The Reluctant Prophet

Jonah 1-4

            The story of Jonah has been familiar to many of us since Sunday school. Jonah, called by God to prophesy to Nineveh, flees in the opposite direction. Caught in a life-threatening storm sent by the Lord, the prophet is thrown overboard, swallowed by a huge fish, and spit up on shore to go to Nineveh.

            Two things we don’t often note, though: first, when Jonah gets to Nineveh, he does the barest of minimums. We are told that Nineveh is a huge city, but Jonah’s preaching seems designed to have the smallest impact. In Hebrew, his sermon is literally five words long, “Five days more, Nineveh overturned.” Yet, despite the prophet’s meager efforts, the whole city, all the way to the king, repents. There’s a lesson there about the power of God’s Word.  The power is not in the eloquence or skill of the preacher, but in the Word. As Isaiah tells us, God’s Word accomplishes what He desires.

            The second thing to note is in chapter 4. When the Lord has mercy on Nineveh, Jonah is angry and he tells the Lord, “This is why I didn’t want to come. I knew you would be merciful.” What he means but doesn’t say out loud is, “These people don’t deserve your mercy.” Wow. You’d like to think that we’re better, but guess what… We’re not. I remember in the weeks after 9/11, someone in Bible class got talking about Osama bin Laden along the lines of, “I hope he rots in hell.” When I gently reminded him of Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you,” (“Luke 6:27), he did not take it well at all. And there are other examples of the ways that we talk about the other, that tell us we’re not so different.

            The thing that Jonah lost sight of was that Israel didn’t deserve God’s mercy, either. Deuteronomy 7:7-8 reminds, “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” To steal a line from St. Paul, “It is by grace Israel was saved.” And it’s still the case, “By grace you are saved through faith, and this not of yourselves—it is the gift of God, not by works so that no man can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

            So, neither the prophet nor we should ever lose sight of who God’s grace is for—every single human being, no matter how wicked we judge them—beginning with us.