Whaley Bridge Parish
August 21st 2022
Jonah 3 and 4
Here we are in week three of our sermon series on Jonah. Over the last two weeks we've looked together at how this short story uses comedy to tell us deep truths about God and ourselves. We've seen how Jesus knew this story and let it illuminate his calling to be God's suffering servant. Now as we arrive at chapters three and four the whale's out of the way - it's swum off somewhere else - and we get to the heart of the matter. We get to a really important question. What kind of a God does Jonah believe in? And for that matter, what kind of a God do we believe in?
As we've been finding out over the past few weeks, Jonah is not exactly a role model for us to put on a pedestal. He's a bit hopeless, a bit unimpressive. The commentator Eugene Peterson says we can relate to Jonah because he's companion to us in our ineptness. I like that.
Chapter three gives us the action. Jonah finally girds his prophetic loins, and heads up to the big city to call them back to God. And you know what? It works. The king repents. The people repent. Even the animals repent. The whole city is turning itself around to God. Jonah's preaching has hit its target, with a quite staggering degree of success. Surely this kind of a result will delight Jonah. Surely he'd want to thank God at seeing lives changed and renewed. But no, no a bit of it. Jonah stomps off in a rage.
This is how the Message version puts it:
"Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God: "God! I knew it. When I was back home I knew this was going to happen. That's why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a programme of forgiveness!
So God if you won't kill them, kill me! I'm better off dead!"
And with that, Jonah takes himself for a high level sulk
It does intrigue me that the word "biblical" is most often used in common parlance to mean really big. We might hear about a flood of biblical proportions. Well, Jonah chapter four gives us a sulk of biblical proportions. Jonah's ability to sulk is truly impressive.
And the reason for the sulk? Jonah doesn't like what he's seen of God in action. Jonah wanted to see the people of Ninevah punished. He knew perfectly well what they'd been up to. Remember Ninevah was part of Assyria, Israel's enemy. We can imagine the script running through Jonah's head:
"Those Assyrians, they're all the same, you can't change them, they're callous, evil, hypocritical - they may say they're turning to God, but it's just a sham. They need to be taught a lesson. They deserve to be punished - that might make them sit up and take notice. So what does God do? Does God punish them? Take out the leaders, a bit of collateral damage with the women and children? Some hope. God just goes and shows mercy and forgives them. I ask you. Where's the justice in that? Disgusting I call it."
Jonah is repelled by God’s mercy. His reaction reminds us of that human impulse to condemn, to judge without mercy. Send the asylum seekers to Rwanda. Name and shame the offenders. Lock up the wrongdoers and throw away the key. Why should we show mercy?
So Jonah sits there sulking, and in the course of the sulk, becomes in increasingly inward-looking and self-centred. The sulkers among us will recognise the human truthfulness of the story here. The tree that was providing some convenient shade is eaten away by a worm- it withers away and Jonah is unprotected from the searing Middle Eastern sun. All he's focussed on now is his own needs for survival, for comfort. Jonah's world has shrunk. He's lost track of what this was all about in the first place. For Jonah now this situation is all fundamentally about his hurt feelings. We've all been in this place. It's not fair, no-one understands, and this is all about me! At the end of the story Jonah is a pathetic figure, a figure of pathos. We feel for him. God's last word is to gently remind Jonah that if he can feel attached to a shady tree, how much more will God care about a city and it people? There's no resolution at the end of the story and the question is left hanging for us to ponder
So what kind of a God does Jonah believe in?
The story shows us that Jonah doesn't really want to believe in a God of mercy and forgiveness. He wants to believe in a God of reward and punishment. Good behaviour is rewarded, bad behaviour is punished. Clear and simple. That's a system we can all understand. Everyone gets their just deserts, - surely that's fair? So why does God have to go and mess it all up by this forgiveness thing? The reality of God's merciful love challenges Jonah's world view.
What about us? And what kind of a God do we believe in? In our hearts and hearts, do we believe in a God of mercy, or a God of reward and punishment?
Christ Jesus came into the world to forgive sinners, writes Paul. Forgiveness, being freed from the things that weigh us down and hold us back, becoming reconciled to ourselves and to one another and to God through Jesus, being healed and made whole again - this is the heart of the Christian faith. This is what God makes possible to us in Christ. And we don't earn it. It's all a free gift. It's all grace.
Paul devotes two of his letters, those to the Romans and the Galatians, to showing what it means for Christians to live by grace, and to be freed from living under the law. We aren't bound by the Jewish Law as the people Paul were writing to were. But we still often chose to live by a different kind of law, one of our own making.
What do I mean? I mean the way in which we tend to make life into a contest in which we are the contestants, who can either pass impressively or fail miserably. We make a set of unwritten rules for ourselves – the rules for the contest of life. I must make a success of my relationships. I must excel at work, be active in the local community, must be available to my grandchildren. Now of course these can be good things. The trap comes when we start scoring ourselves on how we've done in the contest of life. My relationship went wrong, the job progression never came, I’m too tired to do much in the local community. I've failed. I'm no good. Or on the other hand I’m making a success of my relationship, I'm cutting it at work, hooray for me, I'm a success in the contest of life. Living under the law means we are constantly judging and grading ourselves. We do not show mercy to ourselves, so we imagine that neither will God show us mercy.
The Gospel of grace cuts through all this once and for all. "Through our Lord Jesus Christ we have gained access by faith into the grace in which we stand" writes Paul the Apostle. The reason we are put right with God is because of what God does for us in Jesus. It's nothing to do with what we do. It's all God's work. Hear this: whether you do well at work, or simply averagely, makes no difference to your salvation in Christ. Whether you achieve your personal goals, or whether you don't makes absolutely no difference to your salvation in Christ. Let's hear it once again: we do not achieve our own salvation by trying very hard and doing very well. The Gospel of grace says: it's all the love of God for us in Jesus. That's the beginning, the middle and the end of the story. You are accepted and forgiven in the mess and muddle of your life as it is. So why don't we stop being so anxious? Why don't we stop needing to congratulate ourselves and punish other people? Why don’t we simply let ourselves be immersed in the grace of God for us in Jesus Christ?
Jonah didn't find it easy to believe in a God of grace. What about you? In your heart of hearts is your God a stern God who is continually judging you and finding you wanting? A God who wants to punish? Or a God of grace and mercy, who wants to forgive? What kind of a God do you believe in?