, pagan sailors, now fears for his own life. What we have in this Psalm, in the song, in this prayer, in this poem, is a window into Jonah’s heart.

Jonah’s theological denial is stripped away by the threat of the sea. His embrace of Psalm 139 now strains the muscles of his faith. He no longer wants to flee Yhwh, he calls out to him, hoping that there can be no place to escape his presence. He wants Yhwh’s rescue, but what’s more, he longs for his presence.

Jonah has a full, rich, complex relationship with Yhwh, fully as full, rich and complex as his relationship with a spouse. Jonah was angry with Yhwh, but in this moment he needs him, and he cries out for him, and he fears a divorce from him.

Misery, Deliverance, Gratitude in Act 2

Jonah’s sacrifice moves him into the drama of joy. His heroics for the sailors place him in the depths. In his misery he cried out to Yhwh. The threat against his life changed him, broke through the denial. He knew his state, he knew the truth about himself, he was a radical receiver. His life was a gift. His intimate relationship with Yhwh was a gift. He was crazy to turn his back on it, to throw it away, and now he knew it.

Jonah isn’t as different from the pagan sailors as we might imagine. He shared their lot on the boat, he loved them enough to offer his own life for theirs. They tried to save his life with their means, but failed. The only difference between him and them is his knowledge of Yhwh. Now, in the context of the poem, he repents of his running from Yhwh, he was afraid he would lose the intimacy he had known with God, and now he vows to offer sacrifices. Misery, deliverance, gratitude.

Yhwh also knew this all, of course, and so appointed the great fish. Now that Jonah’s head is set right, the story will be restarted, or rather, re-engaged. What happened in Acts 1 and 2 will be important for Acts 3 and 4 of the story.

To Be Continued