Day 2 Jonah and the Worm Jonah 3 & 4 One of the least told stories from scripture is Jonah and…. (no not that creature) the worm. In this tale Jonah demonstrates an amusing pettiness which reminds me of my own. The reader is likely familiar with the context. Jonah has been instructed by God to go to the city of Ninevah and deliver a message for them to repent. Our intrepid hero then sets off in the entirely different direction. Well might we ask, “Why did he do that?.” A little background information is helpful at this point. Nineveh was the great city of the Assyrian Empire. We might understand the Assyrians by comparing them to the ‘Wild Bunch’ a motorcycle gang mercilessly terrorizing a quiet community. The Assyrians had a long history with Israel! It was a history of pillage and carnage. In fact, the ten tribes which formed the Northern Kingdom, Israel, was taken into captivity ending its existence as a distinct nation. To say that Jonah did not care for Nineveh or its inhabitants would be the grossest of understatements! It was his hatred of Assyria that caused Jonah to rebel against God’s calling on his life. You may be excused for thinking that my humorous tale would be of his sojourn in the gastric section of a great fish before being belched on shore outside Nineveh, but that may be a story for another day. Reeking of fish and perhaps bleached blond in the digestive juices and fish guts, he does enter the great city. He proclaims God’s judgement on Nineveh lest they repent. Then the thing he feared most happened. Nineveh took seriously the message! In sackcloth and ashes, they lamented their collective sin. Still Jonah had hope that God would not be merciful toward guilty humanity. He made himself a little nest on a hill overlooking the metropolis, from which he could view the destruction the Assyrians so richly deserved. As he was waiting and watching the sun beat cruelly on his crown. God graciously provided a vine to grow atop that hill and it produced shade to provide him relief so he could await Nineveh’s destruction in relative comfort. While he was waiting in anticipation in the shade of that vine, God delivered another message to Jonah in the form of a worm. (It amazes us how slow Jonah was to learn about the mercy and grace of God until we look closely at our own hearts.) This worm devoured Jonah’s vine! He sat on the hilltop in the blazing Middle East sunshine fuming at God about the destruction of his beloved vine. It seems that Jonah is finally at the place to have a conversation with God. God asks, “Do you have any right to be angry?” “I do! I am angry enough to die!” God goes on to point out the absurdity of Jonah’s anger. He is furious about a vine that grew overnight and died overnight but he has no compassion for a city of one hundred and twenty thousand souls. Scripture does not tell Jonah’s response to God, but we have hope that like Job when confronted by God, he realised his folly. One of the earliest concepts children learn is ‘fairness.’ I well remember a lesson from my own father in answer to a complaint that he was not acting fairly. He said, “The last thing you want in life is to be treated the way you deserve!” I must admit, like so many of my dad’s lessons, I did not understand it at the time. I know now that rather than fairness; I desire mercy and grace. Mercy is ‘not getting what I deserve’ and grace is ‘getting what I do not deserve.’ Jonah was hesitant (to say the least) to go to Nineveh because God was likely to show mercy. He knew they did not deserve mercy. They richly deserved retribution for all they had done! Though he was a recipient of mercy repeatedly he did not want it extended to others. He was a man of mercurial temperament which may be why I am drawn to him. He demonstrates my unwillingness to extend to others the mercy I desperately crave for myself. He illustrates the tendency to accept vine-like grace and take it for granted as if deserved. Jonah is a story of high comedy and low belief. In Jonah we recognize ourselves. We can laugh at this sunburned fish stinking prophet but as we do so, can we recognize and repent of our own hypocrisy ? The folks of Nineveh managed to repent, Should we do less? Repent does not just mean feeling sorry. It means to turn around, to change our attitudes and behaviours and bring them in line with God’s will and in line with his holiness..