Jonah was angry

 Jonah was angry.

Angry enough to die.

God had sent Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, and Jonah didn’t like it one bit.

Jonah said no. Jonah ran the other direction. And God drafted Jonah anyway.

And so reluctantly, against his will, Jonah preached God’s message to Nineveh: Repent, or God will destroy your city in forty days.

This most successful of prophets declared God’s word, and miraculously, Nineveh listened. Miraculously, Nineveh obeyed. Miraculously, Nineveh declared a fast, and asked for God’s forgiveness.

And miraculously, God forgave.

God forgave even Nineveh. God forgave even Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, the slaughterer of the lost tribes of Israel.

And Jonah was angry.

Angry enough to die.

How could God forgive Nineveh?

Nineveh! Forgiven? Impossible.

Jonah wasn’t frustrated.

Jonah wasn’t confused.

Jonah wasn’t petty.

Jonah was furious.

Jonah was livid.

Angry enough to die.

What good was a God that would forgive *Nineveh*?

Jonah was angry with the fury of the oppressed.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone who has been treated as less than human.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone whose family had been torn apart.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone whose loved ones had been killed or left to die.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone whose culture, whose people had been annihilated.

The fury Jonah had at the Assyrians was only matched by the fury Jonah had at God for suggesting that the Assyrians could be forgiven. The idea that Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire – Nineveh, inventor of tactics for imperial genocide – Nineveh, scourge of the Fertile Crescent – Nineveh, who killed and culturally erased the Kingdom of Israel, who singlehandedly caused the “lost tribes of Israel” to be Lost – the idea that Nineveh could repent – and be forgiven – this was too much for Jonah to bear.

What good is God’s justice if it doesn’t condemn a genocidal killer like Nineveh?

What good is God’s anger if it fails to be aroused against so thorough an evil?

What good is the wrath of God if it fails to smite this sadistic tormentor of an empire that slaughters God’s people and obliterates God’s chosen kingdom?

What good is such a God if in this moment of consequence, God fails to condemn the evildoer?

How could God’s presence be welcoming to the oppressed if God so willingly welcomes the oppressors?

The story of Jonah is set before the fall of the Northern Kingdom, but it was written afterward. God had planned, had promised to destroy Nineveh for its wickedness, but when Jonah begrudgingly preached repentance, Nineveh repented, and God turned aside the destruction planned for Nineveh.

What was the cost of Nineveh being spared? How many victims of genocide would have survived if Nineveh had been destroyed? Would the Northern Kingdom have not fallen? Would the lost tribes not be lost? Judaism is called Judaism today because of the twelve tribes, only the tribe of Judah remains. Nineveh caused the very name and identity of God’s chosen people to be altered to a tiny subset of where it started. What kind of God can truly forgive Nineveh? What does it mean to worship such a God? Can God hear the cries of the oppressed and still pardon the oppressor?

Jonah was angry with the fury of the oppressed at a God whose divine inclusiveness left Jonah out in the blazing heat, unwilling to embrace a God who could embrace evildoers and oppressors, even if they allegedly repented.

This is the story of how reconciliation begins.

This is the story of how redemption begins.

This is the story of how we begin to remember how to love.

This isn’t the end.

God’s wrath is turned back in this story, but this isn’t the fullness of salvation. Not for Nineveh. Not for Jonah. This story is only the beginning. The pause in wrath, the pause in judgment that opens the door for transformation.

Nineveh fasted. They acknowledged their evil. They turned to God.

God didn’t say all is well. God didn’t say the effects of their sin were taken away. What happened here is an opening. In acknowledging their guilt, in acknowledging the evil they were capable of, God finds a crack in the armor the Assyrians build around their hearts. The briefest of openings, a way in for God. The very beginning of transformation.

Enough for God to say that there is something to work with. Enough for God to conclude that Nineveh’s destruction is not the only possible solution. If Nineveh is capable of a moment of repentance, there is room for God to work. If Nineveh is capable of a moment of repentance, there is hope for even us.

Jonah is not wrong about Nineveh’s evil. The road to their sanctification is very very very long. All is not well because of this one decision by the King of Nineveh.

Neither Jonah nor the Assyrians were ready to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jonah needed healing. Jonah cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven until he can forgive, and he cannot forgive until he can heal. Until he can see himself as the fully human member of a family and culture and nation that the Assyrians denied he was. Jonah’s anger is his soul speaking the truth: the Assyrian degradation of their conquered peoples is wrong, and the core of our being ought to cry out in protest against the dehumanization led by Nineveh. That anger declares a truth: the marginalized, the dehumanized, the oppressed, the downtrodden are beloved children of God, and any empire that treats them as less than this is profoundly wrong, profoundly not okay. That anger has to speak its truth: when we dehumanize God’s beloved children, we rend the very fabric of the universe, and if these voices were silenced, the very stones would cry out. Jonah cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven until he can forgive, but expressing and not repressing this anger is a vital step on the road to forgiveness. Victims of violence and oppression must declare their angry truth that despite the empire treating them as if their lives count for nothing, the lives of each marginalized, discounted child of God matter.

Any healing, any reconciliation, any sanctification, any salvation for the oppressor must include a thorough conversion to affirm from the core of their being that those they discounted as acceptable collateral damage in maintaining the well-oiled cogs of the imperial machine are, in fact, lives that matter: beloved children of God and not inconvenient obstacles to wealth and order or means of expansion of wealth or power. Nineveh’s redemption and our own begins, not ends, with acknowledging that the carefully planned violence of their empire is supremely wicked and utterly foreign to the will of God, as every empire is. There is a long road ahead of us still if we are to turn from our wicked ways, and then to make amends. There is a long road ahead for the people of Nineveh if we are to convert to believe that the lives of conquered people matter. And it is an unlikely road for us to travel. Our power, their wealth, our existence as an empire depends on the people of Nineveh sharing widespread belief that the people they conquer are means to the end of the wealth and power and way of life of the city of Nineveh, and not fully human children of God whose lives count just as much as those of the imperial race. Accepting a conversion that threatens our very way of life is no easy task. But without it, Nineveh’s moment of repentance, their fast, their brief turn to God will all amount to nothing.

God longs to reconcile all people, to restore all creation to the presence of God. And yet within the chapters of this story, neither Jonah nor Nineveh are ready to dwell together in the new earth ruled from the new heaven that God is creating. Both Jonah and Nineveh, both trespassed and trespasser, both sinned against and sinner need conversion, transformation, and reconciliation before they can dwell together in the Kingdom of God.

We are both Jonah and Nineveh in this story, and the book of Jonah doesn’t give us a happy ending for either. Jonah did not forgive by the end of the book. Nineveh repented in the book but went on to persist in their destructive ways. 

Jonah’s anger is real and necessary, but it can’t be the end of the story if the story is to lead to redemption. Nineveh’s repentance is real and necessary, but it can’t be the end of the story if the story if to lead to redemption. Anger must be followed by truth, healing, and ultimately reconciliation, if not in this world then in the next to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Repentance must lead to amendment of life, penitence, atonement, and reconciliation, again, if not in this world then in the next, or we cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. But this story gives both the oppressor and the unforgiving the hope that no matter how much any of us are resistant to God’s redemptive project, no matter how much we resent those who have wronged us, no matter how much we persist in our sin and go on failing to recognize the full humanity of those we would write off as expendable – the only sign Jesus has to give us is the sign of Jonah, the sign that God is more persistent than we are stubborn. In the end, we put our hope in God’s steadfastness. Amen.