Christchurch Parish News, February 2017
How God’s grace and mercy in the story of Jonah challenge us in our faith today.
‘But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.’ Jonah 4:1-5 (NRSV)
Poor Jonah. The very thing he didn’t want to see happen has come to pass. In spite of his best efforts, which included travelling in completely the opposite direction from Nineveh on a ship sailing to the other end of the Mediterranean, the Ninevites have responded to Jonah’s reluctantly proclaimed message of impending doom with immediate repentance at every level of society. Even the animals have put on sackcloth! And when God saw what the Ninevites did, ‘God changed his mind about the calamity he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.’
The translation of the Bible that we use in church reads, ‘But this was very displeasing to Jonah’. But one notable interpreter, Robert Alter, prefers to translate it thus: ‘And the thing was very evil for Jonah’. He writes in his commentary on this passage, ‘When the Ninevites decide to turn away from evil, their very repentance so upsets Jonah that it becomes, ironically, an evil, which is to say, a bitter vexation for him.’ 1
In other words, Jonah’s utterly hacked off. And then, so the story goes, he prays to the LORD. Note that he prays when he’s angry. He doesn’t wait to get himself into a super-spiritual mood and adopt a suitably holy tone of voice. No, instead, he lets rip, ‘O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.’
Jonah knows God to be merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. But then why so angry? After all, these are good characteristics for God to have. Well, yes, they are … that is, when they benefit the Israelites, the people of God. But they are absolutely not good characteristics for God to have when they benefit the very enemies of Israel. And, as we know, there weren’t many worse enemies of the people of God than the Ninevites.
I’m aware that in so many ways, Jonah isn’t being held out to us as a spiritual example. But nevertheless note that Jonah prays when he’s angry. There are, of course, so many different types of prayer. Some people are very comfortable praying out loud; others prefer to pray silently in their heads. Some naturally tend to praise God for all that He has done; others more readily find themselves acknowledging all that they have done wrong or left undone. Some in their times of prayer can’t help but bubble up with thanks; others naturally tend to find themselves praying for other people.
These are all good prayers and different ways of praying. But I bet you haven’t often been encouraged in those moments when you’re feeling angry with God – and yes, let’s be honest, there are such moments – that what you should do is pray, and that it is OK for you to vent your anger with God. Again, that’s why, as I’ve mentioned before, the Psalms are wonderful because they cover the full range of human emotion, including anger. They show us that nothing that we experience is off the map when it comes to prayer. We can bring it all to God, in as raw a way as we need to in that moment. Besides, it’s not as if God doesn’t already know that we’re angry with Him!
Surely there are limits, when it comes to such prayers? Well, no, not really. Even histrionic prayers have their place. For look at how Jonah continues in his prayer: ‘And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ He’s like a toddler going through the terrible twos, throwing himself on the floor, fists and feet flailing. If God is going to be like this to Israel’s enemies, then Jonah concludes that it is better he die than live to see his enemies benefit from God’s grace and mercy.
It’s easy to be bewildered by Jonah’s behaviour at this point. But actually, it’s a vivid, if extreme, portrayal of how many of us often behave. The backdrop to the story of Jonah is one of international conflict, but if we scale things down to a much more mundane level, ask yourself this: do you find it easier to respond to a friend’s successes or their failures? Gore Vidal once quipped, ‘Whenever a friend succeeds, something inside me dies.’ I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s much truth in that experience. For example, if a good friend has just secured prestigious job with a large pay rise and a new car, do you toast their success and continue to congratulate them, asking how the new job’s going, even weeks later? Or do you find it easier when things are proving a little trickier? Obviously you’re sorry that things are going badly for them and you pray that things will improve. But it’s often easier to listen patiently to a friend’s tales of woe than to be regaled with yet one more anecdote about their successful life.
That’s just with our friends. But in the story of Jonah, we’re talking about our enemies, those who actively wish us ill. We may pray for them, thinking that that’s the sort of prayer that we should say if we’re being good people of God. Deep down, however, do we really want our enemies to repent if that means they are going to be forgiven and be richly blessed by God? Jonah doesn’t. He knows what the Ninevites have done. They have been a terrible enemy of the Israelites, committing wicked atrocities against them. For Jonah, it’s not right that they should be forgiven. After all they have done, the Ninevites should be roundly punished by God. They should suffer his fierce anger. They should experience calamity. They should not receive grace and mercy. Nor God’s steadfast love and forgiveness. And whilst Jonah knows that it is God’s character to do exactly that, he doesn’t want to live in a world where this is true. He wants out. ‘O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’
After Jonah’s tirade against Him, God’s reply is measured and calm: ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ At this point, the LORD says nothing more, for there is nothing more to say. If God can forgive the Ninevites, why can’t Jonah? God’s response infuriates Jonah all the more. He leaves the city and sits down east of it, waiting to see what would become of it. Perhaps he’s still holding out hope that God might inflict a little bit of small scale calamity on the Ninevites, just to remind them who’s boss.
As I’ve said before in this series, there’s not word a wasted in the Jonah narrative. And this is no exception. Jonah leaves the city and sits down east of the city (Ch 4.5). Why east? After all, he’s come from the west, from the Mediterranean coast. He’s worked his way inland and finally reached Nineveh. He’s entered this city that takes three days to cross. And now, fed up with God, he leaves the city and heads to … the east of it. You’d expect him to turn back and wait to the west of the city. But that’s not how the story goes. So let me tell you how I interpret this.
Sitting to the east of city, as he looks out over Nineveh, Jonah is facing west. In doing so, he’s facing towards Jerusalem. For Jonah, as a devout Israelite, Jerusalem was the most important place on God’s earth for one simple reason: in the heart of Jerusalem was the temple. And at the heart of the temple was the Holy of Holies, the place where the shekinah, the presence of the God of Israel dwelt with His people. Symbolically, the story is telling us that as Jonah sits to the east, there is an obstacle lying between him and the God of Israel: Nineveh.
God has forgiven the Ninevites. But Jonah has not. He cannot find it in himself to forgive and bless his enemies. His lack of forgiveness towards them now represents a major hindrance between Jonah and God. Remember, in this story Jonah represents the people of Israel. By placing Jonah to the east of Nineveh, the story is telling us symbolically that when we do not forgive our enemies, then there is something that stands in the way between us and our returning to be in the presence of God.
A few hundred years later, having gone up a mountain to escape the crowds, Jesus told his disciples that they must love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matt 5.44). And having told them that, he then told them, ‘if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matt 6.14-15). It’s that serious. If we don’t forgive others, our own trespasses, which alienate us from God, will remain unforgiven by God.
Jonah didn’t want to live in a world where he was called to let go of his anger, forgive his enemies and delight in their repentance and God’s grace and mercy. Throughout the story, the question challenges us, too: do we want to live in such a world? Or do we prefer to be at one not with God but with Jonah?
Read my penultimate reflection on Jonah here.