“Jonah’s pity party”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, September 24, 2023
Jonah 3:10-4:11 (Forward, p. 57) CEV p. 941
I’ve long thought that American singer/ songwriter Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit, “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To”, would be a fitting title for this chapter from the book of the prophet Jonah. Jonah is having his own little pity party, unset over two things, two things of God’s doing.
First off, he is upset that God ‘changed his mind’ and didn’t annihilate the people of Nineveh, that terribly destructive and evil people. After all, their nation, the Assyrians, had destroyed Jerusalem and most of Judaea and taken their people into exile. As a Jew and an ancestor of ‘this lot’, he had a grudge, an animosity towards them, and, of course, a painful memory for what they’d done to his own people. So, of course, he wanted nothing of good towards them, meaning that he was totally insincere in coming to them with his message of repentance. He actually wanted nothing of the sort. He wanted them and their city to ‘burn’, to be destroyed once and for all. Some have even suggested that Jonah was something of a racist, someone out for his own people, and no one else, which, of course, could well have been. Much of Israel, even up to the time of Jesus, was of that mind. And so, Jonah was rather upset when Nineveh repented, and God reneged on His threat to punish them.
And secondly, when Jonah, in true Lesley Gore fashion, went off to sulk, he was upset that the gourd vine that had grown up quickly and had shaded him from the hot sun, perished just as quickly. Once again, he was totally fixated on himself and on his own pleasure or relief, his own agenda. And, as God so pointedly reminded him, he was more concerned with the vine—or, to be more blunt about it—about himself, than he was with the people and creatures of the cities, the youngsters and the domestic animals of that city—people and creatures who didn’t ‘deserve’ to die, and who had no part in any of their parents’ or ancestors’ misdeeds. And so, we discover a God who doesn’t ‘glory’ in the punishment or destruction of people—as some have suggested--but only wants them to repent, to turn from their evil ways. And furthermore, we see a God who doesn’t hold the next generation accountable or responsible for the past, who weren’t part of their faulty or nasty decisions, even if they somehow ‘benefited’ from those decisions. (The case of Achan—see Joshua 7—is somewhat different as his own family was complicit in his cover-up; he could not have hidden his ‘stolen
loot’ in a hole under the family tent without their being in some way privy to it, or at least suspicious!)
So, to return to Jonah and his unhappiness with God, we see a God who is genuinely concerned with people and their well-being, genuinely interested in having people turn from their evil ways. God is loving and caring towards the stranger and the wayward, even if Jonah, his chosen prophet, is not. God sometimes ‘overrules’ even His chosen ones. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “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?”
(chapter 4 verse 11).
“The exasperating tenderness of God. A compassion that would move skies and seas to give oppressive enemies of Israel a chance to hear God’s prophet and respond. A mercy that counts every human inside Nineveh and knows what they ‘do not know.’ A love that rescues an unwilling prophet with a fish and pays attention to the ‘many animals’ that fasted with the people of Nineveh and would otherwise suffer in a calamity of God’s doing.
“I do not read Jonah was a tale of God choosing love over justice or of God condoning oppression. I see it as a revelation of God’s hope: that creatures should live free of violence with one another. The God I encounter in Jonah is not interested in punitive justice or letting oppressors oppress but in justice that ends oppression and makes peace. When the inhabitants of Nineveh turn from their evil ways, the purpose of God’s exasperating tenderness meets its aim.”
Moving Forward: “Read all 48 verses of Jonah and reflect on their meaning.”
A concluding note: Even though the children, those who ‘cannot tell right from wrong’, were not held accountable, the adults in their lives, their parents, grandparents and the varied decision-makers were. It was they, and their repentance, that was necessary and that paved the way for their deliverance from God’s pending judgment.