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"Repent!"
The storm, the narrow escape, the great fish - after all of that Jonah capitulates and obeys the command of God to go to Nineveh. There is no indication that Jonah has had a change of heart. He merely complies because he has found escape impossible. He is the same old Jonah. He has felt the outreaching grace of God. And he has sensed the humanity of the foreign sailors finding in them a common relationship that transcended all differences. Surely now Jonah will go forward. Who can refuse so gracious a God? Jonah went but there was no mercy in his heart. God's graciousness had not kindled mercy in him toward others. With such intractable human material God has to work and work through. No wonder the going is rough at times.
But Jonah goes with no details given and look what happens. The results are fantastic! Everything is heightened to the nth degree. The city of Nineveh is gigantic: 60 miles across. Jonah delivers eight brief words of judgment. There is no mention of sins from which they might repent, no glimmer of hope, just 40 days and wham! No campaign planning, no series of meetings, no testimonies, no publicity. There is little effort, poor skills, terrible sermon. The response is electric and astonishing. Total success! In spite of himself, Jonah is the most successful evangelist of his time. What the other prophets had hoped for in vain when they announced oracles of God, Jonah achieved among a foreign people. The response and obedience of Nineveh stands in striking contrast to the unresponsiveness and disobedience of Jonah. Lack of repentance by Jonah is contrasted with the universal repentance and humbling of Nineveh. The royal decree, fasting, sackcloth, intercession with God, even including animals wearing signs of humiliation - all indicate Nineveh is not satisfied with mere external acts. Repentance requires more than outward acts. To be sincere and serious, it requires a change of life and perspective. If Jonah had paid attention, he might have discovered an astounding thing: he could have learned more from the Ninevites than he taught them! Vs. 9 "Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?" emphasizes the fact that forgiveness and salvation are not won by outward ceremonies of religion or observances of days of humiliation, but are gifts of God's love and grace. A picture of a more complete and thorough repentance could hardly be otherwise conceived. The whole scene is a model of how people should respond to God's word of judgment! Notice God's response in vs. 10: "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which God had said God would do to them and God did not do it." The Old Testament has no embarrassment about God changing the divine mind. That doesn't change God's nature, but as the responses of human beings to God change, it becomes necessary for God to follow a different line of action in order to be true to the divine nature. This is the mysterious paradox of faith: the all-wise, passionate, loving, redeeming God may change a word God proclaims. Human beings can impact God's design. God is greater than God's decisions. God's anger is conditioned, far from a message of petulant vindictiveness, the message of anger is a call to return and to be saved. No divine anger for anger's sake. Its purpose is to bring about repentance. Its purpose and consummation is its own disappearance and absorption in grace. Anger is contingent and encompassed by God's love. God changed God's mind because the Ninevites had changed their hearts. God repented because they repented. That is the way we word it sometimes. But always God is limited only by God's limitless love. As people change, as history develops, God is responsive to what is happening and adjusts the divine ways and means and yet always in view will be God's ultimate will of salvation for us creatures. That remains unchangeable. But it is precisely in the light of that unchangeable will of God for salvation that God will change the course of action in the light of human response. Jonah knows that, and yet fears and resists it. No one is beyond the concern of God, or beyond the possibility of faith, repentance, and salvation. There are no limits to the grace and mercy of God. They are for all. The book of Jonah proclaims in eloquent terms the universal human possibility of repentance. In this world there live no people created for ignorance and hostility, elect for destruction, but human beings with consciences and hearts, able to turn at God's word and to hope in God's mercy. That includes us, unless like Jonah we see no need for it. Repentance? Repentance is admitting we are wrong and change is necessary. This one word is addressed to all of us. In John the Baptist's teaching, Jesus' teaching, Paul's letters, Peter's sermons, we find again and again the word "repent." It means to turn about, begin again, and make a fresh start. It means coming face to face with fact that there is something wrong with us, and it is impossible for us to make ourselves well. Repentance involves our willingness to admit our need, saying in effect: "I have made a botch of things. I need help.'' Repentance forces us to reflect on the fact that our lives are being suffocated by all sorts and kinds of things and only one thing is needful: that we come to grips with ultimate reality. God asks us where our foundations are and what we stand on. Repentance reminds us that we have failed in a number of ways and not fulfilled what is required of us. We are out of accord with God and others. Instinctively we regard everything in the light of self-interest, and even deliberate, rational thought can be a deceptive rationalization of our deepest self-interest. Repentance has fallen on hard times. It is explained away. We deny reality, and call it difficulties instead: growing pains, good in the making. We blame our problems on outside factors: environment and parents. That is a cop out. The problem is us. We are called like the Ninevites to repentance. We are not called to find a group which says it okay. It isn't. We don't love God and our neighbor as we could. Only grace can overcome the tendency to excuse ourselves. We are in need of admitting we are not right, and we can't make it right on our own. Repentance is embracing God's forgiveness. We do not have the key to release ourselves from this prison of self. The amazing thing, the totally unexpected thing, is that even though we are "in the wrong" before God, God forgives and empowers us to live new lives. God accepts us as we are, and doesn't say "Go out and prove how good you can be and then come back, and perhaps we will reconsider your case." No, God says: "Right now, just as you are, I accept you. There is no barricade between us. I will enter into as close a relationship with you as you will let me." How can we bank on that? That is what New Testament is all about. It is not simply a statement about this kind of love, but an enactment of it. Looking at Christ from the point of our need, we see in him the embodiment of this kind of love. We see in him God's outgoing love coming to us when we could not get to him, entering into our experience, refusing to hate people even when people hated him, loving them to the bitter end, even death upon the cross. And so Christian faith says: That is God's love, coming to you just as you are, not waiting till you are worthy, but meeting you precisely at the point of your unworthiness. Trust that God is like that. Trust that God has taken the initiative in seeking you, that you are already forgiven. It is a gift that God gives. Repentance is leading transformed, loving lives. Something like a new beginning is possible. We resolve to be responsible; to be responsive to the divine intention. We recognize that Christ has not only done something for us, but can and will do something in and through us. Although we cannot always predict how God will transform us or the world around us. We set about repairing what is broken. Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness. To repent is to adopt God's viewpoint in place of our own. It means a complete revaluation of the all things we are inclined to think good. The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window into which some mischievous person has gone overnight and shifted all the price labels round so that the cheap things have the high price labels on them, and the really precious things are priced low. We let ourselves be taken in. Repentance means getting those price labels back in the right place. Look at the contrast between Jonah and Nineveh. Jonah saw nothing wrong with himself. Self-satisfied, he felt no need of repentance. He felt no need of further forgiveness from God, and certainly was not leading a transformed, loving life. Nothing is changed about Jonah. But everything is changed about Nineveh. Which is better?
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Harry Daniel