Wednesday of the First Week of Lent - March 13, 2019

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Jonah 3:1-10  Luke 11:29-32

 As you read this passage from the Book of Jonah, you would get the impression that Jonah is a dutiful messenger following the Lord‘s bidding by warning the people of Nineveh of their impending destruction. Apparently he succeeded because the inhabitants, including their king, immediately responded to his call for repentance, believing that God might spare them from utter destruction. As far as the work of prophets goes, Jonah was a super star; his words were heeded rather than ignored.

But when this passage is looked at in the context of the whole book of Jonah, you get a very different picture. In the two chapters preceding this one we learn that Jonah does not want to follow God’s directive to prophesy to the people of Nineveh and instead boards a boat headed to Tarshish to get as far away from Nineveh as he can. Not what you would call a model prophet. He is stopped only because the Lord intervenes by causing a great storm upon the sea. Out of fear of Jonah’s God, the sailors throw him overboard and he is swallowed up by a large fish where he is held captive for three days and three nights. It is only after he survives that ordeal that the Lord once again instructs him to go to Nineveh to preach against their wickedness. When Jonah finally undertakes that mission, I am sure he was certain that the Lord’s message would fall on deaf ears and Nineveh would be destroyed. But God is God. Because of their repentance, God spared Nineveh and all its inhabitants.

While you expect that Jonah would rejoice in that, he did not. Nineveh was a great enemy of Israel and the fact that it was spared angered Jonah and he expressed his anger to God. For Jonah, justice would have called for the destruction of Nineveh no matter how they might have sought forgiveness. What they sowed they should reap. For God, despite past behavior, mercy is the response even for those who have acted wickedly in the past. Human justice is not always God’s justice. God’s justice always is wrapped in mercy.

Q: Has there been a time that you have run away from what God is calling you to do?

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