After an abbreviated start last week, we make an abbreviated continuation this week in working our way through the book of Jonah.

The story does not tell us why Jonah ran away from God and from the divine call to go to Nineveh.

• Maybe he feared for his life. As the capital of the neo-Assyrian empire, Nineveh and its kings were known throughout the world for their savage treatment of conquered peoples. The walls of the palaces of the Assyrian kings are covered with scenes of their conquests, including people impaled alive on stakes, and piles of human heads. The famous Chicago historian, A. T. Olmstead, once wrote a paper on “the calculated frightfulness” of an Assyrian king. It would be easy enough to preach against Nineveh from Palestine, but to go there in the flesh and do it could be a different matter.
• Perhaps he wanted the city of Nineveh to get what was coming to it/them, rather than seeing them forgiven by a God of grace. At least, in ch 4, when the Ninevites repent and God does forgive them, Jonah whines, “I knew this would happen, I just knew it!” (or words to that effect—see 4:2–3). And there was good reason for him to think this, given Assyria’s reputation for sadistic slaughter. Terrorism in the biblical world is not new in the year 2004.
• Perhaps Jonah cherished the idea that his people were God’s people, God’s chosen people, even, and resented God paying the same kind of attention to any other nation. Surely God loves us with a special intensity no one else enjoys. Certainly he seems happy to thunder, ”Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3:4).

Whatever it was, he ran away. And here we meet one of the key words of the first part of the book: the verb “go down.”

• “He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish” (1:3).
• “He paid the fare and went down to sail with the others to Tarshish” (1:3).
• Jonah “went down into the hold of the vessel where he lay down and fell asleep” (1:5).



• And then the ultimate in “down”: “The waters closed in over me, the deep engulfed me. I sank to the base of the mountains; the bars of the earth closed upon me forever” (2:6–7).

Of course, all that is true in real time and space: Joppa is 2500 feet below Jerusalem, the ship was down at the dock, the hold is below the deck, and the great fish was deep in the water. But “go down” is also one of the Bible’s verbs for “to die” (about a dozen times). Thus:

• “I shall go down to Sheol, to my son, mourning” (Jacob, Genesis 37:35).
• All “who go down to the dust” will bow before God (Psalm 22:29).

To turn away from God, to flee him, is to leave God’s plan made in divine wisdom, and to descend to disorder, shadow, darkness. And if that sinking is not reversed, to run away from God is to go to your death: “The wages of sin is death” (Paul, Romans 6:23).

The mainstream church is dying before our very eyes. The decline in our membership is a kind of “down” that the book of Jonah may not have had in mind. Jesus’ call upon the church is to “go into the all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” To flee that concrete and specific mandate—to make disciples—is to go down to Joppa, to find an alien ship bound in the opposite direction, to descend into the hold and remain unaware of the disorder engulfing it.

We do well to read on!

In this Sunday’s service, we will have two acts of liturgy that give us great rejoicing. One is to baptize Hannah Grace and Emma Faith, daughters of Greg and Melanie (Schimpf) White. We give thanks to God for this home and its intention to turn towards Christ with all their hearts.

And second, we ordain and install deacons and elders of the class of 2007. To be ordained are Beverlee Agee and Debra Hablitzel (deacons), and Jim Collene and Wayne Pelter (elders). Others to be installed are deacons Julie Guss, Roseann Rice and Doug Watts, and elder David Hablitzel; Gennie Rios succeeds herself as elder for a two-year term. We praise God for these who hear God’s call to serve in an office in Christ’s church.

The outgoing clerk of Session, Tami Robinson, will assist in both liturgies.

Nancy McMurray is liturgist, Dorothy Watts is planning the children’s time, and Martha Tidball will be our guest soloist.

The color illustrations of Jonah are by Niko Chocheli, an artist with special interests in Orthodox iconography, and are found in The Book of Jonah Illustrated for Children, published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (2000). The woodcuts are by Jacob Steinhardt.