Variety: Jonah 4v9

“What right do you have to get angry?” (Jonah 4:9)

Following his preposterous marine adventure, Jonah grudgingly obeys God’s instructions and warns the people of Nineveh that their wickedness is about to be punished. But then the impossible happens.  
The Ninevites listen to Jonah’s warning, take it seriously, and repent. And God, seeing their penitence, changes God’s mind and shows them mercy. In other words, Jonah preaches a sermon, and his congregation responds to it!… You’d think that Jonah would be thrilled. But no. He’s furious, and he tells God so.  
After hearing Jonah’s complaints, God asks, “What right do you have to get angry?” (Jonah 4:9). 
To Jonah, then, God’s question is a ridiculous one. Of course he has a right to be angry. Isn’t it right to be angry that God’s mercy extends to killers? Isn’t it right to be angry when people who break the rules don’t get the comeuppance they deserve? Isn’t it right to be angry about a grace so reckless and wasteful that it challenges our most cherished assumptions about justice?  
God doesn’t scold Jonah for his anger. Instead, God engages it with compassion. God even goads it in a playful attempt to broaden Jonah’s horizons. God wants the grumpy preacher to see the Ninevites as God sees them. For while the Assyrians are everything Jonah believes them to be—violent, depraved, and wicked—they are also more…. They’re human beings made in God’s image, but they’re lost and broken. What they deserve is neither here nor there. What they need is compassion….  
God challenges Jonah to consider the hard truth that even his worst enemies are God’s beloved children…. Should God not care for God’s own? Is it right for Jonah to be angry? The story wisely ends with these questions unanswered. We’re left with Jonah still sulking…. 
All too often, we are also left to wrestle with the scandalous goodness of God, a goodness that calls us to become instruments of grace even to those who offend us most deeply. God’s goodness gently probes beneath our pieties and asks why we often prefer vindication to rehabilitation—prison cells and death sentences to hospitality and compassion. It exposes our smallness and stinginess, our reluctance to embrace the radical kinship God calls us to embrace. Why do we grab at the second chances God gives us, even as we deny those second chances to others? God’s goodness dares us to do the braver and riskier thing: to hold out for the hearts of those who belong to God, whether we like them or not.  
Do we have a right to be angry? God knows that the only way to answer this question, and so many others like it, is to wrestle it to the ground. God meets us in the ring, openhanded, willing, forbearing. God’s hand rests on us in love, even as we prepare to attack. God’s patient love enfolds us, absorbing our anger into God’s all-sufficient self.  
 

Debie Thomas