AM I PREPARED TO BE DISTURBED?

Almost every evening a ritual plays out in our house. After we have had our evening meal and washed up we generally head for the living room with a cup of coffee to relax. As soon as Ann sits down Roxy, our dog, comes and sits in front of her and stares at her, this standard poodle language for get off your rear end and let me out. Not unnaturally Ann is often reluctant having just got herself comfortable.

Ann isn’t unique; we are all pretty reluctant to be disturbed when we are comfortable. Ok big confession I don’t often jump up and offer to let the dog out. I came across a reference to a character well known to me from my Sunday School days in an unexpected place recently. I was reading in 2 Kings 14 and there was a reference to “Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.” This is the same Jonah of Jonah and the whale fame. 2 Kings tells us that Jonah had been making prophecies that Israel would grow stronger and regain her former geographic size. That must have been a pretty popular message with the King and his cronies and probably made for a pretty comfortable life for Jonah. His basic message to Israel was God loves us, we are God’s people and he is really going to bless us.

Then just like Ann with her cup of coffee something disturbed Jonah’s comfort, it wasn’t a standard poodle but an extraordinary God.   “The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai:  "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." Jonah ^1-2 We all know the rest, the running away, the big fish, the hissy fit etc. The more I read Jonah the more I convinced that we have seriously misunderstood its message. In fact we have probably trivialized and then ignored one of the most important messages the Old Testament has for us as God’s people.       

Jonah isn’t about a whale or a big fish; it’s not even about a reluctant prophet. The main character in Jonah is a compassionate God. The whole story is about this compassionate God who is struggling to get one of His Servants to share his compassionate heart for those who are far from him and even utterly opposed to Him. At one point Jonah blurts out the truth, ^{Jonah 3: 1}  “But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. ² He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”  I find that out burst astounding. Jonah reveals that there is nothing wrong with his theology.  He knows that Yahweh is a compassionate God the problem is he is simply not willing to share that compassionate heart. Jonah is not willing to love and care for those that God does, in this case the people of Nineveh. To him the people of Nineveh are beyond the pale and attempting to share God’s love with them would mean getting off his rear end and leaving behind not just his prejudices but his comfort zone. Jonah is not willing to be disturbed by the love of God. Like the older brother in the Prodigal Son the love and forgiveness of God doesn’t inspire him it just annoys him.

The more I think about it the more I think that Jonah isn’t simply the story of God’s struggle with one petty Jewish prophet. The story of Jonah is all too often the story of God’s struggle with His people to share His heart for the world, to join Him in His mission to the world. I know for certain Jonah’s reluctance to join God in reaching those beyond God’s people is replayed in far too many churches. Churches are happy with Jonah’s message to Israel, God loves us and is going to bless us, it’s the stable fare of our pulpits and bookshops. Its no surprise the Prayer of Jabez was so popular!

The problem is that the New Testament doesn’t hold up the Prayer of Jabez as the inspiration for the life of God’s people but the Incarnation of Christ.  The Incarnation is the great example of what it means to move beyond our comfort zone for the benefit of others. “Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant,  being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! ^{Philippians 2:5ff} Christ did all of this to share the grace of God with those who were far from God. Yet just like Jonah we say we believe this but we refuse to actually live it. Sunday by Sunday Christians gather in buildings to sing about God’s love, read about God’s love, hear sermons on God’s love and remember God’s love in the Lord’s Supper, then they leave the building and go into Jonah mode and won’t move out of their comfort zone to share God’s love.

The story of Jonah raises an important question for me and it’s not whether it was a big fish or a whale or whether someone could survive in its stomach whatever kind of fish or mammal it was. The question that confronts me is “Am I willing to be disturbed?” Am I willing to live what I say I believe? Am I willing to allow God to challenge my prejudices and move me out of my comfort zone to go to people He cars for? I know those were several questions but I am getting to the biggee. The central question, the unavoidable question from the whole of Scripture not just the book of Jonah is, “Am I willing to share His heart for this world and its people?”