Well, we’ve made it to the last week of sermons on Jonah.  You know what’s happened so far: Jonah tries his best to flee from the presence of the Lord.  But with the help of a raging storm and a great fish, God persuades Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim that its destruction is immanent.  If you were here last week, then you remember the story: not only do the people of Nineveh convert, but they do so with great enthusiasm.  God changes God’s mind, and decides to spare the city. 

If the story ended here, it would seem complete, wouldn’t it?  What a happy ending that would be!  But real life is usually more complicated than that, and so is the book of Jonah.  Today, we come to the fourth and final chapter of the book.  What we discover is a story that reminds us of how hard it can be to grasp the breadth and depth of God’s love; we find a story that reminds us of how small and petty we can be.  To help us get into today’s text, I’ll begin with the end of last week’s reading, the end of chapter three.

[Jonah 3:10-4:11]

In the first week of this sermon series, when Jonah was heading to Tarshish, I said that we’d have to wait until the last chapter to find out why Jonah tried to flee.  And here we have it: Jonah knew that God was a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.  If God is going to love and forgive this foreign people, these Ninevites, then Jonah doesn’t want any part of it.  Jonah isn’t prepared to have a God whose love is universal.  This conviction that God’s love is for all people is one truth that rings loud and clear in this last chapter of Jonah.  It would be easy to write an entire sermon on that. 

But what intrigues me about the end of Jonah’s story is his anger.  By the time we get to this last chapter, Jonah prays that he might quit living, his anger is so great. 

In Hebrew, words that describe emotion are often related to the body.  In this story, the word used for anger literally has to do with burning nostrils.  It’s a great image, isn’t it?  I tell you this because in the last chapter of Jonah, we see a lot of burning. 

Jonah so despises God’s forgiveness of Nineveh that, in Jonah’s mind, it’s evil.  The first verse of chapter four literally reads that “And the evil was a great evil to Jonah, and it burned him.”  We’ve all been in Jonah’s shoes.  We’ve all had those moments when anger burns so fiercely that we can hardly see straight.  This is part of what it means to be human. 

Take a moment to remember a time when you were angry.  Remember how that feels.  Burning nostrils, indeed!  For some of you, just remembering anger is enough to make us feel angry all over again, isn’t it? Now take a deep breath, and let the memory go.

Jonah has a certain idea of who God is.  God has made a special covenant with Israel, and Jonah likes the idea that he’s a part of that covenant.  For some reason, he does not like the idea that God can just go about showering love and forgiveness on foreign peoples.  He doesn’t want to go to Nineveh because he knows that, even if he prophesies destruction (as God told him to do!), God may very well change God’s mind. 

Here’s the thing: Jonah is sure that he is right.  He has some standard of righteousness stuck in his head, and he wants God to live by that standard.  He wants to see Nineveh destroyed.  Jonah knows from the beginning of the story that God won’t do what he wants, and so he’s been angry throughout the book.  God can persuade him to go to Nineveh, but God can’t make him be happy about it.  By the time God actually does forgive the Ninevites, Jonah is so convinced of his own righteousness that he dares say to God, “I told you so!  I knew you’d act like this.  If that’s the way you’re going to be, then take my life; I don’t want it anymore.”

I think that this illustrates something about anger: anger only knows how to be right.  Anger is unable to say, “you have a good point even though I disagree with it.”  If we’re able to be open-minded like that, it’s only because we have the self-control to stand back from our anger, and not be totally consumed by it.  When we’re in the midst of anger, we don’t question whether or not our perceptions or beliefs are accurate.  Anything we see or hear is used to justify our own point of view.  This is why anger can become destructive so easily: it’s difficult to see beyond it.  So everything we encounter becomes one more reason to feel angry, and the anger continues to burn.  

I’m not saying that anger is necessarily bad; it’s not.  But we have to take care with our anger, so that it doesn’t consume us and become destructive.  Otherwise, we can end up just looking for something to be mad about.  When someone speaks to us, we interpret it in the worst way possible.  Anger absorbs us.  It distorts our perspective. It becomes difficult to think about anything else, or to feel anything else.  The Hebrew people knew what they were talking about – anger can burn us. 

Anger can become a vicious cycle; it’s always finding yet another reason to continue.  And that leads us to an important question: when we’re entrenched in our own anger, as Jonah is, how do we get out? 

Let’s look, for a moment, at what God is like in this story.  Like Jonah, God knows how it feels to be angry.  God is angry with the Ninevites, but God is also able to turn from that burning anger.  Jonah himself knows this about God.  When I read the fourth chapter of Jonah, I see a God who is trying to help Jonah find a way out of the impasse that his anger has created.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the fourth chapter.  When Jonah prays to God, explaining why he had fled and asking that his life be taken away, God replies, “is it right to be so angry?”  Translated literally, “Is it good that it burns you?”

Notice that God doesn’t scold Jonah.  God doesn’t offer some sort of theological defense of the decision to forgive Nineveh.  God doesn’t say anything about whether or not Jonah’s life will be taken.  Rather, God invites Jonah to reflect on his own anger.  “Is it good that it burns you?” 

God knows that anger isn’t inherently good or bad.  Anger is a good thing when it burns within us and moves us to seek reconciliation and justice.  Anger can be constructive, even righteous.  It can help us to seek God’s will.  But anger can also be a distraction.  If we let it, our anger can blind us to the needs of others, and to God.  Anger can be destructive.  And so God asks Jonah: “is it good that it burns you?”

Well, Jonah was not ready to reflect on his own anger.  So he storms out of the city, makes himself a booth, and sits down to see what happens next.  He’s sullen, and decides he’s not talking to God.  Jonah’s not exactly admirable here, but we’ve probably all acted like Jonah at one point or another.

Thankfully, God is patient and full of grace.  Just as God doesn’t give up on us, God doesn’t give up on Jonah.  Let’s turn now to this incident with Jonah and the bush. 

The same God who had appointed a fish to swallow Jonah now appoints a bush to grow and give Jonah some shade.  This made Jonah very happy.  But then God appoints a worm that destroys the bush.  God sends a sultry east wind, and again we find Jonah angry.  “The sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die.”

Again, God invites Jonah to reconsider his anger.  “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?”  (“Is it right that it burns you?”)  Jonah is certain that he is right.  He says, “yes, angry enough to die.”  This sentence is Jonah’s final word in the story. 

I admit, this story about the bush can seem a little strange.  What is it supposed to mean, anyway?  I’m going to take my best shot at answering that question.  Listen to God’s words at the close of the book:

You are concerned about the bush for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night.  And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals? (Jonah 4:10-11, NRSV).

I have another Hebrew word to teach you: hus.  The New Revised Standard Version, which I read from earlier, translates this word as ‘concern.’  It’s not a bad translation, but it doesn’t go far enough.  Hus is compassion, pity, loving kindness.  When someone shows hus to someone else, they do so not for selfish reasons, but simply because they care about the other person.  Hus is compassion for the sake of compassion.  Hus is loving someone out of sense of grace, and not because they did something to earn it. 

Let’s go back to that bush.  We know that Jonah was happy to have the comfort and shade.  We know that the wind and sun made him angry.  But the writer never told us how Jonah reacted when the bush was destroyed.  At the close of the book, it is God who tells us how Jonah felt about that bush.  God says that Jonah was concerned about the bush for which he did not labor and which he did not grow.  Jonah showed hus – compassion, loving kindness – toward that bush.  How well God knows us!  In the midst of his anger, Jonah was still capable of feeling compassion.  Today’s artwork is a reprint of a woodcut showing Jonah with that withered bush.  In this instant, Jonah shows that he too is capable of grace, and tenderness.  It’s a lovely image, isn’t it?

What amazes me about the end to this story is that God uses Jonah’s own feelings of compassion to teach Jonah about what God’s like.  Usually, we think of trying to be more like God.  But here, God says to Jonah, I can be like you.  You can use your own experience to understand me better.  It isn’t what we expect, is it?

And then God says to Jonah, if you show hus toward that bush, why shouldn’t I show hus to Nineveh?  There the story ends.

Except it doesn’t end, does it?  By not giving us the chance to hear Jonah’s response, the writer of this book leaves the question for us to answer.  So, I ask you: why shouldn’t God have compassion on the Ninevites? 

You know, I think that if I had to pick a favorite chapter of the Bible, this would be it.  There are many stories that I love, I always enjoy Ecclesiastes with all its skepticism, the prologue in the first chapter of John is beautiful.  But this last chapter of Jonah is my favorite.  It’s my favorite because it gets right down to the matter of what it means to trust in God’s mercy.

The book of Jonah tells us about God’s universal love: God doesn’t just love the Israelites, God loves the Ninevites, too.  In theory, that sounds fine, doesn’t it?  When we’re being rational and philosophical, of course we think that God’s love is universal.  Jesus loves the little children; he’s got the whole world in his hands.  We know this – God loves everyone. 

But when anger is burning in our nostrils, as the Hebrews would say; when we’re totally convinced that we’re right and the person we’re mad at is wrong; when anger distorts our perceptions and allows us to see only more reasons to be angry – in those moments, are we willing to believe that God’s mercy is stronger than our anger?  When we’re so convinced of our own righteousness that we think that everyone else has it wrong, can we remember God’s compassion for all people? 

Again, I invite you to remember a time when you felt angry.  Now reach beyond that memory, and remember the wideness of God’s mercy.  The next time you’re so angry that you can’t see a way out, remember Jonah.  Remember the compassion he felt for a simple plant.  Find someone or something with whom you can share God’s compassion – a plant, a dog, even the memory of someone very dear to you.  Give yourself a moment to feel that compassion, just as Jonah felt compassion for the bush.  Perhaps then it will be easier to remember God’s great compassion for the world.

Jewish writer Abraham Heschel notes that God’s response to Jonah stresses the supremacy of compassion over everything else.  He writes, “It would be easier if God’s anger became effective automatically: once wickedness had reached its full measure, punishment would destroy it.  Yet, beyond justice and anger lies the mystery of compassion.” [1]

The mystery of compassion…  it is a mystery, isn’t it?  And yet we know that it is real, and we know that it is stronger than our self-righteousness, deeper than our self-serving anger.  May we go forth from this place and experience God’s compassion, God’s steadfast, loving kindness, God’s mercy.  May we learn, as I hope Jonah did, to love the Ninevites.

Sermon delived by Sara Olson Dean on April 24, 2005.