Bible readings: Jonah 1:1-3; 3:1-10.

One day the Lord spoke to Jonah son of Amittai. He said, “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and speak out against it; I am aware of how wicked its people are.”

Jonah, however, set out in the opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord. He went to Joppa, where he found a ship about to go to Spain. He paid his fare and went aboard with the crew to sail to Spain, where he would be away from the Lord.

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Once again the Lord spoke to Jonah. He said, “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to the people the message I have given you.” So Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to walk through it.

Jonah started through the city, and after walking a whole day, he proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!” The people of Nineveh believed God’s message. So they decided that everyone should fast, and all the people, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth to show that they had repented.

When the king of Nineveh heard about it, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat down in ashes. He sent out a proclamation to the people of Nineveh: “This is an order from the king and his officials: No one is to eat anything; all persons, cattle, and sheep are forbidden to eat or drink. All persons and animals must wear sackcloth. Everyone must pray earnestly to God and must give up their wicked behaviour and their evil actions. Perhaps God will change his mind; perhaps he will stop being angry, and we will not die!”

God saw what they did; he saw that they had given up their wicked behaviour. So he changed his mind and did not punish them as he had said he would.

Message.

If  my wife asks me to do some domestic task, such as mowing the lawn, cleaning the shower, hoovering the carpet or tidying my desk (none of which fill me with much joy), she can get a number of responses. One is that I will leap up and comply immediately – although I have to say that this isn’t very likely. Another response is for me to say, “I’ll do it later” – and perhaps I will, possibly after some ritual grumbling.

But I know and she knows that there are times when her request goes into one ear and straight out of the other without ever engaging with my brain. And when, later, she says, “Did you remember to do what I asked you?”, I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of what she has said. Perhaps she spoke to me when I was watching something on television, or when I was reading the paper; perhaps she mumbled or I needed to clean wax out of my ears; perhaps my mind simply filtered out something that I hadn’t really wanted to hear. For all the effect she had, she might have as well not bothered to say anything. In other words, the well-known phenomenon of “husband ear” is alive and well in our household – and, I’m sure, in many others as well!

Last week we thought about the boy Samuel who heard God speaking to him but didn’t at first recognise his voice. Indeed, he went to his master Eli three times saying, “You called me” before even Eli twigged that Samuel had actually heard God calling. We went on to say that it’s often hard to discern when God is speaking to us, to distinguish his “still small voice” from both other voices and our own thoughts. In fact, we wondered how God actually does speak to us – for very few of us ever receive an audible word from him or have a vision so distinct that we’re in no doubt as to where it came from. We aren’t being deaf; but perhaps we’re not attuned to God as much as we might be.

The Old Testament prophets didn’t seem to suffer from this problem! Time and time again we read that “God spoke to …” or “The Word of the Lord came to …” and we’re left wondering exactly what those phrases mean. One of those prophets was, of course, Jonah – who reacted in a way which was wrong but which we can easily understand. His book starts very simply: “One day the Lord spoke to Jonah son of Amittai”. There’s no explanation of who this man is. We’re given his father’s name but that’s no help as we don’t know who he is either! We’re told that God spoke to him – was this “out of the blue” or had he already had other divine revelations? Again, we don’t know. Nor are we given any historical context, although there is one brief reference to Jonah in 2 Kings 14, which sets him in the reign of King Jeroboam II around 785 BC, and tells us that he came from a village called Gath-Hepher about 5 miles north of Nazareth, midway between Haifa and the Sea of Galilee. However many scholars doubt this; some think that the whole book is a satirical parable, written a century or two later and tagged with Jonah’s name to make it sound authentic. I’m not an Old Testament scholar so I can’t possibly comment on this!

But let’s get back to the story. And here we have Jonah having no doubt as to what God had said to him. The message was loud and clear. he couldn’t play deaf and deny that he’d heard it. The problem was that Jonah didn’t much like the content of what he’d heard: “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and speak out against it; its people are wicked and I’m going to judge them”. Well, you can imagine Jonah’s reactions: “What’s the point of me going, they’ll never listen to me” or “They’ll listen, but they won’t like it and will throw me into prison as an enemy alien. Why has God chosen that fate for little old me?”.

So Jonah was worried that he might be ignored, which would make his journey a waste of time. He was also worried that he wouldn’t be ignored, and suffer some nasty consequences. After all, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the nation that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and held its southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal for almost a century. It wasn’t just an enemy but a brutal occupying force that changed Israel forever. And who was Jonah? he was nonentity from a tiny strip of wilderness by the sea. Either way, he wasn’t having any of it and, consciously disobeying God, he took off in the opposite direction, sailing west towards Spain rather than travelling eastwards across the desert to Nineveh. If Jonah’s plans worked out, he’d end up about 3000 miles from where he should have been – surely he’d be safe there, well away from both God and the Ninevehites?

An American writer, sympathetic to Jonah, has tried to put his story into modern dress. He says that “Jonah had no credentials for such an act of international diplomacy. He would get even less respect than Ambassador of Palau would get in Washington DC (and who would even know where Palau is?). Or imagine yourself suddenly being sent to southern Sudan where the government is perpetuating genocide. God tells you to march through the hot desert and tell their leaders to repent, to stop the genocide, to hold democratic elections and respect everyone’s civil rights, use their wealth for the good of all the nation’s people. Do you think you’d get their leadership to dress up in sack cloth and ashes? See what I mean? Jonah had a mission impossible”.

So perhaps it comes as a big surprise when, at the start of chapter 3 and after Jonah’s nautical misadventures with the sailors, the storm and the sea monster, we not only read that God calls him a second time but that he actually does what’s he’s asked. I think that gives credit to both him and God: to him, for actually being prepared to do a job which hasn’t got any easier since he first heard about it; and to God, for giving a second chance to a disobedient and cowardly failure.

And what happens? Jonah gets to Nineveh and starts walking around its streets crying, “In forty days God is going destroy this city: repent!” I wonder how he felt as he did this. Would soldiers immediately rush up and arrest him? Would people start hurling insults and brickbats at him? Would he be laughed at as a religious crackpot with a funny foreign accent? Would folk say, “We’re Assyrians, we’ve got our own gods and don’t have to listen to what yours is saying”? Or – worst of all – would he simply be ignored?

You’ll be familiar with some of those reactions if you’ve ever taken part in open-air evangelism. Did you know that, when the Salvation Army started outdoor preaching, a “Skeleton Army” with the support of brewers was raised up to disrupt it across southern England? Riots took place, not only in inner-city areas such as Bethnal Green and Whitechapel, but also in genteel seaside resorts including Worthing and Weston-super-Mare. Public order was under threat: in 1889 alone, 669 Salvationists were assaulted, including 251 women. Their ministry must have been effective and the brewers must have feared for their trade – why else would they have been opposed so violently?

To Jonah’s huge surprise, none of these things happened to him; quite the opposite in fact. For the people not only listened to him but heeded his message. There was genuine and widespread fear of imminent divine punishment. People of all classes put on sackcloth and ashes – even animals were forced to do the same. The king issued a decree enjoining national penitence and a turn away from wicked behaviour. It seems to have been an unprecedented religious revival. And it made Jonah furious: he’d been looking forward to seeing God destroying the city (after all, it had been Israel’s sworn enemy), he was disappointed at God apparently changing his mind, and he felt silly as what he’d told everyone was going to happen now wouldn’t. In fact chapter 4 of this book is all about Jonah’s argument with God. Would he ever learn?

I wonder if we can think of times when we have consciously disobeyed God? It could have been in a small matter, like feeling that we ought to do the shopping for an ill neighbour and then saying to ourselves, “I just can’t be bothered”. It might have been when a church has called for volunteers to help with cleaning or in Sunday School and we’ve thought, “I could do that – but I’ll let someone else put their name forward”. Or it might have been a major life-decision, such as sensing God’s calling to ministry but saying, “That’s too hard and the pay’s lousy, I’ll make my fortune instead – I can still be a Christian and have a business career”. I’m sure that every Christian who has ever lived has felt that they’ve let God down at some point. Some of them have later wished that they could turn the clock back and choose a different path. That’s rarely possible and they’ve lived under a burden of guilt ever since.

But, if this story teaches one thing, it’s that God doesn’t wash his hands of us as soon as we resist him or make a mistake. Nor does he pile on the guilt. Instead, as a God of grace, he readily forgives us and gives us second chances. Yes, Jonah messed up big-time by trying to run away for God – which shows that, unlike the writer of the Psalm we read earlier, he had little understanding of who God is and of how much he knows about us. We are never out of range of God’s knowledge – nor of his love. (That’s what ‘omniscience’ means). God taught Jonah a lesson which, even by the end of the book, he hadn’t completely learned. And, instead of saying, “This Jonah is rubbish as a prophet, I’ll choose someone else to go to Nineveh” God thinks, “Perhaps he’s learned his lesson – I’ll give him a second go”. That pays off – mostly!

And, of course, quite apart from Jonah, God gave a second chance to the people of Nineveh. I know that most of us struggle with the idea of God as a judge, yet it’s a theme which we dare not ignore as it runs through the entire Bible. Here, though, judgement is stayed (which is why Jonah feels so embarrassed and crossed – he seems to ignore the phenomenal success of his ministry) and Nineveh is not destroyed; the city repents of its evil deeds and doesn’t suffer the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. We are reminded of the words of the prophet Micah, words which Jonah should have known but didn’t: “There is no other god like you, O Lord. You do not stay angry forever, but delight in showing us your constant love. You will be merciful to us once again. You will trample our sins underfoot and send them to the bottom of the sea”.

There are clearly several lessons we can take out of this story, but perhaps this is the most comforting and pertinent. We have a God who is – yes – intolerant of the corruption, injustice and wickedness we see in society, but who is also more than willing to forgive, forget and give us the chance to start again. God could have written off both Jonah and the Ninevehites as hopeless cases, beyond redemption.  But he didn’t – and nor does he do it with us. Let’s make the best possible uses of all the second chances in life that he’s given us.