Sermon: "Good News for Victims" (Jonah part 5), February 7, 2021

"Jonah" from the crypt ceiling in the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, B.C.

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: Jonah 3:10-4:4
This is the fifth sermon in our 6 week series on the Book of Jonah.

Here we are in week five of the Book of Jonah. A little recap.

Way back at the beginning God called Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to get them to change their wicked ways. Instead, Jonah ran away by boat. So God sent a storm to get him back on track. Then, the ship’s crew threw him overboard to stop the storm. In response God sent a great fish to swallow him. This fish then spat him up on land in sight of Nineveh where he was sent to preach in the first place. Nice try, Jonah.

Last week we heard that Jonah finally did what he was told. He preached from one side of the great city to the other. And it worked. The Ninevites, from the king down to the peasants and even the livestock turned from their ways. They repented. And God repented, too. Deciding to spare the city from its inevitable destruction. Despite his initial hesitation, his running and hiding, Jonah’s mission was a resounding success. This was a truly miraculous turnaround. With a record like this, he might be one of the most successful preachers in history. Every hit a home run.

After a triumph like this, you might expect a little celebration. A little champagne, a high five or fist-pump at least. Not Jonah. The sight of this complete turnaround of the city’s “very displeasing” to Jonah, it says. It’s more than that. Some translations say that the whole thing’s evil in his sight.[1] Jonah’s absolutely furious.

Why’s he furious? Because God let these people off easy.

“Look, Lord,” Jonah says. “This is why I said no to you the first time. This is why I ran in the exact opposite direction to Tarshish when you called. Because I knew you were like this. I knew you were gracious. I knew you were merciful. I knew you were slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. I knew that if I came here, and told them to repent, they would. And that you would just forgive ‘em. I knew you’d let ‘em off easy. In spite of everything they’d done… And you did. Might as well just kill me now. Cuz I’d rather be dead than let these people get off scot-free. I’d rather die than see this wicked city survive.”

Jonah’s mad because it all worked out! He never said this the first time God called. Or at least we didn’t get to hear it. But Jonah says this is why he didn’t wanna do what God said in the first place! Because he knew that God, that old softy, would just give in. And hold off on giving these people their just desserts.

Now Jonah sounds a little harsh to those of us who hear this text through polite, liberal, western ears. I mean, what an awful thing to wanna see: a whole city wiped out, a whole society punished, destroyed. Especially considering the fact that they all did what God said. They turned from their evil ways.

Remember, though, that Nineveh’s the capital city of Assyria. The brutal, terrible empire that terribly brutalized Jonah’s people. Remember how we said in a couple of sermons that God sending Jonah to Nineveh is like sending a Jew to Berlin circa 1940 Nazi Germany.[2] I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. These guys are awful. And Jonah’s people are their direct victims. His country, his family members. Rape, murder, physical and psychological torture. Disappearances, family separation. Desecration of holy places. Public shaming and humiliation. These people have done the worst things any human being’s ever done. The kinds of things you can never actually make up for. No matter how much you do or say.

I don’t think we can really “get” Jonah’s fury unless we understand this. No wonder Jonah’s angry. These people are finally gonna have a day of reckoning, finally gonna meet the divine hand of justice. They’re finally gonna pay for what they’ve done. And at the last minute God changes her mind. If anyone’s got bad karma, it’s Nineveh. But all it takes is a little repentance. If anyone’s deserving of punishment it’s these guys. But nothing. No jail time, they get off without a slap on the wrist, even. Scott-free.

So no wonder Jonah’d rather die. If you’ve ever been truly wounded by another human being, if you or someone you’re close to’s been truly victimized, then you probably get it. Because it’s a mockery of the very idea of justice. It flies in the face of the universe making any kind of moral sense.[3] I guess you could say from this vantage point that Jonah’s rage is at least understandable. Maybe even justified.

And yet… even with all of this in mind… God doesn’t seem to think so. God responds to Jonah with a question. “Is it right for you to be angry?” God asks. Other translations say “is it good for you to be angry?”[4] Like I said, Jonah’s got every reason in the world to be upset by God’s lenience. And yet God asks this question. One that throws Jonah’s anger itself into question. “Is it right, is it good for you to be angry?”

The great scholar Jacques Ellul points out that the question that God asks Jonah’s the same question asked by God much earlier in the Bible.[5] In Genesis 4,[6] Cain and Abel—the sons of Adam and Eve, the first people—offer their sacrifices to God. Cain’s a farmer, so offers up some fruit. Abel’s a shepherd so offers a young, fat lamb. For whatever reason—we don’t really know—God prefers Abel’s meat to Cain’s veg. Which drives Cain insane. So insane to the point that he murders his brother. He becomes humanity’s first murderer in fact. But before Cain goes and does it, God asks Cain that same question “Why are you angry?” Is it good? Is it right?

On the surface, Jonah and Cain don’t have much in common. Cain’s mad that God prefers his brother’s sacrifice, and Jonah’s justifiably mad that God doesn’t hold the wicked to account. So why’s God ask him the same question as the first murderer?

What they do have in common is that the unmerited favour of God drives them crazy. One’s anger is sourced in jealousy, the other’s in righteous indignation. But its undeserved grace that kindles in both of them a murderous rage. He’d rather crawl back into the big fish’s belly and give himself over to death, he’d rather be in hell[7] than see these people saved from hell. While Jonah’s anger is understandable, justified, and completely reasonable, his zealous desire for vengeance places him alongside the first murderer. [8]

It’s at this point in the story that it’s become clear that God’s not just saving wicked Nineveh. He’s saving righteous Jonah, too. From himself.

You see, as a modern culture we’ve turned our sympathies towards the victim. And rightly so. So often victims are silenced, and shamed as a way to protect victimizers. And a way for the strong to continue trampling the weak without consequences. On a personal level, a societal level. Take your pick. This is most certainly a positive development. After all, Christians worship One who was victimized on the cross. We know what it’s like to dismiss a victim firsthand!

We haven’t, however, come to terms with what being victimized can do to us. How it distorts and misshapes who we are. Like Jonah, we can become so consumed by anger and hatred, that we become driven by the same demonic power that hurt us. Maybe you’ve heard the saying that says hating someone is like drinking poison and hoping that person will die. We can drink so deeply at the source of our own humiliation so that we end up destroying ourselves. We can become what we hate. And given the right circumstances, we, too, would inflict the same carnage on our enemies. We become prisoners caught in that same hamster wheel of sin and retribution that’s trapped human life since the first murder. We line ourselves up alongside Cain in that great march of history.

God’s question, though, suggests there’s a different way. It gestures us towards good news, by pointing us away from the resentment of Cain, and towards the reconciliation of Christ.

The good news, is of course, that there is a way out of this prison. A way off, a spoke in the never-ending cycle of sin and retribution. And this way has already been made for us by the God we meet in Jesus Christ. Jesus, who, in his death on the cross, has borne for us the consequences of all Sin. The One who makes forgiveness possible.[9]

The One who not only taught his followers to love their enemies, but loved them to the end, forgiving even those who murdered him as they nailed him to a tree. The One who reveals to us the depth of a divine Love that knows no bounds. The One who was made sin for the sake of sinners, the one who became a victim to save both victim and victimizer alike.

The good news is that the Way has already been made. It’s been made for both the Jonahs and Ninevehs in this world. It’s been made for the Cain in each of us by Jesus Christ. And it’s travelled by the receiving and the giving of forgiveness. We’re caught in a trap, we can’t walk out… grace is the only way.

So, whether you identify most with the wicked Ninevites. Or you see yourself more as a Jonah. Of course, we’re all more of a mix of both. Either way, may you remember that you have been given a way out. And may you—by God’s grace—take it. May you forgive as you’ve been forgiven. And may you experience the joy and freedom known to the children of God.

Amen.

[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2019).

[2] Alter, the Hebrew Bible.

[3] “The prophet prefers death to living in a world with no recognizable order of justice.” James S. Ackerman, “Jonah,” in The Harper Collins Study Bible, rev. ed., gen. ed. Harold W. Attridge (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), 1236.

[4] New American Standard Bible.

[5] Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 78-79.

[6] Genesis 4:6.

[7] More accurately Sheol, the land of the dead that Jonah visits in chapter 2. But the word “hell” works better rhetorically!

[8] “When we have a sense of our own righteousness, when we hope for, or desire God’s judgment on sinners and rebels, this simple [question by God] teaches us that we range ourselves alongside Cain, that is not for this that Jesus Christ came.” Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, 80.

[9] “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.” 2 Corinthians 5: 20-21.