J & D Fishing

UnJesus Calls Simon Out

One day as UnJesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret with the people crowding around him and listening to the words he said, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything…”

Then UnJesus said, “Really? You worked hard all night and didn’t catch anything? You didn’t catch a single thing? What’s wrong with you? Maybe you weren’t trying hard enough… Maybe you shouldn’t really be a fisherman. Maybe you’re not qualified to fish. You really just need to work harder to prove yourself.

UnLuke 5: 1 – 5

Night Fishing

Jellyfish

Photos taken at the Toledo, OH zoo.

Through the Dark, Toward the Dawn (a sermon on John 21)

“I’m going fishing,” Peter said. What else do you do when you’ve lost everything, but go home? What can you do when the way is blocked, the future dark? You go home, back to what you know, or what you knew, or what you thought you knew.  “I’m going back home, back to fishing.”

Peter hadn’t read Thomas Wolfe’s novel or he might have known, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame…back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” (Wolfe)

You can’t go home again, not really. But who could blame Peter for trying? “I’m going back to fishing, back to what I know, back to where I know or where I knew or where I thought I knew who I was and what I was doing.”

And the others with him: Thomas (the Twin), Nathanael (from Cana), the Thunder Brothers-James and John (the sons of Zebedee) and two others said, “We’ll go with you. What else have we got to do? What have we left to lose?”

Jesus, their rabbi, their teacher, was gone. Jesus, their friend, was dead. Killed in a grisly execution. And the three years that they’d followed him were gone. All that time lost. Wasted. So they went, or tried to go, back home, back to Galilee, back to fishing, back to the smell of the wet wooden boat, and the wind off the water, the smell of leather aprons and the fleshy smell of fresh caught fish. They went back to hands calloused by flaxen nets (Hanson) and muscles sore from the repetitive motion of throwing out and drawing in the heavy sodden nets.

And there on the Sea of Tiberias (an overblown name if ever there was one for that lake, 13 miles long, 8 miles wide and less than 200 feet deep) Peter and his friends spend a long night fishing.  They fished at night because it was cool, and throwing and drawing the nets was hot, sweaty work. They fished at night because that’s when the fish were more active and more easily caught. (Brown 1069)

But perhaps they also went fishing at night because it was dark. Because it was easier to hide. They could hide in the dark out on the lake the same way that they had hid in that closed and locked room in Jerusalem, hiding in fear of the Jews. Hiding because maybe they knew, without having read Thomas Wolfe’s novel, they couldn’t go home again. Maybe they were familiar with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ cryptic utterance, “Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers." - No man ever steps in the same river twice; no one ever fishes in the same lake twice. Everything changes.

Would there have been a chorus of “I told you so” greetings from former friends and family members they had left three years prior to follow that itinerant rabbi from Nazareth? Would there have been scorn and mockery? “Here come the ones who thought they would change the world? What happened to all your idealistic talk about peace, and love, and the Kingdom of God?” Would there have been, perhaps, a measure of fear as well?  After all, if their rabbi and master had been arrested and executed as a common criminal, what could be said of these, his followers, skulking back into town?

So Peter and the others went back to what they thought they knew, back to Galilee and back to fishing, back to calloused hands and tired backs and spent the night fishing on the lake in the dark. But, as sure as you can’t go home again, Peter and the others couldn’t go back to fishing. Not really. They fished all night and they caught nothing. Nothing. Not a thing. Each and every time they threw out the net they hauled it back into the boat empty. They blistered their hands and strained their muscles for no reward.

Perhaps it should be noted that we never actually read in any of the four canonical Gospels of the disciples catching any fish except with Jesus’ help. (Brown 1071)

I usually try to refrain from using clichés in my sermons, but sometimes they prove helpful. The proverbial statement that “it’s always darkest before the dawn”[1] isn’t exactly true scientifically; it is darkest at the midpoint between dusk and dawn, when the half of the earth experiencing night time is facing 180° from the sun. It may not be physically true, but it feels right. In a metaphoric, poetic sort of way it is true. Things just can’t seem to get any worse for Peter and the other disciples. Everything is lost and broken; the past is gone and the future is dead. But then comes the dawn. Then comes the light of the rising sun, an appropriate symbol for the risen Lord.

Dawn finds our dejected disciples about to give up. There’s nothing left for them, not even fish. It’s then that they are hailed by a strange figure on the shore, his features obscured by distance and early morning fog. “Boys, you haven’t any fish, have you?”

The disappointed disciples answer, “No.” And the stranger on the shore, a mere one hundred yards away, told them to throw their net on the right side of the boat, that there they would find a large catch of fish. This isn’t necessarily a miracle. It was common practice for fishers on the Sea of Galilee in their boats to use a spotter on the shore to help point out large schools of fish. The disciples, as exhausted as they were, threw the net out one more time, on the right side and, just as the stranger said, they found the fish. The nets were full and straining, but did not rip. They were unable to pull the net into the boat they caught so many fish.

This may not have be a miracle, in the same way that water was turned to wine, or the way the royal official’s son was healed in Capernaum, or the paralytic was healed at Bethsaida, or the crowd was fed on the Galilean hillside. It may not have been a miracle in the way that Jesus walked upon the waves of the sea of Galilee or the blind man was made to see at the Pool of Siloam, but something in this event, something in the unexpected catch of fish triggered in “the disciple that Jesus loved” a sudden recognition: “It is the Lord!”

The risen Jesus is strange and unrecognizable Lord. Even when seen he is unseen, unrecognized. Mary Magdalene in the garden early Easter morning saw him, spoke to him even but did not see him. Not until he called her by name. Then a sudden recognition came to her. And again sometime later, as the disciples prepared to come ashore with nothing in their nets and nothing in their lives, they saw and spoke to the risen Lord, but did not see him. Not until the sudden catch of fish. And even then they’re not really sure.

On the shore they share a meal with the Lord of fresh cooked fish and bread, cooked over a charcoal fire, but even they as they are sitting at his feet, sharing a communal meal with their rabbi, their Lord, they still not quite see him for who he is. This is so strange that none of them dared to ask, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. They saw, but couldn’t see. They knew but couldn’t understand. “They recognize him, but are puzzled and unsure. The Jesus they knew has undergone transformation in becoming the risen Lord” (Brown 1076).

This is how the darkness is broken and dawn blooms over the horizon, how light breaks in and spills over the lake and their lives. It is a sudden recognition, a sudden (but still incomplete) understanding. Jesus meets with his confused and disconsolate disciples with an intimate meal on the lakeshore. They’d shared a meal of bread and fish with him on alongside this lake once before (John 6: 1- 15). He’d shared with them the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven. He’d shared with them the kingdom of God and as he shared that simple meal on the shoreline with them they slowly began to understand.

The light of dawn does not come all at once, it grows in intensity and brilliance till the morning is bright and clear. And an understanding of the Kingdom of God – with peace and joy and confidence – does not come all at once to the disciples (or to us), it grows in intensity and fullness. It comes in fits and starts, with the occasional sudden realization-an a-ha moment (It is the Lord!)-and with slow gradual understanding (They dared not ask him, “Who are you?”).

Moments of darkness and doubt and confusion, long dark nights of the soul when all seems like loss, and waste, and death will be part of our Christian life. This is unavoidable. We will have times when, despite all our effort, we come up empty and unfulfilled. We may want to give up and go home, go back to what we thought we knew, and who we thought we were. But the way (and we are followers of the Way) is forward through the dark, toward the dawn, from loss and despair to renewed joy and comfort in the risen Lord.

  

Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John xiii-xxi: Introduction, Translation and Notes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1970. Print.

Hanson, K.C. “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition.” Biblical Theology Bulletin Vol. 27. 1997.

Wolfe, Thomas. You Can’t Go Home Again. New York: Harper and Row. 1940. Print.

---

[1] Which may go back to Thomas Fuller’s 1650 work A Pisgah Sight of Palestine. 

153 Fish

Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore, full of big fish, 153 of them. But strange that number: 153. What strange precision. What peculiar and fastidious exactitude. What hidden mathematical symbol, what esoteric code is this? What has the beloved disciple’s gospel hidden for us in this net of full of  fish? For it is the “measurement of the fish,” the vesical piscis mandorla. And as the year begins on the first day of the week, on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, we begin with Christ within the circles. And in the beginning there was the sacred name, the holy Tetragrammaton, 153 times in the book of beginnings. A triangle number for multiplied trinity. Let us think on this: it is the number of mental processes and intelligence, logic and abstract thought. This is a problem we have not yet solved.

And though there were so many, the net was not torn.

At That Precise Moment-An Angel

Do you believe in heaven above?

At that precise moment, as determined by  FOCS 1-the continuous cold caesium fountain atomic clock in Switzerland-with an uncertainty of 1 second in 30 million years, though they were nearly 800 km apart, the suicidal prayers of both Sarah and Tobit were heard in the presence of glory. Sarah in Ecbatana (a city with great walls rising in circles, one within another) and Tobit in the fish city, Nineveh, were heard at the same moment.

Do you believe in love?
And in that very same moment as Sarah and Tobit finished their prayers, just as a preternatural wind blew through an open door allowing a cat to escape, just as the light from a distant lighthouse shined down on a black gospel choir, just as scavenger birds began to feast upon a mountain of garbage, the angel Raphael, one of the seven, was standing in position behind the throne of glory and heard their prayers.

Open fire!
Raphael: The prince of shades and Hades, appointed over Tartarus, responsible for departed souls.
Raphael: He who cures diseases and viruses and corporate malfeasances.
Raphael: Who healed Abraham’s painful circumcision and Jacob’s wounded thigh.
Raphael: Who did bind Azazel both hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness by making a hole in the desert which is in Dudael (the Cauldron of God), and did bind him to the rough and jagged rocks, and covered him forever there with darkness that his face might not see the light until the great day of judgment when he shall be cast into fire.

Don’t know what to do

At that precise moment, precise movement. Motion. When all was quiet and not quite in catacombs and crypts, the angel of healing was sent to them; Raphael was dispatched to heal them both: to Tobit to remove the waxy white scales of his persistent and inexplicable blindness, and to Sarah to divorce her from the demon Asmodeus. At that very moment, as confirmed and verified by the master atomic clock ensemble at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., which provides the time standard for the U.S. Department of Defense, Tobit returned from the courtyard into his house and Sarah came down from the upper room (without having hanged herself in a noose) an archangel of heaven was dispatched for healing and relief.

Send me an angel, right now

Biblical Limericks: Fish Gastric Juices

Your literal reading produces
many interpretive abuses,
but still you will contrive
to show Jonah survive
three full days in fish gastric juices.

Jonah 1: 17

Biblical Limericks: A Fish Story

In Capernaum Peter was asked,
“Does Jesus pay the two drachma tax?”
Jesus said, “Bring to me
a fish caught in the sea;
he’ll have coin to get them off our backs.”

Matthew 17: 24 - 27

Koi

Unknown Facts About the Anglerfish

The guys in this band (from Hamburg, Germany) wrote me to ask if they could use my drawing of an anglerfish on their newest album.  What else could I say, but 'of course.'  The music is great and they said 'please.'

The Lord’s Breakfast

It is often noted that the meal of bread and fish that the resurrected Jesus shared with his disciples on the shore of the sea of Tiberias (John 21) is a sort of eucharistic meal - but it's rarely celebrated that way in churches.  So I've taken it upon myself to draft an Order of Worship for "The Lord's Breakfast."  I have used this book as a guide/template.

What do you think?  

THE OFFERTORY
All Standing

Minister: Beloved in Christ, the Gospel of John tells us that the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberius, and was made known to them in the sharing of bread and fish.  Come then to the joyful feast of the Lord.  Let us prepare his table with the offerings of our life and labor.

During the Offertory, a Hymn or Psalm may be sung.  Representatives of the congregation will receive and bring to the table the gifts of bread and fish, and other offerings of the people.

Minister: O LORD, yours is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the majesty:

People: For all that is in heaven and in earth is yours.

Minister: Yours is the Kingdom, O Lord,

People: And you are exalted as Shepherd over all.

THE THANKSGIVING

All Standing

Minister:  The Lord be with you.

People:  And also with you.

Minister:  Lift up your hearts.
People:  We lift them up.

Minister: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People: It is truly right to do so.

Minister:  We give you thanks, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, always and everywhere through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, by whom you made the world and all things living and beautiful.

Minister: Holy Father, most glorious and gracious God, we give you thanks that our Savior Jesus  Christ, after he suffered and died and was raised up again, gave us this memorial of this work. For on that morning he welcomed his disciples and friends to join him on the seashore for a meal of fish and bread, reminding them that he is the Bread of Life for he said: “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” and, “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Minister and People:

His death, O God, we proclaim.
His resurrection we declare.
The life he gives we receive.
Glory be to you, O Lord.

THE BREAKING OF BREAD

After period of silence, the Ministers shall break the bread and fish in preparation, during which time the following may be said or sung:

Minister: The fish that we share, is it not a sharing in the Kingdom of God?

People:  Because there are many fish but there is one Kingdom.

Minister: The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the Body of Christ?
People: Because there is but one bread, and we who are many are one body.

THE MEAL

Before the Minister and people receive the elements, the following may be said or sung:

Minister: Alleluia.  Christ our Redeemer is risen for us.
People: Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia.

Minister: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

People:  Hosanna in the highest.

Minister:  The gifts of God for the people of God.

Then shall be said, either to the whole congregation or to each individual participant, by the Minister who gives the fish:

                The Fish that Jesus shared with his friends.

And by the Minister who gives the bread:

                The Bread of Heaven, given that we might have life.

During the mealtime, silence may be kept, or Hymns, Psalms and Anthems may be sung.

AN ACT OF LOVE

All standing

Minister:  Lord, let us know and love you and may we feed your lambs.

People:  Lord, let us know and love you and may we feed your lambs.

Minister and People:  Lord, let us know and love you and may we feed your lambs.

THE DISMISSAL

All standing

Minister: Go out into the world in peace.  Be strong and of good courage. Follow the Lord.  Love and serve him by caring for his people wherever you may find them.

People: Amen.

Lionfish

Another of the photos I took last Saturday at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa.

It's not likely to have been one of the 153 fish that Simon Peter and the other disciples pulled out of the Sea of Galilee on that fishing trip after Jesus' resurrection. (John 21:11)

Friends, Haven’t You Any fish?

Photos taken at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa.

Dagon: The Shadow over Imboca

By my original plan I should have watched another werewolf movie but really didn't  want another one so soon after Wolfen.  So I changed my schedule. Besides, I didn't have any lovecraftian horror on my list.  Instead of watching Moon of the Wolf (1972) I watched Dagon (2001) a Spanish horror film based on a novella by H.P. Lovecraft.

You might have expected it be based upon his story Dagon, but it wasn’t.  It was based on his later story The Shadow over Innsmouth.

The film follows a group of American tourists who are forced by a sudden storm to steer their yacht toward Imboca, a dismal looking town on the Spanish coast.  And, because this is a horror movie, they soon wish they hadn’t.  The town seems empty at first, and silent except for a strange singing which seems to come from a strange church (Esoterica Orde de Dagon). But it’s soon crawling (quite literally) with people (not so literally.)

The townfolk are horrible monstrosities with tentacles and teeth and gills. They have for many years, abandoned their Christian faith for the worship of Dagon and the “Deep Ones” –strange ocean dwelling creatures - in return for bountiful fish and for gold.  But Dagon demands human sacrifice and the mating of humans with the Deep Ones. The resulting offspring are the grotesque inhabitants of Imboca

I think their predominant color was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked ... They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design - living and horrible.-from The Shadow over Innsmouth - H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft’s fiction is characterized by an inevitable fatalism.  The human race will disappear, swallowed up by ancient nightmarish creatures from beyond the galaxy.  Humans, in Lovecraft’s stories, are utterly insignificant. These creatures invading the earth care as much for us as we do for the insects we crush beneath our feet. And human action, choice, freedom, is all but an illusion.  The horror of Lovecraft’s fiction isn’t in the hideous creatures (though they are fearful and horrible) but in the meaningless of our existence, it is in the discovery of the fact that we can do nothing to effect a change in the vast uncaring and indifferent universe.

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!

“We shall dive down through black abysses, and in that lair of the Deep Ones, we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever."

Jonah: The Ironic Anti-Prophet

I like to think of Jonah as the Ironic Anti-Prophet.  He’s not just the “Reluctant Prophet” He’s not just the Unwilling Prophet.  He is the Anti-prophet. And it’s a fitting title, I think, for the hero (anti-hero?) of a story so full of irony.  He’s the anti-prophet because he runs away form his mission.  He’s the anti-prophet because he is constantly shown to be less faithful to God than the gentile characters of the story.

He’s the ironic anti-prophet because he’s the only successful prophet.  All the others were ignored, laughed at, arrested, beaten, or even killed for their prophecy. When they spoke the word of God they were ignored.  But Jonah, the anti-prophet speaks and the people respond.  In his success he is the anti-prophet.

And, what is more, he is the ironic anti-prophet because he thinks of his success as a failure.  When his predicted destruction after 40 days failed to occur he was angry. Jonah is an ironic anti-prophet.

And Jonah is a story, not a history.  It is, in all probability, a fiction.  Sometimes I say this and people get very animated.  Some of them get angry.  “If Jonah is only a story…” they sputter. “If Jonah is merely a fiction…”  But I didn’t say that. Let’s not denigrate stories that way.  Only a story?  Stories are important.  We live on stories.  We tell stories because it’s part of who we are, part of what we are.  Stories shape us and then we tell stories about how stories have changed us, and then stories about those stories about stories.  To say that Jonah is a story isn’t to de-value it, or to diminish its truth.  Even fiction can tell the truth – and sometimes it tells the truth better than non-fiction.

Jonah is a story told to delight us and to make us laugh.  We can laugh at the anti-prophet’s attempts to flee from the omnipresent God.  We can laugh at the series of what seem to be successive practical jokes that Yahweh heaps upon the anti-prophet – the sudden storm, choice of Jonah by lots, the strange fish, the overnight vine and the devouring worm… But even as we’re amused and as we’re laughing at the antics of the anti-prophet we’re being challenged and confronted with very serious questions.  It’s not the Israelite anti-prophet who really hears and obeys the word of Yahweh, it’s the coarse gentile sailors and the wicked Assyrians.  What does this mean?  Those in the story who deserve God’s wrath receive his mercy, and the one who should be in God’s favor is hounded by his fury.  Why?  Even as we laugh at Jonah we are confronted with ourselves and with the presence of God.

These are thought provoking issues and are much more important than making the book of Jonah into a battleground for zoological debate, speculating about the size of fishes and the possibility of survival within the gastric juices of some marine monster.  (DiGangi – pg. 55)  [i]  This is not a story about a whale or a fish (a distinction not made by the ancients). This is story about an obstinate anti-prophet and about the mercy of God. 

The story begins, as so many biblical stories do, with the voice of God.  “The word of Yahweh was addressed to Jonah son of Amittai…”  Unlike most of the other prophets we’re not given a setting in place and time.  We’re not told when and where or during the reign of which kings.  This is the only completely narrative book among the prophets and it’s set in a sort of timelessness. Think “Once upon a time,” or “Long, long  ago…”[ii]

The Word of Yahweh came to Jonah son of Amittai.  These names are drawn from 2 Kings 14: 25 where the biblical historian records that the prophet Jonah son of Amittai –who lived during the reign of Jeroboam II (786 – 756 B.C.) - spoke the good word of Yahweh.  But there is nothing more than the names to connect the Jonah in 2 Kings with our story.  In fact in this story he’s not even called a prophet.  He’s the ‘anti-prophet’, remember.

These proper names are interesting, though.  He is Jonah, the son of Amittai – which taken at the most literal level could be read “Dove son of Truth” or “son of Faithfulness.”  But this is an ironic name.  Jonah is anything but the faithful son of God’s truth. (Trible, pg. 493)  Some commentators have seen in this a picture of Israel and God.  In Hosea 7:11 the nation of Israel is described as a “silly dove” and truth and faithfulness are defining characteristics of God.  In a sense, then, Jonah becomes a symbol for Israel.  Jonah’s actions and fears and anger are those of the people of Israel.  This gives the story a deep level of meaning. This is not merely a story.

Yona or “Dove” is an ironic name for our anti-prophet.  He’s not, after all, much of a dove.  Doves are a symbol for the presence of God’s spirit hovering over the waters as with Noah in the ark and with Jesus at his baptism.  But Jonah flees – or attempts to flee from the presence of God.  Doves are also a symbol of peace, but Jonah is not concerned with peace.  He seems more interested in vengeance.  His name is another irony in this ironic tale.

Another interesting possibility wrapped up in the name of Jonah suggests that the root of his name is the Hebrew word Yanah (very similar to Yona) and means “to oppress, to vex, to hurt, or to harm” This makes Jonah son of Amittai the “oppressor” or even “the Destroyer of Truth.”  Perhaps as a pun we have both meanings here, furthering the ironies of his name. This anti-prophet is not all what we would expect of a prophet.

The word of Yahweh came to Jonah: “Arise! Go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim that their wickedness has forced itself upon me.”  Jonah is given three imperative commands (a fact lost in translations like the NIV and the NRSV which blend them together…) He is to get up.  And he is to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, the “great city” as God calls it.  And there he is to cry out, to proclaim that their (unspecified) wickedness has forced itself upon God. Their wickedness is in his face and he cannot ignore it any longer.  Jonah must go to them.

Jonah follows the first of the Divine commands. Arise!  Jonah arose, but instead of going North and East over land to the city of Nineveh, Jonah the anti-prophet flees South and West over the seas to Tarshish.  It remains unclear to us where exactly Tarshish was.  Some propose Sardinia (an island off the coast of Italy), or Carthage in North Africa, or perhaps a city in Spain.  Wherever it may have been, it is clear that it wasn’t Nineveh. Jonah is going as far away as he can in the opposite direction, trying to flee the presence of God.  The prophet Isaiah says that Tarshish was a “distant coast, a distant island,” that had never experienced the glory of Yahweh. (Isaiah 66: 19).  Jonah hears the word of Yahweh, but instead of following he flees.  Jonah attempts to flee not just the command to go to Nineveh, but from the very presence of Yahweh, trying to go to a place at the end of the world where they’d never even heard of the God who created the heavens and seas and the dry ground.

 But notice how the very structure of this verse (Jonah 1:3) highlights another irony here. (Trible, pg. 494) Jonah can't escape.

A. -Jonah arose to flee from Yahweh’s presence, going to Tarshish.

            B. - He went down to Joppa

                        C. - and found a ship

                                    D. - bound for Tarshish

                        C’ - and he paid her fare

 (“her” fare in Hebrew matches the feminine gender for “ship.)

            B’ - and he went down into the ship

A’ - to go with them to Tarshish and to get away from the presence of Yahweh.

Jonah descends and descends, deeper and deeper, first going down to the port city of Joppa, and then going down into the hold of the ship.  This is not the following the command to Arise! He is sinking and he will sink even further.  He wants to flee from the presence of Yahweh, but even in his flight he is surrounded by the presence of the Omnipresent God.

But Yahweh will have Jonah’s obedience.  He hurls a great wind over the sea.  Remember God’s spirit (in Hebrew, the same word as wind) hovering over the waters of creation like a bird (like a dove?) Jonah couldn’t escape on the waters.  The wind blows up a violent storm and the ship itself threatened to break up.  In Hebrew the words even sound like boards cracking from the force of  the wind and water. (Trible, pg. 495)

The sailors aboard the ship are terrified and they each cry out to his own go.  And then, in an unconscious mimicry of Yahweh who hurled the wind upon the seas, the sailors hurl the cargo overboard not just to lighten the ship, but perhaps attempting to appease an angry deity as well. 

But Jonah, our anti-prophet, had gone below deck into the hold of ship and was fast asleep, completely unconcerned for the safety of those who’d unwillingly been caught in the middle of this power struggle between the anti-prophet and his God.  When the ship’s captain discovered Jonah sleeping he, like Yahweh, ordered the anti-prophet to “Arise! and call on your god. Perhaps he will take notice of us and we will not perish.”  God is speaking to Jonah even through these gentile worshippers of foreign gods and idols, but where true prophets would speak the word of God, Jonah, the anti-prophet, remains silent.

The terrified sailors resort to the random casting of lots to determine who brought this calamity upon them and – surprise, surprise! – the lot falls on Jonah.  The narrator doesn’t say that Yahweh directed the outcome of the lot casting.  He doesn’t have to.

The sailors then fire off a round of staccato questions at Jonah:

Who is responsible for this calamity?

(And it should be pointed out that “calamity” here is the same Hebrew word for the “wickedness” of the people of Nineveh – ra’a) 

            What is your occupation? 

(Can Jonah answer this question without indicting himself?)

            Where do you come from?

            What is your country?

            From what people are you?

Only now, this third time that Jonah is addressed, does he finally speak, only when he was caught and he could flee no further.  “I am a Hebrew and I worship Yahweh, the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the land.”

But this is an answer without really answering. He's told the truth, but not the whole truth.  And we know, even if he hasn’t told the sailors, that it was his fault – his wickedness that brought the calamitous storm upon them.  He speaks piously about the creative power of his God, but he doesn’t speak the truth.  He tells the truth, but it is still a lie.

And here, also, the anti-prophet is ironically trapped by his own words, though the translation from Hebrew to English hides it from us.  What he says is “Yahweh, God of heavens, I worship, who made the sea and dry land.”  (Trible pg. 498) He is still surrounded by the presence of God. He cannot escape.

The sailors, even more terrified now, confront Jonah with his guilt – “What have you done to us?” And it’s the narrator –not Jonah himself – who finally makes the admission of guilt.  And the sailors ask him for advice – “What should we do with you?”  But they’re not asking because they want to punish him for his wickedness and for bringing the calamity upon them.  Their only concern is to quiet the seas which were growing rougher and rougher. 

He advises them that if they pick him up and hurl him into the sea (that same word Yahweh used and the sailors used) that the sea will become calm once more.

Now this sounds good, doesn't it?  It sounds as if Jonah is finally admitting his guilt, and that he is, in an effort to save the lives of the sailors, who through no fault of their own have been caught in this struggle, willing to face a noble self-sacrificing death.  But really?  I don’t think so.  He hasn't changed.  This is still the stubborn and obstinate anti-prophet. 

Instead of rising up and calling on his God, instead of obeying and going to Nineveh, Jonah is still trying to flee from God.  If he can’t escape by going across the waters to far distant islands, and if he can’t escape God by sleeping through the storm, he will try to escape God in death.  And even in this, he’s not willing to do the deed himself.  He doesn’t offer to throw himself into the sea.  No. He wants the sailors to bring about his death. 

But the sailors are unwilling to compound the wickedness and they refuse to hurl him overboard. Instead they valiantly attempt to row the boat to shore through the increasingly violent waves and wind.  But it’s of no use.  They cannot make any progress against the storm. 

Thus, doomed and damned if Jonah remains on board and damned and doomed if they throw an innocent man into the waters, the sailors pray to Yahweh. “O Yahweh, do not let us perish for the sake of this man’s life, and do not hold us responsible for causing an innocent man’s death; for you, Yahweh, have acted as you saw fit.”

These rough deckhands, worshippers of  foreign idols, now call upon Yahweh, God of heaven and creator of the sea and dry land, not the sulking Israelite would-be prophet.  Jonah does not speak to God. He does not pray.  He does not cry out.  He still wants to get away from God.

And seeing no other action available to them, the sailors hurl that sulking anti-prophet into the waters and only then does the raging sea grow calm.  The storm disappears as he disappears beneath the waters.  At this the men greatly feared Yahweh and they offered sacrifices and made vows to him.  In the face of the storm they feared and cried out, and threw the cargo overboard as a sacrifice to the angry sea.  Now, in the face of the storm’s dissipation they again fear Yahweh (and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, right?) and they worship him with a sacrifice and vows.  From fear that moved them to desperate prayers to unnamed deities they have become worshippers of the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.  They have neither priest nor prophet to guide their worship, but even so it is authentic and true. 

And what of the ironic anti-prophet Jonah, who sought at every turn to flee from God, even by going down into death?  Can he escape?  Can he evade?  No.  Even in the deep of the abyss, the anti-prophet can not flee from God.  Yahweh provides a great fish to swallow him up.  It is a final irony that even the sea-monster, a symbol of all that is dangerous and evil, becomes a more obedient servant of Yahweh than this ironic anti-prophet Jonah. 

It is an amusing tale, well told, and we can laugh at the exploits of this miserable anti-prophet.  But careful.  The well crafted story pokes through our defenses and cuts us when and where we are least aware.   Laugh, but be aware that we, like Jonah, are pursued in love by that fearful Hound of Heaven.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

                        -from The Hound of Heaven – Francis Thompson

Bullock, C. Hassell, An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophetic Books,
            Moody Press, Chicago, IL, 1986.

DiGangi, Mariano Twelve Prophetic Voices: Major Messages from the Minor Prophets,
            Victor Books, Wheaton, IL 1989.

Trible, Phyllis, The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII Jonah Introduction,

            Commentary, and Reflections, Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1996.

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[i] It seems to me that those who wish to insist on the complete historical fact of the story of Jonah would do best to quit trying to prove that a human could live within the belly of some marine animal, would do best to quit trying to determine which species of whale or shark in the Mediterranean Sea is large enough to swallow a man and to admit with the critics and skeptics that it could not have happened naturally.  This was not a natural happening. It was fish prepared by God and not at all a natural event

[ii] Some have noticed in Jonah a sort of bridge between the pre-Classical non-writing prophets like Elijah and Elisha and the Classical writing prophets like Amos, Hosea, Micah and etc.  Like the pre-Classical prophets, Jonah announces judgment without the possibility of repentance and the story is filled with miraculous events.  But like the Classical prophets he speaks not just to kings and their courts, but to all levels of society.  (Bullock pg. 43)

Anglerfish ii

short while back I posted a simple drawing I made of an anglerfish.

I have, since then, messed with it in Photoshop. What do you think? Better? Worse?

Anglerfish

Anglerfish - pen drawing

You might also check out my fellow artist, Trev's, painting of an anglerfish.