Great Endings: Cliffhangers In Space

“Take care, you two. May the Force be with you.”

—Luke Skywalker, The Empire Strikes Back

Continuing our series on great endings, we turn to one of my favorite childhood movies: The Empire Strikes Back.

It has an ending that surprises us because almost nothing has been resolved. (Spoiler alert for a 46-year-old movie, but if you haven’t seen it by now, that’s really on you) Han is still imprisoned in carbonite. Luke is recovering from his duel with Darth Vader and reeling from the revelation that Vader is his father. The rebellion has suffered a serious defeat and has been forced to regroup.

Luke delivers the film’s final line as he and Leia watch Chewbacca and Lando depart on a mission to find Han. Then John Williams’s score swells, what remains of the rebel fleet jumps into hyperspace, and the credits begin to roll.

It is a classic cliffhanger. The story stops precisely when we expect a resolution. It is not so much a conclusion as a doorway into the next chapter. Its lack of resolution carries a message of its own: 

The story is not over.

The Bible contains a few fantastic cliffhangers, but my favorite comes from the story of the prophet Jonah.

Throughout the book, the recalcitrant prophet resists God’s call to preach to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were among Israel’s enemies, and Jonah has no interest in carrying a message that might lead them to receive God’s mercy.

After a storm, a great fish, and a great deal of divine persuasion, Jonah finally relents. He enters the city and delivers a famously brief sermon warning that Nineveh will be overthrown. To Jonah’s dismay, the people listen. From the peasants to the palace, the entire city repents, and God relents from the promised destruction.

Jonah is furious.

He hikes into the hills overlooking Nineveh and waits, apparently hoping that God might change the divine mind once again and destroy the great and wicked city after all.

Wanting to give this mopey messenger an object lesson, God causes a plant to grow overnight and shade Jonah from the sun. The next day, however, God appoints a worm to attack the plant, and it withers. Jonah lashes out over the loss of his shade and over God’s mercy toward Nineveh.

Then we hear the book’s final exchange:

“But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?’ And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ Then the Lord said, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?’”

—Jonah 4:9–11

And that is where the story ends.

We never hear Jonah’s response to God’s question. We don’t learn whether his heart changes or whether he continues sulking outside the city. Just when we expect some final word of resolution, the score swells and the credits begin to roll.

But the real cliffhanger in Jonah is not whether Nineveh will be destroyed. That question has already been answered: God has chosen mercy.

The unresolved question is whether Jonah can learn to rejoice when that mercy is extended to people he resents.

That is where we enter the story. Without an answer from Jonah, God’s question turns toward the reader.

Will we accept a God whose compassion extends beyond the people we like, understand, or believe deserve it? Can we celebrate grace when someone else receives it? Or will we sit outside the city, angry because God has not behaved as we wanted?

The ending of Jonah feels unfinished because Jonah’s answer is not the only one that matters. The story is waiting for our answer.

We don’t get to decide whether God cares for Nineveh. God has already made that clear. We must decide whether we are willing to care about what—and whom—God cares about.

Some endings close the book. Others leave a door open and ask whether we will walk through it.

Jonah leaves us outside Nineveh with a choice: we can remain where we are, nursing our grievances beneath the remains of our withered comforts, or we can follow God’s mercy into the city.

The story is not over.

What happens next is, at least in part, up to us.

Rev. Ryan Young