Jonah 3:10-4:11
3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. 4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 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. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 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. 6 The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Sermon
Do you get angry? Probably a silly question. We all get angry. Even those saying to themselves, “Oh no, not me. I don’t get angry.”
When was the last time you were angry? What were you angry about?
What does it look like when you are angry? Do you get loud and animated? Or do you seethe with a false politeness, where steam leaks out the soles of your feet and every one can feel the it lurking? Or do you push it way, way down worrying that if you show it, it will ruin everything… until….boom. Out of nowhere – you burst. And anyone within a quarter mile radius can feel the shockwaves.
Our culture is understandably confused about anger it seems. Is anger a good thing or…a bad thing? Should someone express their anger or control their anger? Is it even that simple?
In 2019, NY Times Author, Minna Dubin wrote an article called, “The Rage Mothers Don’t Talk About.”[1] And unsurprisingly, she got a mixed reaction from the internet. Strangers on twitter declared her unfit to be a mother. She expected that part. What she didn’t expect “were the many emails (she) received from mothers around the world, saying they too struggle with mom rage and (her) story made them feel less alone.”[2]
Too often in this country, the way anger is perceived depends on who is expressing it. As we saw with Minna Dubin, if a female expresses her anger she’s labeled as hysterical and unfit to lead and needs to suppress it. If a man is angry – particularly a white man – it is often seen as passionate and heroic.
Sometimes anger in the streets is declared as holy and righteous as it stands up against injustice. Other times anger becomes abusive and unhinged and needs to be stopped.
Is anger an emotion that wreaks havoc or is it an alarm bell that warns us that something is wrong here? Rabbi Abraham Heschel says that anger is like fire. It can be a blessing or it can be fatal.[3] Like fire, it is something that can destroy or it is something that can thaw our frozen and hardened hearts.
There is a lot of anger in the story of Jonah. Usually all we remember is that there is a lot of whale in this story. A big fish that swallows Jonah whole. Which is part of the story, but not a big part. It only takes up three verses. But anger is threaded throughout the story. Some that warns us that something is wrong. And some that just wants to wreak havoc.
In the beginning, it’s God who is angry. “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Ammitai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come before me.”
God is angry. This is the kind of Old Testament passage that I spent much of my seminary career trying to avoid. I wanted passages like, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “God is love,” And “Blessed are the peacemakers.” I didn’t have a lot of time or patience for God’s wrath. Until a professor whom I didn’t much care for called me out saying, “You white, privileged, middle-class American male. You don’t think God gets angry at the things you do that hurt others in this world.” Busted. On the spot. And my theology has been forever changed.
God is angry. And God is right to be angry. Nineveh is the capital city of the Assyrian empire, who ruled the world with a sword. They have turned their back on God becoming the epitome of oppression and cruelty. The enemy of God’s people, Israel. The very symbol of evil in the world– think Hitler and Nazi Germany. And God is right to be angry.
Because it means God cares how God’s people are treated. Wouldn’t indifference be an even greater evil? God’s anger is the end of indifference and is a warning that something is not right.
And so God calls Jonah to be the prophet to crying out against Nineveh. And Jonah…wants nothing to do with it. And so now Jonah turns his back on God – it’s a painful truth that we are often just like our enemies. Jonah turns his back on God and runs in the other direction, jumping on a ship headed across the Mediterranean.
And what happens – God gets angry. And God is right to be angry. When God has shown us the evils of this world and called an end to them, and we run in the other direction? God gets angry. God has called us to be a blessing to the world; God will not let us be indifferent to the world.
And so God hurled a great wind upon the sea, and the boat Jonah is stowed away on is about to be torn apart. While the sailors are running around trying to off load any unnecessary cargo, Jonah…was fast asleep in the boat. And now the sailors are angry. And they are right to be angry. You see, when we run from God’s call for justice and allow the daily rhythmic waves of injustice to lull us to sleep, it can put even more lives at risk. “What have you done,” the sailors ask Jonah.
Eventually, Jonah comes clean. He tells the sailors who he is and what he has done. That he has been fleeing from the Lord – and this is his fault. They should throw him over the edge to make it all stop, he says. Which the sailors do, with a bit of reluctance.
As soon as Jonah hits the water, the storms ceases and the sailors are safe.
But what about Jonah? What should God do with Jonah? He, like Nineveh has turned his back on the Lord. What should God do? Let him drown in a sea of justice or give him a second chance?
And this is where the big fish comes in. Jonah is sinking to the bottom of the sea, an ending one could argue that he rightly deserved, but as the Bible says, God provided for him instead. God provided a large fish that swallows him up.
For the next three days and three nights, Jonah sings praise songs to God in thanks for rescuing him, for saving him, even though he had turned his back on God. The fish however isn’t that big into praise music and has finally had enough, so it vomits Jonah back up on the beach and we are back to square one.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah…now a second time, saying ‘Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”
God is still angry at Nineveh. And God is right to be angry. This is Nineveh and they have not changed their evil ways. And this time, Jonah goes.
He walks part way into the city and really lets them have it with an 8-word sermon. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be over thrown.”
Jonah still dripping with the evidence of God’s grace in the form of fish guts offers to Nineveh a graceless, hope-less sermon. “Forty-days more Nineveh and you’re toast. Just you wait. Just you wait.“
And then, in the very next line – Nineveh repents. Changes its ways. Nineveh (of all people!) believed God. And everyone, even the animals, turned from violence and their evil ways.
“40 days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” It worked. Jonah’s sermon worked. Nineveh repented.
But then God….changed God’s mind. When God saw what Nineveh did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed God’s mind about the calamity that God had said God would bring upon them; and God did not do it. 4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and Jonah became angry. 2
And this is when we find out why Jonah ran away from God in the first place. I knew it, Jonah said with spite in his voice. I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Jonah is angry.
And then God asks Jonah this piercing question: Is it right for you to be angry?
It was right for God to be angry at Nineveh for their injustice and cruelty.
It was right for God to be angry at Jonah for running away from God’s request.
It was right for the sailors to be angry at Jonah for risking their life to protect his.
But is it right for Jonah to be angry at God’s mercy?
Jonah doesn’t like that question and proceeds to pick up his toys and leave the sandbox, he stomps over to the nearest tree, grabs a bag of popcorn, sits back to wait God out while overlooking the city… hoping to see that what he think he knows about God isn’t true. Jonah wants to see Nineveh destroyed.
But God will not give up on Jonah like Jonah has given up on God. Instead of sending a storm this time, God throws Jonah some shade. The good kind that relieves him from the heat of the sun. God gives Jonah a bush to protect him, even though Jonah doesn’t deserve it. There is an irony in God’s compassion here – God delivers some mercy to the one who is mad at God for being too merciful. (Fretheim 184). And Jonah was very happy about the bush.
But then God gives Jonah a small taste of justice and destruction when God calls upon a little worm and wind to destroy the plant so that the sun will beat down on Jonah once again. And once again, Jonah would rather die – for to Jonah, God is not just.
And he’s right.
God is not just.
God is just and merciful. God is angry and God is compassionate.
Jonah thought you could separate the two – justice and mercy. Jonah wanted mercy for himself and not any justice. And he wanted justice against Nineveh and not any mercy. To have one without the other is to miss the very heart of God. Justice without mercy is cruelty and mercy without justice is cheap grace.
But what God has been trying to say to Jonah, what God has been trying to show Jonah is that there is something beyond justice and beyond anger. Not in place of justice, not a detour around justice, but beyond it. There is a place beyond justice. And that place is called mercy.
In the end, Rabbi Heschel says, God wants what is beyond justice and what is beyond anger, for what lies beyond justice and anger is the mystery of compassion (and mercy).[4]
Whether we like it or not, God’s deepest desire is the salvation of all people. Even the Ninevites. Even our cruelest enemies. Even us.
And so God asks Jonah again, “Is it right for you to be angry? You were concerned about and showed compassion at the destruction of this bush. Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city of more than 120,000 people and also many animals?”
And that’s where the story ends. The only book in the bible to end with a question mark, I believe. How will the story end? What will Jonah say? What will Jonah do?
I wonder: do you know what it’s like be in the belly of a whale, to have been swallowed whole by the whale of God’s mercy? Do you know what it’s like to have been given a second chance?
In the end, God changed God’s mind. God changed Nineveh’s mind. Heck, even the animals were changed. Jonah was swallowed whole by the mercy of God. The question is will it change Jonah? Will it change us? Is there any bigger fish in the sea that we all long to be swallowed up by other than the one named Mercy?
Amen.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/parenting/mother-rage.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/parenting/mom-rage-pandemic.html
[3] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, pg. 360.
[4] Heschel, p. 368
Untying the Cerebral Knot 