The people who know this story of Jonah understand that Jonah is called to Nineveh, that “great city”. Jonah does not want to go to that city and he runs only to end up being spit up on the shores of Nineveh. However, I think this is a misreading the story.
God is not trying to convert Nineveh.
God is trying to convert Jonah. And for us reading the story, God is trying to convert the reader.
When Jonah arrives to the city, he walks one day into it and tells the people God is going to destroy the city. Upon hearing this message the people repent. The king hears about the people repenting then the king repents and makes a city wide declaration. It is as thought the people of Nineveh had already heard about this God Jonah is talking about and the people in the city repent right away. Jonah does not have to convince people about this God at all, just one day’s worth of work and the people get the message.
The people of God in the Hebrew bible and the followers of Jesus did not even get this message that quickly.
Then after the city repents, Jonah could have gone back home as the greatest evangelist of all time. This could have been the most effective and remarkable sermon of all time by getting the entire city of Nineveh - including the King - to repent. Instead of celebrating that all of these people repent and turn toward the very God Jonah says he follows, Jonah gets mad.
The name Jonah means ‘dove’. Among the many different thoughts on what this means, one of the thoughts is that Jonah knew the Bible so well that when he prayed he “cooed” like a dove.
He knew the Bible but he did not know God. Perhaps Jonah was never really following God to begin with.
Today, many of us know the Bible. We are convinced that we know what is a sin and who the bad guys are. We are confident that we are already converted to God. We are convinced that our sin is not as bad as the other person’s sin and that our repenting is somehow more complete than the one we think is not repenting. We are convinced that we have a pure soul.
So did Jonah.
And yet, the book of Jonah ends with a question - is it right for Jonah to be angry that destruction did not come upon the very people who repented and turned their heart? It has been said that if you look up on the hill you can still see Jonah sitting there. Sulking in his distain of the other. Convinced that he knows the Bible and he knows that he is right.
So many of us in the Christian tradition are like Jonah. We think that God is using us to convert others, when in fact God is using the other (the evil and insincere sinner) to convert us. If I leave the church because there is a sinner in the church and that I only will attend the church if all the sinners repent and have as pure of a soul as me, then I might as well join Jonah on that hill.
In his Church of one pure, angry and bitter soul.