In the third chapter of the book that bears his name, Jonah, having learned his lesson about running from God, is recommissioned and returns to Nineveh to preach. The simplicity of the message is stark: ‘forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown’.
Nineveh was a great city. There is some uncertainty about the dating of these events and how, exactly, to interpret what is meant. Suffice to say that Nineveh at the time was a significant city of some standing in the region. It will have been a place that was known about.
Imagine going to London, Paris or New York – even to Ipswich, Bury Saint Edmunds or Cambridge – with a stark message of forthcoming destruction. How much explanation was given to pad out the message is not clear and it is not so important. No amount of padding would enable a message like that to accrue anything but ridicule, denial or outright hostility now. If the preacher was fortunate, there may be some temporary curiosity value.
The people of Nineveh understood and repented in sackcloth and ashes; they mourned. They had leadership support and the requirement for mourning, fasting and repenting was cast into law, applied to all people and livestock. There was a hope, expressed by the King, that God may have compassion.
God did indeed relent. Jonah’s reaction is the subject of the next chapter and presents us with challenges. Here and now, we have a message underpinning what we are told again and again in scripture, that God sees and understands repentance and responds to it in and with love and compassion. This is, in a way, an Old Testament equivalent of Jesus words of certainty to the occupant of the next cross at calvary, ‘you will be with me in paradise.’
Paradise – the simplicity of trusting and experiencing the basic message of invitation and response to God. Realising that without God life becomes a mess.
How did this happen? How was so stark a message so effective? Was it simply that the preaching was uncomplicated? Jonah did not expend energy padding out his message into a sermon. There were no theological explanations as far as we know from the text and no quotations from other people of faith. You are heading for ruin – listen – admit it and change.
Do we sometimes overdo the complexity of our portrayal of faith? When did I last put it simply? if we will repent of our selfishness, and admit we are bound for unhappy frustration, then God’s love is available and he can and will surround us with it and set us back on our feet…but our trust does have to be absolute.
The problems of absolute trust come next.
A Prayer
Lord, when I reflect, I realise I am a mess when I am alone. No amount of friends and things can help me; come, surround me with your love, warm me with your embrace and your assurance that you forget my mistakes if I regret them and confess them openly to you. Help me to do that, not only to tell them to others with or for interpretation, but to tell them to you, no holds barred, unconstrained confession. May I know your inexhaustible compassion and love, Jesus’ promise of paradise.
Amen.