Tarshish Mon Amour

Reflection on Jonah 1:1-10 

by Aeryn Johnson

Jonah Flees the Presence of the Lord

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

Jonah Is Thrown into the Sea

7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.

Jonah is a consummate knucklehead, a clown straight from the commedia dell’arte.  “Go to Nineveh!” booms the voice from offstage.  “No!” Jonah shouts back crossly, and we laugh.  The storm rocks the getaway boat he has stowed away on, and his shipmates panic.  “Who’s responsible for this disaster?”  Jonah trembles and hides, and we laugh again.  Everyone knows you can’t run from God! 

Jonah doesn’t know he’s running from God.  In Jonah’s version of the story, he’s just trying to get to Tarshish, a charming seaside town with a brisk metals trade believed to be in what is now Spain.  And who could blame him?  A guy’s got to make a living, he goes where the opportunity is!  

Maybe he heard the call to get up and go to Nineveh, and maybe he didn’t.  Maybe he did and pretended he didn’t.  Maybe he was too busy trying to teach himself Spanish on podcast in preparation for his new life to hear the still, small voice whispering: “Go to….Iraq.  That’s right.  Nineveh.  In Iraq.”  If you got that call, would you answer it?  Or would you let it go straight to voicemail and then delete it later without listening to it?

We tend to think of this story as a cartoon cautionary tale.  To ignore God is to prolong the inevitable; he’ll have his way with you in the end, so you might as well make it easy on yourself and avoid the part where you’re interred for three days in whale offal. It’s easy to forget that when it’s us in Jonah’s shoes, getting on that boat to Tarshish doesn’t feel like ignoring God.  It feels like striding boldly into a bright and exciting future.  A future where side trips to Iraq would make no sense.  

This story isn’t meant just to make us laugh -- it is also an simply an illustration of how things are. We are a people who flee from God when he calls us.  It’s what we do.  But we aren’t self-aware enough to call it that.  Instead, we usually just call it “going to Tarshish.”

Tomorrow's reading: Luke 1:26-38