Can You Get Away from God?


Jonah 1:1-3 (again)
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

I know, I know – three days in a row of the same text. But what I’m learning is that this is an incredibly rich story, filled with detail in every word. Yesterday we looked at Jonah’s chosen destination, Tarshish, as he seeks to flee the presence of the Lord. What a stupid idea.

Jonah hears the call of God to go to Nineveh and soundly rejects the call. Every other prophet who receives a similar call acts immediately to follow God’s command. We see that kind of obedience in Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos . . . the list is long. When “the word of the Lord” come to them, they all move to follow what God tells them to do. The exception comes along in the person of Jonah. Now that doesn’t mean some of them didn’t discuss their misgivings with God before they obey. Moses shared his concerns and God gave him Aaron as a helper. Isaiah declares that he is “a man of unclean lips” and God assures him that any cleanliness is found in God alone. Jonah doesn’t even discuss his misgivings with God. He simply heads in the opposite direction. He goes to Joppa, on the Mediterranean coast to head for Tarshish. Not only does he buy a fare, but rather hires the entire ship and its crew. He has financed an entire ship for his disobedience.

That Jonah has access to the ship’s “innermost recesses” makes sense if he has hired the entire boat. That also explains why the sailors hesitate to throw Jonah overboard even after they discern that he has endangered the entire ship. Even the captain does not order Jonah off the ship, but merely asks him to pray. Tarshish ships are proud, noble structures (Isaiah 2:16), a symbol of everything that is “proud and lifted up” against Yahweh (Isaiah 2:12), carrying precious cargoes, and they are destined to be shattered “by the east wind” (Psalm 48:8) and to promptly break apart “in the heart of the sea” (Ezekiel 27:25–26). This means that at the outset of his scheming to flee from Yahweh, Jonah is doomed to fail!
Lessing, R. R. ©2007. Jonah (p. 76). St. Louis, MO: CPH.

People have been trying to escape God’s presence, power, and control since Adam and Eve first decided to eat the fruit forbidden them. Jonah does succeed in escaping “the voice of the Lord” as God doesn’t bother to speak to him as he hides out on the bottom of the boat or from inside of the great fish. But clearly, God is in perfect control of what happens to Jonah. God is present with us today in even more tangible ways than He was with Jonah. We have the ever-present power of Jesus’ Holy Spirit who abides with us continuously. We have physical manifestation of God’s presence in Baptism and The Lord’s Supper, and the promises that God makes over and over that He will never leave us or forsake us. Instead He “forsook” Jesus as He hung on the cross for our sins and with that redeeming action, our place by His side was made permanent. Just like Jonah, you can run but you can’t hide.

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