Jonah's Frustration

Thursday, October 16, 2008 -- Week of Proper 23
Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Bishops, 1555
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1556

Today's Reading for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 989)
Psalms 18:1-20 (morning) 18:21-50 (evening)
Jonah 3:1 - 4:11
Acts 27:27-44
Luke 9:18-27

Jesus tells his disciples that he must suffer the same fate as so many of the prophets before him. God's people will not listen to him and heed his message. He will be opposed and treated violently. Yet he offers to those who will listen to him a path of service. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

The ending of Jonah makes a humorous counterpoint to the gospel reading today. Jonah is the reluctant prophet who refuses to speak God's word and tries to flee. Yet who can flee from God? So Jonah goes to Nineveh.

For Israel, Nineveh is a symbol of evil. (read Osama bin Laden) More than once armies from Nineveh had attacked Israel. Sargon II, who destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, had a palace at Nineveh. Sennacherib, who destroyed Lachish and many other cities and starved many in his siege of Jerusalem, helped make Nineveh magnificent. Nineveh is in modern Iraq, across the river from the city of Mosul.

When Jonah preaches, this foreign town of enemies listens to him. Unlike the people of Israel, the Ninevites take the prophet's message seriously. They proclaim a fast and repent in sackcloth. (In a humorous exaggeration, even the animals participate, fasting and wearing sackcloth.) Because they heeded the prophet's warning, "God changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it."

But Nineveh is the hated enemy. These are the people who have destroyed Israel and insulted Israel's God. Just because they heeded one prophet this one time, they are to be spared?! Jonah is furious. He wanted "shock and awe" rained down upon them -- fire and violence and destruction. Jonah pouts outside the city, just hoping God will call down ruin upon it.

A bush appears in the desert of Iraq. (Yes, it's a bad pun.) The bush covers Jonah from the sun and sultry east wind. But the next day, a worm withers the bush, and Jonah is exposed to the heat, while the city remains undestroyed. Jonah is so miserable that he wishes he were dead.

"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?"

It's a great ending. Funny and ironic. God punches holes though Jonah's prejudice and his religious pride. Jonah wants a triumphalistic God; a tribal God who will punish the other religions, especially those who have treated his people with such violence. Instead, he recognizes that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, ready to relent from punishing.

Many commentators believe that this book was written as protest literature during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, and time of nationalism and ethnic purification.

Imagine today how popular a short story might be featuring a gentle and forgiving end for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That's the flavor of the book of Jonah. If you might be frustrated and angry with such an end, you can feel for Jonah as he sits beneath the bush in the Iraqi desert waiting for revenge. But that's not God's way, says the story.

Lowell

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Morning Reflections is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

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worship weekly
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serve joyfully
live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas