The Bible is not a book. It is in fact a library. What we call the Book of Jonah was once a separate scroll, as were all the other books, epistles or Gospels now found, and bound, in one volume. Just as in the libraries we use today have sections for history, poetry and short stories, so too the bible contains many different kinds of literature.

Why is this important? Because category mistakes will cause some very strange conclusions and the author's intended point may well be missed. We can take "Introduction to Physical Chemistry" literally but when we read a Shakespearean sonnet in which he compares his beloved to the sun, we should not imagine Shakespeare really means that the woman he loves is actually a flaming ball of hydrogen.

We need to keep this distinction in mind when we read the bible, too. In the book titled the Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, most of us are clear that its author is not giving us an anatomy lesson or claiming that his beloved is actually constructed out of two deer, some pomegranates, and a terrible army coming forth with banners.

While I am using obvious and extreme examples you can see where this is going. If we seek understanding and truth it matters whether we think what we are holding in our hands is a map, an instruction manual or murder mystery. This is one of the many reasons why faithful people understand that studying the bible is as important as reading it. Knowing how to use a library, and coming to discern the types of literature in it allows a thoughtful reader to receive a piece of writing, read a page or two and say "Ah, ha- a collection of short stories," or "Oh look, the New York Times."

Sometimes genres blend. Think of historical fiction- an author is taken by an aspect of a person or a place and writes a story full of dialog that never happened but full of historical facts, near facts, and fanciful hyperbole that starts from actual fact but extends into imagination. Facts and truth are not synonymous. Even a fictional character can offer wisdom and insight into the human condition. Even a fanciful story can teach powerfully.

It's OK to talk this way about Masterpiece Theatre but this kind of talk about the Bible makes some people uncomfortable. Does it sounds like I am saying that the words in the Bible are untrustworthy or untrue? I am not. I do believe that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation - indeed that phrase comes out of my responses at ordination. Let's ground my earlier assertions in something we can all agree upon. Think of the parables Jesus told. If we search archeological records for the name of the prodigal son or the street address of the good Samaritan we will not find a trace. A parable is a story full of truth but short on facts.

But there does not need to be an actual sower of seeds, good shepherd, older brother or worker in the vineyard for a parable to do its work. Jesus wasn't lying when he told those pithy stories, he was teaching truth. And Jesus was not the only teller of parables in the ancient world.

All of this is prologue to help us see and hear the Book of Jonah in a way in which we can extract more truth for today from an ancient tale. Many scholars feel that the Book of Jonah is an extended parable. Yes, there was a real person named Jonah, and a place called Ninevah, but the historical facts were reshaped to deliver an unforgettable moral lesson.

The Book of Jonah is less like history and more like magical realism. The term magic realism, originally applied in the 1920s to a school of painters, is used to describe the prose fiction of Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina, as well as the work of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez in Colombia, Gunter Grass in Germany, and John Fowles in England. These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales.¹

Ninevah loomed large in the imagination of the ancient world. It had been the capital of the fierce and feared Assyrian Empire. The tales of its wonders and power grew until the popular image of it grew to be larger than any city the world has ever seen. The point of the stories was not actually physical description but to engender an emotional response in the readers. Ninevah was big, huge, gigantic, impossibly immense - who would go up against it! Jonah had been given an impossible task. Note that I said given, not accepted.

And then there's the famous fish. Art pointed out at Christmas that there is no donkey in the Nativity narrative. I will now shock you with an additional hard truth - there is no whale in the Book of Jonah. Furthermore consider the fact that this fish is an allegory. All of Israel was swallowed up in the Exile to Babylon. Then all of Israel was regurgitated, still whole and alive, back on the shore of Jerusalem. Exile changes how you think. If you are already predisposed to think ill of the other, imagine how much less you'll like them after they've locked you up.

The nation of Israel was to be a light to the nations, to be God's people in way that would call all nations to come to the throne of God. Like Jonah, the nation of Israel was not thrilled about this mission and tried to avoid it after the late unpleasantness in Babylon. But God had not changed. The mission was still the mission. Jonah could run but he could not hide even in a whale we have imagined. Nor could the nation of Israel avoid what God had asked of them.

Those who heard the Book of Jonah for the first time must have felt like the scribes and Pharisees standing next to Jesus. "Are you talking to me," they must have snarled as their cheeks burned.

The point of the parable Jonah told is that God had given the nation a mission. They had not only failed to pursue it but were so bound up in looking down on the other that they could not begin again. Still, Ninevah and all that it represents will be redeemed because God wills it.

The Book of Jonah is a call to remembrance, to authenticity and action. God's people, through thick and thin, captivity and freedom have a God-given mission. Take the light to all the corners of the world, even the places of darkness- especially the places of darkness. And in so doing find your own freedom in the power of God.

Or stay in a captivity of your own choosing while God frees others, because freedom is what God is and what God offers.

Nivevah and Jonah were a real place and a real person. The truth in the Book of Jonah is real truth but the story is far larger than one person or place- it is about God's mission for God's people. The mission continues, God's people still exist - simply in larger numbers- and the temptations and possibilities are as real today as they were in Jonah's story. When we see the other, let us think of God's mission, not past troubles real or imagined. Gourd plants and fish, ancient capitals and ashes are props in a mystery play meant to remind us to seek Christ in the face of other not just because we have promised to in the Baptismal Covenant but because God has told us so to do. AMEN.

¹ An adaptation from M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1993) as cited by Dr. Robert P. Fletcher of West Chester University.