When I was in Sunday School, I learned that Jonah ran away from a hard job that God had assigned him, but Jonah didn’t succeed in running away.  God used a big fish to deliver Jonah to his first day on the job.

My Sunday School teachers taught me that we should always obey God’s will, and never run away from the job God gave us.  They taught us what happened to Jonah because he ran away rather than do what God asked him to do – how he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish. But they never told us why he ran away.

For years, I thought Jonah was cowardly.  I thought he was afraid to do what God asked, but that wasn’t it at all.  Jonah tried to escape the mission God gave him because Jonah didn’t want any part of God’s mission of mercy towards Jonah’s enemies.  Jonah wanted God to destroy his enemies.

Like Jonah, a lot of religious people think of God as an ally aligned with them against their enemies.  We naturally assume we’re on God’s side.  Therefore, we (wrongly) imagine that God must be opposed to all who oppose us. 

Jonah didn’t want his enemies to experience God’s mercy.  Jonah wanted them to be crushed by God’s punishment. 

There’s a part of me, like Jonah, that would gladly sit back with a box of popcorn and enjoy the show while all those who have hurt me get what’s coming to them.  I know this is wrong.  I know that I am no better than the people who have hurt me.  I know that, just like them, I depend on God’s mercy.  

Like Jonah, God has given me a hard job: to show God’s mercy by forgiving those who hurt me.

No wonder Jonah ran away.

Prayer:  Merciful God, you have buried our sins in the sea of forgetfulness.  Grant that we might become like you.  Help us loosen our grip on the remembered wrongs and resentments that we cling to so tightly.  Amen.