Epiphany 3: The Mirror of Folk Tales

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The story of the Jonah is one that has firmly ensconced itself into our collective consciousness. Even people who have only a passing familiarity with the biblical narratives know this story of the prophet swallowed by a whale. In large part this may be because, while Jonah is called a prophet and the book is included among the other prophets, its narrative has more the feel of a folk tale, even a morality tale, and like all such stories its fantastic elements help to impress it on our minds. Looking at the book objectively, we can see that is unlike any other of the prophetic books. As Lawrence Boadt observes in his introductory work to the Old Testament, “[the book] contains no oracles at all, except the report of Jonah’s words to Nineveh – [‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown’. Rather,] it is the story about a prophet, and right from the beginning we are warned to take the prophet with a grain of salt. The author has a great sense of literary style, full of abrupt changes of direction in thought, humorous touches, and unexpected twists in the plot….[T]he author…knew that his audience would enjoy the story and not be forced to choose whether it could actually have happened or not.” Indeed, the book which bears his name is far removed from the historical figure of the prophet Jonah who was active in the eighth century and mentioned in the second book of Kings,. The Book of Jonah rather was written some 400 years later, and after the Jews’ return from exile in Babylon and once they had begun rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.

While the historical prophet Jonah is concerned with the power of kings and kingdoms, prophesying that the king of Israel would regain some lost territory, the Book of Jonah is concerned with more universal themes, most especially God care for those considered beyond the pale. As I mentioned, most scholars concur that its composition dates from the period after the Babylonian Captivity when the Jews having returned to the “promised land” and looking to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple have become almost obsessed with racial purity. Indeed, to such an extent that men who had married foreign wives were forced to send them away, together with their children. Out of this institutionalized xenophobia arose dissenting voices that reminded people to look outwards, and beyond simple borders of Jewish identity. In the Holy Scriptures these dissenting voices find their expression in two folk tales, the story of Ruth and the story of Jonah. I noted earlier that perhaps the best way to classify the Book of Jonah is as a folk tale, and one of the cultural purposes folk tales serve is to hold up to us a mirror, a mirror to our own foibles and pettiness, as individuals and as communities. And so like all folk tales, Ruth and Jonah hold up a mirror to the community around them to highlight their exclusivist outlook. In the book of Ruth the reader is reminded how the greatness of Israel and of the city of Jerusalem itself finds its origin in a “mixed marriage”; after all, Ruth, King David’s great-grandmother, was a Moabite, a foreigner. In the book of Jonah the theme is more forcibly brought home and universalized as God is depicted caring for the inhabitants of Nineveh simply – it seems – because they exist, because they are part of the created order. At the same time, the writer turns the role of the prophet on its head as Jonah, as a character, represents not God’s vision, but the conventional social prejudice against the foreigner. In fact, Jonah initially refuses to deliver to Nineveh God’s invitation to repent, and when he does deliver it and they do repent, he sulks and becomes angry, “angry enough”, he says, “to die”. (Jonah 4:9)

Anger is an interesting reaction to generosity and I cannot help but be reminded of Jesus’ parable in which all the laborers no matter when they began their labors are paid the same, and when the ones who have worked the longest complain, the master responds: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15). Are you envious because I am generous. Not too different a sentiment is expressed in the last verse of the book of Jonah when God says: “And should I not be concerned with Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11)

Now, it is easy here to simply observe that the book of Jonah presents us with what has in recent years become a seemingly repetitive, albeit certainly necessary trope, that is, the issue of God’s inclusive love. However, there is something more here than simply that. We are challenged by Jonah’s anger itself. It is not enough that he does not want to include the Ninevites nor desires for them salvation and right relationship, but he is angry that God does, and that is an interesting dynamic to consider indeed. It resolves itself in more than simply an unwillingness to include, but a positive desire to exclude. While we all to some degree tend to make God in our own image, making the divine to bear our own prejudices, the story of Jonah reveals an entirely different dynamic; here Jonah knows God’s intentions and purposes, and yet is livid, angry enough to die, because God does not and will not see things his way, because God will not be as angry, violent and even blood-thirsty as Jonah would like God to be, or as he himself would be (we can assume) if he only had the power. The word petty comes to mind.

If folk tales hold up mirrors to their readers, the Book of Jonah challenges us to see ourselves in Jonah's petty anger, in his unwillingness to allow God to be God. As we look into the mirror of the narrative we may find, exaggerated but no less there, our own unwillingness to participate in a vision wider than what we have been taught or come to expect. As we look into the mirror of Jonah's hyperbolic anger, we may just find hints of our own hidden anger and obstinacy at God’s or even at others’ generosity. In the end, that is not only the purpose of folk tales but indeed of the Scriptures themselves – to allow us to see ourselves critically in its words and images, in its narratives and characters. Perhaps that is why so many of its stories have become so much a part of our cultural consciousness, whether people specifically identify as Christian or not.