[Dialogue] 2/12/09, Spong: Origins of the Bible, Part XXI: Jonah and the Prophetic Lesson Against Prejudice

Thu Feb 12 14:24:42 EST 2009

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Thursday February 12, 2009 

The Origins of the Bible, Part XXI: Jonah and the Prophetic Lesson Against Prejudice

It was a profound shock to the people of Judah when the City of Jerusalem fell to the army of the Babylonians in the early years of the 6th century BCE. This city had not been conquered by an invading power since 1000 BCE, when David himself had taken it from the Jebusites to make it the capital of his newly unified country. When Solomon erected the Temple in Jerusalem, the people began to think that this holy city now lived under the protection of its indwelling deity. That idea was shattered with the city's fall in 596. The subsequent relocation of the Jewish people into a Babylonian exile only continued the shock and increased the despair. 
The depth and pain of these reactions was located in the firm belief that somehow the Jews were God's chosen and favored people. Yet the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people seemed a strange way for the "chosen people" to be treated by their God. Life has to be endured as it comes, however, and so the Jews lived apart from their holy city and their sacred soil for several generations. Finally, the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed the descendants of the exiled Jews to return and resettle th
eir native land. Jewish pilgrims returned in smaller and larger groups over the next two centuries. 

The Jews dealt with this trauma in their history by trying to explain why God had allowed the defeat and exile of the chosen people. All of their understanding of God drove them to find some rationality in this experience. This was especially true when a sufficient number had returned to allow them finally to begin to rebuild their country. They wanted to make sure that God's wrath would not descend on them again. They needed to know how they had offended God so that this behavior would never be repeated. Their first explanation was emotionally unsatisfying for it placed blame for unfaithfulness on their own ancestors and dishonored their parents, in direct violation of the Ten Commandments. Then they hit on what seemed a better idea. Alien influences were to blame, they said, "Some of our weaker ancestors had married foreign partners. These Gentile elements then brought corruption to our nation by polluting the true faith and the racial purity of God's people." The way to avoid a future disaster thus seemed clear. They must purge the nation of its non-Jewish elements by banishing them from the land. The half-breed children of these unholy unions must also go. The new land of the Jews must be for Jews only. So the law was decreed and vigilante squads were loosed on the people with instructions to check blood lines to the tenth generation in order to guarantee the racial purity of the newly establishe
d Jewish state. The true worship of a pure Jewish people was the only way to secure God's blessing. The Jewish state thus entered a period of internal violence. 

It was because of the atmosphere produced by this mentality that an unknown Jewish person, presumably a man since women were not taught to write at this time, went to his home to devise a means of challenging these prevailing attitudes. He could not attack them openly in a public, political way, for that would be interpreted as running the risk of new defeat and a new exile. He had to confront these attitudes obliquely until their destructiveness was made clear. He had to find a way to hold up a mirror and to force the ruling authorities to look directly into it. Taking his quill in hand he decided to write a fanciful story filled with the exaggeration of a world of make believe, but so enchanting that everyone would want to hear it. In the privacy of his home, he did just that. When he had finished, a text of this story appeared suddenly and anonymously in Jerusalem at the height of the ethnic cleansing. The town crier gathered some people around him in a public square and this is the story he read. 

Once upon a time there was a prophet in Israel whose name was Jonah. God called to Jonah and told him that he must go to preach to the people of Nineveh. "Nineveh," said Jonah, "you must be kidding. That is an unclean Gentile city. Why would you want me to do something that weird?" God was adamant, however, a
nd God's message was clear, so Jonah had to respond. He did so in the classic way that people do when they are told by an authority figure to do something they really do not want to do, that is, Jonah said "Yes" but he meant "No" since he had no intention of obeying. Jonah, however, went through all the motions. He went to his home, packed a suitcase, went down to the port and booked passage on a boat, but to Tarshish and not to Nineveh. One does not go by sea to Nineveh. If caught, he reasoned, he could claim that he had misunderstood and by this time, God surely would have had second thoughts. All went well as Jonah boarded, unpacked his suitcase in his stateroom, put on his Bermuda shorts, got a good book and positioned himself topside in a deck chair as the ship pulled out into the Mediterranean Sea. The trip was uneventful until a dark cloud in the sky seemed to be shadowing the boat. Aware of this dark presence, the captain tried to escape it by turning the boat both to the right and to the left, but the cloud responded by turning in concert with the boat. While the rest of the sky was clear and blue, this cloud got darker and darker and from within it came flashes of lightning, the roar of thunder and finally rain. So strange was this phenomenon that the captain drew the obvious conclusion, "Someone up there does not like someone down here." In what he regarded as a scientific fashion, he sought to identify the culprit. He drew straws and the lot fell on J
onah. "What is this that you have done, Jonah?" "Well, God did tell me to go preach to the Ninevites, but I knew that God did not really care for the Ninevites, so I booked passage on this boat." The captain, who did not care for Ninevites either, understood and thought he would ride out the storm until a bolt of lightning struck near and a wave from the sea swept over the boat, hurling Jonah's deck chair from one end of the ship to the other. That was when the captain weighed his own security against Jonah's decision and decided that Jonah had to go. So, with the help of three deck hands, Jonah was seized by his limbs and on the count of three they heaved him overboard. 
Jonah never hit the sea. God had created a great fish (the word whale never occurs in this story) that had been swimming in tandem with this boat waiting for its moment in the drama. Jonah fell into its open jaws, which closed over him, and Jonah found himself living in the belly of this great fish. Jonah had amazing adaptive qualities, so he settled down to make his new home comfortable by rearranging the furniture and hanging the curtains. For three days and nights, Jonah lived in this new, but somewhat confining, Mediterranean condominium until even the great fish got tired of Jonah (I think he smoked) and so, with a great primeval belch, the fish threw up Jonah, who tumbled head over heels onto a conveniently located sandbar. Jonah was clearing his head and taking in his new situation, when he heard a
 voice saying, "Jonah how would you like to preach to the people of Nineveh?" "Okay, God," he said, "You win. I'll go."

In one verse Jonah was in Nineveh, but still convinced that God was making a mistake, so he opted for a new form of resistance. In Frank Sinatra fashion, he concluded, "I'll do it, but I'll do it my way! I'll preach to the Ninevites, but I'll do it by muttering under my breath and only on the back streets and alley ways of the city." Around the city he went saying: "God says to repent. Repent and turn to God," hoping no one would hear. To his amazement everyone heard. Crowds gathered from every house and condominium confessing their sins, tearing their clothes in repentance and begging for God's mercy. Jonah was the most successful evangelist in the history of the world. Jerry Falwell would have eaten his heart out for this kind of response. 

Jonah, however, was angry. Storming out of town, he said: "I knew this would happen, God. That is why I did not want to come. These wretched people deserve punishment. I know you, God! I know you will forgive! Why does your love not stop at the boundary of my love?" 

Jonah found a spot outside the city where he sat and sulked. The sounds of the revival could be heard as "Sweet Hour of Prayer" was being sung by the penitents. God was strangely silent and night fell. When Jonah awoke, a giant plant had grown up near his head. During the day Jonah found protection from the desert sun in its foliage and sanctu
ary from the biting desert wind in its trunk. That night God created a worm that ate the giant tree, leaving only a small pile of sawdust. When Jonah awoke, he was distraught at the loss of his beloved tree. He wept, mourned and felt the depth of bereavement. Finally, God broke the divine silence and said, "Jonah, how is it that you can have such passionate feelings about this tree and yet no compassion for the 120,000 people of Nineveh, to say nothing of their cattle?" 

The Book of Jonah ends there. Imagine that story being read on the streets of Jerusalem while ethnic cleansing was taking place in the city. As the story unfolded, the people roared at the depth of Jonah's bigotry until they realized that Jonah was a fictional portrayal of themselves. 
The Book of Jonah remains in the Bible to this day to counter human attempts to say that the love of God is limited to the limits of my love or my religion's ability to love. There are no boundaries on the love of God. That is the message of Jonah. In God there are no distinctions between Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white, gay and straight, left handed and right handed. God's invitation is "Come unto me, all ye" not "some of ye." We are to come "just as we are, without one plea." How dare Popes or Archbishops of Canterbury or religious institutions anywhere define anyone as beyond the limits of God's embracing love! When any ecclesiastical leader or religious tradition excludes or diminishes any child of God for=2
0the sake of "unity" or by defining God's love as limited, the Book of Jonah stands as biblical judgment on that leader and those attitudes. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Marvin Wagner, of Indianapolis, writes: 
Dante said the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who should speak up, but remain silent. Do you believe religious leaders are speaking out about the killing of innocents in this war, for example? Are you satisfied that we are speaking out sufficiently?

Dear Marvin,

Your question is perceptive and difficult to judge adequately. It seems to me that religious leaders always reflect cultural values and personal agendas that compromise truth.

During World War II, the Pope, Pius XII, did not speak out against the Holocaust in Germany in which millions of Jewish lives were lost.

In 1945, the religious leaders of America did not (with a few notable exceptions) speak out against the use of the atomic bombs on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the Anglican Communion, we watch in dismay as the Archbishop of Canterbury places ecclesiastical unity above the confrontation with the debilitating evil and ignorance of homophobia.

Recently in the same week in this nation we saw the resignation of the Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, for sexual misbehavior on one side and on the other we watched the President of the United States vetoing a bill that condemned torture.20I found it appalling that the attention of both the press and religious leaders was almost exclusively on the private sexual scandal and not with the public moral issue of torture.

I'm not sure I want to invoke Dante's hell to judge this lack, but I do think we need to challenge religious leaders in terms of their values and their commitment to enhancing humanity. Raising the levels of human consciousness by asking questions like yours becomes an important element in that enterprise.

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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