“A Whale of a Tale”
Jonah Selected Verses
Children’s Sunday + May 16, 2010
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404
This is the time of year when many kids will be taking final exams so let’s take a theological test together! What are the answers to these questions?
Don’t feel too bad if you got some of the questions wrong. People have been giving the wrong answers for a long, long time. As a matter of fact, the story of Jonah was written about 2,500 years ago because people were giving the wrong answers then.
Once upon a time, says the author, there was a man named Jonah. One day God spoke to Jonah and said, “I want you to go to the city of Ninevah and tell the people there that they need to change their ways.” So what did Jonah say? “Yes, Lord, I’ll be happy to do it.” No! He didn’t want to do it so he decided to run away from God. After all, Ninevah was the capital city of the Assyrians, one of the worst enemies Israel ever had. Besides, God only lived in Israel so it would be easy to get away from God.
Jonah went down to the port of Joppa and got on board a ship going to Tarshish, as far away from Israel as you could get in those days. Jonah felt safe. As a matter of fact he felt so safe that he went down to his cabin and took a nap.
But up on deck things weren’t going so well. There was a big storm, so big the sailors thought the ship was going to sink. All the time Jonah was sound asleep. Finally, the captain came down and woke him up. “What are doing sound asleep? Pray to your God to save our ship!”
Meanwhile up on deck the sailors had figured out that someone on board was real trouble. So they drew names out of a hat to see who God was angry at and the name was . . . Jonah! “Just throw me overboard and everything will be fine,” said Jonah. But the sailors wouldn’t do it. After all, they were pagans and pagans don’t do mean things like that. But the storm got worse and worse and, finally, the sailors gave in and threw Jonah over the side into the ocean. The storm stopped right away and the sailors gave thanks to God.
At that exact moment the Lord sent a large fish – a very, very large fish – to swallow Jonah. (Not a whale, by the way.) The fish took Jonah on a three day ichtheosauric ride back to Ninevah and spit him out on the shore. Which just goes to prove the truth of the old saying, “You can’t keep a good man down!” (I just had to throw that one in!)
Jonah, none the worse for his three-day fish trip, said, “O.K. Lord, you’ve got my attention. I’m ready to go to Ninevah and tell them to shape up.” And off he went to preach his sermon. It was short and sweet: “If you people don’t repent, God will destroy you all in forty days!” Then Jonah went off to take a nap.
But – would you believe it? – Jonah’s sermon worked. The people of Ninevah decided to change their ways, all of them, from the king on down. When God saw that they were sincere he forgave them. It was a happy ending. Well, happy for everyone except Jonah. He had really been looking forward to seeing the city destroyed. After all, these were bad people, his country’s enemies. He was so depressed he decided to take another nap. (Jonah was always taking naps, wasn’t he?)
It was a hot summer day and Jonah tried to find some shade for his nap but there was none to be found, so he went to sleep anyway. While he was sleeping God caused a miraculous shade bush to grow up. When Jonah saw it he was very happy. Then he went back to sleep again. But then God did a mean thing. God sent a worm to attack the bush and kill it and Jonah’s shade bush was destroyed. Boy, was Jonah angry then.
“Why did you do it, Lord?” asked Jonah. “I really loved my shade bush.” “Your shade bush,” said God. “You didn’t do anything to deserve that bush. And, by the way, why are you more upset about that bush than all the people in Ninevah you wanted to see killed, 120,000 of them, not to mention their pets?”
And that’s the end of the story. So now maybe we can give the right answers to our exam questions:
So if we got the right answers every time we heard those questions, wouldn’t that be a whale of a tale?