Jonah and the Assyrians

The church I attend recently wrapped up a series on Jonah that is quite good. A few years ago I heard a friend of mine preach through Jonah and he also did quite a good job. A cursory review of the circumstances the book describes are in order and hearing Jonah preached at one church and then another has reminded me that God's kindness is offensive because He so often shows it to those whom many of God's most ardent supporters (in their own minds, at least) can be livid when God chooses to show mercy on the utterly merciless.

That the Assyrians were a very martial and combative culture is not particularly lost on those who investigate them. That God chose to relent of destroying the city after Jonah preached "Yet forty days and the city will be overthrown" is beyond dispute. That Jonah was exceedingly angry and furious that God chose to show mercy on the Assyrians is something Jonah makes plain. He was angry enough to wish for death after the death of a plant ... while waiting to see more than a hundreed thousand die under the wrath of God.

What God reveals in Jonah is that He may choose to send us to pronounce judgment on those who are accurately considered terrible sinners. We may object to even warning them of the Lord's wrath to come, flee from His presence, and then eventually realize that we must go back. Jonah asked to be thrown into the sea to calm the storm rather than ask the sailors to return him to his land to make the trip to Ninevah. Jonah chose death rather than obedience to the Lord ... and yet the Lord showed mercy to him.

Out of that mercy Jonah goes and speaks to the city of Ninevah and pronounces judgment on them. Then the city repents and Jonah is furious that God relents of the destruction promised. Jonah waits. A plant grows up and withers overnight and Jonah is more upset about and more grateful for the plant that he did not work for then for the city that God has spared. Jonah is who we are. We are the sort of people not merely tempted but who actually do consider ourselves the measure of justice and mercy. We say to ourselves "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." We can fool ourselves into thinking that those we "pity" are those whom we pity when we detest them, perhaps even for good reasons. Yet God calls Jonah to speak to a city full of people whose soldiers have destroyed his homeland. God sent them in judgment on Israel's wickedness and yet, paradoxically, they warrant warning. And when warned by Jonah they repent, and this is what infuriates Jonah--that he knew beforehand in his own country that Yahweh would have pity on them.

Who do we not pity that deserves our real compassion, not merely the "pity" we use as a mask to hide ourselves from the depth of our hatred? The first form of pity pours out life to those who need it and may not seem to have earned it. The second is the mask we wear to hide ourselves from the loathing we have at having our hopes or desires thwarted. Jonah hoped for the ultimate destruction of the Assyrian empire.

There may be several levels at which Jonah was furious. First, he could easily look like a false prophet in as much as he had pronounced a judgment that was averted. Judgment EVENTUALLY came as predicted by another prophet, but Jonah's warning was not to be the one that brought about destruction. Second, Jonah saw that God chose to mercifully spare the least deserving nation he could think of, a nation that had ravaged Israel. Third, Jonah saw himself and his people as the good guys and the Assyrians as the bad guys.

It is this third reason that I wish to consider at some small length, because while Jonah would be right to be angry at the cruelty of the Assyrians he was more angry at God for His mercy toward them, it seems, than toward the Assyrians themselves. Here is the part where, true to small group discussion form, I can ask "Who are the Assyrians that you don't want God to show mercy to?" I know that for a LOT of people I have known in the last five years those "Assyrians" would constitute Mars Hill. See, long-time readers of the blog won't have to search too long to see that I have had a profoundly ambivalent perspective on the church and people who have via anonymous comments wanted me to be more on "their" side have not gotten this.

Well, one of the last sermons I heard at Mars Hill was during the Jonah series back in 2008 and it has been illuminating to realize that the church I'm now attending has just gone through Jonah. I'm not interested in ignoring the providential potential in this for myself. It was actually a sermon a friend of mine preached from Jonah that helped me realize that instead of staying where I was at the time that I actually really did need to start moving forward into the next phase of life. I very much appreciate my friend for preaching that sermon and appreciate that there is a new place for me to be for the time being. The future is as always uncertain and often looks gloomy but the Lord leads us through gloomy and uncertain times as well as positive ones. The Lord ordered Jonah to go speak to Ninevah and sometimes the great unexpected turn of events is that God grants blessing and even victory to those you consider your enemy, those you consider unfit for the mercy of God. And in case I miss an opportunity to make this observation again, I did write the sonnet "On Election" in response to how many American Christians view this with respect to politics.

Jonah's anger was that God averted wrath and extended mercy precisely because of Jonah's obedience in proclaiming the warning of God. Jonah's sermon was one of doom, certain doom, and yet God used it to catalyze an act of repentence that averted the very doom Jonah so confidently declared. Jonah said, "Did I not say this when I was still in my own country!? You are a God who is slow to anger and merciful." Our greatest resentments are often at those who continue in sin for years or decades and whom, it seems, God providentially lets off the hook. Not only does God "let" them carry on in sin but they then turn away from those things they did to the Lord and we feel like fools. Jonah hoped for a destruction that did not come. First he fled God's presence, then he insisted on being cast into the sea but even there he did not die. Finally when Jonah realized that God would not even allow him death and that he had to go pursue obedience Jonah relented ... a little ... before reverting to his old anger.

What this means is that Jesus was not kidding when he said to bless those who curse you and to pray for those who persecute you. Jonah shows us how that DOESN'T look so that we can better see how it WOULD look when Christ comes to a world that ultimately rejects Him. Jonah arguably had a more compelling case to want the Assyrians dead than many of us will have about the people we want dead. Jonah's reasons were not even, by our measure of ethics, even remotely bad reasons. Yet the mercy and love that Yahweh extends can be scandalous, even obscene.

In fact that mercy is so obscene Jonah asked God to kill him. There are acts of mercy the Lord offers to people we hate or have been hurt by that are so offensive we would rather not be alive. It is to this fury of Jonah that the Lord asks, "Do you do well to be angry?" Do you do well to go outside of the city all by yourself and hide in a shelter you didn't even make that God providentially gave you for a time and from there wait for the Lord to destroy people because you have felt wronged? Jonah was a prophet who wanted collective guilt to be true for the enemy and not for his own people. Even though we say that collective guilt at all is barbaric this is something we cling to whether we hate Democrats or Republicans or Christians or atheists or Jews or blacks or whites or whomever we choose to resent collectively.

Jonah is a reminder that this kind of resentment is not new and it will never go away. What God does in the midst of this is show a degree of kindness that we find obscene. Jonah is at slightly greater length an examination of what Jesus spoke of through the parable of the Samaritan. Only Jesus went further by demonstrating that the apostate, the heretic, the traitor, the destroyer of all things good and holy was the one who showed greater kindness than those who would have been considered the heroes of righteous.

We constantly want God to give us and our people victories in obvious ways and through obvious means and then become offended when God continues to use those things that are nothing to put to shame those things that are. We, like Jonah, benefit from recognizing that the Lord who can show boundless mercy to us can also show that boundless mercy to people we don't think deserve that mercy. If we question the legitimacy of that mercy for others how can we say that we merit it? We don't and if it is a gift given to us do we question God's wisdom and kindness in giving it to others? We often do. I know I must remind myself regularly that this is a struggle for me and I recognize it is a struggle everyone will have in life.

Whatever your Jonah moment may be, do not wait outside the city of Ninevah for a destruction you want the Lord to enact on your behalf because you feel morally outraged. Proverbs warns that you shouldn't even be happy when your enemy falls or the Lord will take note of your resentment and turn around and bless your enemy. You shouldn't be too eager for your enemy to fail to begin with. Jonah had not learned that and apparently did not learn that for some time. God used him anyway and if God can use such a bitter, combative, and disobedient prophet whose message of brute destruction became a catalyst for the Lord's mercy then this is instructive.