Morning Devotion for the Season of Christmastide
January 5, 2022
Invitatory
Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Behold, the dwelling of God is with mankind. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them, and be their God.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
Alleluia. To us a child is born: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.
Reading: Jonah 2:2-9
“I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’ The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
“The amazing wonder of the deep is its unfathomable cruelty.” So wrote the novelist Joseph Conrad. He had been aboard a ship far out in the Atlantic Ocean, and it had come upon a Danish vessel that was on the verge of sinking. The crew of the disabled ship had been adrift for several weeks, working pumps in shifts, day and night, to keep the remains of their ship afloat. They were beyond exhaustion and were half-crazed by the nearly hopeless task of having to use every available moment for the singular purpose of staying alive.
Conrad observed that as soon as the last man was rescued, and with barely a sound, the Danish ship slipped under the waters. Suddenly, no trace of it was left. In the space of a few seconds it was as if the ship had never existed. It was gone. And all that was left visible to the eye was the vast, smooth expanse of the ocean, stretching out to the horizon in every direction. Witnessing this disappearing, Conrad felt the awful indifference of the ocean to human life. It erases everything. Conrad never forgot this.*
In contrast, the story of the prophet Jonah is in many ways exceedingly silly. It’s meant to be. He’s a small figure, with even less character and conviction. And he’s given an immense assignment – to deliver the judgment of God against the empire centered in Nineveh. Because of the slap-dash nature of the narration, the story reads like a comic book (without a superhero), as Jonah bumbles from one misstep to another. His sheer incompetence lends an air of hilarity, which, then, is all the more accentuated by his encounter with the famous big fish. Having been thrown into the sea, he’s swallowed by a whale.
As he languishes in the belly of the beast, he offers the prayer printed above.
But, suddenly, there’s nothing silly about this. It’s much like Conrad’s experience. Jonah was realizing something worse than death alone. He was coming to nothing. No trace of him would remain. Subsumed by the waters, he would be gone from all memory and time. And in that realization, he cried out to God, in the hope that he might be redeemed and preserved. And if this were to happen, Jonah pledged, he would spend all his life in the expression of thanks to God.
For as familiar as this kind of promise sounds, for as common as they are, rising up from amid all the troubles of humankind, Jonah’s prayer was deeply serious. Can any pledge have more weight?
But here’s the catch. Once Jonah is delivered, immediately he forgets everything that he swore. Everything – even the haunting thought that once upon a time he made this pledge. He is no less petty, no less petulant, no less self-absorbed than he was before. Once again, God is just an imposition. The people of Nineveh deserve to be slaughtered. He wants to be left unbothered. And what is effectively erased is any trace of thanks. It’s gone as if it never were.
How much is Jonah like us. And, in this moment, the comedy becomes a tragedy.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
* I’m indebted here to Richard Pogue Harrison’s book The Dominion of the Dead.
