“Everybody knows about Jonah. People who have never read the Bible know enough about Jonah to laugh at a joke about him and “the ‘whale.’” Jonah has entered our folklore. There is a playful aspect to his story, a kind of slapstick clumsiness about Jonah as he bumbles (borne out of inconsistent obedience/’subtle’ rebellion, rooted in distrust of God/His Ultimate & Universal Goodness and/or self-absorption/pride/thinking he knew better than God) his way along, trying, but always unsuccessfully, to avoid God.
But the playfulness is not frivolous. This is deadly serious. While we are smiling or laughing at Jonah, we drop the guard with which we are trying to keep God at a comfortable distance, and suddenly we find ourselves caught in the purposes and commands of God. All of us. No exceptions.
(Real-life) Stories are the most prominent biblical way of helping us see ourselves in “the God story,” which always gets around to the story of God making and saving us. Stories, in contrast to abstract statements of truth, tease us into becoming participants in what is being said. We find ourselves involved in the action. We may start out as spectators or critics, but if the story is good (and the biblical stories are very good!), we find ourselves no longer just listening to but (actually) inhabiting the story.
One reason that the Jonah story is so enduringly important for nurturing the life of faith in us is that Jonah is not a hero too high and mighty for us to identify with—he doesn’t do anything great. Instead of being held up as an ideal to admire, we find Jonah as a companion in our ineptness. Here is someone on our level. Even when Jonah does it right (like preaching, finally, in Nineveh), he does it wrong (by getting angry at God). But the whole time, God is working within and around Jonah’s very ineptness and accomplishing his purposes in him (and through him)! Most of us need a biblical friend or two like Jonah.” Eugene Peterson, in commentary preceding the Book of Jonah, in his Message Bible, pg. 1265 (words in parenthesis and italics added by me).
Ponderings of a Sojourner 