Have you ever tried to move God off his throne and put
yourself there instead? Have you ever tried to disregard everything that God
has said about himself and his commands, because you thought you know better?
Well throughout the book of Jonah, we have seen Jonah do
this.
In chapter 1, we saw Jonah trying to run away from God. God
gave Jonah a mission, and Jonah tried to decline the mission, but God would not
let him. He will not allow some patriotic, Jewish prophet to keep him from
performing what He wants to do. Go to Nineveh!
So, in chapter 2, we saw Jonah running into God. You cannot
run away from God and what he wants so Jonah is almost drowned, is swallowed by
a big fish to save him, and then is vomited up on the beach.
Then in chapter 3, we saw Jonah somewhat grudgingly obey
God. Jonah went with God’s call on him, but not whole-heartedly. Throughout the
book, we’ve seen Jonah try to run God. Jonah has been thinking throughout the
book that he knows better than God what should happen to the Ninevites, and so
Jonah has been trying to put himself on God’s throne.
In the last chapter of the book, we hope that Jonah finally
learns his lesson. We hope that Jonah finally repents, and finally agrees that
God can be gracious to the people of Nineveh, and that he does not deserve
grace any more or less than they do or we do. But he doesn’t. A disgusted Jonah
sits and sulks and cannot cope at all with these dreadful people being given
another chance and them responding! And his life long view on God being partial
is blown apart and he just loses it.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. The
Hebrew word here for angry is literally, “to be hot, blaze, burn” You’ve heard
of being hot under the collar. Well Jonah is all that and more!
Why did Jonah respond this way? Remember, Israel and
Assyria were rivals in a contest that could leave only one nation surviving. The
Ninevites were wicked and cruel, and so Jonah probably hated them, or at least
hated what they did. And so he was hoping that God would destroy them.
We should not be too hard on Jonah here. We all sometimes
wonder why God doesn’t judge a certain person or group of people.
We judge Jonah, but we judge too quickly. He’s exhausted.
Well you would be, wouldn’t you?
If we can relate to what Jonah is feeling here, then the
rest of the chapter is for us. Sometimes we might pray as Jonah prays here in
verse 2-3.
So, he prayed to the Lord, and said, “Ah, Lord, was not
this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore, I fled previously
to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger
and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. Therefore
now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than
to live!”
Jonah, it seems, is not only hot under the collar. He is
angry to the point of not wanting to live anymore. It seems that he believes a
great injustice has occurred. Jonah’s thoughts were along these lines: ‘The
Assyrians should have received the judgment that they deserved. And if that
isn’t going to happen then what is the point of carrying on and being your
spokesperson? You might as well take my life.’ Jonah is just getting redder and
redder, like people get when the blood pressure rises and they just explode.
Then the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Anger – it is right? Well, yes, I think it is when things
in the world are just so wrong. There’s been an uprising perhaps only in some
parts of America but certainly outside it that you can’t put children in cages
and separate them from their parents, no matter what the story is. So, you
write an order to stop that and say “we must keep the families together” but
they are still separated and will still be locked up. “I didn’t like the sight
or the feeling of families being separated, I think anybody with a heart would
feel strongly about it. We don’t like to see families separated.” Perhaps anger
at a lack of decent respect for human rights is okay and anger that stuff we
thought was long consigned to history in the free world is still happening.
Anger is right when the rich are rich and the poor get poorer. The comedian
Johnny Vegas was on Channel 4’s “Last Leg” on Friday night and had a live rant
about the NHS being underfunded and a government not caring. He was very angry!
Inspired by love and anger one Iona hymn puts it. And parts
of the Bible get angry about injustice.
We pretty some Psalms by leaving the angry bits out but
sometimes the Psalmist has a meltdown wanting God to get angry: Psalm 79 “Pour
out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do
not call upon your name.” We become superior and we don’t want those who’ve
made mistakes to have a chance.
Anger that just winds the angry person up and the person
getting it is just destructive. Someone really really angry rang me up and
ranted for ages because they had in their view been wronged in a church. They
didn’t accept my version of events or my response and finished the conversation
by telling me they needed to calm down. I remained calm on the other end of the
phone as they ranted. Football fans do it – if England lose this afternoon
against Panama the tabloid press will have a great back page headline that
Raheem Sterling is the worst shambles of a player we’ve ever had. I saw a
fascinating programme last weekend about England football managers and they
showed Graham Taylor who was vilified by the press, and that famous back page
of his head as a turnip as England lost to Sweden and the headline Swedes 2
Turnips 1.
Is it right for you to sulk?
Perhaps cannot cope if things don’t go our way, and we
sulk. Some church people are good at that, none here I say quickly but I’ve had
sulkers in Church Councils who’ve lost votes on big issues. The stormers out
are great fun and I’ve tried hard to understand them. Some people find it
impossible to accept a broadening of vision needed to move on.
Is it right for you to be angry?
This is the question I’m sure God sometimes asks us when we
think our way is better than God’s. God is asking Jonah the same question we
would ask of him. It is as if God is saying: “Jonah, I had every right to kill
you for disobeying me. In fact, I had more right to destroy you than I did the
Ninevites, because you knew about my righteous requirements and chose to
disobey anyway. They did not know, and although they were living in sin, they
were ignorant of my requirements. Now that they know, they have repented of
their sin and so I have turned from my wrath.
You still have not repented of your sin, and I am still
being gracious and patient with you.
Often God doesn’t act like we would like Him to. Sometimes
we get angry when bad things happen or prayers seem to go unanswered. Maybe it
is when we are made to wait for far too long. Maybe it seems that God is
blessing others while you go overlooked.
What about God? How does He react to this little dummy spit
from His prophet? He who showed tremendous patience towards the Ninevites, once
again shows the same patience with His prophet. But He doesn’t want this
experience to pass without Jonah learning something though!
We see why Jonah would rather flee to Tarshish than preach
fire and brimstone to Nineveh, and why he would rather die than obey God. The
answer to both is that he knew God is a gracious and merciful God, slow to
anger and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm.
Jonah knew his Bible and knew that God was gracious. He did
not want God to show compassion on Nineveh.
He did not want the heathen nation of Assyria to receive
blessing and forgiveness from God. In fact, it seems that Jonah disagrees with
how God handled the situation. Jonah is trying to tell God how to behave. God’s
love and grace is wonderful when it is directed toward Jonah and toward Israel.
But God showing love and kindness toward Israel’s enemies? They don’t deserve
it!
Jonah knows God’s character and is telling God that he was
wrong to give grace to the Ninevites. Jonah, in his anger, is attacking God’s
actions saying that the people of Nineveh do not deserve God’s grace.
Well, Jonah, in typical Jonah fashion, does not answer God,
and instead sulks outside the city and makes himself comfortable in a shelter.
Apparently, he hoped that maybe God would destroy the city
after all, and he wanted to be there to watch it when it happened. And as
watched God wanted to give him a visual aid in how God works.
And the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over
Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So,
Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But as morning dawned the next day God
prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened,
when the sun arose, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on
Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint.
Then he wished death for himself, and said, “It is better
for me to die than to live.” The withering of his beloved beautiful plant is a
tipping point for Jonah.
He survived the storm on the boat. He survived being thrown
overboard into the sea. He didn’t give up though swallowed by a great fish. He
was willing to walk into the enemy’s city of Nineveh and proclaim God’s
message. All these things he coped with. But his plant dying-- leading to the
sun beating down on him is just too much! ‘I want to die!’ he says. ‘Take my
life!’
Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry
about the plant?”
God asks his question again.
And Jonah said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to
death!”
With all this talk of death, if Jonah were living today, he
would be considered suicidal. He would be put on suicide watch.
Jonah is furious about a plant. He liked the vine, and
wanted to enjoy its shade, and here God had killed the plant, and so Jonah was
angry. He is so angry with God he wants to die.
But the Lord said, “You have had pity on the plant for
which you have not laboured, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and
perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which
are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern
between their right hand and their left — and much livestock?”
And with that, the story ends.
What a strange ending. Why is the vine there? Why does the
story end this way? It seems like the story should have ended after chapter 3.
God has mercy on Nineveh. The End.
But that wasn’t the end. Why not? Because the story is not about Nineveh.
It is about God and his dealings with a man whose heart is
cold. Jonah wanted the city to be destroyed and did not care for anyone in the
city. But he did care for a plant. And God is saying, “Jonah, look what you are
saying. You did not cause the plant to grow, and yet you loved it and wanted it
to survive. Neither did you cause Nineveh to grow, and yet you want it to be destroyed.
And Nineveh is full of 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from
their left. In other words, they are ignorant about me and about my
requirements. They do not know good from evil. Yet if you had to choose between
120,000 people and a plant, you would pick the plant? The book closes with one
final question from God: “Shall I not be concerned with that great city?”
And that is how the story ends. It leaves the reader
hanging.
We do not get an answer from Jonah. We do not know what his
response was. We do not know if God got through to Jonah’s heart. We do not
know if Jonah repented of his ways. We do not know if Jonah learned his lesson.
Why does the text not tell us?
Because the text is not primarily about Jonah. Most people
think this story is about God’s love for other nations. It isn’t about that, or
the story would have ended after chapter three. A few people think that this
story is about God working on the mind and heart of a prophet of Israel. The
story is not about that either, because we are not told how Jonah responds.
This book ends rather abruptly. God has the last word. That
is how it should be. It is a word reinforcing His love for all. We don’t know
how Jonah responded. We might hope that Jonah forgot about his plant. I hope he
let go of his anger. We might hope he was able to walk down into the city again
and rejoice with those who now rejoice. I hope he was able to tell them a
greater message than he did before... one about the God who is gracious and
compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from
sending calamity. But I’m not sure he did. I imagine him just going away from
all this exhausted mentally and very confused.
What is this story about?
The story is about you and me. The text leaves us hanging
because it asks the question, “What about you? What would you do if you were in
Jonah’s place?”
Sometimes we pray “wrongly” as James says, “to spend it on
your passions” (James 4:3). We want what we want, not what God wants. Jonah’s
experiences warn us about the danger of a wrong concept of God. In his case,
the wrong concept was a God only for me. He knew God was gracious yet did not
think he should be gracious to Nineveh.
There is a real danger of having a detached knowledge of
God that does not transform us into his image, a God for everyone if they turn
to him, a God who makes the offer that it can all be different no matter how
vile you have been.
The book closes with God asking Jonah a question regarding
the fate of the thousands in Nineveh. Its very challenging to end a story with
a question. Perhaps before this Bible Month began we thought the most amazing
thing about Jonah was God providing a whale, and we’ve learnt now it wasn’t a
whale and that there is much much more in this little book. We have been challenged to focus on the
amazing fact that the God of Israel blesses repentant pagans with mercy. The
reason the book closes with an unanswered question is because the he wants us
to give our answer to what he will do in our Nineveh. Are we really inclusive
and forgiving or are we a bit suspicious and is it maybe not all are welcome?
Perhaps we need in a Methodist context to remember some of
our theology. The Four Alls of Methodism.
All need to be saved
All may be saved
All may know that they are saved
All may be saved to the uttermost
No-one is perfect but no one is beyond the reach of God’s
redeeming love. Through Christ – his perfect life, death and resurrection – all
people have the opportunity to respond to God’s love, finding forgiveness for
past errors, peace and strength in the present, and confident hope that reaches
through our futures and into eternity. We can know that and celebrate that,
everyone is included and everyone can witness to it.
There are no limitations on the work that God can do to
reshape and recreate his image in the life of an individual. God himself makes
a home in their lives. God’s Spirit begins a work of transformation, recreation
and regeneration in the heart of that person which need never end. The likeness
of Jesus grows in a person’s life; the mind of Christ takes hold; and the love
of Christ grows stronger and stronger until we begin to see, speak and serve
with the heart of God himself.
There are no limits to how God can change a person from the
inside out. That’s what we mean when we say a person may be ‘saved to the
uttermost’. As Jesus said in the little parable we read earlier – there is more
joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…
For Jonah it was too revolutionary, for people who
encountered early Methodism it was too revolutionary, and for us today, well…
maybe we are growing at the moment because it is at the heart of what we are
becoming, welcoming, inclusive, accepting, helping people move on with new beginning, not being it’s for us not for
you in attitude.
We as a church have always been clear that no-one is beyond
the reach of God’s love. Salvation is there for everyone who turns to God, and
not just for a chosen few. Turning Ninevites and sulky knackered prophets…
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