Jonah

Long, long ago, in a place far away, in a kingdom by the sea. . . The word of the Lord, the Creator of the universe, came to the prophet Jonah, saying: “Arise, go to Ninevah, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has become known to me.” As we were wandering on the Yucatan shores of Mexico this afternoon, I noticed this ancient Mayan city that had fallen into ruins:

As I was contemplating the parabolic Jonah/Jesus connection, it seemed to me that these ruins might resemble the ancient city of Ninevah that was in peril during the time of Jonah. Now I don’t know but I been told that the ancient city of Ninevah had become a place where corruption and something like wicked magamania proliferated and accumulated, like sargasso sludge on the shores of ancient history. And so, “ The word of the Lord came to the prophet Jonah saying: ‘Arise, go to Ninevah, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has become known to me.” But Jonah neglected this divine command; he decided to sail to another locale, a place known then as Tarshish, probably somewhere on the Mediterranean, between Cyprus and Spain. But the Creator, the Master of the Universe, El Shaddai/YWHW, had other plans. So. . . when the sailors of the ship suspected, with a little help from on High, that there was something fishy about the passengers on the ship, they began to worry about the voyage as the wind whipped up to a furious gale and the good ship and crew were in peril. When the sailors realized that their passenger Jonah was trying to get away from the Lord’s calling, they conducted an enquiry. Long story short. . . Jonah confessed that he had boarded the ship in an attempt to get away from the Lord’s calling him to deliver prophetic warnings to the people in Ninevah. So they solved their near-shipwreck problem. They tossed Jonah into the sea. Suddenly, he was in serious trouble underwater. But the Lord had mercy on him, even in the depths of his Mediterranean peril. The Lord appointed a whale to swallow him; so Jonah was in the belly of the whale, as it turned out. . . for three days. Then the whale spit Jonah out. The scene might have looked something like this, with Jonah mired in sargasso sludge.

Later. . . many years later, when Jesus was living in this world, he compared what would be his post-crucifixion entombment to Jonah’s ordeal in the belly of the whale. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40) Glass half-Full