NOTES for Jon 1:1-7

In modern biblical scholarship, the story of Jonah is generally classed among parables whose meaning matters more than the factual accuracy of the events and circumstances they mention. Yet the details of the narrative are not accidental: they matter no less for understanding the parable's meaning than the details of an actual event would.

It is difficult to understand why a prophet called by God evades His command unless we remember that, in Jonah's eyes, the Ninevites were not ordinary pagans and sinners. They inhabited the capital of a hostile state that its neighbours regarded as a concentrated embodiment of the world's evil, like the Third Reich at the height of the Second World War. Jonah both fears and hates the Ninevites, and therefore wants to evade this unexpected commission.

We are not told why the Lord chose Jonah for such a mission; presumably this is not the most important point. What matters more is that the Lord can address a person at a moment when they not only do not expect it, but consider themselves unfit to fulfil the calling revealed to them. Usually a person can choose whether to follow God or turn aside. Sometimes, however, as in Jonah's story, the Lord insists that the commission be fulfilled by the very person He has chosen, for He sees that person's abilities and possibilities better than they do themselves.

During the storm, Jonah sleeps. It is difficult to say which plays the greater part in his calm: confidence that events will turn out well, or sheer carelessness. Only the captain's request for prayer makes us wonder: has Jonah withdrawn from God in his heart, if it takes an outsider, perhaps a pagan, to remind him of the need to pray?…

Today one can often hear from believers: this is for your sins, God has punished you. But a loving God hardly punishes. Jesus Himself says to the disciples about the man born blind: "Neither he sinned, nor his parents, but..."

What then about Jonah? It turns out that God punished him for disobedience? Hardly.

How many people on earth live "not their own" life. We do something because "it is necessary," because a sense of duty or circumstances require it, and in the end we carry out the will of our parents. Sometimes we follow our whims, paying no attention to our deep desire, the one God planted in our heart like a little seed. God has a will for each of us. God created us for happiness, and fulfilling His will can make us happy. Even if, as with Jonah, this fulfillment is accompanied by great difficulties, both inward and outward.

The misfortunes that happen to Jonah are not punishment for disobedience, but help in fulfilling the will of a loving God. On paths far from the path the Lord has prepared for each of us, danger awaits us; on the path of fulfilling God's will, stones are removed so that we do not stumble.

Today's reading describes a real pattern of behaviour in someone who suddenly realises what God wants of them. If this is the very first time you have become aware of the reality of God's presence and realised just how clearly His wishes are expressed, your flight may be even more serious than Jonah's. On the other hand, even if it is not the first or second time you have understood that the road takes a sharp turn and that you thoroughly dislike the place it will lead you to, however devoted and obedient you may be, you will try to turn off in any possible direction. It is not even a refusal—you cannot refuse, because you understand that God has said so—but an attempt to avoid doing God's will without saying ‘no’. Yet any such human refusal, understandable and always possible though it is, has the same effect on creation as an earthquake of seven or eight points on the intensity scale. You turn off the path, board the first ship you find, and the world around you shakes, threatening death to everyone who has not the faintest idea where you are fleeing or from what. Once you have understood the cause of all cataclysms of this kind, there are two ways to act. First, you can remain living inside the whale, in complete isolation, in a disgusting, rotting rubbish heap. Or you can say, ‘What I have promised, I will fulfil’, and the whale will spit you out where you did not want to go.