Hmmph! Blah! Of all the fool things! Repent and be saved! Who would have thought it? Why in the world?
I am angry. Yes, I don’t dispute it. I am angry. And why wouldn’t I be, after all I have gone through? I am angry. And with good reason. I went through hell and back, and with what result? Angry? You bet your bottom shekel I am angry. And I don’t mind telling you who I am angry at. I am angry at God. I don’t think God did right by me. Hmmph. Ridiculous. Unacceptable.
You don’t understand why I am angry? Tossed overboard in the middle of a storm, and you don’t think I have a right to be upset? Three days in a stinking, lousy, fish, and you don’t understand why I am angry? You just don’t get it, do you? I’m totally angry, and I don’t mind telling you why.
I guess you could say that it all started with the way I was brought up. In my home and in my town we were taught that we, Israel, were the chosen people of God. The only chosen people. My father said, “Jonah, just remember that everybody else is wrong and wicked and way off base, and someday God will punish them for all their wrongdoing.” When my mother would say to him, “Don’t you think it would be best to teach Jonah to love the Lord with all his heart and soul and strength,” my father would reply, “My boy Jonah is going to be a man. He’s going to know that you have to be tough in this world. Jonah, when you grow up, just remember: don’t ever let anybody put anything over on you. Do them before they do you. And if they cheat you, Jonah, the Bible says, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. Get ‘em.”
As a child I took a secret pleasure in that; it felt good to know that we were right and they were wrong. It felt very good to know that ours was a loving and compassionate God, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy for us. But that same God, we could count on it, would rain down fire from heaven on idolaters and thieves and liars and, well, on other people. Praise the Lord of hosts, the avenger of Israel! In my childhood I learned that it was good to feel anger about all those people out there, the ones who were not us.
Angry? You bet I’m angry! And particularly in recent years, when the dirty pagan hordes of Assyria swept into our beloved Israel. Samaria, our great city, destroyed! Those filthy Assyrian kings, Shalmaneser and Sargon, treading the roads of our country! Our king, Hoshea, disgraced, and thousands of our people exiled! Worse than that, thousands of Assyrians, Babylonians, Edomites, the unwashed, brought in to our towns. The Assyrians want to ruin us with all these foreigners, who don’t speak our language, don’t live the way we live, and have their own gods. It’s horrible! Truly horrible!
I didn’t understand what God was doing then; and I don’t understand it now. But one thing I do know – that I burn with fierce anger at these wanton warriors from Assyria’s capital city, Nineveh. I hate them. I hate them with a perfect hatred! And I want nothing more than to see them punished.
So you can imagine what I felt when the Lord God of Israel, He who is gracious and compassionate toward His own, but who judges the wickedness of other nations – you can imagine what I felt when He put it in my mind that I must go and preach in Nineveh. I told Him I would not; that I could not; that He must be mistaken. I told God that the prophet Jonah would not lower himself to pick around the slums of Nineveh. After all, there was plenty for me to do at home. If it was preaching that He wanted, I could do that in my hometown. If I was supposed to prophesy, I could do that among my own people. Nineveh?! Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be right. Won’t work. In fact, it makes me angry just to think about it. I was not going to lower my standards and go over to that garbage heap, Nineveh! No!
So I paid my fare for a ship, bound for Tarshish, way out west. I just sort of got busy, you know, like saying to God, “Uh, you think it over, while I’m on this trip, and when I get back, maybe you’ll come up with a better plan.” I couldn’t very well tell God that He didn’t know what He was doing, but I sure could get real busy in a hurry. I could find so many other things to do that I could put this nagging call stuff out of my mind. I figured that if I ran away from what God wanted me to do, He’d find somebody else. Somebody who might even like it. There are folks who like to slum, you know. They can have their ministry to Nineveh if they want it. It’s not my thing. And, yes, again, I am angry at the very thought that somebody thinks I ought to go over there and deal with that mess. Why, do you know they practice child sacrifice? That they have prostitutes in their temples? That they eat rich food and drink hard liquor until it’s coming out of their ears? That’s not the place for God’s man! I could not bless that sort of mess.
Well, the bumbling idiots on my ship. A storm came up, and it got rough. They didn’t seem to know what to do to keep the old tub afloat. Started mumbling about a jinx on board. Asked me if I was the problem. I told them, “I am a Hebrew; I worship the God of heaven and earth and sky and sea, thank you very much.” I wanted them to know who was who around there! But, I must admit, I did think that maybe God was working on me, and that my little disobedience game was catching up with us. And so, as things got worse, and the storm threatened to capsize us, I offered myself. I said, “Throw me overboard. I think this storm is all about me.” After all, I knew that God, our God, was merciful and compassionate and slow to anger where His own are concerned, but He judges others. So I figured that He would rescue me and let the ship, with its blasphemous, gambling sailors, go into the drink. It was worth the chance.
Well, I have to tell you, what happened next deepened my anger and my surprise. When I went over the rail and looked back, the sea had calmed and the ship was upright. All along that rail were rows of grinning sailors, perched like crows on a clothesline, laughing and cawing and jeering at me! God is going to save them?! Why? Why? Supposed to save me and let them drown! I’m the Israelite here. I’m the prophet, I’m the one who has followed him all my life. And do you know what else I heard, bobbing around in that water? I heard those sailors praying to my God, praying, and even offering sacrifices and making promises – to my God. It really felt awful, listening to the name of the Lord God of Israel, badly pronounced by these nobodies, who didn’t even know how to construct a proper prayer. All they did was yell out whatever they felt, none of the proper prayer language. Hmmph.
Well, looking for something to grab hold of, even in those circumstances, I felt the heat of anger surging up. God having mercy on these no-good, outcast, unworthy sailors. I had always felt that His blessings were for us. For Israel. For good people, for nice people. Can’t get over it.
Angry? Should I be angry, you ask? Oh, you haven’t heard the half of it yet. You just don’t know. The most frightening moment any soul ever felt was about to hit me. I have every right to be totally irate.
I heard something off to my right, and there, to my astonishment, was the largest fish I had ever seen! It was swimming straight toward me, and quickly! Its immense mouth was rising out of the water, opening wide and showing rows of teeth too white and too sharp to hide. I tried to dive, I thought about swimming to the side, I screamed at it to scare it off – but to no avail. It just kept coming! And in one horrible, unforgettable moment, in a grand sweep punctuated by the flap of its tail, I saw its joys engulf me, overwhelm me! You have not known fear if you have never had an experience like that! There is absolutely nothing in human experience to compare with this, unless maybe it is death itself. Yes, I suppose the approach of death is the worst, because nobody comes back from death. I was in the belly of the fish for three dismal days, but nobody comes back from death after three days. Well ..
Anyway, can you imagine what it feels like to be in a fish’s stomach day after day? Why I was not torn to shreds by its teeth I don’t know. But can you imagine? The smell of digesting food! The feel of contracting muscles! I could not breathe, my head hurt, I could not move. I was first afraid that I was going to die. And then I was afraid I wasn’t going to die! Because dying would have been better than sloshing around in a fish belly, waiting for the inevitable.
And so, yes, I felt anger about that. I felt angry at the sailors who threw me overboard; I felt anger at the fish; I felt anger at .. at .. I don’t know. Not supposed to feel anger at God. Maybe I felt angry with myself for resisting God’s purpose .. I don’t know. I don’t know. Just anger, and lots of it.
But, well, here I am. Obviously I didn’t die. I got out. Spewed up on a dry beach. I managed to get some help and get back to civilization. And, all right, all right, I told God, if this is what you want, this is what you get. So I pulled up my socks and went over to Nineveh to start preaching. Just get it together, Jonah, I said to myself, get it over with. Nobody said you had to enjoy this; just get yourself over to Nineveh and do your job and then maybe God will leave you alone.
Well, you know, that place was all I expected it to be, and more. It was full of nasty, unattractive, ignorant, selfish people. And it was a huge place – so big it would take three days just to walk through its streets. This was not going to be much fun. But it had to be done. And so I started in, just took one message and did it over and over again, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Not a bad plan, I thought; just tell them how bad they are and put them on notice that God will take care of them. That should show them.
Well, I couldn’t believe it! I only got about a third of the way through the city, and they began to turn themselves around! Instead of sneering at me and my message, as I just knew they would, they seemed to find it attractive! Instead of rejecting everything I stood for, they embraced it! And instead of being angered, as I wanted them to be, by my message of judgment, they went into prayer meetings! They set aside their garish clothes and put on basic black. They pushed back from their sumptuous tables and took up fasting. Nineveh began to look like an old-fashioned camp meeting! I was astounded.
But I was more than astounded. I was angry. I am angry. I don’t want to see the people of Nineveh under the mercy of God. I want to see them under His judgment. I don’t want to see the Assyrians in the circle of God’s love; I want to see them suffer for all that they had done. Why would God love common thieves, flagrant adulterers, drunkards and drug abusers? Why would God gather in child molesters and dishonest tax collectors and women of easy virtue just because they wept? No! No! It can’t be that easy. It can’t be that good for them. They ought to pay the price for who they are. I am angry.
And now even their king has gotten into the act. He has decreed that the whole city should repent, right down to the cats and dogs and horses and cattle. Arrgh! I’m out of here. I give up. I came reluctantly in the first place; and I came to see judgment, not this smarmy piety and this wholesale forgiveness.
In fact, I am so angry … Lord, just take my life. I don’t want to stick around in these circumstances. Just take my life. Take it now. Take me, quickly. I’m too angry to do anything but spit! Pttp!
Well, nothing. I should have guessed. Lord, all you do is put me in circumstances I hate. All you do is throw me among these filthy faithless foreigners, and then give them more than you give me. And I’ve served you since I was a small child. Well, I give up. Just remove me. Just put an end to it. I’ll sit here until you do. I’ll just make a little booth and sit here to wait for you to do your thing.
This bush .. where did it come from? I don’t remember it being here a moment ago. Oh well. Nice though. Keeps the sun off my head. Nice to be comfortable again, after the fish thing. Beautiful bush, castor bean, I think .. how did it grow so fast? Well, let me just lie down in its shade and rest and wait. Wait for God to give Nineveh something else and ignore me, I guess!
Yawn. Oooh, it’s getting hot out here. Where’s my shade? Hey! My bush! It’s gone! It’s dead. Look at that, would you? A worm gorged itself on nearly every leaf! I can’t believe it! My bush. It ate my bush. This is ridiculous! This is the last straw. My bush. I needed that bush. I wanted that bush. It was my bush. The worm had no right. And now it’s hot, and I’m out here in the sirocco without protection. First the cold wet fish and now the hot dry desert. Lord, will it ever stop? Just end it all! Just let me die! I am so angry! I just have to hit something, I have to scream, I want to die!
Oh my God! My God! What has happened to me? I am getting upset over a bush. A common, ordinary, overgrown weed. My anger is so out of control I want to lash out at this leafy enemy! What have I come to? What is my anger doing to me? I’m upset about the loss of one little replaceable bush, a bush which I did not grow or tend.
And yet I won’t allow God room to be concerned about a whole city? I won’t give God room to care for a whole nation of a hundred and twenty thousand people, wandering souls who don’t even know the difference between their right hands and their left? When God has made them Himself? When God has labored over each and every one of them, making each one unique, loving them as His children? How my anger has blinded me! My anger has kept me from seeing that the love of God is broader far than earth’s vast expanse, ‘tis deeper and wider than the sea. Love reaches out to all to bring abundant life – and my anger kept me from all of that.
Oh, my God, it is I who must repent. Just as the people of Nineveh repented and turned to you to receive forgiveness, I must repent. I who have been a part of your people all my days, but have never really understood the length and height and depth and breadth of your love. Oh, my God, it is I who must be forgiven of my anger.
Lord, take my anger and channel it. Use it for your redemptive purposes. If I am angry at the injustices around me, take the energy of my anger and channel it into the cause of justice. If I am angry at the wickedness of others, take the energy of my anger and channel it into showing them a better way. If I am angry at the indifference of others, take the energy of my anger and channel it into an impassioned witness for you. If I am angry at your own people, gathered in this house of worship, take the energy of my anger and channel it into a ministry of love and service. If I am angry at my brother, seated next to me, or at my sister across the room, take the energy of my anger and channel it into the courage to work for reconciliation.
And if, O God, the heart of the matter is that I am angry at myself, angry because I do not live up to my own rigid expectations, angry because there are secret sins and hidden faults I cannot face; if at the bottom line I am angry at myself, because I have hated myself, running the other way when you have called me to be on mission … if I am angry because I have despised myself, unable to accept your offer of new life – then, O God, turn my anger inside out. Turn my anger at myself into positive energy, redeeming love. Turn my anger at myself, and, yes, my anger even at you, into a radiance that will do whatever needs to be done for the Kingdom.
Oh our God, my anger. Channel my anger. Take that energy and use it. Make me a channel of blessing today, make me a channel of blessing, I pray. My life possessing, my service blessing. Channel my anger, you who after three days’ death come forth in love and in life. Amen.
