I have come to love the story of Jonah in the Bible. Its clear message of the need to listen for and follow God's directing speaks to my heart. Doesn't it relate very closely to today's scene, where varying cultures are developing side by side? Arguments of incompatibility, of self-righteousness, of unrighteousness, press upon us. The world would say that because of different backgrounds and life styles persons and neighborhoods are at war with each other, one side feeling itself to be too good or too bad to be friendly with the other side.
But the redeeming Christ — revealing the truth of man's innocence, purity, and Godlikeness — awakens within each listening heart a love for all mankind. It tells each one that God cares for all, and His tender presence saves all from self-righteousness and unrighteousness.
In the Old Testament narrative, God told Jonah, a Jew who believed in one God, to go to Nineveh, a pagan city with a notorious reputation, to warn the people to repent of their idolatrous ways.
It was a big order! One that Jonah didn't want to follow. Perhaps he was afraid. Or perhaps he felt the people were not worthy of being saved, that they were so far from the truth that it would be impossible to reach them. Or he may have thought that if God saved even a pagan city, this would undermine the Israelites' exclusive relationship with Him. Whatever the arguments were, he decided against going to Nineveh. He thought he could get away from God's demands.
The story continues that he decided to take a ship going in the opposite direction—to Tarshish. But his disobedience to God led him to rough seas and tempests. After being thrown overboard and ending up in the belly of a great fish, traditionally described as a whale, Jonah turned to God. He implored God to save him and promised he would fulfill his vows to God. The fish cast him up on the shore, alive.
A second time the message came: "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee."Jonah 3:2. This time he went. And the people of Nineveh did hear the voice of God through his preaching. They were willing to repent. They turned from their evil ways and were saved.
Was Jonah happy about that? Not at all. He became angry at God for being merciful and sat in the shade of a gourd plant that grew up to cover his booth on a hill outside the city. Jonah wanted to see what would happen to the Assyrian capital. But even the sheltering gourd plant failed him in his mercilessness, and he heard the divine rebuke declaring God's mercy on all the people of Nineveh—those thousands of people who through ignorance had gone the wrong way but who had now repented.
Bible scholars see the narrative of this book of the Bible as representing a protest against the religious exclusiveness and the dislike of other nationalities that were rampant among the Israelites after the Exile. And its message is timeless. Even today, during the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, this book is read in the synagogue in its entirety. It reveals that God cares for all people. A Bible dictionary describes its message: "Many Gentiles were ready to repent if only they could be taught. Jonah prepared the way for the clear dawn of the Gospel's day.... It is a story of the redemptive God in action—the noblest evangelistic and missionary tract in the Bible."Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary, 7th ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1961), p. 346.
The supreme example the world has had of courage to face up to what had to be done was our Way-shower, Christ Jesus. In the garden of Gethsemane just before his crucifixion he prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." He could, as he said later, have received through prayer "more than twelve legions of angels"Matt. 26:39, 53 . to save him from this ordeal. But he chose, as he had chosen all along, to face the crucifixion. That act of utter self-sacrifice, for love of God and his mission, is today redeeming mankind from fear, hatred, divisiveness, and it will continue to do so in the future. It was an act of endless impact on mankind, an example for all time.
Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, "If we wish to follow Christ, Truth, it must be in the way of God's appointing."Science and Health, p. 326. And elsewhere she explains, "... Heaven's favors are formidable: they are calls to higher duties, not discharge from care; and whoso builds on less than an immortal basis, hath built on sand."Christian Healing, p. 1.
Have you ever been asked to do something in your church work that made you afraid?
Perhaps you've been asked to serve as a librarian in the Reading Room. But you're afraid you don't know enough to handle questions and challenges that arise. Or you may be asked to teach Sunday School and you say, "Oh, I don't know how to communicate." Could it be that you have had an idea that you feel would make a good article for one of our periodicals? But you say, "I can't express myself well enough." All of these could be called "Jonah" experiences.
When we turn away from God's purpose for us, we are being tempted to go to Tarshish instead of Nineveh. But oh, what rewards await us as we face the challenge and say, "Yes, I will go to Nineveh." The spiritual fortitude that one expresses in not shrinking from "Heaven's favors" brings with it a faith-filled sense of the rightness of God's demands. There then can be no longing backward look, but only the joyous expectancy of seeing God's goodness revealed in our experience.
Jonah's story clearly shows us that sometime, now or in the future, we will have to face challenges head-on and vanquish arguments that mankind is incapable of salvation. The foe that Jonah had to face was the belief that a group of people were a lost cause, that there was no way they could be changed or see the light — indeed that they did not deserve to be saved.
The foe that we have to face is the belief of divisiveness in neighborhoods, communities, nations, families, churches. Also the false belief that we are incapable of doing anything about it, that we don't know enough, and are not spiritually-minded enough, to change things. But we can only feel this way if we think we are doing it through human will or energy alone, that we are bringing about the change. Actually we are not the source of good — God is. And our only duty is to follow what God is telling us to do today. When we face up to what must be done to spread the gospel of God's loving care for all, with joy we'll say, "Yes, I'll go to Nineveh. There is no other way to go."
