Jonah 3:10-4:11 - Struggling with God: When You Don't Like what God is doing

Once upon a time a long time ago in a land far, far away, there lived a prophet of God named Jonah. We don’t know if Jonah was a particularly good prophet. We don’t know if he was respected by the people or by the king, what we do know is that God came to the prophet Jonah one day, while he was out and about doing prophety stuff and told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and tell them exactly what disgusting horrible no good people they were and that it was making the Lord the God of all things very displeased with them. Jonah did not think this was such a good idea. Instead of going to Ninevah to give them the message that God had given to him to give to them, he decided to head in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh and get on a boat and sail as far from Nineveh as he could think of getting, Tarshish.
Now before we get all judgmental on Jonah, I don’t know about you but I believe if I was in his position I would find listening to God pretty hard as well. You see Ninevah wasn’t just any ole city. It was the capital city of the country which had invaded their country, killed the weakest, taken way the brightest and the best, and stripped the country of anything that was valuable, ruined the fields, burned the crops and then expected the people who were left to come up with a tribute to pay them for the this privilege.

Now not to defend Jonah, because of all the Biblical prophets, I would be the first to tell you that Jonah does not deserve any defending, but we need to be honest with ourselves when it comes to the position that Jonah was in. God was not simply asking Jonah to love his enemy, God was not simply asking Jonah go and give a message of God to his enemy, God was asking Jonah to go deep into the territory of an enemy who had nearly wiped out his people, destroyed their land and was taxing the life out of all those who were left. These were not simply people who went around slapping other people with fish (as the Veggie Tale Movie portrayed) but these were people who had were daily causing suffering for Jonah, his loved ones and for the country in which he lived.

It would almost be like expecting one of the original Boston Patriots to get on a ship, go over to Britain and share the love of God with the King and parliament while the king’s troops waged war on his friends, neighbors and relatives back here in Boston. Paul Revere, or Thomas Jefferson, or John Hancock had they been in Jonah’s position would not have done it and I would venture to say that you or I would at the very least hesitate if asked by God to do something like this as well.

So once Jonah got on the boat and the boat headed out to sea, God sent a mighty
storm. The storm raged and Jonah slept. The storm raged and his shipmates began calling upon all their different gods to spare them and the ship captain noticed that one among them was not praying to his God to be spared, so he woke Jonah up and commanded him to get about the business of praying to his God.

When all the praying did not seem to be working, the passengers and crew cast lots to see who was responsible for this calamity, because truly somebody’s god was unhappy and they needed to know whose and why. When the lot fell on Jonah they began a game of twenty questions with Jonah, to try to determine what exactly he did to make his god so very angry with him and what they needed to do to appease his god and make the storm storm. He answered all their questions and took the responsibility and even suggested that God might stop the storm if they threw him into the sea. God had not said anything to anybody about throwing anybody into the sea, perhaps Jonah thought death was preferable to preaching to the Ninevites. Jonah’s shipmates thought this was a pretty silly idea and tried to do everything within their power to save the ship before they gave in to Jonah’s suggestion and threw him into the sea. Immediately the storm stopped and the ship was saved. All the people on the ship praised God, repented and believed that Jonah’s God was the one true God. Jonah is apparently a good prophet even when he is not trying at all.

God, not wanting Jonah to die and still wanting him to go preach to the Ninevites, sent a big fish to swallow Jonah whole. Then through some unexplained miracle the fish did not begin to digest him. And there Jonah sat for three days. After a while Jonah calls out to God thanking God for sparing him by allowing the fish to swallow him (I may point out here that Jonah not once apologizes for doing the wrong thing) and God’s answer to Jonah’s prayer of thanksgiving seems to be, “That’s nice, your going to Nineveh, don’t bother to thank me for the ride.” And the fish spits Jonah up on dry land. Where upon God once again tells Jonah to get himself to Nineveh and act like a prophet and preach. And Jonah, being a wise man, decides that not going to Nineveh had not been working out so well for him, so he would try actually going to Nineveh. So off he went to Nineveh, to tell the Ninevites that God did not think too highly of their way of life and so forth.

Jonah goes into the city, preaching, gloom and doom and destruction and a strange thing happens, the people of Nineveh, listen and when they listen, instead of throwing rotten fruit or tossing him in a dungeon for preaching a message that would probably amount to treason in most places, they listen to him and repent. The people of Nineveh, repented, believed in God, declared a fast and put on sackcloth to let God know that they were serious about this. When the king heard about all this, he was far from angry and calling for Jonah’s neck in a noose, as some kings might be if a conquered enemy waltzed in to their capital city and began to proclaim destruction upon that city, the king instead he also repented, put on all the outward signs of mourning and repentance and declared a fast, in hopes that the Lord God would repent of destroying the city, forgive them of this misdeeds against God and against God’s people.

And what do you think God does at this point? God forgives them, God repents of destroying the city. And so ends the part of the story of Jonah of which we all are most familiar. And here, where those of us who grew up listening to Sunday School teachers tell of the greatness of Jonah and the greatness of God’s forgiveness left off, is where our passage picks up this morning.

Jonah gets angry and throws a hissy fit because his front row seat to the destruction of Nineveh turns out to be a front row seat to their repentance and God’s subsequent forgiveness. He actually admits to God he did not want to come to Nineveh in the first place, not because he was afraid because they were his enemies, but because he did not want God to be merciful and forgive them should they repent. He basically said, “I hate these people, and I know you are big on the forgiveness thing and I did not think that after all the Ninevites have done to my family, my friends, my neighbors and my country, that they deserved forgiveness. They deserve to be destroyed, and repentance or not I still believe they deserve to die, every last one of them. As he sits there waiting for God to send fire from the heavens and torch them all, a plant grows up that gives a little relief from the Sun but then it dies and he gets angry at God about it. God calls Jonah to task over his attitude and the fact that he care more that stupid weed than he does for the numerous men, women, children and animals on whom he wished destruction. And the story leaves us there with Jonah on the hill outside of town and God’s rebuke ringing in the air.
You see Jonah is not the hero of this story. Jonah, never gets it. He never understands. Jonah never wants what God wants. He never repents of his hard heartedness. He never does what God wants him to do for the right reasons. It seems in the end he only went to Nineveh, because it beat the belly of the whale and it would give him front row seats to the destruction of his enemies. All this leads me to believe that Jonah was never really a very good prophet of God.
If you have seen the Veggie Tale cartoon version of this Biblical tale Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber tell you that the point of the story is to not be like Jonah; to instead listen to God when God talks to you, to desire the salvation of your enemies and to accept that God forgives everyone even those whom we would not think are worthy of God’s forgiveness.

One of the wonderful things about this story is that EVERYONE in this story save Jonah repents at some point in this story. Jonah’s shipmates repent and give praise to God. The people of Nineveh including their horrible evil king repented and come to believe in God. In the original language, even God repents, twice in fact, God repents of the storm and causes the sea to be calm once again and God repents of destroying the city of Nineveh. But not once does Jonah repent. Jonah, does thank God for the fish, but that is the best thing he does in the whole book. The narrative closes, with Jonah chastised by God, on the hill angry that God did burn and entire city of living breathing people to the ground.

So there are only two “characters” in this story. There is unrepentant, stubborn, angry Jonah and there is the almighty, merciful God. As the story closes who is in the right? Who do we want to be like? Who should we strive to emulate? The answer is obvious. I mean seriously, no one wants to be like Jonah sitting on a hill in the heat of the Sun calling down fire on your enemies and cursing God for God’s forgiving nature. The only choice is to NOT be like Jonah, to be like God, which of course is what we aim for as Christians anyway. We aim to share the love and forgiveness of God with our world.

It is easy to look at Jonah and say we won’t be like Jonah, but how many of us cheer when our enemies fail. How many of us have ever wished calamity upon those who have sought to do us harm? What how would we feel if we found out that God had forgiven our worst enemies? The gospel calls for us to love where the is hate and for prayer where there is persecution.

What a wonderful God we have who forgives even those whom we would deem unworthy! There are some we may secretly desire never truly know the love and forgiveness of our God. There may be some in this world whom we really hope will “burn in hell.” But God desires to forgive all, all who repent and turn to God will be forgiven. In this story we should be routing for Jonah’s pagan shipmates and rejoice when they come to believe in God, and our hearts should rejoice when God forgives every last one of the Ninevites when they repent and call out to God. Our God does not only love and forgive the worthy. God does not love and forgive the good. God loves and forgive ALL who will repent and believe.