3rd Sunday after Epiphany
Jonah 3
The word of God came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So, Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of God. Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And, he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And, the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change her mind; God may turn from fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God’s mind changed about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and God did not do it.
The Hero’s Journey
We are all familiar with the story of Jonah and the big fish, or Jonah and the whale, as it’s so often referred to nowadays. We enter the story with today’s reading after Jonah’s adventure in the belly of the fish, with God trying to get Jonah to do what Jonah is supposed to do. Jonah is a prophet, he is supposed to speak the word of God so that the people may hear it. But, Jonah didn’t like the people of Nineveh, so he was being stubborn, and was refusing to go. And, that’s how he ended up in a fish.
When God first asked Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah’s immediate response was to run away! He gets onto a ship, thinking he can run away from God, which, if you think about it, doesn’t really make a lot of sense, and God sends a storm at the ship. The sailors decide that there must be some angry god who caused the storm, and Jonah confesses that he is running away from what God told him to do. So, they toss Jonah into the sea, and the sea became calm. And, God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
The story of Jonah and the Big Fish carries so much weight in our collective imaginations that is constantly showing up in our culture in so many different ways. We call stories about people avoiding their calling “Jonah stories.” In the Pinocchio fairytale, the puppet Pinocchio, his father Geppetto, and Jiminy Cricket are swallowed by the whale Monstro, and they’re trapped in the whale’s belly until they build a fire, causing Mostro to sneeze them out. There is even a stage of “The Hero’s Journey” called “The Belly of the Whale,” in reference to the time that Jonah spent inside of the big fish.
The Hero’s Journey is a sort of template that forms the backbone of so many of the stories that we tell, whether it’s literature or movies, legends, and fairytales. This template can be found in stories as old as Homer’s Odyssey, written in the 8th or 7th century BCE, and as new as Star Wars and Harry Potter.
“The Belly of the Whale” is the stage of The Hero’s Journey where the main character becomes separated from everything they know and starts to become the hero that they will eventually be.
The story of Jonah itself is a great example of The Hero’s Journey, so let’s see how the different elements fit into that structure. It starts with “The Call to Adventure.” In the Book of Jonah, this is when God asks Jonah to go to the people of Nineveh and tell them to turn from their wicked ways. The second stage is “The Refusal of the Call”. This, of course, happens when Jonah refuses to go to Nineveh, and instead, gets onto a boat heading somewhere else. Next stage is “The Crossing of the First Threshold,” in which the hero finally starts their adventure, heading into the realm of the unknown. Jonah is thrown from the relative safety of the boat, into the churning waters of the sea. He doesn’t know what going to happen, and probably thought he was going to die.
As we already talked about, “The Belly of the Whale” comes next, which is extremely literal in this story, and then “Supernatural Aid.” God speaks to the fish, and the fish spits Jonah out, onto dry land. And, Jonah finally goes to Nineveh, telling the people there that their city shall be overthrown in forty days, and then he sits to watch it happen. God didn’t tell Jonah to sit in anticipation about what was going to happen to the people of Nineveh. He wasn’t supposed to be happy about this. This stage is “Temptation,” when the hero becomes distracted from what they’re supposed to be doing, and they stray from their quest.
After this, comes “The Road of Trials,” a series of tests that the hero must go through in order to be transformed. As Jonah watches, waiting to see what’s going to happen to Nineveh, God grows a bush to protect Jonah from the sun, but later sends a worm to attack the bush, causing it to wither. Then God sends a hot wind, and with the sun beating down on him, Jonah says he is “angry enough to die.”
Even though one of the stages of the Hero’s Journey is named “The Belly of the Whale”, the Book of Jonah does not contain all seventeen stages, because it ends with the next stage, the “Atonement with the Father”. And, it might be generous to say this final portion of the story is atonement at all, because while God is attempting to teach Jonah, saying, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who don’t know their right hand from their left?” We don’t get to see how Jonah responds.
So, the Book of Jonah provides us with examples for eight of the seventeen stages of the Hero’s Journey. I like to think that if the author continued to follow Jonah’s story, there would be more, but I guess we’ll never know.
The Hero’s Journey isn’t just found in literature; it’s a pattern that we can see in our own lives. I don’t know if that’s because we’re so familiar with these stories that we tend to live them out, or if we write stories like this because that’s how we live. What came first, the chicken or the egg?
When I think about “The Road of Trails,” I’m reminded of the struggles that we all went through when the pandemic started. There was so much fear and worry; we were all so isolated from each other, separated from our friends, our families, and our faith communities. We all “crossed the threshold” into the unknown. But, God never left us. God has always been, and will always be our “Supernatural Aid.”
Do you remember all of the incredible acts of kindness, and love, and coming together as a community that happened during the lock-down? We could see the world changing, people were changing. “Apotheosis”, the stage of the Hero’s Journey when greater understanding is achieved, when the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure.
I remember early on when night after night at 8 o’clock, on the dot, for months, when everyone would go outside and howl at the sky in order to show our appreciation for our first responders. We couldn’t physically be together as a community, but we could join our voices together and feel like we were part of something bigger than ourselves. Thousands upon thousands of people made face masks to donate to hospitals and medical facilities. And, so many people figured out how to bring food to those who needed it the most during those difficult times. All of those people responded to God’s call to answer the world’s needs.
A lot has changed from when covid first entered our lives, though we have to be careful, because covid deaths are on the rise again. We have the vaccine now, and for the most part, things have gone back to the way they’ve always been. And through it all, God was with us.
As we look forward to a new year, I invite you to think about your own story, and think about how God has been present in your life. Each of us will have many sacred quests throughout our lives. It might be a new job, a new state, maybe even a new country. You might be called to learn a new skill or a new language. Or maybe, God is just going to ask you to slow down, to pray more, to take better care of yourself, to breathe. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are all on journeys of discovery and growth. God is always helping us to write our life stories, quiet or grand, inspirational or exciting, they are all important. What story will your life tell about you? Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
