Sermon: Jonah’s Great Fish, Miracle or Metaphor? (Jonah part 5)

Sermon by Matt Kennedy
Jonah 1:17
Sunday, December 11th, 2011

I’ve been promising for the last two weeks to deal with the elephant in the room: Is this for real? Did Jonah really spend three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish?

Let’s be clear about the animal first. The Hebrew word translated “great fish” is the most general Hebrew term for sea animals. It means large sea creature.

Alright so: did a large sea creature really swallow Jonah?

People who say no, do so for two reasons.

The first is an argument from impossibility. Even if, a large sea creature were to swallow a man, nobody could survive 72 hours without oxygen, immersed in acidic digestive fluids. It’s impossible.

In response some have cited historical whale swallowing survival stories. There was an English whaler named James Bartley swallowed by a sperm whale in the 1890s. The whale was killed, dragged to port, and 15hrs later, when they cut open the belly, James popped out—no hair, bleached skin, but otherwise, fine. In 1991, however, historian Edward Davis concluded that the story was a hoax. So I wouldn’t go there.

Others appeal to studies on the body’s capacity to store oxygen. Under the right conditions, some biologists argue, humans might survive 72hrs inside a large, oxygen breathing, sea mammal.

Defending the fish story by digging up evidence that “it could’ve happened” misses the entire point of miracles.

It’s Advent, let’s take Mary for example (Luke 1:29-38). Women don’t conceive without a man somewhere in the picture. It’s “impossible.” Mary mentions that fact in her exchange with Gabriel(1:34). Gabriel doesn’t argue. He says, essentially, you’re right. But, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (1.35) It’s impossible, yes, that’s the point. The child is going to be God’s Son—God is doing something we can’t replicate—for which there is no biological/historical precedence. Why? Verse 37, “For nothing will be impossible with God.” 

So when your friends object to the virgin birth saying: “virgins can’t have babies.” There’s no use trotting the globe trying to find another pregnant virgin. You’re not finding one. It’s impossible.

The question your friend really needs to deal with is whether he or she believes there’s a God who created all things through the power of his word and holds them in being through the same power (Col 1:15). If so, such a God will have no trouble making a human baby in the womb of a virgin. If, not, that’s where you need to start.

The bible claims that this is God’s cosmos. He acts within it in both patterned processes we’re accustomed to—and in ways that defy our perceptions of what is possible.

Even if the bible didn’t say so, we all believe this, sometimes despite ourselves. When I was an agnostic, when afraid, I had to force myself not to cry out to God. When experiencing pain, trouble, sorrow, fear, situations beyond human hope, what do we do? Cry out to God. Some of us try to educate ourselves out of it, but our hearts know that God is and that he’s able to do the impossible. Jonah cries out to God in the sea. He knows. The sailors cry out. They know.

Where does this instinct come from? Paul answers that question in Romans 1: “His invisible attributes…his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world…”(1:20) We all know of his existence, his rule over the cosmos, and his ability to save because that knowledge has been engraved in our hearts by God himself.

We have to persuade ourselves, “educate” ourselves, out of that innate knowledge. The ancients observed the regular patterns of nature like we do but nobody except the strange collection of human beings in the west over the last 300 years imagined that these processes were driven by nothing but themselves.

Wayne Grudem defines a miracle as, “A less common kind of God’s activity in which he arouses people’s awe and wonder and bears witness to himself.” I love that definition because it affirms God’s direct involvement in everything that takes place. God doesn’t “disrupt” the “laws of nature” when he performs miracles like the naked fan streaking across the football field “disrupts” the game. He’s in the game, he makes the game go. And sometimes he works in spectacular unexpected ways, defying the “possible”.

We’re the only ones in the world who freak out about that because we’ve erected this weird arbitrary and illogical line separating “the laws of nature” and God. The bible recognizes no such line. God, we’re told, causes the rain to fall, the wind to blow, and lightning strike.

“Bah. The rain falls because of meteorological conditions.” And God is in control of them all. “He it is,” we’re told in psalm 135, “who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightning for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.” (Psalm 135)

God is in the game all the time. He makes the game go.

So When God makes virgins pregnant or carries bad prophets from one place to another in the belly of a fish, he’s not rousing himself to break the laws of nature, he’s simply working in the world, as he always does, but in a less common way. God makes it rain, God raises the dead—just another day at the office for God.

“God appointed a great fish”. We don’t need to explain that by appealing to biology or sham history. God did it.

At the heart of the “that’s impossible” objection is either 1. a rejection of God’s existence or 2. A rejection of his active sustaining presence—either you’re considering miracles from an Atheist perspective—there is no God…or Deist one—God wound up the watch and walked away.

If you believe that God created and is actively present in all things—then there’s no reason to reject out of hand Jonah and the fish. If you believe what the bible says about Mary’s pregnancy then Jonah and the big fish is no problem.

That God can do something doesn’t mean he did do it.

Second objection: Some Christians who believe the bible and believe in miracles still don’t believe Jonah 1:17 .

To get the meaning of a book you have know what kind of book you’re reading. If you read “The Lord of the Rings” as history, you’ll come away confused or convinced that JRR Tolkien was stoned. But if you know it’s fantasy, you’ll see the beauty and truth of the world Tolkien created.

Likewise, if you read Revelation as a historical narrative you’ll think, “this is crazy.” But if you know that Revelation is of a special kind of literature that employs symbolic imagery to point to theological realities, you’ll be equipped to get it. If you read John’s gospel without knowing it’s history, you might out with some weird ideas. John, for example, reports that they caught153 fish and you’ll wonder what magical mystery meaning lies behind the number 153. John’s a fisherman. This is history. They caught 153 fish.

So what? Some argue that Jonah’s not a history but parable. We read Jonah literally when the author meant it parabolically.

I disagree with this for three reasons:

First, Jonah bears all the marks of ancient written history. When you read the gospels and read Jonah, there’s no difference in form or style. Both deal with named historical people who act in named historic places in historically plausible ways. Parables rarely include personal names but when they do, they’re always fictional because the point is to take the listener into an imaginary situation. The names of places and times are also often omitted for the same reason. Using Jonah son of Amittai from Gath Hepher, a real prophet, called to Nineveh during the reign of Jeroboam II, running to Tarshish via Joppa defeats the purpose.

If the book of Jonah is a parable disguised as history then the disguise is flawless. 

You might say, “the fish story itself demonstrates that it’s fiction.” No more than a story about a virgin giving birth. Almost all the historical narratives in the bible include miracles so you’ve got to find some other reason to discount Jonah. The problem is there is none.

Second: when Jesus tells a parable he starts with: “The kingdom of God is like…” and then goes on, identifying the story as parable. When he doesn’t, the gospel authors do. The same is true in the OT. When the prophet Nathan confronts David about his adultery and murder, he tells story that about a rich man slaughtering a poor man’s only lamb for dinner. David thinks the story is real and declares, “The one who did this shall die”. Nathan responds: “you’re the man.” It’s a parable.

There’s nothing like that in Jonah.

Third, Jesus believed the fish story. Matthew 12:40. Verses 38-42 deal with Jonah. Jesus mentions the fish verse 40:

“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
“Just as”. Just as Jonah was in the fish, I’ll be in the grave. The comparison is between a past historical event and a future historical event. It would defeat Jesus’ purpose to make a comparison between fiction and fact. He’s speaking to hostile critics. If I were one, I’d say: “Yeah Jesus, you’ll come out of the grave “just as” Jonah did ”. The comparison only works if both Jesus and his critics believe the fish story.

Perhaps Jesus was just playing along with what the people believed? Or maybe Jesus didn’t know the truth himself?

Well, then we have a problem. On the one hand Jesus engages in deception, affirming a story he knows is not true. On the other hand he teaches something false out of ignorance which is equally problematic because the biblical definition of a false prophet (Dt 18) is one who teaches anything untrue…even if he thinks it’s true. So if Jonah is not history, Jesus is not a prophet. Moreover, Jesus claims in John: “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.”(8:28) Jesus in his humanity may be ignorant of various things. The Father is not. When Jesus doesn’t know—when the father has not “taught him”—he never teaches as if he does.

For all these, reasons, I think the fish is true. God really sent a large fish to save Jonah. Jonah was there 72 hours. And ultimately vomited out on the beach.

So what? We have a habit of spiritualizing everything. We read about Noah’s ark and immediately go to the analogy between the Ark and the salvation. We read about Jesus calming the storm and go immediately to Jesus giving us inner peace in the midst of trouble. That’s fine and true. But what miracles also tell us, is that God doesn’t just care about the peace of our immortal souls. He cares about the material world. He cares about the human body. He cares when you’re sick. He cares about the wellbeing of the natural world. He’s not just waiting for everything to crash and burn and for all of us to die so we can be with him in the floaty place. He cares about the material world here and now and he can and does work miraculously in it. And so he wants you to cry out to him when you’re sick. When you’re in pain. When you’re afraid. When life is closing in around you, you can cry out to God confident in his power to rescue, not only eternally, but here and now.

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