Through the Labyrinth
Read Jonah 2.
Whether or not a whale, a great fish or a sea serpent swallowed Jonah, is irrelevant. What does matter is the story of Jonah can be used for our spiritual edification and growth. Does the story have anything to do with our own experience?
Let us look at it carefully. First take some time for breathing in and out, deeply and fully, in a relaxed posture. After a half dozen to a dozen breaths add the following. As you inhale pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” And as you exhale pray, “on/in earth as it is in heaven.”
Then read over Jonah 2 again, slowly meditating on each line.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2saying, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
Jonah is dying; he is in the pits, in Sheol, the place of departed spirits, the deepest darkness, in pain. In a fish? no, that is a picturesque metaphor of being swallowed by despair. And this is as universal a human experience as they get. From the poem Richard Corey by E.A. Robinson, to Bergmann’s films, to Dante’s Purgatory literature and religion all teach that you and Jonah are kin. We know those moments “when gravity fails and negativity just won’t pull you through”. We have had those times when fate, fortune or our mirrors laugh in our face. Then we like Jonah are going down into the belly of that Beast that is Chaos and Dread.
The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head 6at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God.
Being in free fall is no fun. As things go from bad to worse, when we sink so low, in waters so murky that we cannot know which way is up, then we find strange help.
We reach out from our physical or spiritual or mental bottom and grab hold of that seaweed that entangles our hair and limbs. We discover that eve if we cannot see, we know that sea weed; kelp or eel grass all floats up toward the light. Leading us sunward.
Yes, the useless weeds of life, we would ignore, cast awe, even pull up and burn, are lifesavers, and flowers of great beauty.
Seaweed teaches Jonah and us that there is life at the utmost bottom. That in the deepest darkness, God is present. Even in Sheol. Even in the Beast’s belly.
As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you
you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God.
As the tide ebbs twice in twenty-four hours, so our lives have their ebbs and flows.
If you have felt your hopes ebbing and your desires sinking, remember that you have to empty your lungs to fill them again. You must breath out before you can breath in life-giving air. And coming back from drowning, expelling the salt water from lungs and soul is painful.
And so like Jonah, we are drawn, pulled, pushed, carried and raised up. But NOTE,
up may not be the direction we really want to float. Up may lead to a road we do not wish to travel. Up may hurt more than sinking deeper into the pit. Jonah had a long walk ahead to reach Nineveh. The road back from the pit may be rough and rugged.
But before all that remember the last words of the lesson.
Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.
Spewing is a marvelous word chosen by the translation we are using the New Revised Standard Version. It reminds me of the comic moment in which a character hears something unexpected, unwanted which reverses the scene. The character spews out water, coffee, tea, beer or whatever liquid he or she was so smugly drinking. The whale, the Deep, Chaos spews out Jonah onto dry land and from drowning Jonah is left in the desert, to travel to a strange land where his fears of God’s love will be proven and he will find solace in the shade of a gourd.
(These are the partial notes of a sermon preached by Pastor Fuller on October 19, 2008.)
Eating Seaweed
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
