I have been wondering this week whether, if Jonah was a modern prophet, he might have been sent to the Islamic State? This sermon excerpt from Laughing Bird asks us to think about the nature of God in relation to those who we most struggle with.
"God says to Jonah, ‘What right have you to get angry over this shade tree?’ Jonah says, ‘Plenty of right! It’s made me angry enough to die!’ God says, ‘How come you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere tree that you neither planted nor cared for, and yet you censure me for changing my feelings about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than one hundred and twenty thousand childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all those innocent animals?’ And so ends the story of Jonah.
I noted earlier that our scriptures tonight tell us something about what God is like; gracious, merciful, faithful, constant, all loving. Here we find that God is also willing to change His mind. God remains free to be gracious to those who deserve nothing but punishment. Notice, too, that Jonah also remains free, free to argue and resist. This story makes a significant contribution to the debate about predestination and free will. This story also tells us that God is inclusive, his love is universal. Here, a ship’s crew and a whole city of Assyrian Ninevites choose to worship the One, living God of Israel. Gentiles are saved. Jonah expects to be loved by God because he is supposedly a ‘Law-abiding’ Israelite. However, he has lived to the letter of the Law, not the spirit of the Law. It is quite a shock to his system to discover that God loves the Ninevites, who are not even Israelites, God’s chosen people! "
http://laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html
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