Jonah Chapter 4 - Anger

No stars. No Hollywood ending. And the girl has to die.

Words from Robert Altman’s 1992 film “The Player” which follows the ups and downs of Studio Executive Griffin Milne who holds the company purse-strings. At one point, a young British writer secures 2 minutes of Griffin’s time to pitch his idea for a movie called Habeus Corpus.

It’s a thriller with a tragic finale – a potential Oscar winner - and the writer’s adamant about how he wants things done. No stars. No Hollywood ending. And the girl has to die. Griffin likes what he hears and the movie goes into production.

Much later on in Altman’s film, long after we’ve forgotten the pitch, we finally get to see the closing scenes of Habeus Corpus. And it’s full of stars, has a Hollywood ending, and the girl doesn’t die. The writer’s sold out – the lure of success and money was just too great to resist.

The Hollywood ending for the story of Jonah comes at the end of chapter 3. Nineveh’s repented, disaster’s been averted and everything seems to be fine. But just as we’re gathering our coats and making our way to the exit, Jonah bursts through the screen kicking and screaming. This thing isn’t over yet. There is no Hollywood ending.

Jonah, the GNB tells us, was ‘very unhappy’ with what had happened, And that translation, fails to do justice to the measure of his anger. The Hebrew says that what God had done in sparing Nineveh seemed “evil to Jonah – a great evil”. He wasn’t unhappy. He was spitting feathers.

And as he vents his spleen to God, we finally discover why it was he ran off to Spain. You can read it in verse 2:

“Lord, didn't I say before I left home that this is just what you would do? That's why I did my best to run away to Spain! I knew that you are a loving and merciful God, always patient, always kind, and always ready to change your mind and not punish. Now, Lord, let me die. I am better off dead than alive.”

Jonah headed for Spain not because he was petrified of going to Nineveh, but because in his heart of hearts he loathed the idea of God showing the Ninevites mercy.

And yet he knew fine well that God is merciful. Israel had always known that.

Generations earlier, when Moses was camped out on Sinai, he asked to see God’s face, and was told in no uncertain terms that no-one could see God’s face and live. But as God’s glory passed over the mountain, Moses was given a glimpse of his back, and he heard the voice of God proclaiming his own name: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin”.

That is who God has always been and will always be. That’s who we hope and expect God to be for us. Compassionate; gracious; slow to anger; loving; faithful. Jonah’s problem is that he doesn’t want God to be like that for others. He would rather die than see Nineveh forgiven, or spend one more day in the service of a God who was prepared to forgive them.

And that’s the irony of Jonah Chapter 4. Jonah, who’s benefited in the most remarkable way from God’s patience and mercy, is enraged because God has the temerity to extend the same patience and mercy to Nineveh.

We can see the irony in that. But in his anger, Jonah can’t. That’s one of the things about getting angry. Perspective goes out the window.

So God gets straight to the point. “What right have you to be angry?” he asks Jonah.

And Jonah gives no reply. Maybe he knew how lame his reasons would sound in the cold light of day. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to even talk to God.

So he takes himself off and decamps to some scrubland on the east of the city, builds himself a bit of shelter and waits there in the hope that God will finally see sense and come round to his way of thinking. And when the fireworks begin, he wants to make sure he’s got the ringside seat.
That wall we spoke about a few weeks ago, the wall Jonah had built in his heart against the Ninevites – was taller than ever. Nothing had changed it. Not the storm, nor the whale, nor the journey, nor the preaching.

He was told to go and preach that in 40 days Nineveh would be overthrown, and that’s what he really wanted. He wanted it destroyed. But the Hebrew word for ‘overthrow’ can also mean ‘turn around’, and that’s exactly what happened. Nineveh wasn’t torched, it was ‘turned around’.

And any other prophet would have been happy with that outcome. He’d preached, and people had responded. But in Jonah’s walled-in, angry little world, that wasn’t good enough.

So in one last roll of the dice, God has a plant grow up to give him additional shelter from the sun. And then, just as quickly, he takes it away from him. An object lesson via the medium of horticulture. And Jonah’s livid. Once again, he wishes he was dead. Once again, God says “What right have you to be angry?”

But this time, Jonah lets rip. “I have every right to be angry – angry enough to die!”

“Do you?”, inquires God. “You didn’t cultivate this plant. You didn’t plant it or tend it or water it. And here you are mourning its passing, while at the very same time you sit here like a vulture waiting for me to wipe out 120,000 human beings in Nineveh.

Jonah, is it right that you’re upset about this plant, but don’t care tuppence for the people in this city?

And with that exchange, the story finishes. Definitely not a Hollywood ending. No neat conclusions or morals. And a lot of unresolved anger. Six times that word’s used in chapter 4, and it seems to me that the last lessons we’re to glean from the story of Jonah are about anger.

The Bible’s very realistic about anger. It accepts it as a given – something we can’t avoid, either within ourselves or in others. Being a Christian doesn’t mean never becoming angry; but it does mean that when we are angry, we try to control it and understand where it’s coming from.

Eugene Peterson puts it this way: “Anger is a useful diagnostic tool. When anger erupts in us, it’s a signal that something’s wrong. Something isn’t working right. There is evil or incompetence or stupidity lurking about. Anger is our sixth sense for sniffing out wrong in the neighbourhood. When we’re angry we know we are on to something that matters; that really counts."

“What anger fails to do, though, is tell us whether the wrong is outside or inside us. We usually begin by assuming that the wrong is outside us – our spouse or our child or our God has done something wrong, and we are angry. That is what Jonah did, and he quarrelled with God. But when we track the anger carefully, we often find it leads to a wrong within us – wrong information, inadequate understanding, underdeveloped heart. If we admit and face that, we are pulled out of our quarrel” and into something larger and potentially life-giving.

There’s something in that, isn’t there? So often the anger we feel says more about us than the other person.

The Christian psychologist Dr Larry Crabb gives a perfect, everyday example of that in his book ‘Inside-Out’.

“Some time ago my wife and I were on our way to our favourite pizza restaurant. In the back seat of the car was another couple, good friends. I was at the wheel, feeling quite confident in my ability not only to drive the car competently but also to find the restaurant. I’d been there many times before.

I eased the car into the left hand lane, stopped because the light was red, and pressed the left-hand turn signal. After a few moments the light turned green. Before I had a chance to move off, my wife said “take a left here, honey”.

Five simple words – take a left here honey – and I felt furious. I jerked my head towards her, snapped “I know” and stepped on the gas. I felt angry; far more so than my wife’s apparent lack of confidence in my navigational skills seemed to justify

Under my capable direction, we drove down Second Avenue until we saw the huge, well-lit sign that announced “Pizza”. Just as I prepared to turn, my wife pointed and said “Here it is”. My rage doubled. Why?

A host of questions, some a bit threatening, emerges from this rather ordinary incident:

What does the intensity of my anger say about my level of maturity?

Was my wife really not sure I knew where I was going, or was she acting out of casual habit and a real desire to be helpful?

How should I deal with angry emotions towards my wife? Discuss them later? Try to forget them? Spew it all out in the name of honesty?

And lastly, and most importantly perhaps, What do I deeply desire that was not provided in that interaction with her?

Following that last line of questioning led Crabb to understand that his deep desire was to be respected and thought of as competent. His wife, unwittingly, had touched that raw nerve and his overly-angry reponse said much more about him than about her.

Jonah is angry at Nineveh and angry at God. And God’s advice to him is simple: “Consider your anger” one translation puts it. “Consider your anger”.

It’s a good phrase; and a good phrase for us to reflect on too.

What does your anger say about you? Have you followed the threads all the way back to see where it comes from? Are you prepared to engage with God about it, or have you taken yourself off to a makeshift shelter to sulk for a while? What do you need to do to deal with your anger before it takes root and begins to devour you the way it devoured Jonah?

Paul give us some good practical advice in Ephesians. he says “Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbour, for we are all members of one body. “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold”.

Jonah is a book of many ironies – the prophet runs from God, the pagans seek him out; the prophet’s prayerless, initially, the pagans are prayerful. The prophet’s unrepentant, the pagans are penitent.

And the last irony is this – God, who has every right to be angry, finds it within himself to set anger aside. Jonah, who has no right to be angry, can’t seem to let go of it. He clings to it like a worthless idol.

And so the story ends. It’s not a Hollywood ending.

The camera pans back, showing Jonah, prone and skeletal, lying in the doorway of his dessicated little hut; walled in by hatred and anger. Beyond him, Nineveh comes into shot, glowing orange in the low evening sun; basking in her newfound grace. And disappearing into the distance we catch a glimpse of the back of God. And if we listen, we can hear his words, spoken as a benediction over the story of Jonah; over all our fleeing and disobedience and building of walls and nursing of anger. He is

"The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin”.

This is our God – the God of the whole world. And this is how we, who take his name, must choose to be.