Jonah and the Belly of the Whale Rev. Karyn Dix October 22, 2017 Have you ever felt like the world was against you? Have you ever felt like everything was going wrong around you and it was all your fault? Have you ever felt like if you just disappeared everyone else s life would be better? If you answered yes to any of those questions you might be able to identify with Jonah at the end of Chapter 1. I know that last week Larry talked about Chapter 1. He talked about the call of God and how maybe it was normal for us to struggle with listening to that call. We all try and run and hide sometimes. But what happens when we run so hard that we are not only running away from God but we run away from ourselves from our lives, when we run so hard and so strong that we start to see the world a little differently, we start to take responsibility for things beyond our control like nature. That is what happens to Jonah in Chapter 1, this is how Jonah ends up in the belly of the whale. For those of you who might have missed it, let s recap chapter 1 and see if we can figure out how Jonah ended up the in the belly of the whale. First, Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh. Nineveh isn t a pleasant place and Jonah doesn t want to go, so he runs away. I think Jonah starts to beat himself up sitting at home so much so that being home became painful and so he leaves home just to get away from the reminders of the things he hasn t done. He is so desperate to run away and hide he gets on a ship headed away from home, away from Nineveh and away from God. Things don t go so well on the ship. And Jonah believes that he is responsible for the difficulties the crew encounters and he offers himself up as a sacrifice throw him overboard and save them because obviously everyone s life would be better if he were gone. He would have to have expected to die when they throw him overboard. At this moment Jonah is so miserable in his life that he prefers death. But he doesn t die. Instead, he is swallowed by a big fish.
I know that this isn t the Sunday School version of Jonah getting swallowed by a whale as a punishment from God for not listening. But, I have to tell you that I think we have been missing the point when it comes to Jonah being swallowed. I think we miss the point because we jump from Jonah being swallowed at the end of Chapter 1 to his being spit out onto the shore at the end of Chapter 2. We skip everything in-between. When I read chapter 2 we get a different picture. We see that Jonah was in a lot of pain running away from the Call of God wasn t all that Jonah was running away from. He was trying to run away from himself, from the pain he was already in. It all begins with the last verse of Chapter 1: Jonah 1:17 But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. There is something pivotal I think we ve missed. Jonah goes overboard ready to die BUT God has something different in mind. Instead of Jonah dying God provides. Yes, I understand that being swallowed by a large fish might now sound like a good thing. In fact I m certain that being trapped in a dark, scary place where nothing is known is far from pleasant. But maybe for Jonah, it was better than death. Chapter 2 is the prayer that Jonah prays while he is in the belly of the whale, and it gives us insight into Jonah s mindset was before and after he got swallowed by that big fish Jonah 2 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple? The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD! Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. I think this is an amazing and powerful prayer. It is easy to see how helpless Jonah felt, how far away from God
Jonah felt. But did you notice that all that helplessness, frustration, depression, and separation from God began before Jonah landed in the belly of that fish. Right from the beginning Jonah is calling out to God from the Belly of Sheol. Then the deep surrounds him and he goes to the place where he feels trapped forever this last space might be in the Belly of the whale. And it is here, where Jonah is in about as dark and lonely a place he can be. His prayer shifts yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, Here, still in the belly of the whale Jonah knows that God is with him all along. That s the piece I think we miss when we use this story to say that God is punishing Jonah for not listening. We miss that it is in the Belly of that dang fish that Jonah realizes that God isn t punishing him, God hasn t abandoned him. God is there with Jonah through it all. Jonah s prayer of thanks isn t given after Jonah gets out of the belly of the fish, it is while he is still trapped Trapped but not alone. His prayer of thanks is when he realizes that his is not alone that God is still with him. Again, I m not saying the belly of the whale is a good place. The belly of the whale most certainly is a scary, lonely stinky place. To put it plainly, it sucks! The belly of the whale is the place where we exist between life and death. Where there is no light, no hope, and no one but yourself and your thoughts. But Jonah s story isn t supposed to tell us that God is responsible for our time in the belly of the whale. That our loneliness is because we are not doing what God wants. Jonah made a series of choices that landed there. His thoughts, and beliefs took him in that dark helpless place a place where the choices he made were more harmful then helpful. I mean, how helpful could jumping off a ship be for his quality of life? And even then, when his choices made his life harder almost ended it in fact, God never abandoned Jonah. God was there, in the belly of the whale.
So I ask you again, Can any of you relate to Jonah s plight? Have your thoughts ever gotten the better of you? So much so that you find yourself trapped in a dark, lonely, scary place feeling lost and alone feeling like someone stuck you there. Stuck with no way out maybe not even sure you want to find a way out? Then you like Jonah have been in the belly of the whale. If the belly of the whale experience isn t a punishment then what do we take away from the story? I think the message is that even when we are running away, even when we are trying to hide, even when we find ourselves in the darkest and most hopeless places of all God never leaves us. God is always with us. I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. God doesn t save Jonah in this moment. Jonah just knows that God hears him in his distress. Jonah sees that when he thought he was going to die before the Belly of the whale held him in limbo for a time, God was with him. God didn t punish Jonah in the Belly of the whale But he was with him. No matter what Jonah does, no matter where Jonah goes God is with him. And God is with us, no matter what. At some point Jonah gets out of the Belly of the whale and at some point we can get out of our belly of the whale experience. The belly of the whale isn t the end it s a holding space in-between. But, as the next chapter remind us, simply getting out of the belly of the whale doesn t fix everything. Life is still hard. But, at least we know that God is with us through it all.