Jonah’s Redemption – Nicole Ashwood

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.  But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. Jonah 3:10 – 4:1

(The story so far… God calls Jonah to prophesy over Nineveh for forty days.  The people heed God’s warning and Jonah is furious…)

After finally relenting and submitting to God’s directive regarding the Ninevite community, Jonah is stunned and furious that God opts for grace and mercy and ‘justice’ rather than damnation and destruction.  Unable to overtly reprimand God for prevenient grace, Jonah reminds God of his (Jonah’s) initial reluctance to be involved in God’s mission as he had already discerned the anticipated outcome – Nineveh’s salvation.

Jonah’s angst intensifies to the extent that he seeks DEATH over the life-giving Presence available in God (4:1-4).  His angst continues, seemingly unchecked, as he reiterates his annoyance with God for the destruction of the environment which facilitates his comfort (the ‘broom’ tree).  God’s response to Jonah is virtually the same as that which defines their former conversation – What ails you? Wherein lies the root of your hurt and angst? Unfortunately, the text does not provide the answers.

So here is the question?  Is it at all feasible that Jonah’s mission to Nineveh was intended to realize his own redemption and salvation as he addressed his own issues with bigotry and ethnic discrimination rather than the sending of the missionary to a people in need of receiving the good news? If this is the case, what elements of Jonah’s journey might we consider as context clues to God’s plan? It is important to note, that Jonah’s call to ministry is not contained in the book which bears his name.  He is mentioned in both segments of the Judeo-Christian canon and is also featured in the Qur’an.  His father, Amittai (whose name means truth), was a prophet, and this divine call was also part of who Jonah was. For when Joash is crowned king of Israel and seems to turn away from the tenets of the faith, he is chastised by one Jonah of Gathepher, son of Amittai.

Yet, as we listened to the voices today from our global fellowship, we discovered the mortal danger of repeating the same sin of those whose blindness we decried.

     Preamble – Accra Confession (2004)

Jonah, the ‘dove’, the symbol of peace, and son of Truth; was not a stranger to chastising heads of governments on God’s behalf.  As one of the twelve Minor Prophets impacting life at court in the Divided Kingdom, it is evident that Jonah honours integrity as a virtue.  The Hebrew canon does not record Jonah objecting to being commissioned to warn Joash his king regarding a lifestyle which displeased God.  Yet, in both Islamic and Judeo-Christian sacred text, the records indicate that Jonah objected to the call to minister to a select group of people, to the extent that he runs away from God, in the hope that his defiance would result in a different outcome for the task assigned. (Qur’an 37. 139-144.  Jonah 1:1-4; 4;1-3) It seems fair therefore to submit that Jonah’s objection to God, was not about the delivery of the God’s edict to the Ninevites, but rather about his lack of desire to see God spare Nineveh from destruction should they repent.

Nineveh was a crucial city in the Assyrian hegemonic machinery, conveniently located at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.  It was the largest city of its time and one of the wealthiest.  As worshippers of Ishtar, Ashur, Sin, and several other gods, their spiritual beliefs were in stark contrast to that of Israel Their war tactics were unrivalled and famous generals included the great war-monger Sennacherib whose exploits included laying siege to Israel during the reign of Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Ki. 18 & 19; Isaiah 36 & 37; and then Nahum 2 & 3; Sennacherib & Taylor Prisms), giving Jonah enough reason to despise the land and its peoples.  A divine request to preach salvation/destruction to Nineveh for forty days was highly unlikely to be included on his bucket list for prophetic assignments.  And yet, God called the symbol of peace to bear witness to the Wellspring of Grace to a warlike people.

Mission, it can be said, is embodied in the life of the church in the world. In Accra we recognized that living according to what we say we believe changes our understanding of mission today. We recalled that the church was born in a time of empire.  God’s Spirit called forth the church, in response to God’s work in the world, as a new community bearing witness to a new global reality and opposing the false claims of earthly gods…

         (Accra Confession – Preamble p.3)

We live in a scandalous world that denies God’s call to life for all. The annual income of the richest 1 per cent is equal to that of the poorest 57 per cent, and 24,000 people die each day from poverty and malnutrition. The debt of poor countries continues to increase despite paying back their original borrowing many times over. Resource-driven wars claim the lives of millions, while millions more die of preventable diseases. The HIV and AIDS global pandemic afflicts life in all parts of the world, affecting the poorest where generic drugs are not available. The majority of those in poverty are women and children and the number of people living in absolute poverty on less than one US dollar per day continues to increase.

 (Accra Confession Reading the Signs of the Times:7)

You and I, like Jonah, are thus called to ministry IN SUCH A TIME AS THIS to bear witness to God’s truth in love AND in Peace, to peoples who are not necessarily open to the message with which we have been burdened. Yet, Jonah’s response in not unnatural.  For in mortal flesh, we are prone to select and deselect those to whom God’s grace is shown.  Ironically, it is not the Assyrians who give us a moment’s pause as we consider sharing the Hope for all nations.  For, in the Caribbean, Haiti often is the recipient of our economic and travel discrimination as we conclude that a proclivity to the occult precludes our association with them as a people.  To date, there are those who are convinced that the earthquake which wreaked havoc in Haiti was proof of God’s divine judgement – for THEY HAVE SINNED AND FALLEN SHORT OF GOD’S GLORY.

Further, Cuba becomes a troublesome issue, not so much on religious grounds, but rather from both political and economic perspectives as their communist machinery and our anti-communist proclivity insists that the way to convince Cuba to yield to a (Christo) democratic way of life is through trade embargoes which in reality punish the average citizenry and not necessarily the government.  It is somewhat noteworthy that both islands possessed the military and social might to defy the powers of their day – France (in the era of the French Revolution) and the US (the Bay of Pigs debacle).  Although they did not pose a physical threat to the neighbouring island states, they posed a very real threat to those in authority, and it is upon their edicts, recommendation and insinuations that the Caribbean began to spurn their regional island neighbours.  This is not to suggest that Cuba and Haiti are without problems, but what we are examining are our responses to those who are spiritually/economically ‘othered’.

As God’s voice to the hard-of-hearing, Jonah was called to go TO the people of Nineveh, to walk amongst them (perhaps at the risk of his own life), to proclaim the depth of their rejection of God and the implications thereof; while offering another way of being.  Admittedly, Haiti is not Nineveh; however, inasmuch as God sought the redemption of a failed and fallen peoples who were burdened with the sins of bloodlust, excesses and idolatry; so it is that God continues to invite us in to make a difference in the lives of those around us – rich and poor – so that we ALL may be recipients of divine grace. Permit me please to celebrate the work of two of my favourite female missionaries from the region – Pastor Yachelle Watson and Ns. Joan Paige-Bain – who have heeded God’s call and are actively involved in the sharing of God’s good news to a people who have often been left bereft of the hope that is symbolic of the Caribbean spirit.

The delegates gathered in Ghana have called us to decry such acts which elevate consumerism over humanity; for

Jesus shows that this is an inclusive covenant in which the poor and marginalized are preferential partners and calls us to put justice for the “least of these” (Mt 25.40) at the centre of the community of life. All creation is blessed and included in this covenant (Hos. 2.18ff).

Therefore [they] reject the culture of rampant consumerism and the competitive greed and selfishness of the neoliberal global market system or any other system which claims there is no alternative.

(Accra Confession 19b-20)

After his initial repentance, Jonah harbours ill-will to his Assyrian neighbours.  Having prophesied around the city for forty looooooooooooooooooong days, he is upset with God’s acceptance of Nineveh’s “false” repentance.   He does not deem God’s punishment worthy of their crime.  Far too often we become judge and jury of God’s grace and seek to dictate the terms of an individual’s or group’s punishment long after they have confessed their sins before God.

But this is not God’s call for our life.  This is not reflective of our true Caribbean identity.  At the initial meeting of the Caribbean Church’s response to the proclamations of the Accra Confession in April 2009, delegates stated:

As Caribbean people we are endowed with the spiritualities of resilience and resistance, which enable us to claim possibilities and pursue viable alternatives for life in fullness for all people. Such alternatives must be underpinned by theologies of life rooted in the Biblical motif of enough. We know that at the heart of this crisis is the sin of greed and the insatiable desire to accumulate wealth at the expense of relationships and the integrity of the environment. We embrace and commend the African concept of sokoni, a ‘market’ place where people and relationships, rather than profit, are paramount.

And so, for each occasion we condone economic sanctions against our neighbours, for each time we encourage visa/travel restrictions on those who face substandard/inhumane or even comfortable conditions in their own contexts, for each time we bring judgement against those whose religious flavour and understanding of God is incongruent with ours; God invites us to consider how we treat those who are ‘not of this fold’, and posits the same riddle placed before Jonah,

¹⁰ … “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Jonah’s story ends with a riddle, perhaps inviting you and I to define the nature of Jonah’s redemption.  May we be willing to confront our own demons of discrimination to share the good news in love and peace, and in so doing, recognize that the sin of our neighbour just might be obscured by our own.

Selah

 

The Rev Nicole Ashwood is the outgoing Education in Mission Secretary for the Caribbean and North America Council for Mission (CANACOM).  She is a liturgist with a passion for justice issues.