Ministry Remnants: Jonah in the Belly of the Whale

 After the awful news from Israel I felt I must spend time reminding us to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" and so we did. But it seemed right to pick up Jonah and go into chapter two. Tying the two together is a challenge and I almost didn't try. It was appropriate to pray for Jerusalem, it was appropriate to pick up Jonah again. No explanation required.

But my mind wouldn't let it go so I offered observations tied to the idea that the chosen people are a gift to the world, though in ways ironic and difficult.

1. The Jewish people consider themselves a people offered up for the world, very much like a sacrifice. This seems in part a way to make sense of their painful history as the carriers of God's self-revealing, reaching its pinnacle (for Christians) in Christ. But it is most awful and ironic in the Nazi's attempt to exterminate them, itself a large scale iteration of what people have tried to do as long as the Jews have been a nation. 

Bottom line, holocaust means burnt offering. And in some sense Jews see that awful history as being offered up for the world, perhaps an expiation of sorts that can only be accomplished by them, God's chosen people. It is an echo of what Christians believe Christ did for the world.

2. Related closely to that theme is Jonah's call to Nineveh. Nineveh was full of not-nice people. God could have just wiped them out. Instead he sent Jonah to warn them of certain judgment. And then when they repented, He showed mercy. Jonah was angry about this this plan but God is better than all of us, his servants not excepted. 

Bottom line: God's plan for His people is to reveal Himself through them and He was doing so with Nineveh, reaching out to them with mercy before judgment. This is who God is, working in infinite ways seen and unseen to reconcile the world to Himself.

3. Jonah was offering himself for a task that would change life for a great many people in a city that was on its way to hell. 

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The best point is likely something like this: God is always at work with His people, using them to get the world's attention. He even allows tragedy. To borrow the familiar idea from CS Lewis, these things are a megaphone to rouse a dull world. We are dull, we need waking up, and we need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

(I did go on to give reasons why Jonah found Himself in the belly of the whale, but I will leave off that for another day.)