Jonah Slept! Could You?

I have been studying the book of Jonah the past couple of weeks and there is a scene in the beginning of the book that has been bugging me. It takes place right after after God tells Jonah to go and launch an evangelistic campaign the likes of which the world has never seen. The assignment is to go to Nineveh and turn them towards God. Though Jonah was the Billy Graham of his generation, he refuses to go because of his hatred for the Ninevites. They are a despicable group of people who consistently break the unwritten rules of warfare by brutalizing the women and children of their enemies. Jonah's bitterness toward them is rooted in the reality that the Jews have been victimized by their brutality and Jonah wants no part of helping them.

So when God calls Jonah to go and lead the Ninevites to repentance, Jonah runs. He would rather God wipe them from the face of the earth then give them a second chance. So Jonah heads off in the other direction, for Tarshish.

You know the story: Along the way God sends a storm that's so violent that it threatens to break up the ship. The sailors surmise that their only chance of survival is to lighten the load by throwing all the cargo overboard. It was all hands on deck!

But there was one set of hands not on deck - Jonah's. Jonah 1:5 says, "But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep." I don't get that, and apparently I am not alone. The next verse states, "The captain went to him and said, 'How can you sleep?'" That's what I want to know. How could he go down there and sleep? Sleep is supposed to be the by-product of peace, found in the center of God's will. This story messes with my theological constructs and tampers with my formula.

There's a similar story in Luke 8. This time it's Jesus and his disciples in a storm of such power that they are convinced they will die. When the storm is fully raging, Jesus, like Jonah, is asleep. The disciples wake him up presumably to die with them. They can't believe he's asleep. He points out the deficiency of their faith and we are left to assume that Jesus' faith and confidence in the future is what enabled him to sleep peacefully in the midst of the storm.

When I look at those two stories, I can understand how Jesus could sleep. But when it comes to Jonah, I am with the captain. How could he?

When I project myself in that situation I just can't imagine being able to curl up and go to sleep. The disobedience; the running; the storm; the cargo; the lives of the sailors; I assume all of those factors would keep me ill at ease and therefore wide awake. But not Jonah and truth be told maybe not me either.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really surprised, just a bit self-righteous. The truth is, instead of judging Jonah, I need to secure a set of industrial strength tweezers to pluck the log out of my eye.

We all have the capacity to turn our backs on what God wants us to do, and then somehow "come to a peace" about our decision. I know I have done it and I feel reasonably sure that you have too. The fact is, it is amazing the things that we can "come to a peace" about that are in direct disobedience to God's commands: adultery; refusing to forgive; stealing money from God by not giving; fostering division through gossip; judging others; the list goes on and on just like our sleep.

But don't be fooled eventually storms will wake us up. Neither Jonah nor Jesus were able to sleep all the way through it. They were both awakened because of the storm. The difference was that because Jesus did not cause the storm, he overcame it and sailed right on through while Jonah was consumed by the storm as a consequence of causing it.

The lesson is not to be fooled by sleep. "Coming to a peace" about something is different from enjoying God's peace.

God help us to be honest about our choices. Wake us up before we find a way to justify our behavior and end up consumed/swallowed whole by the storms of our disobedience.