September: Day 21: Teaching 2: Prophet Jonah

September: Day 21: Teaching 2:*
Prophet Jonah
 
(Why Does the Sinful World Stand Indestructible To This Day?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Prophet Jonah, whose memory we now commemorate, was the successor of the Prophet Elisha and prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II, in the 8th century B.C. Jonah predicted to this king victory over the Syrians, the most dangerous enemies of the Israelites. And indeed, Jeroboam returned to his kingdom the ancient regions taken by the Syrians. Then the Lord commanded Jonah to preach repentance in the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Jonah loved his fatherland too much to favor its enemies, and instead of fulfilling the will of the Lord, he boarded a Phoenician ship and went to Tarshish. But as soon as the ship sailed, a storm arose at sea, and every minute the sailors were afraid that the ship would sink. Jonah, trusting in God, was not afraid of drowning and calmly retired to the cabin, where he fell asleep. The sailors woke him and said: "Why are you sleeping? Call upon your God, that He may save us, that we may not perish." But the storm did not abate. Then they decided to cast lots to find out for whose fault such a disaster had befallen them all: and the lot fell on Jonah. The sailors asked him: "Who are you, where is your country and people, what is your occupation?" Jonah answered: "I am a Hebrew; Jehovah sent me to preach to Nineveh, but I disobeyed and am going to Tarshish." The sailors were terrified and said to the prophet: "What can we do to you, that the sea may be calm?" Jonah answered: "Throw me into the sea, and it will be calm, since for my sake such a storm has befallen us all." As soon as the sailors did this, the storm abated. Thrown into the sea, Jonah was swallowed up by a huge fish and remained inside it for three days, first in fear for his life, then in hope of God's help. After three days, the fish vomited him up on the Syrian coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Jonah went to Nineveh and began to preach that it would perish in forty days. Horror seized the Ninevites. They abandoned their wickedness, instituted a general fast, and put on mournful clothes. The Lord, seeing the repentance of the Ninevites, was moved with mercy and postponed the execution for a time. Meanwhile, Jonah, having built a hut for himself outside the city walls, awaited the fulfillment of his prophecy. Seeing that forty days had passed and the city remained unharmed, he began to complain about God's mercy to the corrupt inhabitants of Nineveh. Then the Lord admonished him in the following way. Over the prophet's hut, one night, a branchy tree grew. Jonah was very glad that he could hide under its branches from the scorching rays of the sun. But the next day the tree was gnawed by a worm and dried up; then with the sunrise a scorching east wind blew, and there was no longer protection from the heat. Jonah was so upset by the loss of the plant that had given him coolness that he wished he were dead. Then the Lord said to him, "You have pity on the plant, which you did not plant, nor make it grow, which came up in one night and withered in one night. How can I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left?"

II. This biblical narrative raises the question: how does the world, obviously mired in lawlessness, stand until now? How does the Holy and Righteous Lord tolerate sins in the human race and not send upon it the punishment it deserves? What holds back His Divine justice? Let us seek an explanation for this, brethren, in the indications of the revealed word of God.

a) When the Lord, visibly appearing in the person of strangers to the forefather Abraham, conversed with him and when He revealed to him His intention to destroy the lawless inhabitants of Sodom, Abraham asked the Lord: "Would He really destroy the righteous among the lawless?" The Lord, satisfying the prayerfully disposed spirit of the forefather, told him that He would not destroy the whole lawless city even if only ten righteous people were found in it. So, brethren, this is who is the cause of the standing of the sinful world and its non-destruction, despite all the lawlessness of people. The righteous, who are among the lawless.

b) The Lord was angry again with the Ninevites, as we have heard today. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian kingdom, the greatest, most famous and most populous city. The inhabitants of Nineveh, by their wickedness and sins, aroused the righteous wrath of God against themselves, and the Lord decided in His counsel to consume Nineveh with all its inhabitants. The prophet Jonah, sent with a threatening message, announced to the Ninevites the righteous wrath of God and declared that Nineveh would be destroyed in three days. The people accepted the prophet's message with faith; everyone, from the king to the last inhabitant, put on sackcloth, imposed a fast not only on themselves, but also on all the animals, and turned to God with a prayer for mercy. What happened? The merciful Lord had mercy on the people and canceled the execution intended for Nineveh. Here, brethren, is another reason why the Lord is long-suffering to the sinful human race. They are sinners themselves, but repenting of their sins and beseeching the goodness of God for mercy. In this exact sense the Apostle speaks: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise,” i.e. the end and destruction of the world, “but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

c) We find another reason for the standing of the sinful world in the revelation of the New Testament herald of the future destinies of the world. He was told: “The time is at hand” (Rev. 22:10), i.e. the time of the end of the world. Thus, the end of the world is near, but has not yet come – for what reason? “He that offends,” it is said, “let him offend still further, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still further, and he that is unjust, let him do injustice still further, and he that is holy, let him be holy still further” (Rev. 22:11). You see the intention of God, according to which He mercifully postpones yet the end of the world and the human race. The Lord gives time so that the pious and righteous may succeed more and more in piety and justice, and the sinful and unrepentant may also become more and more hardened in their impenitence and sins, so that at the future terrible judgment they may appear before Him without answer.

Here, brethren, are the reasons, besides others, inaccessible to our minds and known only to God, for which the Lord spares the sinful world and does not give it over to final destruction. The truth of the righteous and the repentance of sinners restrain the righteous wrath of God upon the lawless.

However, there will be an end to the mercy and longsuffering of God. His righteousness will also rise for judgment at the second coming of the Son of God Jesus Christ to earth. It will be exactly the same then as it was before. “As it was in the days of Noah, and in the days of Lot, so will it be also at the coming of the Son of man” (Matt. 24:37; Luke 17:28), said the Lord Himself. Noah and his family were saved in the ark, but all the rest drowned; Lot and his family were led out of Sodom, but all the rest were burned: so also at the end of the world, the righteous will enter heaven, but sinners will drown “in the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15).

III. Let us give thanks, beloved brethren in Christ, to the Lord, that He, in His mercy, still gives us time to postpone our end and the end of the world for our salvation. Let us not waste time, this precious gift of God's mercy, in empty and, even more so, soul-harming deeds, but let us turn it to the benefit of the soul and the acquisition of a blessed and eternal life.

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

* In the original text, this should be the first teaching under September 22nd, since in the Russian Church the Prophet Jonah is commemorated on that day, but since I follow the Greek calendar, I moved it to September 21st.

 

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