The Worst Prophet Ever

My favorite book of the Bible is Jonah. This shouldn’t be too surprising. My favorite movie is Airplane! My favorite TV show is Futurama. And my favorite musician is “Weird Al” Yankovic. (Don’t hold me to these in the future. My favorites change, depending on the day and the theological point I’m trying to illustrate.)

The thing that Airplane!, Futurama, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and Jonah have in common is that they are all emblematic instances of parody—satirical comedies that use widely understood genres to ground their humor. Or, to put it more simply, they make fun of stuff. Airplane! makes fun of self-serious disaster dramas of the 70s, Futurama satirizes science fiction of all kinds, and “Weird Al” has spoofed every major pop star since the early eighties.

And I know what you’re thinking: Are you saying Jonah, a book in the Holy Bible, is also a parody? Surely you can’t be serious. Well, I am serious. (And don’t call me Shirley.) It’s not common knowledge, but Jonah is also a parody—perhaps even the earliest example of a parody we have. (It was probably written sometime between the late 5th to early 4th century BCE.)

Parody may not come to mind when we think of Jonah, but it is at least commonly recognized that Jonah is funny. When I was eleven, I was in a church musical called Oh Jonah! I played one of the sailors. The show depicted Jonah as most kid-friendly versions of the story do, like a prophetic Scooby-doo. Jonah hears God tell him to go to N-N-N-Ninevah???, and in his fright, he runs away, leaving a Jonah-shaped cloud.

And that’s how most of us remember Jonah: as a cowardly prophet who got swallowed by a fish as comeuppance. But there is a lot more going on in Jonah than that. The only reason we don’t see it is because we don’t live in the world in which Jonah was written. Imagine watching Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights without ever having heard of Robin Hood before. You could probably enjoy it on some level, but you’d miss out on half the comedy!

The line “Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak in an English accent,” is only funny if you know that Robin Hood is supposed to be English. It’s doubly funny when you know that Kevin Costner didn’t bother with an English accent when he played Robin Hood two years earlier. Even the title—Men in Tights—relies on you knowing about the traditional wardrobe of Robin Hood and his merry men. Parodies often play against genre conventions to create humor.

In The Naked Gun, it’s funny that Leslie Neilson’s character, Lt. Frank Drebin, is so incompetent. But the fact that he’s a detective in a crime movie makes it even funnier, because crime movie detectives are usually super-competent. They always know exactly what to do and they always get the job done. But if you’ve never seen a police drama, you’re not going to get that. The same sort of thing is going on in Jonah, but what’s being spoofed isn't a police drama, a western, or a fairy tale, but a prophet narrative.

Prophet stories were popular in ancient Israel. The Bible has 15 books that fit this genre: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—not the most well known books of the Bible, but there sure are a lot of them! And elements of the prophet narrative are all over other more popular books of the Bible. You could even consider Jesus’s story a prophet narrative. Prophets are everywhere in the Bible! Kind of like superheroes in movies today.

So who were they? Prophets were people who were called by God to speak for God. The words “prophet” and “prophecy” bring to mind seeing the future, but that’s really only part of a prophet’s deal. The main characteristic of a prophet is speaking the truth, especially to powerful people who don’t want to hear it. Just like any genre of storytelling, there were certain conventions that prophet stories followed.

Moses is arguably the Bible’s most well known prophet, and we can see many of the conventions of a prophet narrative happening in his story. Moses first encounters God through a burning bush (Exodus 3), and the scene follows the genre conventions of a prophet story perfectly. Before a prophet becomes a prophet, they must have an encounter with God. This encounter is characterized by a power imbalance between God and the one God has chosen as a prophet.

And when the soon-to-be-prophet encounters God, the first thing out of their mouth is something about how insignificant they are. For instance, Moses says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” Next, God will offer the prophet a miraculous sign, to show that God is really God and to boost the prophet’s confidence in their call. The prophet is then emboldened to go out and speak God’s truth.

In the Moses story, God turns Moses’s staff into a snake. After that display of power, Moses is willing to do the dangerous work God has assigned him. The job of a parody is to hit the same genre beats, but in an upside down way. For example, in a western, a brave and noble sheriff in a white hat arrives in town to bring order and safety to the humble townspeople. And the townspeople celebrate him as a hero.

We can thank our lucky stars that we have Sheriff Whitehat to protect us—that sort of thing. But in Blazing Saddles, the townspeople find themselves unable to celebrate their new sheriff because he's black, and they're all racist dummies. One woman bakes the sheriff a pie, but delivers it in secret and says, “Of course you'll have the good taste not to mention I spoke to you?”

When you read Jonah’s story, you see the conventions of a prophet story playing out in ridiculous ways. Jonah's encounter with God comes quickly. God appears to Jonah in the first sentence. God tells Jonah to go east to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. That’s Jonah’s cue to say how unworthy he is, that God should pick someone else, etc. But instead...

Jonah gets up, says absolutely nothing, and walks out the door. Instead of going east to Nineveh, Jonah goes west, booking a trip on a boat to a coastal city called Tarshish (at the very edge of the known world). He goes as far as he can in the opposite direction of where God told him to go. He doesn’t wait for a miraculous sign, he doesn’t say he’s not worthy—he doesn’t say anything! He just bolts.

Popularly, this retreat is attributed to cowardice—Jonah's too scared to be God's prophet! But if Jonah was unsure of himself, he would've had a perfect opportunity to express that to God straight away. It's part of the script! Instead, Jonah confidently does the opposite of what God tells him to do. And we the audience are left asking, Why? Did I miss something? Where’s he going? He never even gives God a chance to give him a miraculous sign!

But the miraculous sign is coming. While Jonah’s on the ship going as far west as he can, a storm comes. A big one. This storm is so big, they’re not just worried about going under, the ship is in danger of literally breaking apart against the waves! The ship’s crew is going bananas. These are hardened sailors willing to sail into unknown seas. But the storm is so bad they are tossing everything they can overboard, and everyone is praying frantically to as many different gods as they can.

It was a great moment for religious pluralism. Have we tried Vishnu yet? Try Zeus again! What about Allah? Whaddaya mean his religion hasn’t been invented yet? They’re interrogating every person on board for gods they can appeal to, and when they find Jonah he is... asleep. Asleep in the ship’s hold. Hardened sailors are losing their minds in this storm, and Jonah’s asleep.

We are in the middle of God’s miraculous sign, meant to embolden Jonah into action... and he’s taking a little nappy nap. He’s sound asleep during the worst storm ever. I picture it like a Goofy cartoon—Jonah ping ponging around the hold, but still catching Zs. Finally, since they can’t figure out which god is mad at them, they decide to cast lots. Ancient people worshiped gods because they presumed gods were in control of the things they couldn’t control, like random chance.

Ergo, drawing straws is a crude but logical way of discovering divine will. Hopefully the offended god will miraculously reveal the offender. And God does! Jonah draws the short straw. And they question him. Who are you? Where do you come from? Which god did you tick off? Now, the Scooby-Doo version of Jonah would probably make up a lie or somehow weasel out of this mess. But Jonah’s response doesn’t strike me as the least bit cowardly:

“I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Note that Jonah doesn’t doubt God or God’s power in the least. He decided to run, even though he believes in an all powerful God. (File that away for later. We’ll come back to it.) The sailors go from freaked out to FREAKED OUT. You have to be a student of geography to know this, but the surface of the earth comes in only two varieties—land and sea. Land and sea is all of it. If the god who actually created the land and sea is behind this storm, they are 1000% doomed. So they ask Jonah what they can do, and again Jonah's reply is not what we’d expect a cowardly character to say:

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”

This is not a Scooby-doo response. Jonah may be the world’s worst prophet, but here he is, bravely offering his life so these sailors can live. (File that away too.) For people who could die at any moment, the ship’s crew shows remarkable empathy. They don’t immediately toss Jonah overboard. They try to regain control of the boat, rowing as hard as they can, but the storm just gets harder. They all pray to Jonah’s God (making this very quick conversion to Judaism), begging God to spare Jonah’s life.

Meanwhile, (I have to assume) Jonah is yawning. Finally, seeing no other option, they toss Jonah into the water and... Clear skies. Calm seas. The sailors are safe. (Quick side note before we get back to Jonah: What happens to these sailors? I want to hear the untold story of the rabbi who had a full crew of gentile sailors at his door, ready to convert to Judaism.)

But God’s not done with Jonah. God then “provides” a giant sea monster to eat Jonah. We usually call this creature a whale, but the story doesn’t say for sure what it is — all it says clearly is that it’s big enough to swallow and house Jonah for three days. Jonah will survive this horrific experience to continue his adventure in the book’s latter chapters.

But at this point in the story, we’re left with a bit of a mystery. What is the deal with this terrible, terrible prophet who does nothing a proper prophet is supposed to do? He flees when God calls. He sleeps through God’s miraculous sign. He’s living out the story of a prophet in a completely backwards way. And yet, the story almost goes out of its way to disprove our assumptions about him.

Maybe he’s unfaithful. Maybe he doesn’t really believe in the God that’s calling him. But then he brags to the sailors about how his God made the land and sea. Maybe he’s a coward, too scared to do a prophet’s dangerous work. But then he offers to die so others could live. He also sleeps through a terrifying storm! Interestingly, Jesus will also sleep through a storm in the bottom of a boat when his story is told hundreds of years later.

Is Jonah demonstrating Jesus-levels of faith? If he’s got the faith, why is he being the worst prophet ever? What is Jonah’s deal? What motivates him to be the worst? I can’t tell you yet. We’re only doing chapter 1 this week. The book is out already. It’s been in publication for thousands of years. So if you want spoilers, you can read it on your own. But I recommend you let me tell you the story over the next few weeks. Jonah is a parody, a spoof, but it’s also got a twist ending concerning Jonah’s true motivations.

This story will keep us in suspense until the very end. We’ll get there, I promise. Until then, no spoilers for this two-and-half-thousand-year-old book. But meanwhile, what’s today’s takeaway? What can we learn from this backwards prophet in the first act of his story? I think there’s something to merely appreciating how great this story is, and how fully appreciating it takes some work.

This story is a great example of how the Bible is not always user friendly. Yes, the Bible is a wonderful book. In so many ways it has changed the course of history. Even after thousands of years, it still holds surprises and wisdom for us. And yet there are loud voices in our society who say the only way to appreciate the power of the Bible is to take it literally.

In that case we have to accept that a real guy got swallowed by a real sea monster and hung out in its belly for three days (Not to mention a six day creation, talking snakes, and the sun standing still in the sky.) But here’s the thing: The Bible never says we need to take the Bible literally. I’ve checked. The closest I’ve found is 2 Timothy 3:16, which says, “All scripture is inspired by God...”

“Inspired” doesn’t necessarily mean literally, factually, journalistically true. Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night is inspired, but that doesn’t mean the sky is all swirly. And, like a Van Gogh, the Bible is a work of art. The Bible is literature. Not all literature is trying to tell us a factually true story. Sometimes literature is just telling a story.

Jesus told stories called parables that were little hypothetical situations meant to raise questions in the heads of listeners and spur them ponder truth. Everyone agrees those stories are invented, because they clearly exist to illustrate something deeper. It would be insanity to insist that Jesus was trying to tell us that there really was a mustard plant that grew into a tree or a servant that buried money in the ground.

Even the most strident biblical literalist agrees that Jesus’s stories are not factually true. It’s the same with Jonah. Jonah wasn’t written to report history. Jonah is a comedy written to make us think in new ways. We laugh at Jonah and then we wonder what’s wrong with him. And then we wonder what’s wrong with us—but we’ll get into that later.

Don’t read the Bible literally. Read the Bible literarily—as literature. If we read Jonah as a news article, as a report of true events, we miss the comedy. We miss the parody. We miss the social commentary that’s coming. The Bible—like all great literature—has layers upon layers of deeper meaning.

Meaning that we miss if we read it as just literal truth. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “Well, I just follow the Bible,” as if the Bible were the directions on the side of a box of mac ‘n cheese. The Bible is not step by step instructions on how to get to heaven. It’s so much more than that! It’s stories and poems and arguments and counter-arguments and comedy and tragedy and things that will keep you up at night thinking.

Truly “following the Bible,” takes more than just a willingness to follow directions. It takes reading and studying and pondering and prayer, and, most importantly, the humility to realize you may never arrive at the Bible’s deepest meanings. And that’s the beauty of it. You don’t follow it. You live into it. But doing that’s scary because we have to admit we don’t know it all.

We don’t like not knowing things. We want to be right about the Bible. And sometimes, in a race to be right, we settle for something less than what God wants for us. But what if God doesn’t need us to be right about everything? I think God gave us a book that is hard to understand so that we would never stop trying to understand it, never stop pursuing God.

That’s kind of the opposite of what Jonah does. In the story, Jonah tries to flee from “the presence of the Lord.” That’s stupid for a couple reasons. First, how are you going to escape the God who made the land and sea? The presence of God is everywhere! But second, and more importantly, the presence of the Lord is good. It’s where we want to be!

That’s what this is all about—connecting with the source of everything! Why would anyone want to leave that? But that’s exactly what we do when we think we have the Bible all figured out. We give up the chase. We go in the exact opposite direction we’re called to, which is walking humbly with God. So let’s embrace the mystery of the Bible. Because the good news is that God has given us a story to live into which will never stop being interesting.

God of Creation, Source of and inspiration for all art, Thank you for comedy. Thank you for the way it sticks in our head and teaches us truth without us ever even noticing. Give us a taste for truth that we might embrace it wherever we find it. In the name of Jesus, another prophet fast asleep in the storm, we all say AMEN.