mercy

by

Jonah

It ain’t necessarily so, it ain’t necessarily so.

De t’ings dat yo’ li’ble to read in de Bible,

It ain’t necessarily so.

When you read the Bible as a child, you remember heroic and fantastic images that later challenge your credulity. In adulthood the authority of the Bible collapses in disillusionment as the narrator of “It ain’t neceesarily so” articulates. About Jonah, the songs says,

Oh, Jonah, he lived in de whale, oh, Jonah, he lived in de whale.
Fo’ he made his home in dat fish’s abdomen.
Oh, Jonah, he lived in de whale.

The part we all remember is the fish, which is mentioned in two of the forty-eight verses of Jonah. So the redemption of a prophet and a major capital of ancient civilization is reduced to this:

Jonah in the Belly

In my recollection Jonah was about a man who tried to run from God. [What a doofus!] He was confined to a whale for three days to get his head straight [Served him right!], and finally agreed to do his job: preach to the city of Nineveh. But he was a still a doofus, because he didn’t like God showing mercy on the Ninevites. The final chapters seemed like an epilogue and not very important.

But a re-reading of the story later in life evokes God’s mercy in ways we don’t see in other Old Testament literature. Psalmists extol God’s mercy, and historians explain forgiveness of the Hebrew people in light of God’s mercy, but mercy comes in waves in this story, one right behind the other. And the story spans the limits of the known world. Jonah himself seems like a minor character in a cosmic drama.

First there is the mercy the sea-farers had on Jonah, when it seemed like he was the inevitable cause of their ship perishing in the storm. It becomes obvious after their interrogation of Jonah that he is the cause and Jonah himself says to them:”I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you” (Jonah 1:12).  What did they do? “Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land” (13).  They didn’t want to take out their misfortune on Jonah, in spite of the fact he had spent the worst part of the storm sleeping below. They had mercy on him until finally they had no choice, but to rid the ship of him.

Once in the water, Jonah does not perish because “the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah”(17). This part of the story is usually read as the low point for Jonah, but the text says “the Lord provided,” so while the accommodations were not Five Diamonds, the story suggests that God has saved Jonah, rather than executing him.  Jonah says about this imprisonment:

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought up my life from the Pit,

O Lord my God.

So we are intended to read the fish incarceration as God’s mercy.

Next, God has mercy on Nineveh, “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” (4:11).  This verse touches the heart of mercy, sparing a people who have directional confusion, a metaphor of pathetic helplessness. When we speak of people who don’t know their right hand from their left, it is inevitably in mockery. There are a lot of graphic metaphors indicating how stupid people are by their poor differentiation of one body part from another, and none of them imply we should have mercy on such people. Yet God Almighty does.

The entire fourth chapter of Jonah is devoted to a parable about how the prophet was embittered because God allowed a sheltering bush to perish in one day. God argued that a bush to Jonah was not nearly as significant as a mighty city was to God. Many people know about Jonah and fish, but few would recall Jonah and the bush, a story with far more ethical implications. This chapter is bursting with the news of God’s mercy on all mankind and not merely on his chosen people.

So God schools Jonah about the wideness of his mercy, filling the final chapter with a parable and an explicit conclusion, “should I not be concerned about Nineveh. . .?” This seems to be the point of the story, not that a huge fish kept Jonah hostage for three days. Often the trailer for the movie overrides the depth of its message. And so with Jonah.

Nineveh is often considered the precursor of the modern city, and so its redemption is a modern parable.  The king takes Jonah’s prophecy to heart and commands a city-wide repentance. “Who knows?” the king reflects. “God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish” (3:9).  The words suggest humility, not that the citizens will dissuade God, but that God will change his mind.  This has a whiff of the Prodigal Son who returned to his father, not to regain his previous place in the family, but to be accepted as a hired servant. The offender leaves the initiative up to God, while the repentance serves to answer the offense. Intellectually the idea of God changing his mind is unimaginable, but through faith, all things are possible. The king of Nineveh speaks for his urban descendants today. We may not know our right hand from our left, but God has not given up on us.

 

 

by

Showing Up

Woody Allen is credited with the statement “80 per cent of success is showing up.” If you teach public school or engage in voter registration, you get this. Your job is to get the unwilling to be minimally willing and move on from there. If the students or voters don’t “show up,” your work is futile.

Public schooling and voting for public officials are considered the great institutions of American society. Both have fallen into disrepute because of modern inventions that confound them, standardized testing and voter suppression laws.  Both regulations rationalize against “showing up,” but rather that you must show up at the right time and meet certain qualifications. Those who advocate for such regulation believe that the processes of learning and voting need strict quality controls. As much as this makes sense, the regulations of standardized testing and voter id/ voting hours are not affecting quality, but participation.

If you are not directly involved in teaching or voter registration you may not understand that both learning and voting require engagement. Without it the rest of the process is defunct. It’s like another popular American institution, the lottery. If you don’t play, how can you win? As one who never plays the lottery, I can attest my interest in numbers chosen on TV or in the newspaper is nil. I am a nonparticipant.  I don’t even get why people throw their money away on such things.  Supposed you believed this about education or voting?  You don’t show up.

I have taught high school and listened to people explain what they vote for, and I know that people do not always show up for the right reasons. I know that there were days when I breathed a sigh of relief when Barry or Linda did not show up for class. But then Barry or Linda show up a week later and say, “What did I miss?” I’m thinking: a week of education. I’m wishing they had been there to know what was going on even if they didn’t do it.

You can say I’m suffering from low expectations, but I also know that these students can suddenly become engaged with the novel we’re reading for no particular reason and take off. Or someone will get through to them, and they will see the point of learning. And I think the same is true of voter registration.

I suspect those who disdain the “showing up” philosophy are thinking, No one begged me to show up, I just did. And why can’t everyone else do what I did? Take initiative, accept responsibility, do what’s right. But if you teach public school or attempt to get the vote out, you can see how thin the margin is between doing what’s right and doing nothing.  There is a redemptive moment in many lives that happens just because they showed up.

And if you want to get down to redemption, you have to believe, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  If you don’t accept that grace or luck or connections have something to do with success, then you probably don’t believe in “showing up.”  You probably think it all comes of trying harder and having the right attitude. Good luck with that.

For my part, I begin this day asking for mercy not to screw up, and God takes it from there. And I will screw up, but I know that God will remember I showed up that morning. I will learn something, and I will remember to vote.