God goes to Jonah, and tells him that he wants him to go to the city of Nineveh, “and preach against it; for their wickedness has come before me”
By the second verse of the Book of Jonah, however, it becomes clear that this prophet isn’t convinced that the people of Nineveh will listen to him, so he gets on a boat bound for Tarshish. Tarshish is 2,500 miles away from where Jonah lived!
But the boat doesn’t get very far before a big storm breaks out and Jonah gets tossed into the sea and is swallowed by a big fish. For three days, Jonah prays to God from the belly of the
fish, telling him he has finally decided to obey him and go to Nineveh, and so God commands the fish to spit Jonah onto the shore, and he commands Jonah a second time: Go to Nineveh
and tell them “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”
Now, did you ever ask yourself why Jonah was so reluctant to go to Nineveh? It’s probably because Nineveh, the biggest city in the world at that time, was the capitol of Assyria, a nation
known for its brutality. In the British museum today, you can see a large collection of Assyrian stone carvings which proudly recount how they treated their enemies: impaling and beheading them, tearing down their cities and piling their citizens. One commentator writes that asking Jonah to convert Nineveh was like asking a Ukrainian to go to Moscow and tell Putin to repent.
So, Jonah must have thought that God was crazy. Those people in Nineveh are animals! They will eat me alive! Not even God can save them.
But then you heard what happened. Jonah goes to Nineveh and walks through the streets proclaiming (by the way, I suspect he just whispered it under his breath) “Forty days more and
Nineveh shall be destroyed.”
And what happens? The entire city repents, everyone from the King to the lowliest donkey put on sackcloth and ashes, turn away from their evil ways and return to the Lord.
Now, you would think that was a really great ending to the story. But no. Jonah is not thrilled that God has converted this people. So, Jonah goes out into the desert and sits there like a spoiled three year old, sulks and tells God, I am just going to sit here and die!
Why does he do this? Because God does not fit into his tiny view of what the world is supposed to be. Like a toddler, he is convinced that he, and his kind, are the center of the universe, and it is God’s job to give him everything he wants, and punish all those other people who are not like him.The Apostles said as much to Jesus once and he replied, “How
does it concern you, if I wish to be merciful?” Am I not God?
But since our first parents, the history of humankind has been a steady stream of disobeying God, because we’re convinced everyone but us should go to hell. If you ask a Hamas terrorist
what he thinks of the Jews, he would say “to hell with them.” If you ask a right wing Zionist about the Palestinians, he would say “to hell with them!”
And who, in our lives, do we see as “the other,” the resident of our own imagined Nineveh who is undeserving of salvation?
But as the Prophet Ezekiel tells us, God desires not the death of a sinner, but that they be converted and live (Ezekiel 18:33). And it is not our place to judge, and certainly not our prerogative to exclude anyone from God’s mercy. It is, rather, our place to pray for the
conversion of sinners, and the reconciliation of all nations and peoples.
Not very far from this Church, a talented priest with extraordinary pastoral skills, was once tempted to preach that all of us Catholics were going to heaven, and everyone else is going to hell. And while he was eventually reconciled to the Church, and God has done wonderful things through his followers, great damage was done by his failing to understand, as the Catechism teaches us that even those “who, through no fault of their own, do not
know Christ and his Church” can still be saved (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 848).
So let’s keep preaching by example and word to all men and women, even if they live in Nineveh.
