The Question God Leaves Open

In the final week of our series in Jonah, we come to the last scene of the book. God has spared Nineveh, and Jonah walks out of the city, builds himself a booth, and sits down to see what will happen. He is hoping God will change his mind. We know that seat.

The booth matters. Every year Israel lived in booths for a week to remember how God sheltered them in the wilderness, and God told them to make room at that feast for the sojourner. Jonah builds a booth for one and uses it to watch outsiders fall. Then God gives him a plant for shade, and for the only time in the book we are told that Jonah is glad. When a worm kills the plant, he wants to die. God asks whether he does well to be angry, and then asks the question that ends the book. If Jonah pities a plant he did not grow, should God not pity a city full of people who have lost their way?

Jonah knew all the right things about God, but what he depended on to be okay was his own comfort. We can do the same. We can believe true things about God and still go somewhere else for life, and the Bible calls that idolatry. In John's Gospel, at the Feast of Booths, Jesus stands up and says, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." God did not watch us from a distance. In Jesus he came and lived among us, and on the cross the one who offered living water said, "I thirst." He took the judgment we deserved so that we could have life.

Being around Jesus is not the same as coming to him, walking with him, and depending on him. As we keep coming to him, his Spirit gives us his love for the people in front of us, including the ones we would rather watch fall. The book ends with God's question, and we answer it as people Jesus has already had mercy on.