Jonah is probably most famous for spending three days inside the belly of a whale. A few readers may remember his ridiculous attempt to escape God by taking a boat to the reaches of the known world.  But Jonah’s most critical lesson is the failure of his faith to grow, when it is challenged to understand the mystery of God.

The story of a man with a purpose but trying to escape it.  He tries to run  from God. He’s trapped for three days in the belly of a “sea monster” and forced to confront his doubts. He decides to accept his destiny by preaching to wicked Nineveh and moves an entire city to change their way of life.  God reverses his plan to destroy the city. The man is disillusioned with the outcome, because his prophecy was negated by God’s mercy. He bitterly complains to God because his life seems pointless. A parable tells the reason for God’s forgiveness: mercy on a repenting pagan city. The story ends affirming the universal mercy of God and the bitterness of his prophet.

If you went to Sunday School you probably heard about the whale and Jonah’s  ultimate decision to submit to God’s call. The result saved a city. The featured character was the whale, more accurately translated as a “sea monster.” But there is more, that the teacher left out.

In modern biblical studies Jonah is considered a satire on the privileged status that the Jewish people claimed after the loss of their homeland (after 539 BCE). They anticipated God’s deliverance for his chosen people, but they had no concept of a universal God, who shed grace on all nations.  A few elements supply the humor in the story:

• a prophet running from an omnipresent God
• a sea monster getting the prophet’s attention by swallowing him
• the prophet’s sulking after God’s mercy overturns his prophecy
• a bush as an object lesson on the mercy of God.

Some Christians balk at a less-than-literal interpretation, but the idea of surviving the ingestion of a whale suggests it is fiction, yet no less important in its message. The whale seems more like comic relief from a desperate prophet’s rebellion.

But between the lines of satire, the message of God’s mercy to the Gentiles (non-Jews) is thematic from start to finish. It is a funny story with a serious message. Is God just or merciful? Is God selectively merciful to a chosen people? What is faith and what happens to faith when it confronts a reversal?

1But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. Jonah 4:1-3

Jonah has a static faith. He doesn’t believe in a non-partisan God who favors all nations. He doesn’t debate with God like Moses or Abraham. He doesn’t express his skepticism like “Doubting Thomas.” about the resurrection: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands . . .I will not believe” (Luke 20:25). Instead, when God calls him to Nineveh, he runs.

Jonah’s  faith is based on his judgment of the heathen. He interprets the mercy of God as undermining his prophecy.  He cannot fathom a God who does not follow through on his threats. Unlike Moses or Abraham, he doesn’t question God, he just says, “Now Lord take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

It is this brittle faith that Jonah satirizes. Jonah cannot adapt to the universality of God, of God’s mercy extended to the heathen. Rather than learn and adapt, Jonah asks to die. Even when God offers a parable about preserving the life of a bush that protected Jonah from the sun, Jonah doesn’t get it. Or we assume he doesn’t, because he has nothing more to say in this story.

What does this story say about faith? Faith needs to expand as our vision of God grows, as God reveals a nature we never knew. Faith must expand to accommodate what we are learning about God, not insist on old dogma.

This message shows the modernity of this story. Some believers are sure their faith is unchanging, because God is unchanging. That was Jonah’s problem. He thought an unchanging God meant Jonah’s understanding of God was also unchanging. He insisted that God’s mercy was only for the Jews so stubbornly that he wanted to die rather than consider it. But our understanding of God can change. The infinite, merciful God has more to teach us.

When a true believer says, “God said it; I believe it; that settles it,” that suggests that God has nothing new to say.   Jonah’s story says otherwise. It taught an ethnocentric people that the mercy of God is universal.