1/21Jonah 3, see Trible-tanner-How willing are we to let God be God? Salvation is pure gift and grace and Jonah's story reminds us that we do not own that grace, nor is it ours to dole out as we wish. God will be forgiving because that is the very heart of God.
Never worry if we have the God of second chances. When the word of the Lord comes a second time, will Jonah pay heed? Notice we are told that God speaks a second time, but alteration occurs in that we are not given explicit reason for him to go to Nineveh. Does the first reason carry over or not? Is the narrator unwilling to repeat the first message?
So here is Jonah, marching into Nineveh, near Mosul in Iraq in our time. He tells the people in this capital of empire that change was coming. . This was the empire that despoiled Israel and was at the gates of Jerusalem. They do. It would be like preaching to the Taliban or the mullahs in Iran and seeing an immediate mass conversion to become Mennonites.He has the most successful short sermon imaginable. I picture him halfway hoping that Nineveh will be overthrown and punished. He may have hoped it was a look into the future, not an opportunity for repentance. Instead, it stops everyone in their tracks, and all of these pagans repent. In Hebrew, we read : Nineveh, a city great to God. Great could be size but it could point to other interpretations, obviously such as import and power .The response of the city is a mass conversion of everyone to this short sermon that puts preachers in a spasm of envy. . So, unbelievers teach the people about the quality of their own worship perhaps and their response to the call of the liturgy and the prophets.The word overturn is ambiguous as it can mean destruction or deliverance.(hpek/nehapek). Everybody repents when the king says repent. I love the image of poodles in sackcloth and ashes.
In the end, Jonah does not run from his call to Nineveh as much as he runs from the prospect of a God who will forgive enemies of Israel. Does Jonah suspect that God’s steadfast love and compassion, God’s hesed, could be directed to other peoples?Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh, the seat of the dreaded Assyrian empire that had destroyed the Northern kingdom, depopulated it and imported with alien cultures.Sometimes, people speak of the angry God of the Old Testament. Here is a good example of a merciful God whose character is set in Exodus. God’s inclusive love moves toward the enemies. Jonah runs, not out of fear, not out of stubbornness, but in his realization that God could have mercy on the Assyrians, and he can’t live with that. If they listen, if the enemies repent-what about us? In many ways, the tale of Jonah is designed to have us look around with a new perspective. If the enemy can change, so could we. It is a perspective shift o see that the enemy can indeed change. Jonah was slow to respond to God; Israel was often slow to respond to God;we are slow to respond to God, but the Assyrians moved fast.is a perspective that tells us that we are capable of evil ourselves. For us, revenge tastes sweeter than forgiveness.
Enemies do not have to remain enemies forever. We have moved a long way from the deadly days of World War II to a Honda plant in Greensburg, IN. Tourists visits Vietnam and cruise ships enter Cuban waters.We never relinquished out alliance with the Saudis after 9/11.
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