Jonah 3:10-4:4

Can God repent?

          When I lived in Beirut, I lived for around five years in a dorm apartment with 6 other girls. And it was a great experience; we loved that place except for one thing. We lived on the third floor, and the owner of the apartment -an old, disabled man- owned a shop on the street level where he spent all his days. The entrance to his shop was right next to the entrance to the stairway to our apartment. So he pretty much monitored all of our activities! “Oh that was nice outfit you were wearing when you left in a gray Suzuki Grand Vitara at 7:05 last night!” is one of the comments we would hear from him. But that wasn’t the whole problem, the man was bored and always wanted to talk, and we were all busy women.

He was one of those people who once they start a conversation, they hop from topic to topic, and he could go on for hours… and he was obsessed with finding husbands for us and always seemed to know exactly what each of us wanted in a man, namely, in his opinion, money. So you shouldn’t be surprised if it told you that we all tried at all price to avoid meeting with him every time we leave or come back to our apartment. It was quite a task. It is fair to say that I used to literally run and hide if I needed to, to avoid another 30 minute long conversation about a prospective husband who’s my father’s age but it doesn’t matter because he’s rich.

I sometimes wonder what the neighbors thought watching us from their balconies, hiding behind doors like thieves, seizing the right moment and running as soon as we found it safe to do so.

Have you ever tried to run away from something? Or someone? What do you run away from? You might be saying not me. Yes you, we all run from something, someone, a task, a conversation we should have made months ago, a phone call, a meeting, and evidently, God!

Jonah is on a journey of running away from God. In this, he’s neither the first nor the last. But here is the strange element: he doesn’t start running from God because he has done something bad, he doesn’t run to escape punishment, he doesn’t run away because he has intentions to do evil that he wishes to hide from God… Jonah isn’t running away from God’s anger, he is running away from God’s mercy.

We see many threads of grace throughout the story: the sailors worship God in the midst of the storm, the sea creature swallows Jonah to deliver him from death, the Ninevites repent upon hearing Jonah’s warning. In none of these instances does God’s mercy “feel” good. Instead Jonah is so angry that he wishes his own death. He protests:

“Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.
I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah is angry and accusative. He starts accusing God, of what? Of being gracious and compassionate! That doesn’t sound too bad to me! Why is Jonah so infuriated?

Friends, Jonah’s sense of justice is violated. And let me say that his isn’t a phony pretense; remember that according to his own sense of justice, previously when he was on the ship, he confesses his guilt and asks to be thrown overboard to receive his deserved judgment.

And by that he is no different than his people, the Hebrews, who interpreted their defeat by other nations as a fair judgment by God for their sin.

And he isn’t different than most of us either. Most of us believe punishing the offender to be fair and logical. And yes certain acts of forgiveness do violate our sense of justice as well.

To help us understand Jonah’s anger over God’s mercy, consider the following examples:

A rape and murder of a ten year old. The execution of thousands of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. The bombing of the business towers. The burning of a church in Egypt with those in it during Sunday worship.

And then think of God forgiving those committing such awful crimes and letting them off the hook. Now tell me if that does not violate your sense of justice.

Friends we all thirst for justice, I know the message of God saving one and all is hard to accept. It sounds unjust. I personally struggle with this concept as I grew up with discrimination on all sides. Throughout my life, I experienced sexism, classism, sectarianism, patriarchy and religious discrimination. I was victim of several unjust systems and I confess that I wish to see the evildoer punished for their evil, and the victims redressed.

But the more I learn about God’s ways and how different they are than my ways, the more I feel like I just want to run and hide. Just like Jonah.

But I know that God will not give up on us, the same way She did not give up on Jonah. And like Jonah, we are consistently challenged and invited into a fuller understanding of God’s nature and character.

Christians everywhere and non-Christians tussle with the question: does God’s mercy rule out God’s justice?

The story of Jonah answers or shall I say rewires this question. God’s dealings with Jonah, Nineveh and the sailors defy the notion that anyone ever deserves mercy. Mercy is an utter gift from God. And the opposite of God’s mercy is not God’s justice, but human ruthlessness.

Friends, God’s mercy extends beyond our sense of fairness, a reality that, like Jonah, we cannot fully grasp. Sadly, the book ends and we aren’t told that Jonah repents. God’s sense of justice remains a challenge to him as to most of us.

One of the most humorous but also very true statements I read about Jonah is the following: “This is not just a story of a whale, but because of God’s love, it is a whale of a story.” Yes it is a story about the depth and breadth of God’s loving and forgiving heart.

Can God repent? YES if God wants to stay true to God’s nature which is love.

The greater question is: Can we come to accept and replicate such love?