Preaching Jonah (Part II)

Here is another excerpt from the series on Jonah back in September.  This sermon was on Chapter 2, in which, among other things I coined the term "ichtyodeglutition" (the technical term for being swallowed by a fish-- it has a million uses).  Below's an excerpt and you can click here for the whole thing.

No former English Teacher can resist analysing a good poem, and I gotta say: for all its being written by a drowning man in the belly of a fish, this prayer in Chapter 2 ranks among the most carefully crafted poems in the whole Bible. In the poetry biz, we’d call Jonah Chapter 2 a “Hebrew Chiasm.”

A Chias-what? you say? Well, funny you should ask, because a chiasm is a form of poetry where all the ideas are sort of arranged in an “x” shape, where the second half of the poem is like a mirror-opposite of the first half (the word Chiasm itself just means “X”).

Let me demonstrate with this quote here: “Never let a kiss fool you, or a fool kiss you.” Now. That’s not from the Bible (but it is good advice). And it’s memorable because the ideas are arranged in sort of an “X” shape. Do you see it: You’ve got fool, then kiss, then kiss, then fool. Like an “X”.

Does that make sense?

Or how about this one: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Have you heard that one before? Did you ever notice it was sort of written in an “x” shape? Your country, you, then ask, then you, and your country.

Well if this is making sense to you than let me just say that these “x”-shaped thingies (that’s actually the technical word for them)—these x-shaped thingies are all over the place in the Bible. Especially the Hebrew Prophets, like Jonah, they used chiasms all the time. And usually when the prophets started talking in chiasms, they put the key idea right at the dead centre of the x.

Take Jonah’s prayer here, for example. In verse 17, it says a great fish swallowed Jonah, right? And then he starts to pray. In verse 2, he says, “in my distress I called to the Lord”—and note that he uses the special Hebrew name for God there. And then he says, “I called for help and you heard my cry” (though the actual word there is the Hebrew word for “voice”—you heard my voice is what Jonah says, literally.) Okay, but then in verse 4 he talks about how, even though he was expelled from God’s sight, he will look to the Lord’s Holy Temple. And in verse 5 he says that stuff about how the waters engulfed him—though literally he says something like “The waters surrounded my soul” “Soul” is the actual word there.

So we’ve got: the Lord, my voice, his Holy Temple, my soul. You with me?

Well: then we have verse 6: “I went down to the roots of the mountains—but you, O Lord, you brought my life up from the pit.” Put your finger on it: I sank down ... but you, O Lord, brought me up.

Now, keep your finger there, and watch this. In verse 7, Jonah says “When my life—and the word he uses, again, is soul—he says: when my soul was ebbing away, I remembered you O Lord. And my prayer rose (where?) to your Holy Temple. Do you see what’s happening? Maybe it would help if I pointed out that in verse 9, when he says “with a song of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you,” the word he literally uses there is: “Voice.” “With the voice of thanksgiving,” is what it says in Hebrew. And notice that the very last words of his prayer use the special Hebrew name for God, just like he did in the very... first ... words.

“Salvation is of the Lord.” And after that: the great fish vomited Jonah up.

Do you see what I see? We have a perfect “x” shape here. I mean, look: the fish swallowed Jonah, then: the Lord, my voice, your Temple, my soul ... verse 6 ... and then my soul, your temple, my voice, the Lord. And then the fish vomited Jonah up.

Do you hear that? “I sank down to the roots of the Mountain. And you, O Lord brought my life up from the pit.” That’s the heart-beat of Jonah’s prayer. The dead centre of this chiasm.

Preaching Jonah (Part I)

This fall we went through a verse-by-verse preaching series on the Book of Jonah.  I picked it mostly because I like to do one Old Testament and one New Testament book each year in my preaching ministry, and I figured this story itself was well enough known on the surface that it would be engaging for the church to go a bit deeper with it.  I didn't really see it coming how vividly it would come to life and how clearly it would speak.  I'll post some excerpts here over the next little while, in the hopes of extending the conversation.  Here's the opening thoughts from the first sermon.  You can download the whole sermon here.

Well: fish stories always inspire bigger fish stories, don’t they? So let me tell you about the time my brother and I were fishing on a lake in the Rockies.

My dad took us fishing every summer, and this particular summer Shane and I were out on the water in an aluminum rowboat, way over at the other end of the lake. And we were drifting around not paying much attention, watching our bobbers and not really watching the sky, so we didn’t notice the storm clouds piling up around the mountains.

Thunderstorms in the Rockies can sweep in pretty suddenly, so when Shane happened to look up and see black clouds scowling down all around us, he didn’t waste much time suggesting that we go in. We started rowing for the dock, but like I say, thunderstorms in the Rockies can sweep in pretty suddenly, and we were like, right in the dead centre of the lake when “the Lord sent a great storm upon the sea” (so to speak).

I’m sure I’ve been more scared in my life, but it’s hard to remember when; because the sky exploded like a Myth-Buster’s experiment gone wrong, and lightening flashed like the strobe light in a bad disco ... and the rain. It was pummelling the lake so hard it seemed like the water was boiling ... and we were drenched .... and Shane was shouting something in the bow that sounded like “Dale you gotta row! You gotta row!” or maybe it was “I don’t wanna go! I don’t wanna go!” it was hard to hear over the roar of the water.

Well. We made it back in one piece, and the minute we were standing on solid ground we started laughing our heads off; but I’ll tell you, to this day when I think of the last time I was “prepared to meet my maker,” that storm in the Rockies comes first to mind.

And I’m telling you this story not just because it’s a good fish story, but because I need you to think of the last time you were terrified, like that. I don’t mean creeped out, or startled, I mean, like: get-ready-to-meet-your-maker kind of fear.

At least, that’s what Jonah wants us to think about. It doesn’t quite come through in translation, but the Hebrew word for “fear,” actually, shows up six times in this opening segment. It’s there in verse 5, and again in verse 9, twice in verse 10 and twice again in verse 16.

I mean: Sunday School flannel graphs and singing Asparaguses have sort of tamed this one down for us, made it feel more like a nursery rhyme than a psychological thriller ... but when you peel back the layers, what you’re left with is one scary story.

When I was a kid I caught about 30 seconds of the movie “Jaws.” I was probably five or six, and I wandered into the room one night when it was on TV. Before any of the grownups realized I was there, I saw that scene where the girl’s swimming out in the deep water and something brushes her leg? Remember? She panics. She goes down once, splashes to the surface screaming, and then... she’s gone.

That was all I saw, but I’ll tell you, for years after there was this niggling fear in the back of my mind every time I went for a swim. That I’d turn around and there’d be some huge mouth coming up to swallow me.

Anyone know what I’m talking about?

If you do, then you’re closer to “getting” Jonah than Larry the cucumber could ever bring you. Because this is a fearful story. It’s about our fear. And it’s especially about how the turning point—in our spiritual lives, let’s say, our goals, our ambitions, our life direction—how the turning point begins with the fear of the Lord.