The Sign of Jonah: Enter the Hero

For a variety of reasons (only one of which is to save money on fuel oil over the winter) we are going to meet in the church basement for the first three months of 2010. I think of it as an extra-long Lenten season—our time of preparation for Easter. During Lent, we are encouraged to meditate on the suffering and death of Jesus on our behalf. If Jesus can be three days and nights in the tomb before being resurrected, then maybe it is okay to spend three months in the basement before returning upstairs for Easter Sunday on April 4th.



Matthew 12:38-42


Commentary


The sermon series for the next three months is titled “The Sign of Jonah.” In going through my archives, I realize that I spoke about the sign of Jonah a few months ago (August 9, 2009: “From Church Growth to Kingdom Growth”). That message focused on Jonah 4, and the revival at Nineveh. At that time, I said (and I still maintain) that a prophetic sign is a visible act of God that points beyond itself to a less visible, but more important, act of God.


v39  a wicked and adulterous generation. Generally, adultery in the Bible refers to infidelity between God and humans. God is faithful, but humans are fickle—ready to give their love to any “god” that promises what they think they are lacking. How would this title apply to the Pharisees and teachers of the law?


the sign of the prophet Jonah. In Jonah, the sign is the deathly tale of a disobedient Jonah swallowed by a whale, or great fish, and vomited up three days later on dry land, ready to do God’s will. This miracle is the sign that the spiritual revival at Nineveh—a large-scale deliverance from death to life—would really happen.


v40  so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Likewise, as profound as the resurrection is, it is only the sign of God’s mighty work and the means by which all can be saved.


If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8:11)


v41-42  The mighty power of God is “to bring life [physical or spiritual] to the dead, and call things that are not as though they were” (Rom 4:17). Even pagans like the men of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba could apprehend it and turn towards God—how much more should the teachers of the law, the Pharisees, and us?


Application


In Miracles, C.S. Lewis states that there are patterns apparent in how God works. Citing John 5:19 (“The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”) Lewis says, “There is, so to speak, a family style.” Lewis contrasts the pattern of God’s miracles with the myths of other religions:


I am trying to answer those who think that miracles are arbitrary, theatrical, unworthy of God, meaningless interruptions of universal order. They remain in my view wholly miraculous ... When I open Ovid or The Brothers Grimm, I find the sort of miracles which really would be arbitrary. Trees talk, houses turn into trees, magic rings raise tables richly spread with food in lonely places, ships become goddesses, and men are changed into snakes or birds or bears. It is fun to read about: the least suspicion that it had really happened would turn that fun into nightmare. You find no miracles of that kind in the Gospels.


Lewis summarizes:


The miracles done by God Incarnate, living as a man in Palestine, performed the very same things as [the mighty deeds of the Father], but at a different speed and on a smaller scale. One of their chief purposes is that men, having seen the thing done by personal power on a small scale, may recognize, when they see the same thing done on a large scale, that the power behind it is also personal, is indeed the very same Person who lived among us nearly two thousand years ago. The miracles, in fact, are retelling in small letters of the very same story that is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.


One of the patterns of how God works in the Bible—the pattern that we will be looking at for the next three months—appears in the myths of other religions and in classical literature and pop culture as well. It is the pattern, on one hand, of Jonah and the whale and Elijah at Mt. Horeb; on the other, it is the pattern of the Star Wars epics and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is the pattern, on one hand, of Moses at the Red Sea and Peter walking on water; one the other, it is the pattern of Orpheus descending to the underworld to save his wife Eurydice. It is the pattern, on one hand, of Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress; on the other, it is the pattern of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It is the pattern of the hero.


Mythologist Joseph Campbell articulated the pattern of the hero’s journey; in brief:


● the hero is living in the ordinary world,


● he receives a call to a different place,


● in his journey to that place, he encounters supernatural help,


● he reaches the gateway of this new place, a place that will transform him,


● he encounters increasingly difficult trials and temptations leading ultimately to an abyss (or place of death),


● either the hero does not die, or he dies and is resurrected,


● he begins his return to his former world; however,


● he has been transformed, even as he returns to his former world with a gift. [1]


This is the pattern we follow—more or less—when we give our testimony. This is the pattern we follow when God calls us to follow him. This is the pattern of dying to self and being raised up to newer, fuller life.


Like the Pharisees, when we ask for a sign, we have in mind some kind of cute miracle—maybe a heart-shaped cloud, something magical, a curious coincidence at least. To parrot Jesus, I say, “Your sign usually is going to be the sign of Jonah—the sign of the hero on his/her journey—as you are called to follow me, to go to the abyss, whereupon I will bring you back … transformed.


Points to Ponder


Using the eight parts (more or less) of the hero’s journey listed above, what hero’s journey (or journeys) have you been on?


What if we as a congregation were on a hero’s journey for three months in the basement of the church? What might God be calling upon us to do? Are we willing to follow, to die to self, and to be transformed?

End Notes

1 - For Jesus, this pattern might be: his incarnation; his baptism by John; his transfiguration; his triumphal entry; his arrest, trial, crucifixion and death; his resurrection; his appearance before his disciples, his ascension and Pentecost.