Jonah: Antihero, Unwilling Prophet, Ourselves

Dan Berrigan, S.J.

October 6, 2004

(On Phil Berrigan's birthday, and his brother and co-felon, Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan, talks  in Baltimore, “Jonah: Antihero, Unwilling Prophet, Ourselves,” at Loyola College's McGuire Hall, as part of the Catholic Studies and Theology Lecture Series.  Phil, our friend and a remarkable activist, left us on December 6, 2002 )

Jona is perhaps best taken as an anti hero. In this he matches the mood that falls to us in such catastrophic days as we tread - melancholic, on the down side. We see him, by hook or crook of fate - or of providence - receiving the Deity's errand, and perversely setting out.
Wrong direction, speed without substance. Following his sweet will, in accord with his own map.
Did the instruction say south? Go north. Nineveh, no. Tarshish, yes. Capricious and irksome he is, running from the truth of life, countering a tradition plainly heard. O contrary man!
And all unexpectedly, he lands in our bible. Astonishing! Astonish us, word of God.
Confess as well, how grateful we are for this less-than-hero.
************
Inevitably, Jona suggests a comparison with cultural icons today. We are swamped with them, these, generals, politicos, tycoons, celebrities of dubious behavior. Soulless? They provoke in the thoughtful a second look, a highly skeptical one. Tending as they do toward the bullying, the greedy, the violent and indolent.
Powerful, they grant no middle ground. The military and their spooks invade and subvert and sanction. All else failing (better; nothing else tried!), they bomb wildly, the craziest serial bombers on record, creating vast swaths of misery and death.
The 'American century' to be sure; and at what price, from Nicaragua to Salvador, to Panama to Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan - and beyond. Millions of victims to bespeak the triumph, the prevailing. With a curse.
Domestically as well, they create enclaves of misery, populated by victims, the homeless and hungry and untended ill.

*************
Jona the anti-hero. Camus delineated perhaps the classic modern type in his novel 'The Plague.' A populous city is stricken by a mysterious infestation. A medical doctor is alert and on duty night and day, assuaging the afflicted as best he might, salvaging whom he can.
Questioned as to why the city lies under the hideous siege, his response is laconic. 'They forgot to be modest, that is all.'
Touching the heart of the matter?
The doctor is an agnostic. A Jesuit also inhabits the story, a massive voice in the stricken city, a noted preacher. he disdains questions and pounces on answers. The sorrows of the dying, the grief of survivors touch him lightly if at all. From pulpit his lightnings fall; bolts of sin and punishment, those perennial themes of the heartless.
But there is hope, even for him; eventually he is granted a change of heart.
***************
Contrast, opposition, light and darkness contend in our story of Jona.
Jona, an opposite foil to Moses? Both stories begin with a call of Jawe. Moses responds with a gradually dawning obedience and understanding (Exodus, cc. 3, 4).
Jona, our artful dodger, is another matter entirely; his double mind proves enervating to sound purpose. On the one hand, he is presented as (and so presents himself) as God's own man, charged with a holy errand and word. And lo stalemates the mandate.
************
Astounding how the story reverberates. The story of the little man (who quite possibly never existed) is taken up by Jesus, in a fiction truer than truth;

'As Jona
dwelt
three days
in the belly
of a whale,
so
will
the Human One
dwell
three days
in
the earth'.
(Mt.,c. 12, vv. 39-40)
And we are reminded; the least among us is held in a kind of uneasy, wary honor.

Jona flees the summons. Simple as that, refusal. We are offered nothing of psychology or nuance of temperament; instead, a simple story, a simple outcome, concerning a man of slight moral stature. One who might have stood tall in the text, but for a certain impeding, wizening mood.

He is like a November apple, a fruit that unaccountably failed to mature. Perhaps a branch faced too strongly northward. Late autumn came on with a blast, our apple is hard as a hung stone, and out of complexion.
A good story subtly tells of traits held in common, though it tells of a single protagonist. Jona is one of our tribe. He, and we as well, require first a ripening environment, then a thorough shakedown.
Thus our story.
**************
Jona is born of a people who according to their own prophets, are afflicted with stiff necks. The trouble has invaded the genes so to speak, and by the time of Jona, is strongly hereditary.
We take note of his habitual stance; he is bolt upright, his head is on high, as though impaled on a ramrod. He will do what he will do, come Jawe or high water.
And by the same token, he will not do what -.
And with that, we return to chapter one.
Few words are recorded of our purported hero. Yet we note something that can hardly be missed. His own will and purpose rank first. Yield before Jawe, obey, depart on the moment for Nineveh? Why, his religion (which is to say, his ego), positively forbids it.
Thus early on, we marvel at the literary form. Strong elements of satire, and on Jawe's part - a gentle buffoonery, a needling, a voice humming away 'testing, testing'.
************
The note is struck; Jona's summons takes a quite ordinary form. Jawe simply speaks to him. No such epiphany as erupted before terrified Ezekiel, striking him down (c. 2, v. 1). Nothing to compare with What or Who descended on Daniel where he stood by the river, and saw - God knows what he saw.
Whoever, Daniel fell unconscious (c. 10, vv. 4 - 10).
**************

The question occurs; would a stupendous, seismic, holy epiphany have set Jona on the right road racing rightly? In any case, nothing of this. Instead, a rather conventional instruction is issued from headquarters. Go to a foreign city. Once arrived, announce this; the wickedness of its citizens has reached the close attention of Jawe.
What is this? No sooner the command, than our hero scuttles off the page. The prophet (purported) has quickly become an anti prophet.
Why, we almost had no book of Jona at all, no more than a smoke, a blur, tracks on a road.
And not, please, to miss the subtle derision. Jona the protagonist is - comical.
Not for him the lofty, costly way of his elders - obedience, the message delivered
at whatever cost of scorn and punishment.
***********
A stringent command of Jawe, and Jona fails his vocation. Kierkegaard writes somberly:

And this is a pitiful thing to one who contemplates human life, that so many live on in a quiet state of perdition. They outlive themselves, not in the sense that the content of life is successively unfolding, and is now possessed in an expanded state.
... They live their lives, as it were, outside themselves. They vanish like shadows, their immortal soul is blown away.....
They are already in a state of dissolution before they die.

*********
  

It is shortly apparent that the soul of our Jona is hardly laved in grand virtue. Nonetheless, hear him out; he knows a few things.
One, he heard a voice sending him on a questionable errand; and this on behalf of goys - and what goys! For such, and for the sound reasons already dwelt on, Jona can summon no great affection.
And what of Jawe's command? Two reflections occur. First, the deity in his (sic) present mood, may well hold the spiritual well being of Nineveh as an urgent item.
Jawe after all, is Jawe. And Jona is - well, we shall see.
Secondly, the long & short of it - the prophet's not going. A prophet, and a refuser? Yes.
We have seen it, and marveled at the chutzpah. Told to go north, he flees south, and fast.
***********
Jona calls to mind the story of Jesus concerning two sons (Ml, c. 21, w. 28 - 32). (Who are possibly, in a physical sense one and the same; but of double mind).
To each, we are told, a command is issued by the father; go work in the vineyard. One responded obediently. Of course he would honor the command. And then? He did nothing of the sort.
The other, cheeky, faced off. No, he would not do it. Then he went off, and did as bidden.
Of double mind, Jona?
Go to the gentiles, says Jawe, tell them they also are included in the circle of my mercy. Tell them to shape up.
This most unsettling God!
Let us not fear to invoke current realities; the wickedness of New York or Bejing or Tel Aviv. Let us imagine a Jona, sent to a contemporary city. To any great city of the world, infected with injustice and violence, greed and concupiscence and pride of life.
The messenger is instructed to deliver therein, a stern warning. Mend your ways, curb your galloping appetites, start caring for widows and orphans and strangers at the gate. Or else!

God is forever shocking the gods. In such ways as this. A people of Ninevah despised, spiritually forlorn, far removed from grace, dwelling beyond the pale - to these occurs a sweet onslaught of grace. Lo, in this they surpass the others, the 'chosen', who sit snug and smug in an orbit of canonized ego! Whose sorry emblem is named Jona.
This Nineveh, according to the true believers, is Sin City. The appellation may or may not be correctly conferred. Up to a point, Jawe seems to agree that such alas, is the case.
But. Give God time. Eventually, as we shall learn, a spellbinding event erupts.

From ordure spring orchids. On the moment, we are told, at a first syllable from on high, wondrously, instantly these Ninevehans undergo a change of heart.
Ironic. The messenger was tardy, somewhat tawdry, devious. Obedience came hard. Indeed, at first it came not at all. And the sinners, what of them? They yielded, spectacularly.
Caution is therefore advised. For God, it would seem, delights even in ordure. And brings forth -.

There is also a matter of divine threats, lying like unspent lightnings here and elsewhere, notably in texts of the prophets. Those pages! They all but mutter as they turn. Jawe frets at the backsliding of humans, prophets are instructed to bring sinners, whether domestic or foreign, to heel.
Or failing that, to spell out in fierce detail the alternatives hovering over; Armageddons, earthquakes, plagues, droughts, shoels, deluges, exiles, world threatening goy armies, huge encampments at the gates of Jerusalem.
What to make of such threats - especially since, more often than not, they are simply aborted? One expert offers a subtle comment;

The divine threats, even the most categorical, are hardly to be taken as the expression of blind destiny. They rather express the will of a God who is merciful...
The threats attain their purpose exactly - when they need not be executed.
(L. Gautier)

Deep waters here. As we shall see.
One of Jonah's least attractive qualities, call it envy, ire, spleen, is presented as a kind of dramatic warning.
Take heed of a lengthy, drawn out sentence that follows. To wit; our prophet speaks for those who grow impatient at the patience of God, who ignobly react when hope, promise of mercy, borrowed time, are offered those of quite different ilk, age, skin, nation, ideology, religious attachment, sexual proclivity.
Nineveh thus stands for those who are shouldered aside by insiders, shoved beyond the pale, to less than human status.

The edict implies that the citizens of Nineveh are worthy of divine attentiveness. They are to be shown both compassion and firmness, in this vein; 'You too count for much; to you I offer this dignity. I hold you accountable...'
Threats too are uttered; they hang on the air, then shortly are dissipated.
*************
And the message to the goys implies a word to the chosen as well. The word is harsh and abrupt. 'My ways are not your ways'. Period.
'Your ways' imply this; the religion of Jona is governed by showdown mentality. Jawe stands with us only if he (the male pronoun seems peculiarly appropriate here) stands staunch against others.
And, to cinch the Jona argument, what of that 'day of Jawe'? When will it come to pass?
Strongly implied is; when shall we stand vindicated, when shall our virtue, our integrity, be manifested to all?
*************
The story turns ominous too, it has strange twists and turns. Jona is a slow burning fuse. He stands for many of his compatriots, echoing their sense that 'Jawe owes us much. And this 'much' implies that Jawe owes the pagans not a whit'.
Why then should I, Jona, extend myself on a thankless errand?
*************
C. 1, vv. 14 ff. Jona, we are told, went down and down; first down to the port of Joppa, then down into a ship, then down into the hold. His journey is a drama of regression, an attempt to recapture the past, a slippery ghost - childhood, then infancy, finally the safest of places, a womb.

Matters turn surreal. He will shortly descend further, will undergo a dizzying free fall, will learn how deep are the bowels of creation.
************
Safely aboard ship, Jona is free of Jawe's burdensome word. For awhile.
Then a mighty storm arises. Tempests, we recall, are a favored device of every story teller since the Flood. We are wrapt in excitement and turmoil, we recapture the dread and shiver of a childrens' tale.
Also a storm brings on crisis, in view of an eventual triumph. Thus courage may prevail over brute nature.
Storms also disrupt normal routines and timetables. Decisions must be made in the teeth of disaster, ships and lives are set off course, arrivals delayed. Disputes may well break out, mutinies even. Voyagers, who embarked sure of themselves, people of substance on errands of state or economy or r. and r., - such are tumbled about, cast far from routine and schedule. Far from safe orbit and sure destination.
Perhaps even worse transpires. Perhaps the great are flung overboard, cast ashore, |reduced to rags and hungers. Or drowned outright. Or drowned outright. And of course, God makes use of storms. As we shall shortly see, and Jona shall see - and no great credit to him.
Our scribe is a master of paradox, and the subtleties thereof. As the storm rages uncontrolled, in near despair the crew turn to their gods. And Jonah, the purported true believer, where is he? Below decks he slumbers on. He revealed not a word concerning a recent event, his flight from duty - though his dereliction might be thought highly pertinent to the disaster impending.
A prophet, asleep? Yes. He takes his ease, while above the crew toil and sweat against unsteady fate.
The storm worsens. Shortly Jona's slumbers are shaken by the furious captain; that official names him in contempt, 'the sleeper'. Brusquely he shakes Jona awake.
And we think; what a truthful image; 'the sleeper'. Far from true awakening, from mindfulness, Jonah sleeps life through. He is half comatose, half conscious - of himself, of Jawe, of his vocation. He lives like a sleepwalker whose driving force at the rim of the world is - nightmare.
***************
Jona reminds us of those other sleepers, the three disciples in Gethsemane (Mt, 26, 36,ff.) Such sleep is a kind of moral befuddlement, a numbing of soul. In face perhaps of too great a burden, of too much grief to be borne?
We tread softly here. If we know anything of ourselves, we know the limits of what we can bear in face of the horror of the world. So we summon compassion for such slumberers, and the blank relief they seek.
Only a valiant few remain alert to the summons of a terrible hour.
Being conscious in the way of the great ones, may even wring a sweat of blood . This is the cost of mindfulness;
'And
being in agony....
His sweat
became
like drops of blood,
falling down
upon
the ground.'
(Lk.,22,44)
*************
C. 1, v. 6. Awake once more, Jonah is questioned closely by the captain.
How can this be - that when all are endangered and we call upon our gods, you neglect to invoke your God? It is as though the slumbering conscience of the prophet found voice - and this, on the tongue of a pagan;
'Rise up!
Call
upon your God.
Perhaps God
will be mindful of us,
so that we
may
not
perish'.
We have in the scene, a repeated implication of the story teller, a delight in irony, however painful. The faith of the pagans is admirable, the faith of the believer woefully wanting.
**************
The storm gathers force. In the tumult, the sailors question Jona closely. A suspicion grows among them; there is more to this passenger of ours than meets the eye! Something, a hidden sting, connects him to our«rortal plight.
"Who then are you?" they ask.
And our reluctant prophet grows suddenly articulate. In the bedraggled circle, on the heaving deck, he declares his faith, the faith he refused to proffer to the people of Nineveh.
One thinks, hearing his credo; that faith of his seems somewhat prefabricated, It rolls trippingly from his tongue;
'It is Jawe
I worship,
the God of heaven
who created
the sea and
the dry
land.'
Rather than being addressed, Jawe is spoken about; let it be granted, the God of Jona is a majestic being; but absent - or at least distant.
A gesture of fealty in sum, is contrived under crisis. It is void of passion or commitment. Jona strikes one in fact as a would be theologian, displaying his predigested formulas.
The contrasts are fierce as the enveloping storm. In the hearts of the sailors, stirred mightily by the threat of death, dwells another reality entirely; a somewhat muddy mix of superstition and hope. Together with a courage that looks fate in the eye and dares its worst.
To discover who so to speak, is the Jona in their midst, they decide to cast lots. (The ancient device, we are told by the Roman savants, Cicero and Horace, is designed to break the cover of the guilty.)
The dice roll; You are the man!
Jona's reaction is typical, fatalistic, curiously so;
'Cast me
in the sea,
and
the storm
will calm.'
(C. l,v.12)

How, we marvel, does he know? Is the prophet so attuned to the divine will that he joins the calming of a storm with human sacrifice?
Or is this proffer of self immolation an evidence of despair?
In any case, the lots have fallen to Jona.
The sequence is unsettling. The believer has slept through the tempest, indifferent to the danger he has precipitated.
And the sailors? they are greatly distressed by the outcome of the lots. They bend anew to rowing, hoping to reach land and save their sorry guest and themselves.
All in vain, the storm grows fiercer by the moment. And the sailors, pagans like our people, a minim of of Nineveh, turn spontaneously to prayer.
We marvel. Indeed one might range a stormy world, and come on no nobler 'pagans' that our crew.
****************
V. 14. Pagans - or pagans come to faith? No such prayer from prophet Jona;
The men cried to God, 'We beseech you, let us not perish for taking this man's life, do not charge us with shedding innocent blood; for you have done as you saw fit'.
************
Vv. 15-16. Nothing avails, over it goes with Jona! The waves receive him.
And on the moment, the raging waters grow calm. The sailors offer sacrifice, and make their vows, we are told, to 'the holy One'.
***************
Jawe it appears, ranges everywhere. And likewise, God is everywhere to be reckoned with. On sea or land, it is nigh impossible that such as Jona claim the last word for his own.
Whether the sins of Nineveh be in question, or our fleet footed recusant, his pretension, pride, self justification - any or all of these are penultimate. From Jawe the last word.
Period. God punctuates, then terminates the argument. Alpha, Omega, in My beginning is My end. The last shall in a wondrous sense, be first.
***************
C.2,vv.1ff. A 'great fish', otherwise unidentified as to species, becomes the vast vehicle of God's ingenuity.
A hand traced by Blake or Michelangelo stretches above the deep, almighty. A strange providence, shocking.
In effect; Go! And a noble leviathan of the deep is dispatched.
A beast obeys on the instant.
And a prophet (say rather, a sorry waterlogged jetsam), what of him - ?
****************
As to the wording of the instruction, or the mode of consent, we know little or nothing. Jawe spoke or hummed or sang aloud or whispered or thundered. Or perhaps simply pointed. And the fish set course.
Over the pathless waters hastened the majestic regent of the deep. He nears our man, thrashing about in the sea.
And -I have you! - like a mawful of plankton Jona is scooped, up, then down. Gently, inelegantly he tumbles, into the vast gullet.

Nothing for it, there he must abide, engulfed in darkness, ignorant as the unborn or the newly dead.
****************
What shall be the outcome of this stupendous event, what direction or port of call looms?
Jona, was he not once for all and habitually in command of- Jona?
No longer, period. Choices, matters whether of survival (unlikely) or direction (chancy) lie in the hands of- another.
And of time, whether the hour be named dawn or high noon or sunset or night -nothing is he granted to know. We behold Jona, ignorant and helpless, stripped to the bones of existence; dry bones. .
Jona; at the end of his tether. No more evasion. He lies helpless, at the mercy of- Mercy.
A schemer and equivocator, he fled the light, the truth. He stained the pages of scripture with images of folly, scheming, self serving, with moods and tantrums, pathos, childishness, - emptiness.
He drops his hands, empty.
And lo! There in the darkness, Jona begins to shine. First a feeble heart of flame. Then lo, he is all light, a man made of St. Elmo's fire!
**************
And Jawe? he is silent, like His own great whale.
Nevertheless upbearing and cherishing all, in the darkness of unknowing.
****************
The poet Rilke is both comforting and disturbing;

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors? they are our terrors; has it abysses? those abysses belong to us. Are dangers at hand? we must try to love them....
How should we forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples?.....
Perhaps everything terrible is at the deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us.
***********
In his fishy hostel, Jona sets himself to prayer. To prayer! Did the sailors not plead for their lives in the eye of the storm? Did they not invoke the God of Jona?
What of Jona, what were the words of his prayer? Up to this moment, he is a prophet who spurned the message -we dare say, a prophet without God.
***************
In the maw of the great fish, Jona has touched - bottom.
He went down to Joppa, thence down to a ship, down to a lower deck, down and down to atavistic slumber. 'Free me from this world, from Yourself, who are too awful for bearing'. It was hardly a prayer at all; it was amnesia, despair.
How far is down? Where is the bottom of things, the floor of creation? Captive in
the great maw, Jonah scarcely abides in this world.
****************
And 'At last I have him', says Jawe to himself (and the tone, it must be granted, hints of satisfaction, as though a patient fisherman held aloft his catch). 'Let him dangle there. For awhile.' 'It may be', continues Jawe ruminating, 'that despite all, our man will come on a dark wisdom'.
************
How the tale, especially the delicious episode of Jona, the 'catch' of God, lives on! The imagination of Jesus was suffused with it; Jona, pernickety and tardive - and Jesus, hastening toward Jerusalem. We marvel at the analogy, its inspired unlikeliness.
Still, a likeness is insisted on, both with respect to the death-resurrection theme, and the theme of judgment.
First, to the latter. Jesus draws upon the broadly implied irony of the story.
Something strange happened on the way to Nineveh. Or in a later and more tragic event, on the road to Jerusalem.
The believers, the chosen, the covenental people - all those words implying credentials and privileges, of special regard (and the supreme Tightness of these!) - all are shaken out, cast overboard, lost on wild winds;
At the judgment,
the people
of Nineveh
will rise
against
this generation
and condemn it,
because they repented
at the preaching
of
Jonah...'
(Mt.c. 12, v. 41;Lk.,c, ll,v. 32)
****************
It staggers the mind. Nineveh proves more believing, trusting, loving, penitential, apt for conversion - than those true believers, the chosen ones of temple and torah.
A bitter pill indeed, the analogy, the ones favored. Erstwhile pagans are transformed; they become witnesses for the prosecution, over against the chosen. The neat scheme of salvation is unraveled, the sigil is reversed, truth is stranger than illusion.
And the chosen - have they overdrawn their account, are they found bankrupt on the day of Jawe?
Say it, revel in it. The beneficiaries and heirs are the formerly despised, the goys.
**************
As to Jesus' reference to 'the sign of Jona,' there is an apparent difficulty.
Just as Jonah
was
in the belly
of the whale
three days
and three nights,
so will
the Human One
be
in the heart
of the earth
three days and three nights.'
(Mt.c. 12, v. 40)
*****************
But if the story of Jona is fictive and the story of Jesus factual, how can Jesus call up the tale of Jona as an analogy?

Deep waters here. To Jesus' way of seeing, there are truths truer than facts, there are sublime fictions that summon realities mere facts are blind to. Only give the imagination free play, let it embrace the improbable; and lo, all is changed!
How else approach the Event, except by imagining It? No reason can touch that
stupendous outcome, no earthly logic. No reason. But there is rhyme to it, this morning-beyond-death.
Therefore we imagine.
********************
RESURRECTION
To raise the huge question,
heave it like a boulder away
from the dark cave, closed
final as dossiers of the declared
guilty -

the question
to which there stands alas
in death's arrogant dominion
only a hint, a meager dawn illumination -

I circle the tomb warily.

The Magdalen saw 'a gardener',
John, Peter raced
undoing earlier failure of nerve and will.

(crucifixion shames us, cowards;
resurrection - and we crowd the rent tomb,
fear and awe contending).

I wish wishing would bring You
into being. My being.
You Who are.

Like the lorn father
of a demon-ridden child; 'I believe,
help Thou my unbelief!'

or Graham Greene; 'This saves me,
I don't believe
my disbelief.

Through walls You slip in or away
like an air stream through air.

And that smile, so seldom before
lingers, lingers
essence of rainbow unspent.

I see You cast no shadow -
what can this mean?

Would You walk that road twice?

In new existence
do you summon tears?

Once You were clothed
in imperfect flesh -
is the perfect bearable?

Do You imagine
other ways of being God -

contemplative bones, easeful as lotus,
half slipping out of time
a Buddha, a banyan tree?
(DB)
**************
Jesus and Jona are cast forth from the maw of death. Then they meet, unlikely brothers, face to face, the one a mirror image summoned by the Other. There the two stand, delivered, on the firm ground of a new existence.
And Jesus insists on a likeness. Not, to be sure, that his temperament in the least resembles Jonah's! The analogy lies elsewhere; in the drama of death, the 'going down' of Jona revealed at its truest; an image of the death of Jesus.
And in the coming forth, the denial of death.
*************