This second half of the book of Jonah may not be a proper dispute with God, as there’s not much direct back and forth between Jonah and God, but there’s certainly a struggle of wills on display here. Many people in Scripture push back when God calls them to prophecy or leadership, but Jonah elevates resistance to an art form. At first, he attempts to literally run away from God’s instructions, which famously lands him inside the belly of an enormous fish. Only then, after God delivers Jonah from his predicament by way of fish vomit, does Jonah begrudgingly make his way to Nineveh to proclaim the message that God had given him.
The Ninevites quickly respond to his prophecy with repentance, but instead of being pleased with the work that he’d done on God’s behalf, Jonah decides to throw a full-out temper tantrum. Why? Because Jonah doesn’t *want* Nineveh to be forgiven. He even admits that this is the exact reason he’d run away in the first chapter. So Jonah tells God off for showing mercy and goes outside of the city to sulk, hoping that God will decide to punish the Ninevites at the last minute after all.
You have to admit that this story is pretty funny. Jonah comes across as an absolute caricature of a man (because really, who would actually react like that??) and in fact, many biblical scholars consider this book to be a satire. Jonah is written in such a cartoonishly exaggerated way that it’s clear to the reader what NOT to do: don’t run away from God, and definitely don’t get upset when God shows compassion to someone else. It makes you look ridiculous! Everyone knows that compassion is a good thing. Jonah is such a silly goose!
With the distance of time, it’s easy for us to interpret the story in this light-hearted way. But while we might think this is just a comical story about a prophet being petty, Jonah’s very first readers would have had a very different perspective. To them, the Ninevites weren’t just any foreign power; they were Assyrians - one of the greatest threats that the Kingdom of Israel ever had. Not only that, but the book of Jonah was written decades - possibly even centuries - after the story's events supposedly take place. Which means that the people reading Jonah knew something its protagonist didn’t: in the 8th century BCE, the Assyrians would invade and eventually destroy the Northern Kingdom.
This puts Jonah’s emotional reaction in a different light, doesn’t it? Satire or not, this story wouldn’t have been very funny to its first readers; it would have been profoundly disconcerting - infuriating, even, to think that God would have compassion for Assyrians. When Jonah says, “...you may as well take my life from me, because it would be better for me to die than to live,” it didn’t sound melodramatic to their ears. It sounded perfectly reasonable. To them, it truly would be better for Jonah to die in that moment than to live through the brutality and forced exile that the pardoned Assyrians would bring to the Northern Kingdom just a few short years later.
What’s more, God doesn’t even seem to have any empathy for the prophet (and, by extension, the book’s original audience). God pushes back on Jonah’s bitter reaction, asking “Is your anger a good thing? Can’t I have compassion for Nineveh?” Jonah remains silent in the face of these loaded questions - probably because the response he wanted to give would almost certainly push the boundaries of God’s patience. But in his mind, he would have been screaming, “You know what? No. You CAN’T have compassion for Nineveh. THEY are not your covenant people. THEY don’t worship or serve you. THEY are the enemy. If you show them mercy, you might as well be stabbing us in the back. Are you the God of our people or of theirs?” For Jonah, God’s compassion in this case was not just hard to accept. It was nothing short of betrayal.
As Christians, we ground our identity in the compassion and mercy that Christ taught, the same kind that God offered to the Ninevites. Sometimes, we find it easy to show compassion to others: it’s clearly the right thing to do, and it feels good to do it. But other times - when it comes to people that we hate or fear as much as Israel hated and feared Assyria - it’s suddenly much more difficult. You might be ashamed of this fact; it might make you feel guilty and even unfaithful to God at times. But just like Jonah, maybe your struggle doesn’t reflect a malicious heart as much as it does a deep-seated fear. Fear of how the grace that you show them today could eventually come back to hurt you - fear of compassion’s cost.
Because compassion always has a cost. Sometimes, the cost is as small as a ding to your reputation - you’re labeled “gullible” or “naive”. Sometimes, the cost is more substantial - you give up some of your own limited resources to help someone else. But sometimes, especially when the compassion is directed at someone that you consider an enemy, the cost can be enormous - in Jonah’s case, the future of an entire people is put on the line. Showing compassion for someone who’s hostile or combative necessarily comes with enormous risk and no guarantee of a good outcome. (It’s no wonder Jonah chose to risk fish digestion over compassion towards his enemy.) So it’s much easier to operate on the principle that compassion should be reserved for those who deserve it, who are struggling through no fault of their own. Those whose choices have gotten them in trouble have earned retribution - not for the sake of vengeance, but for the sake of everyone else around them. That’s the only way to keep the cost of compassion low.
But here’s what Jonah learned: God doesn’t work that way. God’s compassion isn’t the result of a cost-benefit analysis that determines the long-term risk of showing mercy. God shows compassion for its own sake and challenges us to do the same. To take the risk and pay the cost every time, whatever it might be.
Given how painfully high the cost can become, this is an awfully difficult mandate to accept - especially when we consider who it comes from. What does God know about risk? What does God know about pain and suffering? God is omniscient, omnipotent, and immortal - risk is not a part of God’s existence. Maybe this is part of why Jonah was so angry: God can afford to gamble with the potential cost of compassion, because consequences can’t touch God the way they can touch humans. It’s easy for the Lord to be compassionate because there IS no built-in cost for God.
But while it may not be in God’s nature to experience risk, that doesn’t mean that God has never paid a cost for compassion. Jonah may not have known, but it’s the very reason that we’re gathered here: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life [John 3:16].” God CHOSE to descend to earth, to suffer and even die, all out of compassion for humanity. God willingly took on this cost for the sake of a world that not only didn’t deserve it, but was certain to continue in its sinful ways. God isn’t asking us to do anything that Godself isn’t willing to do. God practices exactly what God preaches: compassion at literally any cost.
So we have no excuse left not to take the risk of practicing compassion towards our greatest enemies. But at the same time that God set the standard by paying the greatest price of all, God also gave us a gift. On Easter morning, Jesus proved that there is no cost, not even death, that’s too great for God to overcome. For Israel, the cost of compassion towards the Ninevites was destruction and exile…but God brought them out of the wilderness and back to their promised land. For Christ, the cost of compassion towards humanity was a violent, humiliating, and painful death…but God brought him out of death’s grasp and back to new life.
We are, and always will be, a resurrection people. This means that even the highest price we pay in obedience to God cannot have the final word. So whether the cost of our compassion is the survival of an enemy, the death of a dream, the collapse of a community, or even the loss of everything that we hold dear, we remember this truth: while weeping may endure for the night…or the year…or even an entire lifetime…joy WILL come in the morning [Psalm 30:5].
For the first time in this sermon series, we’ve encountered a dispute with God that doesn’t result in changing God’s mind. But hopefully it can change ours. Now we know God wouldn’t ask us to pay a cost that God isn’t willing to pay, and we know there’s no cost that will ever be able to destroy us completely. So maybe now, compassion will come a little bit easier for us, even in those times that everything in us is crying out for retribution instead.
Jonah wasn’t quite able to get to this point - maybe there was a little bit of pettiness behind his reaction, after all - but I believe that we can. I believe that we can extend compassion even to those who don’t deserve it, because we are filled with Christ’s love. We can endure the cost, no matter how high, because we believe in resurrection. We can be the people that God calls us to be - without throwing a tantrum - because while we might not yet know the cost of compassion that we’ll wind up having to pay, we do know how the story will end. We can, and we will, with God’s help. May it be so. Amen.
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