Readings: Jonah 4.1-11; Psalm 86; Luke 11.1-4
As a boy I found it difficult to understand the seriousness of play. I knew 'being serious' and I knew 'playing' but I did not see how they could go together. 'It's only a game' seemed to me to be a piece of profound practical wisdom but this, it seemed, was not how others saw it. My older brother often encouraged me to take part in football matches even though I was not very good at it. I agreed, with growing reluctance as time went by. Having kindly encouraged me to participate I was then a bit puzzled when, in the midst of battle, he was angry with me for doing something stupid or not doing something I should have done. To say 'it's only a game' would not have been wise in those circumstances!
Jonah has a similar difficulty. He feels he has been taken for a ride. The people repent immediately he arrives in Nineveh and so too does God which makes Jonah angry. Not because God did not carry out what he had threatened to do but because he knew from the beginning that this is how it would turn out. God is always merciful, rich in clemency and loath to punish. So what was the point of calling Jonah to pass on threats that were always vain and empty: God would never have done what he threatened.
So Jonah feels used and humiliated. He fails to see the seriousness in the play which God has just produced using him as its lead actor. God has only been playing with him, he feels, whereas for him it has been deadly serious, a matter of life and death.
We might feel something similar in relation to prayer as in the gospel reading today. Why call on God and tell him what we need and want when he knows all this already? And when, it seems, he is only too ready to give us what is for our complete and lasting happiness without our even asking for it?
Even if there is something of play in the way things are being managed by God, and even if there is something of play also in our liturgical carry on - hoping that by acting as if we are God's holy people we might come closer to really being that holy people - play has a serious purpose. Through play relationships and friendships are formed and strengthened as situations are dramatised and 'played out' through symbolic conflicts, engagements and resolutions. It ought to remain symbolic, of course, and it is all the worse when the conflict is not contained within the boundaries of play.
Sooner or later, in the course of our lives, we will feel that God is playing some kind of game with us. It is important to remember that the most serious thing in reality is the love of God and everything that happens in our dealings with God and in God's dealings with us is at the service of that love. That is the final message of the Book of Jonah which God has gone to great lengths to teach the bewildered prophet. Jonah's ego is bruised but we hope that he has come to see the serious reality at the heart of God's treatment of him: God's concern for Nineveh and its people as he is concerned for all his creatures, including Jonah.
Prophets are those whose human words carry God's Word and sometimes their lives are turned into 'acted parables' through which important truths about God are illustrated. It was probably better that at the end God did not say to Jonah 'it was only a game'. Better by far to illuminate the serious purpose of the game which was to bring human beings to a new appreciation of the seriousness of God's love.
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