JONAH'S TOMB

(Explosions at the tomb of the prophet Jonah, in Mosul, Iraq. Read the CNN report. ) 

In July 2014, ISIS militants blew up the tomb of Jonah.  Yes, that Jonah.  The one from the Bible.  The fish guy.  Jonah.

Don’t feel bad.  I didn’t know Jonah had a tomb either.

Ancient Jews, Christians, and Muslims (who haven’t agreed on much since) agreed that the Old Testament prophet died and was buried in the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.  Today, we know Nineveh as the Iraqui city of Mosul.

Centuries after Jonah died, Muslims built a mosque around his tomb, and ISIS hates the fact that there’s anything that Muslims, Jews, and Christians have in common, so they strapped explosives to the mosque and killed it.

That bit of current events matters because the book of Jonah ends without closure.  Jonah is last seen sitting under a withered gourd vine griping to God about the redemption of Nineveh.

But now, we know the rest of the story.  Now I understand why Jonah was so mad.

I knew that the Ninevites were Israel’s ethnic, religious, and political enemies, but every time I read Jonah chapter 4, it sounded like Jonah was taking the whole thing way too personally.  But I get it now.

Jonah was a prosperity prophet. 

2 Kings 14: 25 says: King Jeroboam restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which the Lord God had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher.

Jonah ministered in Israel to a prosperous people in a time  that the national economy, and especially the real estate sector, were expanding.  Jonah’s name means “Dove.” Jonah’s father name, Amittai, means “Truth.” 

The prophet would have been introduced as “The Son of Truth, the Dove of the Lord, the Prophet of Increase--- Jonah of Galilee!”

When God told Jonah to leave his prosperous ministry in Israel and go to Nineveh, it was like God telling Creflo Dollar to leave the World Changers Church International and go preach repentance  to ISIS militants in Mosul.

The prosperity preacher said, “I’d rather quit, cash in my stocks, move out of the country, and retire in Tarshish.”  (Jonah 1: 1-3) 

But Jonah prophetic gift was genuine; so when the Lord told him to preach in Nineveh-Mosul, Jonah understood that God wasn’t just calling him to speak at a conference and then fly his private jet back home.

If the pagan Ninevites accepted his message and turned to God, then they would need more than a prophet.  They would need a PASTOR.  And since Jonah was the only qualified clergy in town, he’d be stuck in Nineveh, serving over 120,000 baby-believers whose relationship to God was based on repentance and fasting --- not prosperity.   Jonah would be stuck there for the rest of his life.

And that is exactly what happened.

So he prayed to the Lord, and said, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish.” (Jonah 4: 2)

Here are the two major lessons for you and me:

1.      The thing you’re afraid God is going to ask you to do is quite possibly the thing God is going to ask you to do. 

And since you can’t stop God from asking you (and chasing you down with a storm and a giant fish to get you to do it), then you might as well get over being afraid.

2.      There’s always closure. From the outside, in the now, we may only be able to see what we’re losing.  In the moment others may only see you defeated by your fears. 

But, if you persist in obedience, God will build for you a legacy that still stands centuries later, a legacy that not even explosives can erase.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

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