Full Title: The Problem with Mercy: When Grace Ruins Your Plans
Scriptures: Jonah 3 & 4
Theme:
In this sermon, Jonah’s story becomes more than a tale of a reluctant prophet — it is a mirror reflecting our own struggle with God’s boundless grace. Jonah delivers God’s warning to Nineveh, only to sulk when mercy triumphs over judgment. Through God’s probing question, “Is it right for you to be angry?”, we are invited to confront the discomfort of compassion that crosses our boundaries and challenges our sense of justice. The sermon closes by leaving us in that unanswered space, where the tension between fairness and mercy invites deeper reflection on what it truly means to follow a God whose love knows no limits.

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When I sat down to write a sermon on Jonah, I felt confident.
The whole book fits on four pages in my Bible — just long enough to read with a cup of tea in hand, familiar enough that I could see the felt-board characters from my childhood Sunday school.

God says, “Go to Nineveh.” Jonah says, “No thanks,” and heads in the opposite direction.
The wind picks up. The sea turns black. Jonah is pitched overboard, swallowed whole by a great fish, and spat out three days later — humbled, grateful, and singing praise to the God who saved him.
The moral? When God says go… you go.

That should have been the sermon. Neat. Simple. Obedience lesson wrapped up in a bow.
And then — I kept reading.

The ending of Jonah’s story never made it onto the felt boards.
God sends Jonah again, this time to deliver the warning: in forty days, Nineveh will fall.
Jonah preaches the news, braces himself for the show, and… they repent. All of them. From the king in velvet robes to the lowliest beggar in the streets. Even the cattle wear sackcloth.
And God changes His mind. No destruction; only mercy.

And Jonah — Jonah is furious.

This is the part that unnerves me, because I recognize the face Jonah is making.
It is the face of someone who has been there all along, kept the rules, done the hard work…and now watches the undeserving march straight into God’s embrace.

Jonah’s words are blistering: “I knew it, God! I knew this would happen! This is why I ran off! You’re merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love — eager to forgive — and I can’t stand it. Just kill me now.”

It is shocking at first, isn’t it? To watch a prophet — saved from the sea, rescued from the dark — stand nose-to-nose with God and spit out his grievance. But the longer I sit with him, the harder it is to keep my distance.

Because here’s the truth: Jonah knew Nineveh:
Nineveh was no nameless city. It was the Assyrian capital — massive, fortified, wealthy, brutal. The walls stood a hundred feet high, forty feet thick. Chariots raced side-by-side along the ramparts.
The prophet Nahum wrote about their cruelty: how they crushed the poor, tortured soldiers, ravaged women, desecrated God’s ways with idols and bloodshed. These were Israel’s enemies. If you were Jonah, the thought of Nineveh living another day must have felt like swallowing hot ash.

And mercy? Mercy for them? It wasn’t just unfair. It was unthinkable.

I wish I could say I am different — that my heart instinctively beats in rhythm with God’s compassion — but my first nature is not Christian. It is human. And human nature has a problem with mercy.

It feels wrong when the prodigal son gets the party while the elder son cleans up after the animals.
It feels wrong when workers who clock in at five o’clock get paid as much as those who have sweated under the sun all day. It feels wrong that Ninevites — or whoever your Ninevites might be — get spared judgment at the eleventh hour.

Let me tell you what my Nineveh has looked like lately.

When I heard that the court upheld the cross at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, my first thought was not about the power of God displayed in that place. My first thought was, “Finally, a win for us.”

When ISIS destroyed the ancient tomb of Jonah, my first thought was not prayer for deliverance or for their hearts to turn to God. I thought: “Why does God allow them to prevail?”

When the conversation at the salon turned to immigration at the Southern border, I found myself in silent agreement with half-truths and political rhetoric, assigning guilt before I ever sought God’s guidance.

Even debates over Israel and Palestine pull me in with the old lure of righteous certainty — as if deciding who deserves compassion is mine to settle.

Turns out Jonah and I have more in common than I’d like to admit. Turns out that, handed mercy, I still sometimes want judgment. Turns out that, like Jonah, I can preach repentance one day…and run the other way the next.

Which is why this strange little book matters so much. Because God doesn’t just deal with Nineveh. God deals with Jonah. God watches him storm off like a sulking child and builds him shade in the desert.
When the shade dies and Jonah’s rage flares again, God asks the question that still stands between heaven and earth:

“Is it right for you to be angry?”

It’s a question for every heart that has ever kept score. It’s a question for us when compassion collides with our loyalties — our causes, our nations, our tribes. It’s a question that refuses easy answers but leaves us with God’s own reminder: that mercy is not just for the people we love. Mercy is for the people we can barely stand.

And maybe — unsettling as it is — the Book of Jonah means to show us that heaven will not be the private country club of the righteous. It will be a wide table where our enemies are welcome, where Nineveh eats beside Israel, where God’s compassion will finally erase our borders. And if that makes us wrestle — if it makes us feel the sting Jonah felt — perhaps that is the beginning of understanding grace.

And so we come to the end of Jonah’s story — or maybe not the end. Because the truth is… we don’t know what Jonah did next. Did he sit in the dust until the sun went down? Did he walk back into Nineveh and look his enemies in the eyes? Did his heart shift even a little?

The book leaves the question hanging like God’s voice in the empty air: Is it right for you to be angry?

I suppose that’s where we live, too — somewhere between the shade and the scorching sun, trying to decide what to do with God’s mercy that flows past our borders and finds people we tried not to see.

And maybe, if we keep standing here long enough, we will discover that grace is not a reward for getting it right. It is not a medal for loyalty or proof that we have been better than someone else.

Grace is God’s stubborn love… the kind that refuses to play by our rules… the kind that will not rest until our Nineveh — whoever or whatever that may be — sits beside us at the great table, and we forget why we ever kept them outside.

Until then, the question remains, whispering at the edge of every story: Will you rejoice when your enemy is saved? Will you say “Amen” when mercy ruins your plans?