Materials
God
Changed His Mind
Jonah 1 - 4
Markus
H. McDowell,
PhD, Religion, Pepperdine Univ.
Prayer
St. Jerome, a 4th century scholars who translated the Hebrew and Greek
Scriptures into Latin, once wrote:
The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without
fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without
ever reaching the bottom.
The book of Jonah is like golf.
Seemingly an easy book, a fun story with a simple message, right?
Yet as as I read through and studied Jonah this week, I started discovered
that raised far more questions that I had expected. Just as I thought
I understood, I realized I had missed the point. Just as I thought
I had it all figured out, I was thrown for a loop with a word or phrase
I hadn’t paid much attention. I began to think, maybe that was
the point: mystery. Jonah is known as a prophet, yet the book of Jonah
never calls him a prophet.
The other prophetic books contain almost all poetry, prophetic oracles,
and sermons. The book of Jonah consists solely of narrative. The other
prophetic books give us a historical setting: not so with Jonah. No
one knows who wrote the book of Jonah. Guesses as to when Jonah was
written range from the 8th century to the 2nd century BC, with no
prevailing consensus. While many of the prophetic books have a few
oracles directed to the foreign nations, Jonah is the only prophet
who God sends to a foreign nation.
Other mysteries and strangeness about as we begin to read the text:
“Jonah, son of Amittai (1:1) “son of ammittai” in
Hebrew means “son of faithfulness.” Yet Jonah is far from
faithful. Jonah runs away from God, but is willing to die to save
the sailors (1:3). The sailors pray when in danger, but Jonah sleeps
(1:5). Jonah tells the sailors to throw him overboard, seemingly an
act of courage: yet the proper response should have been “take
me back to port.” Jonah, the Israelite who worships Yahweh,
puts the sailors in danger; but the pagan sailors try their best to
save this stranger (1:13). Jonah’s disobedience leads to the
sailors offering a sacrifice and vows to the God of Israel (1:16).
God saves Jonah, even though Jonah disobeyed and wanted to die (1:17).
The bizarre nature of this tale continues in chapter 2. In the belly
of a fish, Jonah sings a song of prayer to God! The prayer is very
pious on one hand. And yet it is also selfcentered. Jonah refers to
himself twenty-three times, but God is mentioned only thirteen times.
Even the end of the prayer sounds quite pious and beautiful, yet coming
from the mouth of Jonah sounds hypocritical:
Those who worship vain idols
forsake their true loyalty.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Deliverance belongs to the LORD!”
Right after this beautifully worded psalm, we find a very crass word
in Hebrew. Many English translations try to make this a bit nicer:
but Jonah wasn’t “spit” out of the fish…he
was VOMITED out. Lovely.
Chapter 3 begins like chapter one. We are right back where we started
again: all the running away, storms, prayers, rowing, big fish…and
we are right back where we began. Except this time, Jonah heeds God’s
words and. Not happily, but he goes.. When he gets to Ninevah, the
message is very short - in Hebrew, only five words long. This message
contains no hope, no call for repentance, no second chances. God’s
word to the people of Ninevah: “in 40 days, you will be destroyed.”
Maybe it is because we are so used to this story, or maybe because
it is so far removed from us, that we don’t see the shocking
thing that happens next. These people don’t even know about
God. They have never heard of Yahweh. But after five simple words,
the ENTIRE POPULATION now “believes” God. They fast. They
sit in sackcloth. Even the king does all these things. And stranger
still…the kings commands the animals to fast and wear sackcloth.
They hope God will change his mind.
And he does. God changes his mind. Right there, in chapter 3, verse
10: “God changed his mind.”
Does that fit your picture of God? Your definition of the omnipotent
and omniscient Almighty? The All-knowing, God. Creator and Ruler of
the universe…changes his mind. But the strangeness of this tale
doesn’t end there. Jonah is angry. With God. He knew God would
do this. He knew God would change his mind, because God is “merciful
and loving!”
“I knew you were merciful and loving,” shouts Jonah, “and
I knew that it would lead you go back on your word!!!
Jonah knew his Israelite theology. It’s all through the Old
Testament. God is full of mercy, longsuffering, abounding in steadfast
love, forgiving from generation to generation. Jonah knew his doctrine.
Right doctrine, wrong application.
Jonah wants justice. (At least for others. For himself, he wants mercy).
Wrongs need to be righted! People need to do the right things! Hold
them accountable. But those people better treat me with humility and
grace. “Justice!” shouts Jonah!
And God does practice justice. In fact, there are laws where God demands
that his people practice justice against wrongdoers… even carrying
out the death penalty. There are plenty of examples in scripture of
God and his people doing just that.
But not in this instance.
Here, God chooses to changed his mind because of pity. And the Hebrew
word is pity. Not the word “concern” that some translation
employ. That is the reason that God gives to Jonah when Jonah yells
at him. Look at 4:11. God pitied the Assyrians. And not only that—read
the very last line of the whole book—God was worried about their
animals! Mysterious and strange!
A God who creates danger for people, condemns people without hope,
forgives people, gives second chances, changes his mind, and might
save people just for their animals… And the entire book of Jonah
closes with a question. Not a statement. Not a summary. Not a conclusion.
Not an answer. A question. And an abrupt question at that: “and
also many animals?” What kind of book, speech, or sermon ends
with an open question? The book of Jonah is not just a theological
Pinocchio story.
At this point, we might be tempted to say, “what a strange God.”
A God who is contradictory. A God who is said to be never changing;
yet here we are told he changes his mind. What a strange God.
On the other hand, maybe it is us who are the strange ones.
Maybe, we are so caught up in our logic, our scientific, scholarly,
traditional, pattern-searching, my-opinion-is-better-than-yours intellectual
culture of knowing the right things that we forget that God, in order
to truly be the God we believe him to be, must be a mystery to us.
A God who we can define…is no God at all.
A God who we limit…is an idol of our own making.
When we say “God would never…” we’re making
ourselves God!
“Jonah is not just a Israelite from Palestine, called out of
anonymity to perform a task for God.... he is a human, he is every
person, he is me, he is you.” “He is the paradigm of our
resistance to being chosen by God for a task that is bigger than we
are. God has called us to a task that goes beyond our individual,
wants, desires, and comforts.”
Jonah got on a ship tried to run away from the presence of God. We
run away from the presence of uncomfortable possibilities. Jonah demanded
justice when he should have practiced compassion. We often demand
judgment when we should be practicing humility.
Jonah is certainly a character that can interpret us, if we will allow
it. His concept of justice, his concept of God, his anger can critique
every one of us.
But I don’t think Jonah is the main character of this book.
In paying so much attention to Jonah and the great fish, we may miss
the great God. The question “What is God really like?"
is a much more important question than "What is Jonah like?"
This is a God who calls someone to a task that challenges everything
he is and thinks.
This is a God who hurls a powerful storm to kill people who just happen
to be in the wrong place, but sends a big fish save a man who directly
and defiantly disobeyed him.
This is a God who gives the man a second chance who would rather die
than obey God.
This is a God who was ready to destroy an entire major city, yet seems
ready to save it if only for the innocent animals.
This is a God who changes his mind.
God is always bigger than we imagine, more complex than we can fathom,
and often more surprising than he is predictable.
Our God is so diverse, that I dare not put him in a box and define
him my way. This is unsettling, because we cannot be sure at any time
what new thing, what challenging thing he might ask of us…
This bothers me. Does it you? Do we want to say “this is not
right. We can know what God wants, and what he will do, and what he
thinks?” Those were Jonah’s responses, too. A God who
changes his mind made Jonah angry.
How do we react to a God who is such a mystery? Shall we work harder
and harder in our mental efforts? Shall we get mad and angry at him
or take it out on others? Shall we pretend we know more than we do:
I have all the answers?
Maybe we should spend less time analyzing God and his church as an
object, and more time worshipping him as our creator and redeemer.
Maybe we should spend less time telling people what God wants them
to do, and more time showing them what God has done for us?
Jesus went about doing good. Yes, Jesus taught. He spoke of theology,
and of God, and even of doctrine. But before he taught, and after
he taught, and sometimes while he taught, he was healing, and helping,
and encouraging, and serving. There is a whole community out there.
Many hurting, many lonely, many physical. Without spending any less
time using our brains and our mouths, should we be spending more time
using our hearts and our hands?
May 4, 2003
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