Delivered on Sunday 10 September 2006 in St George's Chapel

Jonah 4

Last week we left the King of Nineveh sitting on a heap of Ashes. He had heard Jonah's prophetic message and he and every person and every animal in the city had repented of their violent ways. And there the King sat; wondering, if we repent, as we have, then perhaps God will change his mind and not punish us. Who knows? And it is there that we join the story this morning. The first thing we discover is that the King's bet paid off: God saw the national fast, the change of heart and the turning away from evil ways and decided not to punish them. The whole city, people and animals, survived.

Good news, you'd have thought. And surely, Jonah, who had brought the call of repentance to the great city, must have been delighted. It had been a difficult and dangerous mission to a foreign and hostile nation but ultimately it had been successful. So you'd have thought Jonah would have been thrilled, but Jonah was no ordinary prophet. You will remember that Jonah is the prophet who, when first instructed by God to visit Nineveh, got up and ran away. That's not the typical reaction of an Old Testament prophet and here, once again, he reacts in a rather peculiar manner: instead of being pleased he is angry. In fact the language used here is the strongest language possible: he is not just angry, he is furious beyond belief. And as he fumes, he prays. It is only when he prays that we understand why it is that he didn't want to go to Nineveh in the first place. Last week I suggested that his reluctance to travel might have put down to his nationalistic tendencies and to understandable concerns at having to carry a prophecy into a land hostile to his own. But, in truth, that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that he knew God to be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, and always ready to relent from punishing. He knew this was God's nature and that is why when he was first instructed to go to Nineveh, he ran off to Tarshish. "So Lord," he prays, "please let me die!" A world in which God forgives even Israel's enemies is a world Jonah does not wish to live in.

But God ignored his request - he didn't even enter into discussion. Instead he put a simple question: Is it right for you to be angry?

Without further ado, Jonah trudged out of the city and continued eastwards. He settled on a spot where he could still see the city but which was still far enough away to be safe, just in case God decided to punish the city after all. Yes, he built himself a little shelter and settled down to wait for the doom - hopefully spectacular - that God would hurl at Nineveh. Come on God, smash these people to smithereens. ... // Given that timber is a scarce commodity in Mesopotamia - very expensive as it has to be imported - we can assume, with some certainty, that Jonah's shelter did not have much of a roof. So he would have been delighted when he woke up one morning to find a bush outside his shelter, and one so conveniently placed that it sheltered him from the heat of the sun. He must have thought to himself 'that makes things a lot easier'. But the very next day a worm attacked the bush and it withered. Once again Jonah was furious.

I suspect, in today's terms, this business with the plant would be considered harassment. But the point was not to harass but to teach Jonah something about the inconsistency of his own position. Central to this object lesson was the fact that Jonah had had nothing to do with this plant: he did not plant it, or water it, or foster it. It was God who had appointed the plant. In the same way that God had appointed the large fish to save Jonah from the raging deep, he now appointed a plant to save him from the burning sun. It was also God who appointed the worm to destroy the plant, and who appointed the hot east wind to blow, resulting in Jonah's heatstroke. Now, in this weakened condition Jonah, once again, pleads with God to take his life. God replies to his request in much the same way as before: Is it right for you to be angry about this bush? 'Yes', said Jonah, 'angry enough to die'.

Jonah has fallen right into the trap that had been laid out for him. He had had nothing to do with this plant. It had appeared one morning and it was gone the next, and all at the instruction and behest of God. God created it; God destroyed it. And yet he was angry that God had destroyed it. Why? After all Jonah had had nothing to do with the creation of a great city, a city with many people and animals - something much more important than a plant; and Jonah wanted God to destroy that city. Softly but firmly God pointed out the inconsistency of Jonah's position. He said to him: "If you're concerned for this plant, should I not be concerned for the great city of Nineveh, with its enormous population of people and animals?" And there the story ends.

Some commentators suggest that the primary function of the book as a whole and of this passage in particular is to teach universalism, that is, the doctrine that God will save everyone and everything. You can certainly see where that interpretation comes from. If God is willing to save the Ninevites whose reputation for violence and oppression is legendary, then surely he will save anyone. And, of course, there may be something of that in the story but I don't think that really gets to the bottom of it. In reading the passage I was struck by Jonah's reaction to the plant's destruction - he wasn't cross because a plant had been destroyed; he was cross because the plant that had been giving him shade had been destroyed. This concern with self is exactly what we saw when we looked at the prayer he offered straight after the great fish had vomited him up. There we discovered that his prayer was not a simple psalm of praise but an exercise in self-deception. And when we look at his prayer in today's passage we notice another twist. In the middle of that prayer Jonah acknowledges that God is gracious and merciful but surrounding that statement of true faith are these sentences: "Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew. ... Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live". In these two sentences, Jonah makes eight references to himself. His statement of true faith is enveloped by massive egocentrism. This same egocentricity is seen in his anger at the destruction of the plant. Both are linked into his firm belief that God is on his side. If God is on his side, why would he destroy the plant that offered him shade? If God is on his side, why would God save his enemies? Jonah's anger is based on this belief that God is on his side. And if God is on his side, surely he will do what Jonah wants; in this case, save the plant and destroy the city of Nineveh.

But God is more elusive than that. And to prove that point when we read that God appointed a bush, and that God appointed a worm, and that God appointed a hot wind - the Hebrew text is very careful to use a different word for God on each occasion. The text is crying out: "you think you've got God worked out, you haven't, you're not close". God is free to do as his pleases - no human or group of humans can claim to own God, however much we believe that he might choose to own us.

The story of Jonah is full of vitality. And at a time when we will soon commemorate the tragic loss of life in New York five years ago, the story carries some force. As emotions understandably rise, and replayed images cause renewed anger, we like Jonah, as prone to think, "God is on our side". Yet, God softly reminds us, as he did Jonah, that he is majestic. By all means let us come to God with our full range of emotions, including anger, but let us remember that in his sovereignty, God is free to be God.