Today’s installment from the Book of the Prophet Jonah illustrates the second way in which Jonah differs from the other prophets of Israel; namely, he is successful. Not only was he sent to Gentiles rather than to the children of Israel, God worked through him to bring the citizen of Nineveh to repentance. No other prophet in the entire body of the Hebrew Scriptures could claim such success. So long is the tradition of prophets meeting their deaths that when Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying he was and they told him that the people thought he was one of the prophets, he understood from that moment that he would die at the hands of the Jewish authorities just as all the prophets had died before him. It also tells us a little more about Jonah. Perhaps Jonah’s initial attempt to run away was an act of self-preservation.
The reading also illustrates something that Tomas a Kempis wrote in his spiritual classic, “The Imitation of Christ.” There we read that the only thing we can change through prayer and fasting is ourselves. Indeed, when the Ninevites put on sack cloth and fasted from food and drink in the hopes that God would spare them, their intention may have been nothing more than self-preservation. However, as it usually does, their prayer and fasting brought about a change.
Jonah’s success will cause him more turmoil than failure would have done. Remember, Jonah saw the Ninevites as sworn enemies of Israel. As such, he would have wanted their destruction rather than their conversion. So Jonah is also an example of what God can do even through flawed and sinful human beings. It did not matter that Jonah’s heart may not have been in his preaching because it was God’s Word that was at work, not Jonah’s word. God’s Word is effective in and of itself. The messenger is not the one who effects conversion. It is the Word of God itself that saves.
While we may sometimes think of prophets as those who foretell the future, the true definition of a biblical prophet is one who carries God Word throughout one’s life and in whatever situation one finds oneself. The prophet is only a vessel that carries the Word. God’s Word is the presence of God in our midst. It is that which will lead us to conversion and change.