What is this thing to you?

Is there anyone that doesn’t know the story if Jonah, particularly that part in which Jonah is swallowed by a great fish? I thought that I did. I have read the story several times in the last thirty years, and yet as we talked about the story in my adult Sunday school class last week, I found myself marveling over passages that seemed entirely new to me.

At the end of the story of Jonah, the Assyrian people repent, and turn to God, who in turn forgives them. Jonah’s response? He throws a fit. “I knew you were going to do that” he says, “ I knew you were going to forgive them. What was the point of my coming here if all you were going to do was forgive them?” He sits down outside the city and fumes.

Some people might me mystified by Jonah’s behavior. I think it is interesting that I never really took great notice of it. Probably because it was too close to home as this is where many of my conversations with God begin. “What was the point of that?” Just like Jonah I become incalcitrant. I can see myself in Jonah’s shoes. Frustrated, he is so overwhelmed with emotion that he is no longer able to talk with God. JoHe goes and sits outside the city wall in the burning desert sun and prays for death.

I am no stranger to this response. It is not uncommon for me, faced with some difficulty, or having felt some offence, to shut down the rational part of my mind. I become fixated on the swelling tide of emotions that churn within my body and I am incapable of offering defense on my own behalf. Furious at my own impotence as much as any perceived offence I may find myself acting out or saying something inappropriate that only worsens my situation. I am not above praying for release, even death, in these moments.

God’s response to Jonah is equally interesting. He causes a plant to sprout and grow overnight until it is large enough to shade Jonah. I imagine this plant like one of the trees you see in a Dr. Seuss book, long and gangly and multicolored. Jonah, the passage says, likes the plant, and enjoys the shade.

In yet another twist, God kills the plant, and here is where the story ends, or almost. Jonah becomes incensed, and God, seeing Jonah’s anger says to him “what was this plant to you? You did not plant it, you did not raise it, it was not yours, and yet when it dies you are angry. How much more are the people of this city, lost and confused, than this plant to which you owe nothing?”

The book ends on the question, and does not offer an answer. It appears as though it is the reader, and not Jonah, who is asked the question and expected to make an answer. Why are you angry? What is this thing to you?

The author is silent.