F. Harry Daniel
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: February 4, 2007

"The Mystery of Compassion"

As a preacher of repentance to Nineveh Jonah was a colossal success. St. Francis preached to birds, but only Jonah brought about the repentance of cattle! The overwhelming success of the prophet surprised everyone, Jonah included. He didn't like it.

"It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." Why? He gives the reason in 4:2: "Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I know that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and repent of evil!" You gotta be kidding, Jonah! You mean to say that you begrudge God's love to Nineveh? "Jonah, you yourself are alive only because of that very same grace active on your behalf."

Jonah uses a formula to describe God's grace that has an extensive history in the Old Testament. It occurs six times almost verbatim, and is echoed in four other places. It is one of the Bible's great passages. It is an affirmation of the priority of grace in all God's dealings with God's creatures. This magnificent credo was first uttered by God to Moses. Jonah objects to it as applying to others. He speaks powerful and well-worn words, but he thoroughly disapproves of their being true for just anybody. He wants input in defining to whom they are applicable. Jonah's theology is remarkable, but like so much theology, it seems to make no difference to his action. He is the representative of all those people who profess their belief in God, the compassionate creator of all humankind, but who deny their own compassion to those of God's creatures that are outside their own group. The most thorough-going rejection of God's will often takes place in people who observe forms of piety and in their own minds count themselves believers.

"Why are you so angry, Jonah," God asks. That question was an invitation to consider God's point of view and with it Jonah's whole theology. But the prophet didn't respond. The prophet is cast not only in the role of mediator of grace to others, but also in the role of one greatly in need of being ministered to by that very same grace.

But Jonah thinks differently! There is still time to save face. Most of the 40 days are still left." So Jonah goes east all the way through the city: 40 more miles! He doesn't give up hope that somehow the doom pronounced against Nineveh will still be fulfilled! What is it with this prophet! He thinks: "Surely the repentance of these wicked people has only temporarily hoodwinked the Lord, and God will yet act to carry out the divine word. Will God change God's mind or the Ninevites change theirs? The 40 days aren't over. There may be time for the people to weary of piety and fall back into their previous evil ways." Jonah hadn't learned a thing! Can anyone who has been the recipient of divine mercy begrudge it to others? Yes! Jonah sits on a hill overlooking the city and waits and watches for the destruction of Nineveh. Jonah's anger is set over against God's slowness to anger.

But the last lesson has yet to be learned. Most astounding is the tenderness of God. Look at God's patient response. God doesn't break off the conversation and God won't take Jonah's life. The Creator of all stoops to hold a conversation with a rebellious child. What patience! What unmotivated fairness! God answers Jonah's complaint with a miracle: a wonderful shade plant to provide some cooling for the more than overheated head of his prophet.

Jonah avoids sunstroke. He is as happy and grateful as he had been for his deliverance from drowning in the sea. God's grace was wondrously granted him twice. It ought to have awakened his thoughts to the situation of Nineveh whose gratitude was expressed in their repentance, alteration of life, and faith in the Lord.

Now the point is brought home. God hasn't finished appointing! God sends a worm to destroy the plant. Then an east wind blows -- an absolutely dry, furnace like blast of heat that parches the body by evaporating its perspiration. Jonah is made to experience something of the destruction he had wished for Nineveh. It is only when his cherished plant has withered and he feels the blasts of the desert wind and the merciless beat of the sun, that he realizes his expectation will not be fulfilled -- and more than this -- that a fundamental conviction by which he has lived has been shattered: he had believed that God's wrath to judge those outside Israel should outweigh God's mercy to save them. He does not object to the divine compassion and salvation directed to those like himself, but when it is also effective for the wicked, he cannot abide it. Yet he is unwilling to live without his old belief; and because he refuses to let God transform his anger into love, his pity for plants into pity for people, his conception of what the object of the divine mercy ought to be into what God has shown him it actually is, he desperately longs to die.

Like the storm and the fish, the plant is to be the Lord's instrument in educating his prophet. The Lord asks that Jonah examine the motive for his anger. Jonah doesn't see the parallel between God's concern for Nineveh and his own concern for the withering plant. Why should Jonah show such concern over something so ephemeral with which he was never involved?

''And the Lord said, 'You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. And should not I pity 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 much cattle?'" If Jonah pities the plant, shouldn't God pity Nineveh? Did not God have something to do with Nineveh? Was God not also its creator? Jonah's very pity for the plant is employed to awaken his sympathy with God's compassion for the great city. Jonah is shown how he has denied to God the very same natural affection which he confesses to be so strong in himself. If pity is due the lowly plant, how much more is pity due Nineveh's more valuable and numerous inhabitants. Jonah is capable of compassion, great compassion -- for a plant!

The story stops. The abrupt ending underscores God's concern for people - including children and beasts. The picture is of God who is infinitely gracious. God has vindicated the divine love to the jealousy of those who thought it was theirs alone. And we are left with this great vision of the immeasurable city with its multitude of innocent children and cattle, and God's compassion brooding over all. Look at the wideness of God's mercy.

After all that has happened Jonah's attitude ought to strike us as incomprehensible. That a prophet who has been called will not preach is strange. That he should flee and fall asleep during the storm is bad enough. But that he should be brought to the gates of death and rescued in order that he might begin his work with courage and then be shocked and horrified by the wondrous result of that work, that he, Israel's prophet, should want to reduce the revelation of God to uncharitableness - this is incomprehensible. And most shocking of all is that he should sit there and wait for Nineveh's downfall and that when this does not happen he should sit there and reproach God for granting grace to the world -- as if he himself were not alive by grace, as if he himself had not been rescued by grace. Jonah is desperately trying to shape God to fit into Jonah’s little world.

What happened to Jonah? Did he remain in his hardness of heart? Could he resist so gracious a God? Was he touched by divine compassion, so that compassion was kindled in his own heart? We are not told! The author is concerned with his readers -- what does this mean to us? Do any of us resist this loving, gracious God? Will we finally turn out to be like Jonah or Jonah's God?

Jonah's objection to God's mercy on Nineveh and his concern for the plant are exposed as mere self-centered irritability. What about our response? We have worked out our salvation. We are glad and thankful for God's love. Have we made a deal with God? Have we worked out life in our own terms and moved on little concerned about serving God's love and being its instrument? It can be said we are leading decent lives. But are we leading gracious lives. We have accepted God's love, but have we ever understood it? Is Jonah in us?

Jonah can help us understand now why so many people fail to find fulfillment in their Christian faith. They are looking at it too exclusively from their own point of view, too little from that of God and of others. They think of religion as a kind of insurance policy by which they can escape punishment and win salvation. Or, they think of it as a great task laid on them by God, the success or failure of which depends on their faithfulness.

In Jonah's God we see the essence of faith - giving and receiving gracious love. What kind of God is this who listens to Jonah? What kind of God is this who listens to the suicide elegy of his servant, as if it were a world catastrophe when God doesn't perform the destruction of Nineveh -- and on top of that a complaint without the slightest trace of self-accusation and self-examination, without any remembrance of what he himself said: "I will sacrifice to thee with thanksgiving, my vows I will pay." What kind of God is this who allows all this madness to vent itself upon God's own heart, who swallows up this ill humor?

This is the God of love, love revealed in a cross and an empty tomb. This is our God who loves us with an everlasting love. Even a God who loves the Jonahs of this world.

When all is said and done love has the last word. Beyond justice and anger lies the mystery of compassion. Praise the Lord!