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Biblical characters are often seen as two-dimensional, lacking background or nuance. But Jonah had a story. Knowing a person’s history and hardship has the potential to soften our own hearts and relate to that person differently, bringing empathy.

We don’t know much about Jonah, about his life circumstances or upbringing. We don’t know what kind of loss or joy he experienced. Based on the culture and history, with the Assyrians’ bloodthirsty oppressive violence over Israel, we can assume his life wasn’t easy. Human psychology tells us Jonah’s upbringing came with intergenerational trauma and difficulty where surviving is carried within a person’s DNA. When you aren’t sure how to make ends meet or how to feed your kids, when you’re called off to war, or when you hear that the next city over has been burned to the ground, there are certain traumas that become foundational to how a person navigates through their life. (The comparison of this ancient story with Israel and Gaza today is not lost on me. Violence begets violence as we watch our paradoxical bloodsoaked tax dollars protect and kill and aid all at once.) These ancient stories have much to teach us if we’re willing to allow them. For Jonah, his upbringing was rooted in generational traumas and daily uncertainties, and I’m sure this shaped how he saw the world. Same for us, right? Our own difficult and traumatic life experiences shape the way we view the world and can make us question God. It’s really hard to respond to life with joy when loss and uncertainty has paved the way into today. And if that’s the case for you and me, I can’t begin to imagine how it was for Jonah.

But whenever Jonah needed grounding, he could find it in the Temple.

The Jerusalem Temple was thought to house the presence of God. Everything a Jewish person did was rooted in the admiration of and distinctness of Temple life. So, whenever Israel was subjected to foreign oppressive powers they would turn their focus towards the Temple, which reoriented their perspective in whatever storm they faced.

The Temple was also a constant, physical reminder of God’s unbreakable covenantal relationship. Covenants weren’t something God made up. It was an ancient practice tribes and peoples used to signify a mutually beneficial promise made between them. For example, the son and daughter from two different families of similar wealth and power would marry to benefit both. Or two tribes would make a promise to have each other’s backs, or not go to war against each other.

To make this promise the leaders would cut a covenant. They would take an animal, kill it, cut it in two, place each half just a part from the other, and then walk through the two halves signifying the promise made to each other was for life. If either party broke the covenant they were essentially saying, “May it be to me as it was to this animal …Till death do us part.”

If I break this promise, you can walk through my blood.

In Genesis 15, God used this ancient, barbaric human-made and understood promise and pledged Godself to a people, cutting a covenant with Abraham, knowing full well that human beings could never uphold the promise of relational fidelity.

Jonah’s prophetic role was to remind Israel they were to be faithful to following the ways of God no matter their circumstances, and I’m sure Jonah took his role very seriously.

So when the word of the Lord came to Jonah to declare second chances over Israel’s sworn enemy, over the people who may have murdered and mutilated Jonah’s own family members and demolished his countrymen over the past hundred or more years, of course Jonah wasn’t super-stoked. This wasn’t just the graciousness of God. This seemed like a breach in covenantal fidelity and promise.

It would have felt like betrayal, abandonment, treason.

I bet everything Jonah thought he knew about God, everything he’d worked for and preached about began to unravel. His faith, his theology, his religion fell apart like a house of cards, so what was the point of living when everything you’ve ever known now seemed like a lie? Of course you would run away and get as far as you could from where your life began to crumble.

He boarded a ship for the farthest place he could think of and while on this ship, a fierce storm kicked up and began tearing the ship apart, threatening to sink it. While the sailors did their best to survive by throwing their livelihood overboard and crying out to their gods — screamed prayers carried away by the wind and rain — Jonah headed down below deck to sleep it off.

When grief hits you hard because everything you thought you knew about your own life expectations or how your life was supposed to turn out falls apart like a house of cards, it’s really hard to function.

Jonah avoided reality, numbed the present, and sunk below the ship, because grief will do that to you.

Once the sailors discovered that the storm was from Jonah’s making and after deliberation, they woefully decided to throw him overboard.

And this is where the big fish comes into the story. Throughout chapter two of Jonah, we don’t read about the details of his experience in the belly of this big fish. We read about his prayer life.

Jonah had no idea how long he would be in this situation or if he would survive it. We know it would be three days but all he could probably see was a slow death and the torturous existence of a claustrophobic grave. But in the middle of despair, he fixed his perspective on what he knew to be true. “I remembered you,” Jonah said about God. I remembered your faithfulness. I remembered your love.

Jonah prayed, I remembered you. He didn’t know what the next moment would bring him but he did know that when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, God wasn’t waiting for him on the other side, beckoning him closer. God was with him in the valley, in the grave, in the depths of such unknown and impossible places.

Jonah remembered and fixed his attention on the holy Temple, knowing he wasn’t alone.

I know many of us are walking through a valley of the shadow of death and it feels like we’re alone. This valley might be of your own making, like it was for Jonah. It might be from someone else’s making. It might be from nothing you can actually point towards and blame — it’s just hard right now. Some of you might feel like Jonah, totally irritated and frustrated that life isn’t turning out the way you had imagined it because you thought you’d be married by now, or that your marriage would be healthy by now, or your kids would be kinder by now, or you would have the right career by now. And to walk forward when things are such a mess feels like an impossible task, like maybe you’ve been abandoned.

Some of you might feel like you’re in the belly of the grave, barely surviving or holding on, feeling forgotten by God. There is a level of loss and grief that has buried you and it’s been way longer than three days. You’ve lost the ability to sing, pray, or trust anything or anyone.

So, look towards the Temple.

Take a deep breath and focus your attention inside. You are created in the image of God and you have everything you need inside you. You can feel it in your gut. You were designed to access the goodness and love of God, and you keep looking everywhere else, hoping some wisdom is going to fall from the sky when you were already created with everything you need. You are loved. You are whole and complete. Scripture says your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What a holy invitation of spiritual depth and wonder! God is with you in this hardship!

These ancient stories eventually tell how Jesus Christ brought forth a new covenant through his death because blood was required. The original covenant was broken again and again, so God slipped into skin to show a powerful way of sacrificial love (Google Girard’s “Scapegoat Theory.”) Humans became the Temple that houses God’s presence, which bears witness to such love and grace to every person, especially our enemies. So when life feels impossible, when you feel like you’re drowning in a watery grave without any knowledge of how long you might be buried in the deep, know you are not alone. Look towards the Temple, towards Love, within you.

And I believe the power that raised Christ from the dead can raise you from your watery grave as well.

So may we know we are loved and may this Love empower us to bravely love any bloodthirsty enemy around us. And may we listen to each other’s stories, building empathy as we see the image of God within each other.

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Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church. Follow her on Instagram.