Al Braca left for work from his new home in suburban New York. He was a corporate bond trader with Cantor Fitzgerald. His wife, Jeannie, said that he did not really look forward to going to work that much. The rough and tumble of the corporate bond business was hard on Al. But he had a real heart for the people in the business and that’s why he stuck with it.
The people in the business sarcastically nicknamed him, “The Rev” because Al freely shared his faith with his coworkers. They made fun of him, but when horrible things came into their lives, they all went over to Al quietly and asked him for prayer.
Al traveled from his home to Manhattan, where he arrived at work one morning. His office was on the 105th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center. He was settling in at his desk, at the job he didn’t really like all that much, on September 11, 2001. “The Rev” was about to become part of the worst terror attack on Americans in history.
In the aftermath of September 11, reports trickled in through emails and phone operators that a man was leading people in prayer that fateful morning at Cantor Fitzgerald. Reports identified the man as Al Braca. When people realized that they were all trapped and would not be able to escape, Al shared the Gospel with a group of about 50, and they all prayed together. On that darkest morning, God had his leader right there in the middle of the whole thing. A leader willing to share the Good News of salvation. In a moment of crisis, the worst crisis one could possibly face, knowing he was about to die, Al Braca knew exactly what to do.
What a contrast with a Bible character you may know, but likely don’t know the whole story. His name was Jonah, and he was what we commonly refer to as a “minor prophet”. In the Bible you have the big prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, whose prophecies are voluminous. Then there’s a group of 12 shorter books, including Jonah.
“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai; ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. And after paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee the Lord.” Jonah 1:1-3
What a contrast. Here we have God’s prophet. He’s ordained by God to be the prophet of Israel. He’s been given a clear, specific command. Nineveh is a godless city, and his message will not be received well. Nineveh was part of the kingdom of Assyria, and at that time, was about as evil a kingdom as you could imagine. The Assyrians conquered, looted, tortured and killed. Their entire economy was based on war. Read Assyrian records and you’ll see words like massacred, razed, destroyed, burned, felled with the sword, and burned at the stake. It’s known that in World War II the Axis powers studied the Assyrians of Nineveh to figure out how to be as cruel as they could be. It’s the world’s most dangerous place to go and Jonah is facing a crisis. God told him, “Preach against Nineveh.” Nineveh is a city in the center of a violent empire that doesn’t answer to God or Jonah or anyone else. Jonah could be run out of town at the very least. Or more likely, he would be killed. Faced with this choice, Jonah makes his decision.
He runs. He heads down to the docks, hires a ship and points the captain away from Nineveh towards Joppa and tells him to set sail. Likely you already know the middle of this story, where Jonah faces God’s consequence in the belly of a fish. But it’s important to know how it started. Because the lesson here is profound. God’s chosen man, put into a position of risk, given a clear mandate by the Creator of the Universe, simply bolts for the door.
A different man, just a man, 2,800 years later, does what he knows is right. He shares the love of the Lord with those people that God sent him to. There are more than likely people in heaven today because of the obedience of Al Braca, sitting in a room on floor 105 of Tower One of the World Trade Center. Nineveh too, all those years ago, needed a word from the Lord, but His chosen man wasn’t going to do it.
Is Jonah just a legend, a myth, a story for Sunday School class? Is Jonah just a moral tale, like an ancient Chinese proverb written on a fortune cookie? No, it really happened. We can know that Jonah was a real man. Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:23-25 as a historical prophet, and later by Jesus Himself in Matthew 12. Outside of the Bible account, Jonah is mentioned by the Greek historians Herodotus, Ctesias and Strabo. Nineveh was a real place, known to have been destroyed around 612 BC.
The book of Jonah contains a number of supernatural events. Beyond Jonah spending three days in the belly of a fish, there is the miraculous repentance of Nineveh, and a plant which grew up around Jonah to protect him from the sun. Jonah is not an allegory or a piece of fiction. It is a real story of a real man that actually happened. If Jonah actually happened, then the next question is, what are we supposed to learn from this account? Why is Jonah in the Bible and what should we take away from it? Certainly it is a lesson in crisis management. When a tough call must be made, and the right thing to do is also the hardest thing to do, how would you respond?
There’s an interesting parallel to Jonah’s story in Matthew 12:38: “Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.’” They asked Jesus to show them a miracle. See the way Jesus handles this, starting in verse 39: “He answered, ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.’”
Just as sure as He would die and be resurrected from the dead, so was Jonah three days and three nights in the belly of the great sea monster. Jesus authenticates the book of Jonah by this parallel.
Jonah eventually obeyed God, but at a cost. When the crisis came and the choice was hard he chose to run, and it cost him. The parallel story of Jesus, when the choice for Christ comes, He instead will obey God. In fact the Bible said He “was obedient even unto death.” He knew the cost and He knew what He had to do and He did it. There’s a great lesson for us in the life of Jonah.
Notice first in the crisis, that Jonah knew what he had to do. His instructions from God were simple. Go to Nineveh and tell them this message. So what caused the crisis? For Jonah, it was considering the cost, the personal cost, of doing what he knew was the right thing to do. Sometimes a crisis hits and it is from external forces. But in Jonah’s case it was a crisis of his own making. In that sense, when crisis hits, Jonah teaches us to do the right thing, even if it is at great personal cost, do the right thing.
There’s another kind of crisis, and that is one that comes from outside. Something unexpected and surprising. It hits us and can knock us off our feet. The choice in this crisis may seem more complex, less clear. This was Al Braca’s crisis on the 105th floor of Tower One on September 11. But here too as we look back at the story we see that Al took stock of the situation and he knew what to do. There was no question there. The issue for Al was the same as the issue for Jonah: would he do it?
Knowing what to do in a crisis is probably the thing we grapple with the most. A difficult situation, an impossible barrier, a decision that looks like it’s a no-win situation. There are two lessons in crisis management from Jonah. The first is this: most of the time, you’ll know what to do. The toughest decisions are always those with moral, ethical consequences—life or death consequences. In those crises we can often look at what God has told us to do. He’s given us an entire book filled with His moral and ethical standard called the Bible. And in that book He’s given us example after example of how to act and react when trouble comes our way. And He’s given us a command to be confident in His instructions. He has provided those who follow Him with a fellowship, a group of people of like belief from whom we can glean wisdom and experience. He’s even told us we will have crises. But He says in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” What a promise! Trouble will come, but God is with you in it, so take heart and be at peace.
What’s the second lesson from Jonah? Just this: Doing what we know to do is the true test of a leader in a crisis. When difficulty comes, the test for a leader who relies on God’s instruction is the follow-through. Can I be trusted to do what I know I need to do?
And here too is the promise of God, the trustworthiness of God. We can know that God is real and that His love for us, for the world, is real. I mean, honestly who would make sacrifices, at great cost, and trust that in a crisis God has your back, for a metaphor, for a fairy tale? You might ask, how did God have Jonah’s back? He sent him on a death mission, an impossible task. And then when Jonah ran, God sent a fish to swallow him whole. That’s your confidence builder?
But you see, Jonah didn’t die. And when he obeyed God and went to Nineveh, the city did the one thing nobody but God expected. They listened. And they repented. And God spared them. The lesson of Jonah wasn’t that God’s wrath came down on an evil city. The lesson is what happens when a leader, faced with a crisis, doesn’t do the right thing—doesn’t do the one thing he knows he should do.
God forbid any of us ever have an Al Braca moment, a 9/11 moment. But every one of us will have a Jonah moment. In your life, a crisis will come and you’ll have a tough choice in front of you. And more than that, you’ll likely know the right thing to do. The question is, will you do it?