I tend to be claustrophobic, which means I’m not much for flying on airplanes or participating in anything that requires close quarters. Caves or tunnels, as you might imagine, are particularly terrifying, so I generally try to avoid those. Except for that time I visited some of the cliff dwellings once claimed as home by the Anasazi tribes in Mesa Verde, Colorado. Wanting to be prepared, I took a look at the brochure the night before. I knew it might be close quarters in some places, but come on, how bad could it be? Sigh. According to the pictures, which illustrated plainly that the group would at one point have to crawl through a narrow tunnel, it could be pretty bad.

 

I am not a small person and though the picture showed an adult emerging from the tunnel with room to spare, I was nevertheless filled with panic: What if it collapsed? What if I got stuck? What if, what if?

 

Being a brave and hearty soul, I vowed not to let fear get the best of me. I made up my mind that I would block it all out and without much of a problem, make it through the end of our tour. Gwynne and I formulated a game plan: She would crawl through first, and I would wait until she reached the far end. Then I would inch through the tunnel focusing only on her; she would be the focal point, keeping me from thinking about what was actually taking place. The plan, like the trip itself, seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

The tour began, and I pretended to be interested in the different sites the guide pointed out so as not to alert the group that the biggest guy in attendance was about to have a panic attack. For a while everything appeared fine – and then we arrived at The Tunnel. As I surveyed the entrance, it occurred to me that the ‘adult’ in the photo must have been a mature-looking first grader. There was no way I would fit; let the panic begin.

 

Adhering to our plan, Gwynne crawled through first as I tried to put on my best game face, playing “Joe Cool” as I stood before those waiting in line behind me. Once Gwynne made it through the tunnel, it was my turn. No more delay. The moment had come.

 

The tunnel itself confirmed my suspicions; as I got down on my hands and knees to crawl through, I was not looking into the sweet and encouraging eyes of my wife on the other end, but at the rock wall above the tunnel. Even on all fours I was too tall to crawl through! The only way I was going to make it to the other side was by lying on my stomach and inching my way along in an agonizingly cramped army crawl. The alert system inside my head went from panic attack to abject terror. My wife, saint that she is, managed to stifle her laughter until I reached (unscathed, of course) the other side.

 

If you’re wondering what this has to do with the story of Jonah, the answer is simple: he got on a boat. Claustrophobic people like me don’t get on boats. Boats are small. Even the big ones are small on the inside, and if they sink all you get to look forward to is watching your last breath bubble to the surface as you descend to the bottom of the sea. So, while most people think Jonah was a bonehead for running from God, I have to wonder: “What kind of imbecile would get on a ship in the first place?” It’s like flying; you’re on your own. Even Jesus said, “Low I am with you always” – or something like that.

 

Ancient seafaring peoples didn’t keep very good records about their cruise itineraries. I can’t find any information about the buffets, the house band, or the shuffleboard tournaments. Mostly, my impression is that passengers just prayed for smooth sailing and hung on for dear life until they reached their journey’s end—which affirms my claustrophobic reaction to ships and brings us to a very interesting part of the narrative.

 

God called Jonah to go to the metropolis of Nineveh and preach a message of repentance to its inhabitants. To us, this may not seem like that big of a deal. But a devout Jew in Jonah’s time wanted nothing to do with such a calling. The Ninevites were Assyrians, and at that time the Assyrians were the dreaded enemies of the Israelites. To the Jews, they were heathen Gentile scum, the world’s preeminent power and the seat of corruption and oppression. They were lost. Unreachable. With any luck, God would surely wipe these offensive pagans off the face of the planet. God, however, apparently doesn’t think in these terms, because he seemed to want them to turn from their unjust ways and be saved from destruction.

 

So God called Jonah to go preach, but Jonah had other ideas. If God wanted him to walk east to Nineveh, he’d sail west to Joppa. I’m sure, like my plan to crawl through the tunnel, this seemed like a good idea at the time. Yet as Jonah boarded the ship headed for Spain, the reordering of his life had begun.

 

As we get into the story of Jonah’s ordeal, a kind of three-part cadence emerges, a little like a waltz rhythm: one, two, three. The pulse begins with Jonah 1:1-2 telling us of the initial call of God: “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’”

 

One.

 

Verse 3 contains the ominous words, “But Jonah…” Regardless of God’s will, Jonah is set in his ways and has his own ideas. 

 

Two.

 

This leads us to the third beat of the story’s rhythm; the opening words of verse 4, counters Jonah’s refusal: “But God…”

 

Three.

There you have it: life in a nutshell. It begins with the call of God that forms the meaning of our lives. This is followed by the second beat, our reaction, which is followed by the third beat, God’s response. God calls and, one way or another, we answer. But make no mistake: God never leaves it at that. Especially if we, like Jonah, decide to go in an opposite direction. God does not abandon Jonah; instead, he remains engaged in the process of Jonah’s calling, still leading him in that waltz. So passionately committed is God to winning our hearts that he remains relentless in his pursuit. The dance continues. And that is exactly how he is about to encounter Jonah.

 

The itinerary for Jonah’s cruise also included a prayer meeting. Well, okay, this was probably not on the original schedule. In fact, a prayer meeting is one of the last things we can picture these rough-and-ready sailors getting involved in. But that’s exactly what they did in response to a massive storm God had brought upon the boat. After they threw the cargo overboard in a vain attempt to prevent the ship from sinking, they prayed to their gods and urged others to do the same. How quickly life can be reordered when we sense that it is about to end. Even a band of ruddy roughshod sailors, as the storms of life overtake them, cry out to anyone who will listen. 

 

But their naked desperation does them no good. The sea refuses to give up its raging. The winds blow and the waves crash over the boat. With all options exhausted and the circumstances appearing hopeless, the crew does what we all inevitably do in a bad situation we can’t seem to fix: they assign blame. The ship will probably still sink and everyone will almost certainly die, but we’ll feel so much better knowing whose name to curse on the way to the bottom!

 

The crew cast lots to determine the guilty party. We don’t put much stock in this sort of thing today, but at least for the purposes of the story, it worked: Jonah was fingered as the one responsible for their calamity. The sailors grill Jonah for some kind of answer: “Why has this fate come upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”

 

I have to wonder just how convicted Jonah must have felt as he responded, “I am a Hebrew. I worship the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Those last words seem a bit Freudian. They speak of the one thing everyone on board most desires to see – dry land. But would they see it? If only he would have reordered his life around the original call of God while he had a chance. But he didn’t. And now it seems too late. Jonah’s selfishness has sealed the fate of everyone on board.

 

Upon hearing that Jonah, the Hebrew, is fleeing from the God of the Hebrews, the crew becomes “even more afraid.” The stories of Israel’s God had spread through the world in which Jonah lived. It must have struck them as utter insanity that Jonah would know such a God, be called by this God, and yet still respond rebelliously toward him. Sometimes people outside of our story understand it better than we do.

 

In Jonah, we can certainly see ourselves. In times of crisis and pain, in times of fear and failure, there are questions that come to mind. Who am I? Where have I come from? How did I arrive at this point? Who is the God I serve? What have I done? Our minds race to find meaning, a thread, some sense of coherence that might allow us to make sense of a life that we feel we’ve never really lived.

 

Like Jonah, we know this God of the Hebrews. Like Jonah, we understand that he has called us out so that we might speak a word back into our world. And, like Jonah, we bristle at the call. Why do we so often find ourselves going in the opposite direction?

 

I find the response of the sailors admirable: “Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them.” What irony. Perhaps some of these men had relatives in Nineveh, the city to whom Jonah is called to preach repentance so that they might be saved. Jonah turned his back on Nineveh and endangered the lives of everyone on board, and still the sailors were working hard to save his life. Jonah may have been called by God, but his “heathen” couriers had more compassion.

 

Despite the sailors’ best efforts to row to shore, the storm took its toll and the ship was in danger. As a last-ditch attempt to save the vessel and the passengers these Gentile mariners took drastic action; having exhausted all other options, the sailors prayed to Jonah’s God for mercy and tossed their Hebrew interloper overboard. “[A]nd the sea,” the Bible tells us, “ceased its raging” (1:15).

 

To get the full affect, you need to read those last words slowly:

 

And the sea…ceased…its raging.

 

These weathered sailors have been fighting the storm for hours. As seasoned seafarers they know the devastating potential of nature’s forces. Their last desperate act is one of casting Jonah overboard, a course of action that runs counter to all of their instincts about the protection of their passengers.

 

And now everything has become still. The wind and the waves cease. The chaotic turbulence of the waters is calmed as order returns to the face of the water. The fear of certain death is assuaged as the churning sea is rendered placid. No more wind, no more waves, no more storm. There is only a day so tranquil that it eerily testifies to the presence of God – a God to whom every person on board is now offering sacrifices and vows. For the people on that ship, all of life had been immediately reordered.

 

Jonah’s life had been reordered, too, of course; while the scene on the surface is instructive and inspiring, the real story shifts to what is occurring in the depths below. Jonah sinks to the bottom of the sea. To understand the circumstances of how his life is about to be touched by God, we pick up his prayer beginning in chapter two of his namesake book:

 

I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?” The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever… (Jonah 2:1-6a).

 

God took Jonah into the deepest, darkest Gethsemane he had ever known to give him a reality check like nothing he had ever experienced before. When you find yourself sinking to the roots of the mountains with seaweed wrapped around your head, it’s a pretty good sign that things are not going as planned. When you reach this point, what do you do? Where do you turn? When there is nothing left and you are drawing your final breath, what will your response be?

 

Jonah’s response is similar to one of the prayers of Solomon, that God would always hear the cries of his people:

 

May your eyes be open day and night toward this house [the temple], the place where you promised to set your name, and may you heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. And hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place; may you hear from heaven your dwelling place; hear and forgive” (2 Chronicles 6:20-21).

 

Note how closely Solomon’s prayer echoes the words of Jonah: “As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple” (2:7). The result? God responds to the last-gasp prayer of Jonah, bringing his life up from the pit (2:6). At the moment Jonah cries to the God of last resort, God sends his ‘water-taxi’ that will, three days later, deposit Jonah on the beach!

 

In the spirit of Solomon’s prayer, Jonah turns toward God; from his holy temple the Lord answers his prayer. God hears and forgives. God spares Jonah to live another day. It doesn’t seem to matter to God that Jonah is clearly desperate, praying in a moment of crisis for God to rescue him. Jonah’s prayer was self-serving – what else could it be? – but God heard him and became his salvation.

 

Though a decade my senior, Gary and I were good friends. He was a tough businessman and ran a tight ship. He could appear gruff, and his language was often salty, but he grew to have a heart for God. Gary had been raised in a Christian family but did not pursue a relationship with God once he left home for college. In time he married, and after he became a father it seemed best to him to put up a good front and tag along with his family as they attended church each Sunday.

 

The longer he sat through some of my teachings at church the more interested he became. Often, while we teed up for a round of golf, our conversation would gravitate toward various spiritual topics that proved to be of growing interest to Gary. He was captivated by the historical accounts of God’s working in the world and saw some direct correlations with how God was working in his life as well.

 

Over time Gary shared with me how his view of God was changing, how he was beginning to see a God of love as opposed to the god of wrath he had known in his younger years. As his view of God broadened, his interest in God deepened and eventually he made a personal, deep commitment to walking with God in a more intimate way.

 

Gary’s life appeared to be perfect. His business was solid, his family was healthy and his life was filled with love. Except for his golf game, as I was fond of reminding him, everything seemed to be on the upswing.

 

But then life happened.

 

Gary walked into church one Sunday morning and asked me if we could go somewhere private to talk. “Tim,” he said, “I found out what was wrong with my back. I’ve got terminal cancer. The doctor has given me six weeks to live.”

 

I was floored. In an instant I felt sick with so many different feelings and emotions. I questioned God: How can this be? Why? And I begged: Not now. Not with a family to support. Not with bills to pay and kids to marry off and grandkids to be embraced and so much of life ahead. Please; this can’t be happening. 

 

We cried. We prayed. Before we left the room, Gary asked the most sobering question anyone has ever asked me: “I know you’re very busy, Tim, but can we spend whatever time I have left just talking about God and heaven and what you think it will be like?” Gary was inviting me to walk with him into his Gethsemane; he wanted to know if I could stay awake long enough to help him enter into his rest.

 

The next six weeks were the most blessed and traumatic of my life. As his death drew near he narrowed his circle of friends to me and his immediate family. He wanted nothing to distract him as he prepared to make his final journey home. Every day I sat with him and talked about the God of love I had come to know. As he became too weak to converse, I would read to him passages I found particularly inspiring. One of his favorite stories was the story of Jonah. Gary loved to hear that when Jonah called out to God, God was there, just as he had been the entire time, waiting to respond in loving-kindness.

 

It was a Wednesday when I received a call telling me that Gary had been taken to the hospital. In spite of large doses of medication, Gary had reached a point where the pain was overwhelming. Though he insisted on dying at home, his wife could not bear his agony any longer and she called for an ambulance.

 

I rushed to the hospital hoping to have more time with him. I wanted him to know I was with him – and more importantly, that God was with him. When I arrived I was ushered to a waiting area where I began praying with his wife and three children as the medical staff attended to Gary. Soon the nurse appeared from the door of his room with the sullen words, “He’s dying. We’ve done all we can do. You might want to go in now.”

 

The memory of standing by his wife as she ran her fingers through his hair and tenderly spoke words of loving kindness will never leave me. I wept tears of sorrow, tears of pain, and tears of joy as Gary passed from our hands into the hands of God. I thanked God that Gary and I had those last days together. And I thanked Gary that he allowed me to share them with him.

 

It was a holy moment. For an instant and in a way more profound than any I’ve known before or since, I knew the depth of Solomon’s plea and Jonah’s prayer that God would hear and forgive. Though those prayers had been spoken centuries before, God continued to be faithful. The same God who rescued Jonah from the darkness of his despair had rescued Gary, too.

 

I’ve always liked the way the book of Jonah is laid out in our modern Bibles. Each chapter represents a new place in Jonah’s life and relationship with God and is demonstrative of how turbulent our relationship with God can be. As is often the case, prepositions are very important in this story. For instance, the first chapter is about Jonah running from God and suffering the consequences of such a poor choice. In chapter two, Jonah, sopping wet from fish barf, wisely reverses course and runs back to God. Finally, in chapter three, Jonah is discovered running with God as he fulfills his mission to go and preach to the Ninevehites. But, as life would have it, our final chapter finds Jonah running ahead of God; he isn’t at all pleased that God is going to grant mercy to Israel’s enemies. Amazingly, blindly, Jonah is not willing to extend to others what God in his good grace has first extended to him.

 

In the end, however, the story is not about Jonah. This is the really remarkable part—the story is about God. And that is what makes this story part of the greatest of all stories. It’s a story about God’s love for all humanity, not just for a chosen few. It’s about God’s willingness to show concern for other parts of the world not often appearing on our radar. It demonstrates the principle of how God extends his tenderness to the diverse peoples of the world, from New York to Papua New Guinea. It’s about the God who shows his tenderness for all of creation, even the animals (Jonah 4:11, Psalm 36:6).

 

This was the God Gary wanted to know more about before he passed to the other side. And so for days we spoke of this God and of his love. We spoke of his unsearchable riches and how in Christ, we had received every blessing in the heavenly places.

 

Before dying, Gary had asked me to conduct his funeral, and I spent a great amount of time considering what I wanted to say. I thought of the people who would be in attendance and how they knew him. Some would know him from work, some from church, and some from his childhood. All of them, though, would know him for being the transparent person he was – for better or worse. But the one thing of which I was certain was that none of them would know him as I had known him in the last few weeks of his life. And so I decided to speak of this Gary.

 

It took everything I had to choke back the tears. Gary’s friends exceeded the 1,200-person capacity of the hall. The music stopped and everyone stood in respect as his wife Charlene entered the auditorium to be seated. With that it was time to begin. I took a deep breath, approached the podium, and collected myself. I purposefully began by saying, “Everyone who knew Gary knew that Gary was not perfect.”

 

Heads nodded in agreement and smiles crossed many faces, some of them pondering Gary’s ultimate destination as they headed to say their final farewell that day. It’s a common reaction at funerals; we often recall the imperfections of others as we inwardly wonder about their postmortem fate. Are they facing mercy or justice, reward or judgment? “Don’t even think that way,” we scold ourselves. But it is too late; we can’t unthink the thought. Yet in times like these our nervous questions about our departed friends betray the doubts we inwardly harbor about ourselves.

 

After reminding everyone in attendance that Gary was not perfect and eliciting a sufficient number of heads nodding in agreement, I paused and asked… “Or was he?”

 

I shared the Biblical stories and texts that spoke to Gary during his last few days upon this earth, passages like the fifth chapter of Romans. Even today, I recall the joy it brought Gary to learn from verse six that Christ died for us while we were helpless. And then from verse eight how Christ died for us while we were sinners. And finally, from verse ten Christ died for us while we were enemies of God. Gary sensed his greatest peace as it occurred to him that while we were helpless, sinning, enemies of God, God gave us nothing less than his all.

 

The best part of this truth is that no matter how you define it, nobody is worse than a helpless, sinning, enemy of God. No definition exists that can possibly make a person less than that. And I’m pretty sure that was God’s point.

 

I spoke of how Gary found comfort in Romans chapter eight and how we were “more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Gary resonated with the realization that nothing, absolutely nothing could separate us from the love of God – “not death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” (9:37ff.).

 

I concluded by quoting Gary’s favorite verse of all, 1 John 3:9, “Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God.”

 

With that the verdict was in: Gary was, indeed, perfect.

 

Jonah spent three days in the belly of that great fish, whatever kind it was. This was not a three-day weekend; it was an occasion to think, to labor, to reorder his life and to vow that if he ever saw the light of day again that things would be different.

 

Though I’m not recommending it, I imagine three days inside a sea creature could bring a lot of clarity to a person’s mind and soul. Much can be accomplished in three days, and, as Matthew tells us, that’s exactly what happened with Jesus. “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man [would] be in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). Jonah’s shadow fell over Jesus that Gethsemane night as he prayed and sought solace in the story of his holy, God-wrestling forbearer.

 

In giving his life there was still work to do. He would experience his own three days of single-minded clarity as he lay in the earth awaiting resurrection at the hand of God. Listen to the words of Peter as he leads us behind the veil of this mystery:

 

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark… (1 Peter 3:18-20).

 

So there they are, Noah and Jonah, our two examples of a reordered life forever linked together. Peter also mentions those on the receiving end of the flood, those for whom the heart of God so long ago grieved – but who, unlike Noah, did not board that boat.

 

I can see Jesus pondering these things in the garden of decision. He is about to enter his own deluge – a self-sacrifice fulfilling everything necessary to bring humanity back to God. He reaches backward in time and forward through time to fulfill his eternal call.

 

In Gethsemane, Jesus remembers Jonah. Would Jesus head toward the disturbing call of God, or would he run away? Would he willingly be cast into the deep to save the lives of others? Would he dare to believe that God would deliver him from the deep?

 

Jesus prays and cries and sweats. His future experience remains unknown, yet he is sustained by the strength of a life long ago reordered. The question remains, Will he be able to make this journey? It is only by the faith and wisdom of a single-minded life given into the hands of God that he is even able to entertain what lies before him.

 

As we join with Jesus in his Gethsemane, we find ourselves walking with the human Christ. And even more, we know that some day in our future, in the darkness of our Gethsemanes, he too will walk with us. This is the Jesus I want to know better. This is the one proclaimed as Immanuel—God with us. As we envision walking with him through the valley of the shadow of our death, our hope is that we, too, will fear no evil, for we see Jesus as the one who has walked this way before. In our darkest time, we will find strength in him as nothing less than the divine gift of God, a gift we can know because of a life that has long since been reordered by the loving call of God.

 

URL: http://www.presence.tv/cms/per_jesus-gethsemane-us-part-6.php

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