The second time the word of the Lord came to Jonah, things went a lot better than they did the first time.
The first time the word of the Lord came to Jonah, things did not go well. God said, “Get up! Go to Ninevah! Preach to the people of that great city!”
But Jonah went the opposite direction, all the way to Tarshish. Jonah did not go to Ninevah. He did not want to preach there.
Why? Were the people of Ninevah really that bad? God wanted the people of Ninevah to hear the message, in the hopes that they would repent. Jonah, apparently, did not think they were worth preaching to, and he really couldn’t care less if God destroyed every single one of them.
Now I don’t know about you, but I can remember having thoughts about people that, while they may not have been quite so extreme, really weren’t all that different.
I remember in high school, feeling that way about some of my classmates. Now, it may surprise you to know that I was not the most talkative kid in the school. For the most part, I sat in my desk, and tried to be invisible. Every once in awhile I did raise my hand to ask a question or to contribute to a class discussion, but it took all the courage of Moses going before Pharaoh for me to do so.
A number of my classmates didn’t have that problem. They had no problem drawing attention to themselves, talking all the time, whether it was in class or out of class.
Naturally, I thought of them as arrogant, egotistical suck-ups, and I didn’t understand why the teachers couldn’t see through their act, why the teachers gave them the attention they begged for, or why the teachers allowed them to dominate class discussions and even send those discussions on detours that had little or nothing to do with what we were supposed to be learning.
It seemed to me that the class would be better off without such students. Indeed, it seemed to me that the school would be better off. Who needs students like that?
If God had told me that there was a special message for these students, and would I please deliver it to them? … I don’t know, but I might have said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
That’s what Jonah said. Thanks, but no thanks. He didn’t go to Ninevah, but instead, ran away; but after a storm at sea…,
and after being tossed overboard…,
and after being swallowed by a giant fish…,
and after spending three days floating around in that
fish’s digestive system…,
and after being vomited out onto the shore…
…Jonah had a change of heart….
He didn’t have a change of heart regarding the Ninevites – his view of them hadn’t changed – but he did have a change of heart when it came to listening to God and following God’s call. “OK God, I’ll go to Ninevah. Not because they deserve it, but just because you told me to. And, because I’m tired of fish.
Speaking of fish out of water, for two years I was a member of the Chapman College Concert Choir. Or maybe it was one year in the Chapman College Concert Choir and one year in the Chapman University Concert Choir. I can’t remember.
Both years that I was in the choir, we went on tour, traveling by bus throughout the western United States, leading workshops at high schools during the day, performing concerts in church sanctuaries in the evenings, and spending the nights in the houses of church members and school choir families.
I remember one night, getting ready for bed in the bedroom of one host family, talking with another choir member who was my roommate for the night. He was a nice enough guy, even though he was one of those types who liked to talk a lot and draw a lot of attention to himself.
I probably don’t need to say that he did most of the talking in our conversation. And he started talking about this other guy who was in the choir with us, who I’ll call Chris because I don’t remember his name, but Chris sounds like it might be right.
My roommate for the night said that he had always thought of Chris as arrogant and stuck up, because Chris almost never talked to him. But Chris had been his roommate the night before, in whatever city we were in, and he and Chris began talking to one another in a way that they never had before.
Then my roommate said, “And you know what? Chris isn’t arrogant or stuck up. I was wrong. He’s just … quiet. Once I got to know him, I realized, he’s actually pretty cool. And you’re kind of the same way. I used to think people like you and Chris were being rude, but now I realize that you’re just … quiet … and that’s OK.”
The way he said it, I knew that he was really being friendly and positive, and I realized that if he was wrong about me, maybe I was wrong about people like him.
Isn’t it strange, the criteria by which we judge one another? And those arrogant, egotistical classmates of mine really weren’t arrogant and egotistical. Well, most of them weren’t…. They were just more extroverted than I was. And that’s OK.
The people of Ninevah repented. The king of Ninevah himself called on his people to change their ways, so that God might show them mercy. And God, seeing what they did, and how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
And Jonah threw a fit. Because he could not see the people of Ninevah as being worthy of God’s love. To Jonah, they weren’t “different” or “misguided” or “lost” or “on the wrong path.” To Jonah, they were bad. Evil. Beyond redemption.
When I started leading youth groups, I was surprised when I’d invite a youth to attend, and their first question to me was, “Who’s going to be there?”
Always, I’d happily reply, “You!”
But they wanted to know who was going to be there, because if so-and-so was going to be there, then they weren’t going to show up.
And I was surprised, until I remembered what it was like for me when I was a kid, how easy it was to make judgments, how hard it was to see people who were different as cool, acceptable, and worthy of God’s love.
Whether it’s because someone is from Ninevah, or has wronged us and we can’t let go of a grudge, or we just plain don’t understand what makes them tick, we find ourselves, over and over again, running in the opposite direction, away from them, putting as much distance between us and them as possible, refusing to believe that there are, in fact, more similarities between us than there are differences.
Jonah wanted to put as much space between himself and Ninevah as he could. But God wanted to bring them together. God wanted Jonah to realize that the Ninevites weren’t as different from Jonah as Jonah liked to pretend.
In fact, the Ninevites weren’t the only ones who had lost their way. Jonah’s experience in Ninevah was orchestrated by God not just so the Ninevites could repent and be redeemed. Jonah’s experience in Ninevah was orchestrated by God so that Jonah could also repent, and find redemption.
And together, both Jonah and the people of Ninevah would find wholeness.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers to “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you … for God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” There is some real wisdom there for how we are to treat people who are different from us, or whose personalities we just don’t get.
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