By Terrell Carter
Reflections on Jonah 1:1-17
Who is your enemy? Who do you just not like? What person or group do you despise? I know we’re Christians, but when you’re not at church or thinking holy thoughts or being intentional about being loving, who can you not stand? Please, be honest with yourself. No one else knows what you’re thinking.
Is it Donald Trump and other Republicans? They have done enough lately to make much of America angry, haven’t they? In the past year, they’ve repealed portions of the Affordable Care Act, passed tax reform that benefits the wealthy and punishes the average working class, and they are determined to make some type of wall along the U.S./Mexico border a reality. Or, maybe it’s the Democrats who you can’t stand. They don’t seem to understand the value of hard work or a person earning their keep. They would rather put someone on a government program and give them a handout instead of teaching them the value of earning an honest day’s wage.
Or, maybe it’s the media. As President Trump says, they are the purveyors of fake news. They exist to keep our nation divided about any and everything, and they cause more harm than good. Or, maybe it’s a co-worker who jumps at every opportunity to take credit for work they didn’t complete, or they regularly try to set you up for failure, or they celebrate anytime something goes wrong for you or when a project that you are leading doesn’t turn out right. Maybe it’s a neighbor who won’t keep their dog from squatting in your yard.
I imagine that if we all could be honest, multiple names and faces probably popped into our minds as we started to think about the question of who is our enemy. Don’t feel bad. You can take solace in knowing that you are not the first people to struggle with this question. This is something that Jonah had to deal with. At its core, the Book of Jonah is about how he responded when he found out that God cared about people that Jonah couldn’t stand. The book is about the challenge Jonah faced when God asked him to change his thinking towards people whom he had hated for many years. Although Jonah’s hate for this group of people was well-founded, God challenged him to see the group of people as God saw them.
Jonah came from a town called Gath-Hepher and not much is known about him. What we do know is that one day, Jonah’s minding his business and God gives him a task to complete—to go to Nineveh and tell the people of that city to repent of their sins: “God has seen what you have been doing and God is not pleased. Change your ways or experience God’s wrath,” to paraphrase the text. This is a simple and straightforward command from God and…Jonah refused to do it. Why? Because he hated Nineveh and everything it stood for.
Nineveh was located to the west of where Jonah lived, was about three miles wide, and was the largest city in the area at the time. It was a tremendously pagan city and its inhabitants were known for participating in witchcraft and sorcery. More importantly, it was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were one of the primary enemies of Israel at the time, and the Assyrians were growing in power and reputation on a daily basis. They regularly threatened Israel, Jonah’s kin, with violence as they expanded their dominance over the area. All of God’s children knew that Assyria was working toward conquering them and taking their land. And God does the unimaginable. He tells Jonah to go to the enemies of his people and to preach repentance to them, so God would no longer be angry with them.
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