I preface the tale by making the point that when it comes to homilies, you just can't beat a GOOD story. People of all ages love a good story. Even my father, who prefers hockey and baseball and political TV, will watch a good Hallmark movie with me. I was so surprised when I was home visiting and he stayed up late with me to watch the story that I thanked him. In his smarty-pants way he responded, "I didn't know there were so many Inns to be saved." So funny. But it is true, Hallmark does beat a path to the saving of Inns, vineyards, bakeries, and the like.
When we are teaching our children to read and to learn about life, we read them stories. No one ever prefaces a reading of Aesop's Fables by stating that they are not true. In the name "Fable" we come to understand that they were not historical fact, because animals were personified (anthropomorphized, if you will) to make a lesson clear and non- threatening to people. When we are engrossed in a story, we let our guard down and truly listen.
Story telling, as I have stated elsewhere before, is an art. You may be born with it. You may be surrounded by Master Story tellers. Or, like me, perhaps a little of both. Dr. James Dobson, the famous Educational Psychologist said that women use 30,000 words a day, and men only use like 15,000. This explains why when a woman comes home from work, they can recount the entire day in details of color, shape, size, quantity and impact on global economics. And when a man comes home, the day can be summed up as: "fine." And we all know why you never want to hear a woman say that things are "fine." But I digress.
So, to the point. Once a year in the liturgical calendar of readings, the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale comes up in the lectionary. The pastor I used to work for absolutely BRISTLED every time that reading came up. He would remark to me, "It never happened." "It's just a story." I tried to approach this disturbing reaction by saying, "there's no such thing as JUST a story, it has a purpose." But that was absolutely lost on him, as was evidenced by the content of his homily. He was a product of the 1970's seminaries and the influence of destructive in-house education. Well, we have another name for it ...
"Demythologizing" was a term coined around the works of Rudolf Bultmann, a German theologian. He was making the point that the stories of the Bible might not be literally true but still have some value. And I, as an educated theologian who is more pastorally engaged, want to insist that the very MINUTE you suggest out loud to Joe or Sue in the bench on Sunday morning that the story is "not true" they consequently think there is NO Value in it. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth.
Remember when the demythologizers got ahold of the Adam & Eve story in Genesis? They suggested that it was a Hebrew "myth" to explain the origins of creation, the fall of humanity, original sin, and the promise of a savior. But the minute people hear the word "myth" they shift the entire thing to: UNTRUE. People are notoriously efficient at throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. (Now did you stop to think that maybe there is no meaning to that phrase because we don't really throw babies out with bathwater? No. You did not, because I did not initially draw your attention to it. I let the power of the IMAGE itself tell you what was most important. You naturally sorted the rest out. I know you are not in my backyard checking my lawn for a kid.)
So where did demythologizing lead us? Follow the train that Corrupted 1970's Theology took us on (my corrective comments in parentheses):
>Adam & Eve are a myth, therefore all stories of origin are of equal value. (Happily, the Great Pope John Paul II, preached a lot about the reality of Adam and Eve, the first man, the first woman and their relationship to God and each other.)
>Moses didn't really see a burning bush, it was just a symbol to express his experience with God (and so he took his shoes off ... for WHAT REASON?)
>The Red Sea didn't really "part" because Moses had studied the receding pattern of tides in that area beforehand ... (and he walked HOW MANY Israelites through "dry-shod" just in time before it receded back on the Egyptian chariots?)
>Jesus didn't really change water into wine at Cana, they saved the best for last. (Is the head waiter's comment in John's Gospel not rhetorical..." Hmmm)
>Jesus didn't really consecrate bread and wine, trans-substantiate it. It's "just a symbol" (and then why didn't He chase after the people who left Him saying, "this teaching is too much for us!" Could He afford to lose a major portion of His following in the early days? Just sayin'.)
Or my absolute favorite, told to me from a Catholic school teacher whose faith seemed on-the-rocks:
>Jesus didn't really raise from the dead because He wasn't really dead. They used herbs to revive Him. (anyone who has read the description of death by crucifixion as published in the Journal of American Medical Association, JAMA, realizes how ludicrous that theory is.)
>Jesus didn't really rise from the dead; He just "rose" in the hearts and minds of His followers. (St. Paul said that if Christ isn't raised from the dead, truly, our faith is in vain and we are of all men to be the most pitied. Amen.)
So you see how the technique of "demythologizing," not just takes the story out of the story, it removes the whole meaning and point of the story. That being said, we could ask, "Did all things in the Bible happen literally as they are written?" And in response I will ask: "Are there not different types of truth, different purposes for telling stories?" So a Story could be a vehicle to get a point across. Whether or not it actually happened the way it is told is kind of beside the point. HOWEVER, before we go assigning "myth" status willy-nilly all over the Scriptures, we need to ask what the POINT of the story is... and also perhaps if there are other historical sources that may indicate the story isn't as far-fetched as we think it is. I have heard that there were cave drawings found in South America that are pictographs of a story that looks remarkably like ... Noah's Ark. Hmmm....
What WAS the point of the Jonah story anyways? In its historical context, it certainly could be making the point that when we run from God's plan for our lives because "we don't wanna do it..." He has the power to orchestrate a re-direction to get things back on track with His Plan. It could also be, from a human perspective, a story about a guy who got a Second Chance to do ministry when he was running away from it. It could be about how fear and lack of faith cripple our decision-making process. It could even be about the strange and humorous ways that repentance is brought about.
My friend Barb-the-Catholic-Science Teacher always used to say to me, "Bik, he didn't get swallowed by a whale because whales don't have teeth, they have baleen." And I would say to her, "Not the point. When I tell a 'whale of a story' it doesn't necessarily involve real whales. And how are we to know it wasn't some other form of sea creature and the Bible writer used the term "whale" generically?
Perhaps the most important interpretation of this Old Testament story for the Christian people is it's Christological significance. Jesus, before His death, said, "Father, if it is possible, take this cup from Me. But not as I will, let Your will be done." He was saying the opposite of Jonah. When Jonah was asked to preach to the dirty rotten scoundrels in Nineveh he said, "Later gator," and hopped a ship going the opposite direction. When the crew of Jonah's boat realized he was the reason the voyage was so rough and terrible, they threw him over board. (insert me brushing my hands together here. "so done with you, mister.") When Jesus' disciples were on the boat with Him and the weather got choppy, they cried out to Him in terror, but they didn't throw Him overboard. Later, in the Garden of Olives where He was betrayed, one of His own followers turned Him over to the arresting soldiers.
But let me ask you, how many DAYS was Jonah "in the belly of the whale?" And the next thing you know, the whale lets him out onto the sandy beach of Nineveh where he begins preaching. His hearers, sinners though they were, received his message and turned their lives around. It never talked about his success as a preacher among his own people, but of the marvelous success he had reaching the hearts and minds of the heathens. So. Think about this part of the story in relation to Jesus' resurrection. After three days in a cave, He comes forth by the power of God and visits His disciples who were cowering in fear in an upper room. His presence and the message of God's redemption of the human condition, power over sin and death, fills them to the point that they become the missionary Church to the known world. It is a message that started in a little town in Nazareth and by passing through death and overcoming it, became the message that changed everyone who received it. And that is the foreshadowing that is present in the Jonah story... Like so many of the key events in the history of Israel, it points prophetically to the work of Christ. To use the Greek word, it functions as a protoevangelion, fore-runner of the gospel.
But, no. Some homilists get all bogged down in saying the story isn't historically true and miss the opportunity to bring the truth OUT of the story.
The last time we had our argument I was prepared. He said, as he did so many times before to me and anyone who would listen, "You know the Jonah story isn't true." I looked at him and responded: "How do you know? You are Old, but you aren't old enough to have been there." And that is where we left it.
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