Saturday of the first week of Advent: Jonah again - speaking plainly to God

Presence

I bring myself into Your presence, O God. May I always take time to notice and enjoy
the beauty You have created for my pleasure.

Scripture

Jonah 3:10; 4:1-10

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…
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 and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. 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.
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. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 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.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 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. 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?”

Reflection

What a journey Jonah’s journey to Nineveh was! The miracle of his survival in the whale pales in comparison with what happened next. Jonah went into the great city of Nineveh and with eight words converted the entire population. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”. It is the shortest and most effective sermon on record. “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth”.

Nineveh repents, God spares Nineveh and Jonah is incandescent with rage. For modern readers, the fish story is difficult to assimilate; we find the greatness of God’s mercy to Nineveh easier to accept. For Jonah it was the other way around.

It was not cowardice that made Jonah flee from God’s initial call. He didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he knew the power of his own preaching and he dreaded the possibility that the hated Assyrians would listen to him and be spared.

To us, steeped in the cult of the individual, it is very easy to empathise with Jonah. He had an amazing talent, but he wanted to be the one to decide how best it should be used. It is as hard for us as it was for Jonah to accept that at times our roles will not be centre stage.

Jonah was greatly resistant to the idea of spending his talent in this particular way. His spiritual landscape was as circumscribed and confined as the whale’s belly. While finding his own deliverance perfectly acceptable, he did not want God to extend the same generosity to people he judged as undeserving. Jonah reduced God to a tribal deity, the exclusive property of his own people. His people, and only his people, are the proper focus of God’s love and attention. He tries to force God into his own small world.
Martin Luther described Jonah beautifully: “This is, I think, a queer and odd saint who is angry because of God’s mercy for sinners…He does not even change when God punishes him for his unreasonable anger…and yet he is God’s dear child. He chats so uninhibitedly with God as though he were not in the least afraid of him, as indeed he is not; he confides in him as a father”. Perhaps this is the secret of God’s patience with Jonah. Stiff-necked and curmudgeonly as he is, Jonah is nonetheless honest and courageous, unafraid to enter into a real dialogue with God. He is obedient in action but does not attempt to pretend that he is compliant in his heart. He is completely true to himself.

Prayer

Lord, grant me the courage to speak directly with you about something that is weighing on my mind at the moment.

Amen

Glory to you, Father, source of all being,

to you, Jesus, Word made flesh,

to you Holy Spirit, Comforter,

as it was before time began,

is now and shall be into the future.

Amen.