Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Carol Swanson.
God had called Jonah: “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city [the Assyrian capital], and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me” (1:2). But Jonah didn’t want to warn Nineveh. He had experienced their wickedness. The very violent Assyrian Empire had destroyed his homeland and people, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and he wanted revenge; he wanted them destroyed in turn. So, when he finally got to Nineveh, he declared, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3:4)
Of course, he was upset when Nineveh donned sackcloth and ashes and repented—from the king down to the cattle—and that God saw this and did not rain destruction down on their heads. Maybe Jonah thought Nineveh would call him a bad prophet or think his God a weakling.
What Jonah did was blame God: “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love [quoting God’s words in Exodus 34:6-7] and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (4:2-3)
And God responds with a question, “Is it right for you to be angry? I” (4:4) Jonah goes out of the city to sulk and see if his hoped-for destruction might still occur.
“The LORD God appointed a bush…” (4:6) we are told. What kind of bush, you might wonder?
In the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible article on Jonah I read, “…a large plant, perhaps a castor-oil plant…” How I laughed! A medicinal plant for such a stubborn, curmudgeonly character! A bit of whimsical humor. The Hebrew word qiqayon (also spelled kikayon) is only used once in the Bible, but in current Hebrew, it is used for the castor oil plant (Ricinus communis). And in our Lutheran Study Bible the verse is also footnoted, “Heb qiqayon, possibly the castor bean plant.” What a hoot!
Our Jewish neighbors read together the entire book of Jonah in the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because it models complete repentance by Nineveh. “Don’t be like Jonah!” the rabbis say. But Rabbi Amy Perlin writes, “…sometimes we are Jonah. We run, we are swallowed up, and we are spit out. We have times when the responsibility of the world is thrust upon our shoulders and we have times when we feel very much alone. Sometimes, just like Jonah, we feel that life is too much for us. Who wouldn’t want to book a cruise, get on a ship, and run away from such burdens? Perhaps, we are more like Jonah than we even want to admit.”
Process Thought tells us that our feelings, our thinking, our decision-making, and our experiences with others and the world make up who we are, who we are becoming from moment to moment. We can see this in Jonah’s story.
We learn about ourselves when we read or hear the story of Jonah. What do we learn about God?
Through Process Theology I’ve learned that God knows and understands us better than we do ourselves. And God knows how others and the world understand us. God knows and understands everything that is happening in the world, interconnected, and brings each present moment into being, offering us new and novel possibilities for the next future moment, possibilities that can lead us toward wholeness for the world. And we as co-creators and free agents can embrace those possibilities, or not.
Rabbi Amy Perlin explains, “Our Yom Kippur is the day for At-One-Ment, to be with yourself emotionally and spiritually. It is a time to confront fears and failures, pain and loneliness. Jonah had to realize that he was not being sent to Ninevah alone, without God. And we are not being sent into a new year alone.”
I think of our own fears and anxiety over the political situations here and abroad, over climate change, and so many other factors. But as the rabbi said, “we are not being sent into a new year alone.” God is with us.
The God of the Bible is a relational God who wants to dialogue with us. Sometimes it is through the word, sometimes it is through others, or through events.
Think of the book of Jonah. God’s opening word to Jonah are, “Go…cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” Are those words threatening? Or could they be inviting conversation? Isn’t that why Jonah said he fled? He wanted destruction.
But God continued to speak to Jonah through the sailors, through the wind and sea and fish, through the Ninevites, through the plant and the worm, and the cattle. God is Love, and “Love is patient; love is kind; …it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (I Corinthians 13:4a, 6-8a).
Love speaks, “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?”
How will God speak to and through us in the coming days and year?
We don’t know from the story if Jonah repented or continued his stubbornness. Would he embrace God’s dream of peace and harmony for the world? What we can be sure of is that God continues to hold Jonah always, as God holds us and the world, with “tender care that nothing be lost.”
Take a few minutes, read the two quotes from Alfred North Whitehead (favorites Gary Olson loves to share), maybe close your eyes, and meditate on God’s loving and tender presence.
“The image…of God’s…nature is best conceived, [as] that of a tender care that nothing be lost.”
God “is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.”
Sources: Rabbi Perlin https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/sometimes-we-are-jonah#:~:text=Every%20Yom%20Kippur%20afternoon%2C%20congregations,because%20it%20models%20complete%20repentance.
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p 346