The Sailors
The trouble with God’s urges is that you can’t escape. Run away and you take the problem with you. God came again, this time in the form of an enormous storm, at sea of all places, and Jonah suddenly finds himself once again (literally and metaphorically) in deep waters. He can neither answer the call nor escape it. In his attempt to avoid those dreadful people (the pagans, the heathen, the unbelievers), he now finds himself confronted with a captain and a crew who (whatever they are) are not part of the faithful. They want to know who he is and what he thinks he is doing. This is his new ‘Nineveh moment’.
It is a story of what happens when a person with a very strong sense of call comes into close proximity with a group of people from another faith and they find themselves facing a common problem in a time of crisis. Go back to your own ‘Nineveh moment’ and see if you can identify the sailors. Then compare these two reactions.
The sailors, far from running away, first cry to their god for help and then set about doing what is practical and possible. Next, they involve their nearest contact (Jonah), investigate possible causes and look for reasons and solutions, including the supernatural — this thing might be ‘of God’ (1: 10, 14). They even struggle to the limits of their ability. They display a basic humanitarianism, even refusing to ditch Jonah when he presents himself as the cause and actually invites them to do it. They display qualities of wisdom, selflessness, piety and faithfulness which Jonah seems unable to recognise, appreciate or emulate, yet remain people with whom he seems totally unable to cooperate. To the sailors the problem seems to be ‘an odd ball’ they have unfortunately encountered on the sea of life.
Jonah, by contrast, has little positive to offer. Obsessed with himself he has scant regard for those who refuse to see everything through his eyes and even in a time of deep distress which they share he fails to say anything about his God or to demonstrate the quality of life which might draw them to him.