notes of a sheep in wolves' clothing

JONAH’S HĀPAK, part 5

2010-01-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

Jonah’s Hāpak: Jon. 4.2 vis-à-vis 2 Kings 14.23-29

The choice of “Jonah’s hāpak” as a means of titling/classifying the exegesis of the passage at hand has to do with the use of the verb in Jonah’s message to Nineveh in Jon. 3.4: ʻôd ʼarbāʹȋm yôm wenȋnewēh nehpāket (“Forty days and Nineveh is overturned/turned over!” JSM). The use of hāpak here is deliciously ambiguous, as has been noted by interpreters at least as far back as the rabbis. (39) Though the basic glosses of the word inhabit a wide semantic continuum containing both inversion and demolition, (40) and including a change of heart for good or ill, (41) as Sasson notes, because the word is found in the niphal stem in relation to cities only here, there is much more wiggle room to allow for the reflexive sense, as a great many niphal forms do—so, “Nineveh will turn itself around,”—or, to allow for intentional ambiguity. (42) The latter is the option to which I am most sympathetic, for reasons that should become apparent below. To my mind, the events that befall Jonah over the course of his own narrative likewise turn him inside out, demolish him, and turn his heart upside down. The Jonah we as readers encounter in Jon. 4.2 3 has been pushed to his breaking point.

As noted above, in Jon. 4.1, Jonah finds the events in which he has been forced to participate morally objectionable. To fully comprehend why this is so, it is necessary to briefly exit the text of Jonah. If one read purely on the grounds on inter-textual exegesis (43) —hence, a reader-centered approach (44) that paid attention only to the interplay between biblical texts, all extratextual questions dealing with historical referents aside—one would gather from other readings that Nineveh was the future capital of the Assyrian empire that eventually destroyed Israel (2 Kings 17; Nahum 1-3). In that case, one would not need to be so bold as Marvin Sweeney, who states that “Jonah as a prophet is expected to know that Assyria will destroy his homeland Israel.” (45) The reader would simply import what they knew from those other texts to explain Jonah’s moral outrage.

The aforementioned moral indignation provides the appropriate backdrop against which to read, exegete, and interpret Jon. 4.2, (46) which reads:

So [Jonah] prayed to YHWH: “YHWH, was this not my word while I was still in my own country? That’s why I cut and ran for Tarshish at first; because I saw that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and overflowing with ferocious compassion, and eager to relent from causing disaster.” (JSM)

Jonah’s prayer, explaining (finally) his flight from YHWH, mentions a “word” (dābār) of his while still in his homeland. This is not insignificant, and there is a direction in which scholarship has not developed this portion of Jonah’s prayer/apologia. Sasson, for instance, suggests that the “narrator might be playful in assigning dābār to Jonah when, in all of its previous occurrences, the word had always referred to God’s order (1:1; 3:1, 3).” (47) Wolff attaches its significance “to the hour when Jonah received his call.” (48) It is Raymond Person, however, who points toward the significance of “my word while I was still in my own country,” when he says that it “has no antecedent in the text itself; therefore the reader restructures the following information in order to create an antecedent for this phrase that then successfully fills in the gap created in 1.3.” (49)

Person gets sidetracked in my estimation, however, when he turns to the reader’s familiarity with prophetic literature to fill this gap; his explanation thus becomes quite facile, noting what is plainly what is encoded into the text of Jon. 1.3 itself—that a prophet should not run away from God. (50) If the reader must again depart from the text at hand, why depart to something as abstract as “prophetic literature” to tell her what she already tacitly knows? Why not start with the reader’s presumed knowledge of the prophet himself? For in 2 Kings 14.25, there is already a word recorded from Jonah, concerning the re-establishment of the borders of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II: “He was the one who restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath all the way to the Sea of the Arabah, in keeping with the word of YHWH the God of Israel, which he spoke by the agency of his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath-hepher” (JSM). (51) Hence, I posit that Jonah’s “word while I was still in my own country” in Jon. 4.2 refers to the word given him by YHWH in 2 Kings 14.25. (52)

If we understand his “word” while he was in his own country as his commission to speak of national renewal in a time when the king (Jeroboam II), like so many before him, “did evil in the eyes of YHWH” (2 Kings 14.24 JSM), this opens up an interesting window into Jonah’s reason for running from his commission. The sorry state of affairs had, however, provoked not wrath, but pity in YHWH, who looked past the wickedness of its leadership and “observed the extreme bitterness of Israel’s affliction and that there was no one, whether young or old, to help Israel” (2 Kings 14.26 JSM). So YHWH chose to save Israel through Jeroboam II, restoring their boundaries and leading to a time of prosperity. Observing that Hosea and Amos (53) condemned the social injustice and idolatry rampant during the reign of Jeroboam II, some interpreters have chosen to label Jonah a nationalistic prophet, who will preach only good tidings for Israel despite their sin. (54) This is nowhere suggested in the text, however—here Jonah speaks what YHWH tells him. To my mind, this “nationalistic” Jonah is a fiction created by superimposing a faulty portrait of a bigoted prophet (gleaned from equally bigoted readings of the book bearing his name) onto 2 Kings 14.25.

Those who argue that Jonah is an ardent nationalist (on the scant basis of 2 Kings 14.25) are ultimately working from a presupposition about the book of Jonah, namely that it is aimed at post-exilic exclusivists (55) such as Ezra and Nehemiah. Not only is this viewpoint not substantiated by historical data, (56) it also stinks of Auschwitz. (57) Thus, while I argue that 2 Kings 14.23-29 (esp. 25) is key to our understanding Jonah’s reason for flight, I wish to stress that it has nothing to do with reading a Jewish parochialism onto Jonah. Rather, Jonah is a prophet who once spoke renewal upon Israel, even though Israel was apostate. Yet, this Israel was also hardly the exploitative and corrupt place spoken against by Hosea and Amos—those assessments came later. The Israel in which Jonah spoke the prophecy of 2 Kings 14.25 was distressed, when the “extreme bitterness of Israel’s affliction” could be observed, and when “there was no one, whether young or old, to help Israel” (2 Kings 14.26). In fact, 2 Kings 14.26 echoes Deut. 32.36, which promises that YHWH will have compassion on his people, and vindicate them when they are helpless.

Imagine, then, that Jonah has spoken YHWH’s blessings upon Israel through Jeroboam II, but that this time of prosperity and national renewal becomes an occasion for ever-increasing sin among the people; hence, the careers of Hosea and Amos. But imagine also that Jonah is still alive to see this turn of events, and this is when Jonah is called to go and preach in the distressed city of Nineveh. I recognize that this is quite a chain of speculations, but it bears out my point, and Jonah’s (in Jon. 4.2). Jonah’s stated reason for flight was his “word” (dābār) in his own country. Furthermore, he adds, “because I saw then [kȋ yādaʹtȋ] that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and overflowing with ferocious compassion, and eager to relent from causing disaster.” That is, Jonah gained first-hand knowledge of YHWH’s self-disclosure of Exod. 34.6 back when he prophesied restoration to a distressed Israel by the hand of the apostate Jeroboam II. Thus, Sasson’s fitting assessment: “Jonah is not referring to the goings on in Nineveh ... but is reasserting what seems a commonplace to him, that if given the slightest opportunity to do so, God customarily chooses not to punish evildoers.” (58)

That being granted, if we posit that Jonah has since lived long enough to see Israel continue in evil, and perhaps even heard the unsettling prophecies of Hosea and Amos concerning future exile at the hands of Assyria, his panic will be acute—indeed, he will feel that YHWH is betraying his people. It matters little that in 2 Kings 14.25, he speaks good tidings to Israel, while in Jon. 1.2, the prophet is told to cry out against Nineveh because of their wickedness. The prophet’s function is to cry out against the wicked in an attempt to coax repentance. Jonah, however, knows all too well what people do with the second chances YHWH affords them. The quality of YHWH’s mercy has been strained to the point that, for Jonah, it is now not only cliché, but in light of the potential threat Nineveh poses, dangerous.

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(39) See the discussion in Sasson, Jonah, 234-35.
(40) KBL 240.
(41) BDB 245.
(42) Sasson, Jonah, 234-35; cf. T. A. Perry, The Honeymoon Is Over: Jonah’s Argument With God (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), xviii; Spina, The Faith of the Outsider, 110.
(43) See the discussions of Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Thomas B. Dozeman, “Inner-biblical Interpretation of Yahweh's Gracious and Compassionate Character,” Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (Summer 1989): 207-23; Lyle Eslinger, "Inner-Biblical Exegesis and Inner-Biblical Allusion: The Question of Category," Vetus Testamentum 42.1 (1992): 47-58.
(44) I am grateful to Joseph Kelly for providing me with a provisional copy of his paper, “Is YHWH Faithful to Israel? An Inner-Biblical Interpretation of Exodus 34:6-7 by Joel and Jonah,” where there may be found on pp. 2 6 a lucid discussion of a reader-centered, intertextual methodology for interpreting scripture.
(45) Marvin Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), 1:329.
(46) Sasson, Jonah, 275, is a bit hasty when he judges that “it would be very incongruous to have an angry Jonah open his mouth in prayer because, as far as I know, there are no instances in Scripture of angry individuals rising to praise or beseech God.” What—has Sasson never read an imprecatory psalm?
(47) Ibid. 277.
(48) Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, 166.
(49) Person, In Conversation with Jonah, 136.
(50) Ibid.
(51) Credit to Dr. John Fortner for helping refine my translation of 2 Kings 14.23-29.
(52) That Jonah would call a word spoken via his agency “my word” is no great difficulty in the semiotic universe of scripture. In 1 Kings 17.1, Elijah calls the prophetic pronouncement of drought “my word,” while the messages given to prophets are sometimes called “the words” of that prophet (Jer. 1.1; Amos 1.1; cf. Neh. 1.1). In the NT, Paul on occasion refers to the message he has been commissioned to proclaim as “my gospel” (Rom. 2.16, 16.25; 2 Tim. 2.8).
(53) Amos 6.14 actually reverses Jonah’s prophecy in 2 Kings 14.25, with the coming Assyrian invaders pursuing the Israelites from Lebo-Hamath to the Arabah.
(54) For instance, Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary 31 (Waco: Word, 1987), 447, calls Jonah “a nationalistic northern prophet who adopted no critical stance toward the policies and practices of the monarchy.”
(55) So Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, 434-35; Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, 157; Magonet, Form and Meaning, 90-112.
(56) For a discussion, see Bolin, Freedom Beyond Forgiveness, 57-60; Sasson, Jonah, 24-27.
(57) On anti-Semitism in the history of Christian interpretations of Jonah, see Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives, 21-32. Though some like to blame it all on Wellhausen, anti-Semitism has, regrettably been a part of Christian biblical scholarship virtually since there was a Christianity. André and Pierre-Emmanuel LaCocque note the irony of the situation: the contention that Jonah was written to chide exclusivist Jews, and is in turn used to present the “superiority” of Christianity, and mention a German Protestant pamphlet of the 1920s entitled, “Biblical Anti-Semitism: The Universal Character, Sin, and End of the Jews in the Mirror of the Jewish Soul Provided by the Prophet Jonah.” In Jonah: A Psycho-Religious Approach to the Prophet (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 169 n. 68.
(58) Sasson, Jonah, 282.

2009-11-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

The desire to do an organic exegesis was stated above; what that might look like is amorphous; indeed, it is an intentionally ambiguous phrase. The question of, “Where to begin?” (outside the obvious, with the text itself), looms heavily. I chose to begin with the question, “What is Jonah’s structure?” in order to consider in which soil an exegesis of Jon. 4.2-3 (a text chosen completely on an intuition of mine that it represented the “aha!” moment of the story, at least from understanding Jonah’s perspective) would best flourish. Scholarly suggestions ranging from complicated ring-compositions (33) to suggesting that there are no significant exegetical elements (34) to be found within patterns arising from the structure seemed, in the case of the former, far-fetched and forced, and with the latter, a cop-out. Simply stated, the “structure” of Jonah presents itself as a Rube Goldberg machine elaborately concocted to provoke a chain-reaction that will finally ensure the rhetorical show-down between Jonah and YHWH in ch. 4. I finally found a scholarly confirmation for my hunch about the structure of Jonah in a study by Raymond Person that broke the book down into a series of “adjacency pairings”; that is, an initial request (in the book of Jonah’s case, the command for Jonah to prophesy doom against Nineveh) can only be met by acceptance or refusal. Jonah refuses, and this sets off the chain of events seen in the book. (35)

The basic pattern of the adjacency pairings forming the book of Jonah works as follows: “Get up, set out [qûm lēk] for Nineveh, the great city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come to my notice [lĕpānāy]” (Jon. 1.2); and in response: “Jonah instead got up [wayyāqom] to abscond to Tarshish, away from the LORD’s notice [millipnê YHWH]” (Jon. 1.3a, b). The repetition of qûm in vv. 2-3 emphasizes the defiance of Jonah’s flight by making it look (ever so briefly) as if the prophet is about to do what he is told (36). Further accentuating the adjacency construction of the narrative at this juncture is the repetition of penê in vv. 2-3, where in v. 2, YHWH states that the “evil/distress” (rāʹātām) of Nineveh has come to his attention (lit., “come up to my face”), Jonah sets out to flee away from YHWH’s attention (“face”).

Beyond the practicality and ease of use that comes with the adjacency pairing structural proposition for Jonah is that it allows for a greater-appreciation of the doubly-focused nature of the narrative. This is where my earlier analogy of the Rube Goldberg contraption becomes even more poignant. A Rube Goldberg machine is one that is intentionally inefficient, performing a mundane task in a circuitous and convoluted manner. The double-focus of this narrative involves, on the one hand, YHWH sending Jonah to preach to the Ninevites, their subsequent repentance, and YHWH’s relenting from punishing them; and, on the other, Jonah’s assertion (4.2) that he knew YHWH would forgive them all along. If what Jonah suspects of YHWH holds true (and from YHWH’s discourse in 4.10-11, it does not appear to be a far-fetched notion), then Jonah’s role in the process does seem redundant.

On another level, the adjacency-pairing balance is intentionally disrupted by the narrator, for though the reader is told that Jonah fled his commissioning (Jon. 1.3), the narrator withholds the prophet’s reason for flight until 4.2. Thus, throughout the divinely-appointed misadventures that befall Jonah subsequent his refusal of the divine mandate (Jon. 1.4-2.10), and the second commission and its outcomes (the people repent of their evil and YHWH repents of the evil he intended for Nineveh), the reader is left trying to fill in the gap. (37) Person suggests that this device allows the narrator to use the “flashback [of Jon. 4.2] in order to describe Jonah’s first success and therefore make his anger look even more ridiculous.” (38) And this is where I depart from Person. For the purposes of this study, the flashback occasioned by Jon. 4.2 will not only explain his response to YHWH’s command, but put his anger (Jon. 4.1) into perspective—as well as his haphazard approach to prophesying in Nineveh (Jon. 3.4).

And here is where I begin making bold exegetical moves in defense of Jonah’s position. First, though it is natural to note the gap between Jonah’s flight (Jon. 1.3) and his explanation of it (4.2), Jonah’s reason for running away from his commission is preceded by a note on his reaction to the situation in which he finds himself (4.1). Most English translations of Jon. 4.1, I am afraid, wrongly nuance wayyēraʻ ʼel-yônâ rāʻâ gedôlâ. Hence:

“But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.” (NIV)
“But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.” (NRSV)
“Jonah was really upset and angry.” (CEV)
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.” (ESV)

I am going to make the radical suggestion that we translate Jon. 4.1 rather literally: “But this was evil to Jonah, very evil, and he became angry.” What was evil to Jonah? The fact that YHWH had forced him to preach in Nineveh, that the Ninevites were repenting, and that YHWH would relent from punishing them. This tableau did not merely “displease” Jonah—he found it morally objectionable. And this is to be the background for our exegesis of his prayer in 4.2 below.

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(33) So David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis-Malachi (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 292-95; Jonathan Magonet, Form and Meaning: Studies in Literary Techniques in the Book of Jonah, Bible and Literature Series 8 (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983), 29-64; George M. Landes, “The Kerygma of the Book of Jonah: The Contextual Interpretation of the Jonah Psalm,” Interpretation 21 (Jan 1967), 24-25.

(34) Thomas M. Bolin, Freedom Beyond Forgiveness: The Book of Jonah Re-Examined, JSOTSup 236 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 70-71; Sasson, Jonah, 204.

(35) Raymond F. Person, Jr. In Conversation with Jonah: Conversation Analysis, Literary Criticism, and the Book of Jonah, JSOTSup 220 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 25-28; 36-54.

(36) Sasson, Jonah, 77; Alan Jon Hauser, “Jonah: In Pursuit of the Dove,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104.1 (1985): 22-23.

(37) Person, In Conversation with Jonah, 87-88. An interesting exploitation of this gap is to be found, for instance, in Alan Jon Hauser, “Jonah: In Pursuit of the Dove,” 22, who states, of all possible explanations a reader encountering the story for the first time might come up with for Jonah’s flight, one might be “that Jonah may be fleeing to avoid being the agent of Nineveh's destruction.”

(38) Person, In Conversation with Jonah, 88.

Jonah's HAPAK, pt. 3

2009-08-31T22:02:00.000-07:00

While such a trans-methodology as the one described above will certainly invite the criticism that it admits an unacceptable amount of imprecision (23) in the handling of biblical texts, it is defensible in the case of Jonah, at least, inasmuch as “Jonah’s position can be given any number of cogent glosses.” (24) Again, this is where my frustration with the hermeneutical continuum of methodology to exegesis to theology-building (whether of the descriptive or prescriptive variety) becomes apparent, because a broad survey of the literature surrounding Jonah offers—no matter the methodology employed—facile variations on what the story is about (xenophobic prophet learns of God’s inclusiveness, or curmudgeonly prophet learns about grace) (25) and what “principles” or “messages” may be distilled from it (outlined succinctly by Barbara Green as: “God loves us all; mercy is more urgent than justice; Jews need to try harder”). (26)

This situation is problematic in terms of theory because the complicated nuances of the book of Jonah suggest something more “visceral” and “less cerebral than a principle” (27) is represented therein. Likewise, it is problematic on the pragmatic end to the extent that it dulls us to the rich array of analogues possible between the text and our own life situation(s). Just as “scholars are reluctant to admit more than one literary classification for a single piece of literature,” (28) so it seems that they are equally obsessed to pin down tidy “interpretive apophthegms” (29) (preferably one at a time) that may represent the fruits of their exegetical labors. Yet as Hans Wolff reminds us: “skilled though [the author of Jonah] is in the creation of scenes and in the use of satire, grotesque, and irony as literary methods, our writer is not a systematic theologian.” (30)

Having outlined my trans-methodology, wherein both reader and method submit to the demands of the text, the subsequent sections of this study shall proceed as an application of such an organic exegesis of the text of Jonah 4.2 vis-à-vis 2 Kings 14.23-29. Three distinctive features, two native to the text of Jonah itself, and one specifically related to a presupposition undergirding my approach to Jonah, are noted below. These provide a basic program for the exegetical venture undertaken in the following sections.
(1) The basic structure of the book of Jonah is an open-ended doubly-focused narrative, as demonstrated by its building-block-like narrative elements (e.g., the exchanges between YHWH and Jonah which propel the story) coupled with its lack of formal closure. Any exegesis of any part of the narrative must take into account this feature and a particular portion of text’s role or function within that framework.
(2) An issue of intertextuality, largely undeveloped by biblical scholarship, is instantiated by Jon. 4.2, where the prophet references “my word while I was still in my own country” (JSM) (31), which brings to mind the content of his prophetic word as detailed in 2 Kings 14.25.

(3) This particular exegetical exercise adopts a posture essentially sympathetic to Jonah’s position, as stated in Jon. 4.2. The double-focus and open-endedness of the narratival structure of the book render such a position licit. Furthermore, the tendency by dominant readings to reduce Jonah’s role to one of a buffoon or mere object-lesson—a strategy which disrespects the complexities of the issues surrounding the tale of Jonah (theodicy, the limits of justice, the problematic nature of mercy)—demands that someone amplify the voice of the troubled prophet. Perhaps paradoxically, only in offering just nuance to Jonah’s protest will true justice be done to YHWH’s counterpoint. Otherwise, YHWH’s presumed (by the text) posture becomes a trite platitude. Only when one appreciates (as does Jonah) what is at stake in YHWH’s program (as stated through the exchange between YHWH in the prophet in 4.4-11, especially YHWH’s words in vv. 10-11) may one make a truly informed decision whether or not to accept YHWH’s program. (32)

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(23) To my own mind, that “imprecision” is what allows the interpretive venture to remain a game worth playing; the point of one reading may perhaps not be dulled by the counterpoint of another—they may, in fact act as iron sharpening iron.

(24) Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives, 274. It is this author’s supposition that this is true not only of Jonah but most any written work (telephone books, technical manuals, and assembly instructions may be exempt from this appraisal). See also Timothy K. Beal, “Ideology and Intertextuality: Surplus of Meaning and Controlling the Means of Production,” in Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 27-40. Says Beal, “Every text—as an intersection of other textual surfaces—suggests an indeterminate surplus of meaningful possibilities. Interpretation is always a production of meaning from that surplus” (31). Beal further suggests that dominant modes of biblical criticism—canonical, form, or rhetorical, for instance—essentially set limits (or in Marxian terms, “control the means of production”) for the interpretive enterprise, which raises the question: “Which voices are marginalized and which are foregrounded when these critical approaches are put into practice?” (36). In this particular study, I am suggesting that it is the voice of the prophet Jonah himself that is most often marginalized in any reading of the text, no matter the methodology employed.

(25) So Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah; John C. Holbert, “’Deliverance Belongs to Yahweh: Satire in the Book of Jonah,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 21 (1981): 59-81; Frank Anthony Spina, The Faith of the Outsider: Exclusion and Inclusion in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 94-116.

(26) Barbara Green, “Beyond Messages: How Meaning Emerges from Our Reading of Jonah,” Word and World 27 (Spring 2007): 150.

(27) Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives, 243.

(28) Sasson, Jonah, 326.

(29) Green, “Beyond Messages,” 149.

(30) Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, 87.

(31) All translations marked “JSM” are the author’s own. Other citations of biblical material will be appropriately noted.

(32) At this point, I would offer that as arrogant as it sounds to offer mere mortals the opportunity to accept or reject YHWH’s program, this is the privilege afforded us by YHWH’s decision to grant humans free will. In fact, for the disciple (or would-be disciple) Jesus presents such a decision-making process as an obligation, which he terms counting the cost (see Luke 14.28-32).

JONAH'S HAPAK, pt. 2

2009-03-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

On Methodology: A Trans-Methodological Approach for a Trans-Genre Book (13)

In the introduction it was offered that the book of Jonah “is a strange tale which—like its divine protagonist YHWH—refuses our attempts to categorize, tame, or even really grasp it.” This strangeness spills over into the story’s resistance to learned attempts to assign to it a literary genre. The search for the genre of Jonah embodies the counsel of Qoheleth: “be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Eccles. 12.12 AV). (14) The book itself is an oddball in the prophetic corpus, a tale purported to have happened to Jonah ben-Amittai, who would have been known to readers from an appearance in 2 Kings 14.23ff, during the days of Jeroboam II. For some, especially form critics conditioned by the notion that a prophetic book should contain primarily oracular rather than narrative material, the inclusion of Jonah among the Twelve is nothing short of scandalous. (15)

The rush to fit Jonah onto the Procrustean bed known as a literary genre is instantiated, so far as I can tell, by this very scandal. (16) And so various genres are adduced and tried on Jonah in a scholarly equivalent of Cinderella’s glass slipper: “myth, fable, folktale, allegory, midrash, legend, parable, satire, parody, theodicy, and the like.” (17) But Jonah can be made to fit any of those slippers only at the expense of a few toes, or according to Sasson’s genteel evaluation, “Needless to say, each position appeals only to a small fraction in scholarship.” (18) It should by now, however, be clear that the massive failure of great minds to reach anything like consensus in terms of the genre of the book stems from what Wolff has described as “the protean character of the material and traditions that go to make up the book.” (19) In other words, the book of Jonah is trans-genred; just to the extent that scholars continue to pin a specific genre to it, they will come away frustrated, and the meaning of the text will also be frustrated, even distorted, in exegesis, hermeneutics, and application. Again, it is a tale that simply refuses attempts to classify, and hence tame and manipulate it. (20)

Such a scenario as described above provokes a radical re-apprehension in the direction of methodology: a trans-genred work demands a trans-methodology. It has already been observed in this study that there is a material connection between one’s chosen methodology and the genre assigned to Jonah, and that this continuum bears significant consequences for the hermeneutical process (and by extension, theological rumination, at both ends of the descriptive and prescriptive polarity). If what we have observed about Jonah’s defiance of genre-imposition holds true (and in light of the long-running and ongoing scholarly loggerheads in regards to that matter, it seems a safe assumption), then a logical response is to adapt to the demands of the text, i.e., to encounter the narrative qua narrative, on its own terms. Such a radical yielding to the text could be rightly termed organic exegesis, a process of being schooled in/by the text which trusts in the reader’s innate curiosity and willingness to have her prehensions of the text refined by its parochial features (i.e., the text’s own internal logic and organizing principles, its function as a document of community formation and reformation, and its subsequent reception and actualization by said communities).

Yielding to the text (and by that I mean any number of things—submitting to it, being seduced by it, accepting it for what it is even if one does not agree with its posture) is liberating in that it allows the needs of the text to subordinate the demands of methodology. One is free to adopt a methodological posture just until that methodology no longer suits the demands of the text; or to recognize the validity of results garnered by methodologies that seem to be at loggerheads (e.g., historical-critical readings vs. literary ones), and indeed apply those results situationally. Yvonne Sherwood refers to her interpretation of Jonah, for instance, “as a hash, a jambalaya (a recombination of older more piquant, marginal readings).” Such a way of handling the text is perhaps a prototype for my own inclinations, here. The liberating feature of my chosen approach puts the “trans” in trans-methodological, insofar as the prefix “trans” inhabits a semantic continuum connoting both “beyond” and “across.” Jonah is an ideal book for just such an experiment, owing to its parochial difficulties (e.g., what Wolff has described as “the protean character of the material and traditions that go to make up the book,” as seen above). Again—my primary thesis (at least in terms of how to approach Jonah): a trans-genred work invites (demands?) a trans-methodology.

(13) Credit to my colleague Joseph Kelly for suggesting the notions of trans-genre and trans-methodology.

(14) Good surveys of genre proposals for Jonah may be found, for those so inclined, in the following resources: Millar Burrows, "The Literary Category of the Book of Jonah," in Translating and Understanding the Old Testament: Essays in Honor of Herbert Gordon May, ed. H. T. Frank and W. L. Reed, 80-107 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970); T. Desmond Alexander, "Jonah and Genre," Tyndale Bulletin 36 (1985): 35-59. James Limburg assigns it the genre of "didactic story" in his Jonah: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 22-28; Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, 82, settles (with some reservation) upon "novella." For a balanced, insightful, and cautious discussion of the subject, see Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation, Anchor Bible 24B (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 327-40.

(15) See W. Eugene March, "Prophecy," in Old Testament Form Criticism, ed. John Haralson Hayes, 141-77 (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1977), and Claus Westermann, Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), which both exclude Jonah from treatment. One would assume that form-critical considerations have contributed to this neglect, excluding Jonah from the prophetic table on account of the book's idiosyncratic form. Others begrudgingly offer that Jonah was arbitrarily selected to round out the collection into the significant number twelve. So Karle Budd, "Jonah, Book of," in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Cyrus Adler, et al. (New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1904), 7:229. Disturbed by such postures, and noting that the Twelve have been "the Twelve" time out of mind (cf. Sir. 49.10), Elmer Dyck replies that such formal considerations are modern inventions and would not have posed a problem for the ancients. See his "Jonah Among the Prophets: A Study in Canonical Context," in JETS 33 (March 1990): 63-66. On how the atypical features of Jonah may actually serve to reinforce its status as a prophetic book, see Ehud ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah: Reading and Rereading in Ancient Yehud, JSOTSup 367 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 80-98.

(16) Thus Sasson, Jonah, 326: "It is common for biblical scholars to locate Jonah within a known genre of literature, hoping that the traditions and affinities it shares with comparable material will permit better insight into Jonah's many interpretive problems." "Interpretive problems" is a polite way of saying, "This book doesn't behave like it's supposed to."

(17) Ibid.

(18) Ibid.

(19) Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, 80.

(20) Here it should be noted that this study does not propose disregarding genre (as such) as a legitimate component of the exegetical and hermeneutical processes. The problem highlighted here is the attempt to impose a genre onto a text (Jonah) that resists such categorization. This scenario strikes me as similar to that observed by phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels wherein an observer attempts to define phenomena observed in a culture other than their own via categories with which they are most familiar. According to Waldenfels, this is a function instantiated under the penumbra of three powerful mechanisms: ethnocentrism, egocentrism, and logocentrism. See his Der Stachel des Fremden, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 868 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990). Imposing a genre onto an unwilling text is a form of oppression.

(21) See Wayne A. Meeks, "A Hermeneutics of Social Embodiment," Harvard Theological Review 79 (1986): 176-86.

(22) Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives, 210.

JONAH’S HAPAK, part 1

2009-03-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

At the end of his cognitive-linguistic analysis of the book of Jonah, Albert Kamp arrives at a set of conclusions concerning Jonah that to this reader’s mind border on facile: “From a theological point of view the text confronts me with a very liberal understanding of God, in which models of explanation of reality are not fixed in advance in rigid thought patterns, religious claims, and dogmatic premises . . . Left behind is a structurally altered view of God and the world.” (1) Perhaps my annoyance was rooted in the notion that, as novel as Kamp’s approach may have been, it failed to advance a novel resolution to a narrative that is jarringly open-ended. (2) Then again, perhaps it stems from the cynicism of one who has wrestled with the text, has been hobbled by it, and crying out for a blessing hears nary even a still, small voice; maybe I have become the “suspicious and irritable reader” who is willing to give the anti-heroes a more sympathetic hearing. (3)

The danger of reading the Bible as well-informed believers is that we are apt to finish all of its punch lines with a knowing wink. Jonah is one of those old jokes, although our prehension of it might owe more to flannel graph storyboards and Veggie Tales movies than the biblical text itself. (4) Jonah, however, is a strange tale which—like its divine protagonist YHWH—refuses our attempts to categorize, tame, or even really grasp it. For the character of Jonah, there is no punch line: “he is left hanging, his narrative thread untied and unraveling . . . the significance of his character left up to the whims of the reader.” (5) And, since the significance of the character of Jonah is to be left up to the whims of the reader, perhaps it is only fair that we not read him as a mere comedic foil, but with all the graciousness that is afforded to humans to exercise, recognize that “the narrative . . . makes inroads into the prophet’s body and the prophet’s mind,” leaving us with “the spectacle of a protagonist who seems seriously damaged by his narrative.” (6)

Against the aforementioned tableau, it becomes quite apparent what needs to be done in order to advance the discussion of Jonah, in terms of both exegesis of the text and the rich vein of theology to be mined thereby. Instead of viewing the narrative thrust of the story as YHWH the protagonist vs. the antagonist, Jonah (7), the tale should be read in light of what Robert Alter has described as “the paradoxical double focus” often employed as a biblical narrative technique. (8) This double focus pays attention to both the actions of the superior (e.g., God) and the inferior (e.g., a human) in a way that emphasizes the ambiguous relationship between divine and human causality. The YHWH-Jonah exchange—especially as the story ends—bears certain affinities to the example Alter uses, which is David’s retort to his estranged wife Michal when she challenges him for frolicking around half-naked in front of base women (2 Sam. 6.20-22). Says Alter of that confrontation: “David has the last word because, after all, he has the power, as he has just taken pains to point out to Michal . . . Michal can do nothing, and perhaps has literally nothing more to say, about her rage against her husband.” (9)

On this model, both YHWH and Jonah will be seen as protagonists (and antagonists) in their own right, and their movements and counter-movements at one of the story’s pivot points (along with a flashback) will be exegeted in this study in a manner weighted toward sympathy with Jonah’s position. This will be done to highlight the (oft-neglected) fact that the “antithetical reading is not repressed, hidden, waiting to be teased out . . . Jonah’s countertext presents itself as clearly as the main—that is YHWH’s—text.” (10) In essence, then, this study would find such a claim as Hans Wolff’s contentious (or at least in need of further nuance), namely that Jonah “is not really a story about Jonah at all. It is a story about Yahweh’s dealings with Jonah.” (11) Rather, it is a tale about YHWH and Jonah’s dealings with each other, and even at those “points where Jonah recedes completely into the background for the time being,” (12) the prophet’s protests are neither silenced nor frontally addressed, but are left echoing in the atmosphere of the semiotic continuum inhabited by both the prophet and YHWH.

(1) Albert Kamp, Inner Worlds: A Cognitive-Linguistic Approach to the Book of Jonah, Biblical Interpretation Series, trans. David Orton (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 234.

(2) Whether one construes Jonah along the lines of a xenophobe opened to God's inclusiveness, a spoilsport questioning the logic of mercy, or a true prophet genuinely concerned for the safety of Israel who is reminded that YHWH is concerned for all distressed nations, the outcome of Jonah is "supposed" to be that the reader comes away with a heightened appreciation for YHWH's ineffability, with the tacit assurance that it is ultimately benign (at least for the elect, per Rom. 8.28).

(3) Alice Balch, Women, Seduction, and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 21-22.

(4) On editorial circumcisions and other forms of violence perpetrated against the book of Jonah in popular church resources, see Russell W. Dalton, "Perfect Prophets, Helpful Hippos, and Happy Endings: Noah and Jonah in Children's Bible Storybooks in the United States," Religious Education 102 (Sum 2007): 298-313. Dalton even notes a version (p. 308) that includes a smiling Jonah and king of Nineveh embracing and the hand of God patting Jonah on the back!

(5) Walter B. Crouch, "To Question an End, To End a Question: Opening the Closure of the Book of Jonah," JSOT 62 (1994): 101-02.

(6) Yvonne Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 275.

(7) Conversely, if one were to look at the events from Jonah's vantage-point, YHWH would be seen as the antagonist. It should soon become apparent that this study advocates considering the book from this perspective as a valid interpretive enterprise, even if one ultimately sides with YHWH.

(8) Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 121. It was Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives, 275, that inspired me to apply this "double focus" device to Jonah. See also the excellent discussion of dual causality and historical determinism in biblical historical narratives in Roland Boer, Jameson and Jeroboam, SBL Semeia Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 155-58.

(9) Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 125.

(10) Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives, 277.

(11) Hans Walter Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 81.

(12) Ibid.

Proclaiming the Lord's Death: A Lord's Supper Homily

2008-05-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

This communion talk was presented in late December 2007 at Jacks Creek Church of Christ. It was the last time I delivered a Lord’s Supper message there before I left for Memphis.
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The message this morning is inspired by 1 Cor. 11.23-26. Let us hear the word from God.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (ESV)

This word, brothers and sisters, is one of both remembrance and anticipation. Speaking of remembering, I do not recall how many times I have stood up here and tried to corral our hyperactive thoughts toward this table. I don’t remember a lot of the things I’ve said, and I’m not even certain that most of them were worth saying. What I do recall is that I kept returning to 1 Cor. 11.26, and why I did, and am now. Those words embrace past, present, and future. They build a bridge between Passion and Parousia. For those of us who travel across this bridge, the Lord’s words, Remember me, may be at times our only engine of survival. I have learned from this family to crave this meal above all others for that very reason. Make no mistake, we are negotiating our way through evil days. We must proclaim the Lord’s death until he returns if for no other reason than to remind ourselves that he is indeed returning.

In a sense, Paul has really upped the ante on Jesus’ Remember me. “Proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” means so much more than a nostalgic tour along the Via Dolorosa. In the specific context of the Corinthian correspondence, “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” signified something along the lines of, “Remember that our heavenly Father once sent his only Son to die at the hands of unjust men, so that the injustice of this world might be unmasked, even as God’s way of justice is revealed. Remember that this event has reconciled all things—things on earth, in heaven, and under the earth—to God. The whole sweep of past, present and future has been reconciled to God! You must not forget this and let the fragmented ways of a world that does not yet know of its reconciliation assert themselves in your life together. No! You are destined to actualize this reconciliation.” All of this, brothers and sisters, comes packaged in Paul’s assertion that whenever we eat this bread or drink from this cup, we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes.

Paul’s point is that if you focus on the remembrance and anticipation signaled by this meal, you’ll learn how you ought to live. It is a word about how we must together work out our salvation in fear and trembling.

First of all, what Paul says we are doing when we eat this bread and drink this cup is proclaiming the Lord’s death. We are not proclaiming our own sinfulness, wretchedness, or suffering. Now, it’s easy for us to miss this point when you come to the table nursing hangovers and resentments, when it seems an insult to call your affliction light and momentary, when what you have lost leaves a throbbing imprint on your very self. These things we must bring to the table and I assure you, we will not just leave them there. To proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes, however, invites us to enter into a place of acceptance, where Jesus whispers, “My child, I have already reconciled all of this to God.” Here Christ becomes present in our midst, the lamb that was slaughtered and yet lives again. Here we learn to own our sins, shortcomings, and suffering redemptively. In this meal, Jesus comes to us and says, “Physicians, stop trying to heal yourselves. It is my broken body that provides the balm for the healing of the nations, and for your healing, too.” To proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes isn’t just the way of this table—it’s a way of life. We remember Jesus, loving the unlovable, embracing the unembraceable, forgiving the unforgivable, and we know that this is how he is with us. He will not bind our wounds as though they’re nothing, for he knows what it means to be wounded.

Second, to remember Jesus this way invites us to regard our reconciled lives as gifts for others. You may notice that you have wounds that have not yet been bound. Perhaps you wonder if this means they haven’t really been reconciled to God. They don’t feel reconciled! But this, I think, is a matter of perspective. It may be that you need that wound—or even that someone else will need it one day. Perhaps someone else needs the gift of recognition, or the gift of learning to love you with your flaws. It may seem a strange gift, but remember—Jesus didn’t miraculously erase the stripes from the bodies of Paul and Silas. Those wounds were there for the Philippian jailer to cleanse and bandage. Again, when we use this meal as a time to remember Jesus, he may come to us and say, “Physicians, don’t try to heal yourselves! For by your wounds, others may be healed.”

But as I said earlier, 1 Cor. 11.23-26 is a word about memory and anticipation. The Lord’s Supper is not only a time to remember Jesus, but to anticipate his return. In fact, there is a close correspondence between the two. Think of it this way: Have you ever been apart from someone you loved very deeply? Right now, for instance, Megan and I are in different towns. We only have to be apart for a few days, and she is not very far away. But her absence is very present to me. It is because I remember the way she loves me, how she fits so perfectly in my arms, that the shape of her is imprinted on my soul. So when I anticipate being reunited with her, that anticipation is truly visceral. When we remember Jesus, how he showed his love and concern for the people he had adopted as his own tribe, how at the Cross he showed us that steadfast love and justice can embrace and kiss each other, how he is present with us today in this meal, our anticipation of his return is greatly strengthened. The figure of Jesus is imprinted upon my soul as concretely as anyone I know down here. He is the one who offers me hospitality in even my most godforsaken days because he knows that kind of lonely. His is the love I have never been able to withstand.

As I said before, the way of this table is a way of life. To proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes is both to remember him and anticipate his return. But we do this in contention to a world that does not want to remember him, and is not expecting his arrival. The important thing then is to live as those who do remember Jesus and anticipate his arrival. Of course, there are many ways to do that. Mary, the mother of Jesus, sang out in praise of the God who topples tyrants and exalts the lowly. The shepherds responded promptly and faithfully to God’s sudden thrust of grace. Simeon and Anna awaited his arrival with a fierce and unbroken resolve. The Magi had to deal shrewdly with a pompous dictator. Mostly, we will find our way by virtue of being who we are and where we are, if we are open to the weaving of the Spirit through the fabric of our context.

Two words of caution must be given at this point however. The first has to do with remembering. It is essential that we not only remember Jesus, but that we remember him rightly. Many of us may have had the wrong Jesus imposed on us early in life. For we who are the spiritual heirs of the American Restoration Movement, the words of an insightful recent songwriter named Sufjan Stevens are quite relevant: “Stephen A. Douglas was the great debater, but Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator.” What I mean is that Jesus the forensic pugilist was never quite able to move me to radical repentance; Jesus the liberator makes me want to be more like him. Beyond this, as we look to the more recent landscape of popular religionism, we must realize that we do not need an “I’m okay, you’re okay” buddy Christ, or a therapeutic Jesus who wants only for you to become a better you. No, we need a Jesus who will hurt us in all the right ways, who loves us relentlessly enough to not flatter us, and who frees us from the captivity of all forms of evil, whether personal, structural, or institutional. Jesus once told his disciples to be careful how they heard him (Luke 8.18); closely related to that is the need to be careful how we remember him.

The other caution I want to level concerns anticipation. The first time he came, many people were anticipating the coming of a Messiah, and that anticipation was rooted in a certain way of reading scripture. But when the Messiah actually showed up, he didn’t meet their expectations. The real Messiah presented himself to them, and they told him he wasn’t qualified for the job! So I want to offer a caution about how we anticipate his arrival.

A lot of folks have elaborate systematic interpretations of scripture in place to try and discern Jesus’ movements, as if a proper correlation between biblical prophecy and the latest news headlines will act as a sort of cosmic GPS to track the Second Coming! This is dangerously close to repeating the folly of those who were waiting for a Messiah in the days when Jesus came the first time. Others of us have been so put off by this misuse of Scripture that we are almost reticent to look for Jesus’ return, lest we be accused of the excesses of those I just described. There is a real danger either way when we try to pigeonhole God with our systematic theology.

It could be that we need to start emphasizing the scriptures that tell us that Jesus will return like a thief in the night (Matt. 24.43; Luke 12.39; 1 Thess. 5.2-4; 2 Pet. 3.10; Rev. 3.3, 16.15). Or those that raise the question: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18.8). What if the trumpet of the Lord turns out to be a Dixieland band playing “O When the Saints Go Marching In” on a street corner in New Orleans, and Jesus reappears as someone among the group of merrymakers doing the Second Line? We of all people do not want to be caught recoiling in incredulity!

And so this morning, as we eat this bread and drink the cup, let all of us raise a toast in remembrance of he who has come and in anticipation of his return. To a reconciled past, present, and future! To the memory of our Savior! To the anticipation of his return! To the courage to proclaim in out loud!

A prayer to bless the bread: Father, we thank you that you have made a trysting place for love and justice in the Cross of your Son. We ask that as we break this bread that we would recall that it was his body, given for us, that reconciles us to you. Let us never forget that the one who told us to turn the other cheek, give away our garments, and willingly bear the burdens of others was himself backhanded, stripped, and made to bear the burden of estrangement. May our lives embody this Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

A prayer to bless the cup. Father, as we drink this cup, we remember the new covenant established in the blood of your Son. Father, we know that we have all been sprinkled with his blood, and we are your tribe. We pray for the grace to anticipate the arrival of Jesus, and the courage to proclaim the amnesty you grant through him to all creation until he returns. In light of our own reconciliation, we ask also for faith to live as those who have beaten their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, assured that peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. We ask these things in the name of the one who has made peace between us and you, so that we may be called your children. Amen.

Worship: Why We Shouldn't Leave Our Troubles at the Door

2008-05-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

What follows is a transcript for a Wednesday evening devotional I led at Jacks Creek Church of Christ in Jacks Creek, TN on January 10, 2007. The songs—which I used like parentheses enclosing my talk—were “Come, Let Us Worship and Bow Down” and “Listen to Our Hearts.”
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Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. (Psalm 111.1-2 ESV)

I’ve heard of a South African church during the Apartheid regime whose members brought to the Lord’s Supper not only bread and wine, but also symbols of their own struggle and sorrow: chains, passbooks, and rubber bullets. I find this to be a powerful reenactment of the passage just read in your hearing. It’s about worshiping with integrity, really. What stands out most clearly for me is the perspective it gives to the role of the individual worshiper: she lends her voice to the voice of the assembly. And together, they speak of praise and gratitude, and testify to the mighty deeds of the Lord. Worship is at once common, corporate, and personal. Together we give thanks for blessings old and new. Together we ask the Lord to keep turning the world upside-down. Together we recognize that we are God’s fellow-laborers in shaping the future.

Beyond this, the psalmist adds, “I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart.” To me, this is about the need to bring the entire self into the worship experience. For the church in South Africa I mentioned earlier, this meant hauling their chains into worship with them. For us, it will mean something different. Maybe such a scenario would see us bringing in a notice of foreclosure, a divorce settlement, the food stamps that never feed our family through the end of the month, the diagnosis that we have been told is terminal. The point is, when we purpose to praise with the whole heart, this means that we often offer praise out of broken, bewildered hearts. This is what folk singer Leonard Cohen calls the “cold and very broken hallelujah.”

Worship can challenge and transform us by renewing our minds, by putting our struggles into an eternal perspective and not by numbing us to them. For that transformation to take place, the whole self must be present, open to the transformation, indeed, expecting it. If I leave my burden at the church-house door as I enter, it won’t be any lighter when I leave. But in the worshiping community, we hold all things in common, whether joy or sorrow. A wondrous economy of redistribution can occur during honest worship, whereby the one who has much sorrow finds he can share it so he does not buckle under its weight, and the one who has much joy can share it without any fear that she is losing anything.

Reflections On Genesis 2 and Loneliness

2008-05-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on 25 July, 2006 on freedies.com. Since that time, God has sent me a helper suitable, only she didn't look like what I was asking for. God gives us bread, not stone.
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God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day...The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man"...The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. (Genesis 1.31, 2.18-23, 25 TNIV)

Donald Miller's book, Searching for God Knows What, has given me a totally different way to read this familiar story--the oldest story we humans have about ourselves. You see, here in this marriage factory they call a university, I often feel sort of inferior, like a defective model. "Have we not given this guy five years to find a wife and become a productive member of the church?" sputters Dr. Sewell, Tasters' Choice spewing out of his mouth and splattering the front page of a copy of the Chester County Independent (the one whose headline read, "Local Judge Found Stoned," followed by an article about Alan Highers' kidney stones). "What's wrong with him? Is he goofy or something?" Well, I came here to get an education, not a wife. But for years I sat in chapel on the first day of the academic year, where I was told, "Look to your right, look to your left and you--YES EVEN YOU!--could be the winner of a fabulous new spouse, courtesy of this premier Christian University!" After a couple of years of hearing that sort of bunk, I quit bothering even showing up for the first day of chapel. I gave up all hope of finding a socially-minded, eco-friendly babe bathed in hyacinth, wearing Lisa Loeb glasses and a Sonic Youth t-shirt, who also happened to share my ferocious love for the radical rebel Jesus. If the powers-that-be intend to run this place as a marriage factory with a diploma mill attached to it, I'm very sorry, but for me this just hasn't quite worked out. Now, what usually happens with a defective item is you get a refund on it. I am a defective item, so whoever sent me here deserves a refund. Well, since I decided to come here, I guess I should be the one who gets the refund. But that's not really my point. The fact is, I'm here to get an education, sure, but a boy in his mid-twenties sure can get powerfully lonely some days. And probably I shouldn't pine over it the way I've done sometimes. Despondency is never an effective method for successful living.

On the other hand, whoever said that being a Christian had anything to do with what we might term "successful living"? Seems to me it has more to do with handing my entire self--lonely and all--over to the care, protection, guidance, and grace of a frightfully mighty God--of whom I can only have a perhaps rudimentary degree of comprehension, but who comprehends every depth of me--so that he might deliberately and lovingly go about the work of transforming this blurry lump of clay from one degree of glory to another.

I don't think there's anything really the matter with me on those days when I just get to feeling baptized in lonely. Think about it--if I've handed myself over to God's sovereign care today, asking his guidance, nurturing, wisdom, and protection--and I still find myself lonely, probably he has a good reason for that. Some people try to make like you're some sort of freak or something if you call yourself a Christian and still sometimes discover a naked, quivering, gnawing, raw, empty spot in yourself. "Doesn't God fill in all the gaps for you? What's wrong with you? Is God's companionship not good enough for you? Don't you trust that he's going to send the right person along at the right time? Haven't you ever heard it said that you often find the right person when you stop looking?" Well, first I'd like to tell all those people who say dumb stuff like that to hold their peace and think about all the broken places they still have in themselves before they act so smug about mine. Then I'd remind them that Jesus was probably feeling furiously lonely when he died screaming, "My God, my God; why have you abandoned me?" I don't think he said those words just for dramatic effect. I also don't think there was anything wrong with him saying it. But then that person would probably respond by saying, "Well, you're not him." But then I'd tell them, "You're right, and also you've not been listening because you totally missed the point." The point is it's okay to feel lonely. God himself indicated that he doesn't intend to meet all of our social and relational needs personally, and also, that it is perfectly natural for a man to long for the company of a woman.

That's where Don Miller's understanding of the Genesis 2 account fits in. He talks about how it was God who looked down out of heaven and said that Adam's aloneness was a crummy thing. Sure, Eden was a massive and amazing place, but a guy wandering around in such a wide-open area for a while all by himself is going to get bored and need someone made out of flesh and blood and spirit and bone to speak to and cuddle with and joke with and tickle and dream and giggle with. That's just how we're made. I've always considered it a pretty straightforward indication that God didn't appreciate a guy walking around all by himself because of how Genesis tells the story. In 1.31, God pronounces the verdict of "very good" on everything he made--Adam included--but in 2.18 he says that it is "not good" for Adam to be solitary. But I'd never thought about it much beyond that point until Don Miller put the two notions together. Adam was very lonely and also very good. His loneliness wasn't a character defect; it wasn't a sin and a shame and a lack of trust in God's providence--it simply was. A fact, a feeling. But I know of plenty of folks who want to make you feel guilty if you tell them that you're lonely, that you desire companionship. Probably they don't do it on purpose, but it comes off that way sometimes. But where Miller really got me thinking was how it was after God noticed Adam's aloneness that he brought the animals to him to be named. Now, I'd known that forever, and honestly, I was usually a little cynical about it. The text says that Adam gave names to all the animals, but that he couldn't find a suitable companion among them; that's sort of a well, duh! moment there. That's why the story always bothered me. I mean, surely God knew better. He knew Adam wasn't going to get all chummy with a hermit crab. He knew that a pet skunk wasn't going to fulfill his desire for an intimate bond with a creature who corresponded in form and function to him. Why couldn't God have just made Eve at the same time he made Adam and then have them name the animals together?

I think I always just imagined this huge herd of animals wandering calmly up to Adam, then sitting there all placid and patient, while Adam points and says stuff like, "Okay...you're a dog...and you're a....platypus...and you--yeah, scaly guy over there, you're an iguana." And as he would name an animal, it would be tacitly dismissed and wander off to go do whatever it was supposed to be doing. So I never pictured the process as taking any more than a day or three. Obviously, yes, I oversimplified the matter. But Don Miller reminded me that there are millions of different sorts of animals, and also, not all of them could just wander up to Adam to be named. I mean, he had to name dung beetles, dugongs, dragonflies, eels, giant squids, Leviathan, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, gnats, oysters, head lice, dolphins, penguins, porpoises, the bombardier beetle, wobbegongs, man-o-wars, stink bugs, cockroaches, and those crazy little fish that have the lights hanging off their foreheads on account of they live so deep in the ocean that's the only way they can see to get around. I think that it took a very, very long time. I mean, Genesis 3.5 tells us that Adam was a hundred and thirty years old when Seth was born, which would have to put him probably somewhere around a hundred when Cain and Abel came along. So it would appear that either Adam and Eve didn't figure out the AC/DC connection nature of their corresponding components for quite a while, or it took Adam about a hundred years to name all those animals, since Eve didn't show up until after he had discovered that none of them were suitable companions for him. So all those years Adam was going around naming all the animals, he was also experiencing this longing for companionship. This was before the Fall, so he could just have a face-to-face chat with God whenever he wanted. There must have been some neat conversations back then.

God: Hello, Adam. How's it going?

Adam: Oh, it's mighty swell down here. You know what sort of animal I met today?

God: What sort of animal was that, Adam?

Adam: Well, there was this sort of beetle that ate poo. And I said to it, "Eeeww! Gross! What are you doing that for?" But he couldn't talk, he just acted like I wasn't there. So I named him "dung beetle."

God: Well that's a fine name for it, Adam. I couldn't have done any better myself.

Adam: God, I've been naming animals for sixty-nine years now and they're neat and all, but none of them can relate to me, nor I to them. Will I ever find another something that's like me?

God: One day you will, Adam. But for now, you just keep up the good work naming the animals.

And it went on like that for years and years and years. You know it did because the text tells us that Adam never could find a suitable companion among all the beasts that God had made, which implies that he was looking for one. That had to be seriously frustrating for him. I mean, it turned out okay eventually because God made a woman for him, and he was really excited when he woke up from his silly dream about God taking a rib out of him (or was it a dream? he really did feel quite a bit lighter on that side), and behold! there was a she-human standing there before him. He was so happy that he had finally found a creature made out of the same stuff that he was made of. Look at what he says: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (NRSV). At last! Now tell me he hadn't spent the last hundred years looking for such a thing. There is no shame in longing or looking. The thing is, you just have to keep on doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing--for Adam, it was naming the animals--while you're longing and looking.

See, all around me I have couples--some of whom little more than satellites constantly orbiting one another--or those folks who could have anyone they choose, but for some reason feel it more virtuous to stay single--and woe to me if I ever tell any of them that I'm down because I'm feeling quite lonely. And they say the sorts of things I talked about before. About how if I was trusting God, really trusting God, I wouldn't feel that way. Like how it's almost sort of an insult to God for a Christian to feel like that. How they found this wonderful person when they stopped looking. And so then I feel lonely and guilty. But I've come to realize in reading Genesis 2 that there's nothing at all wrong with feeling that way, and that the sorts of things they've been taught in regards to that matter are perhaps a bit unbiblical. I think we rely too much on pop-psychology religion books when dealing with these sorts of matters. You know those books that are written by the prettiest men and women you ever saw, the sorts of people who have to beat members of the opposite gender off with sticks. And those people have names like "Biff Gullington"; "Josiah Hollingsfield"; "Cynthia Henstromsmith"; "Rainy Stormbrewin"--you know, names no actual person you really know has. And the books have these audacious titles like I Booted Dating in the Rear and God Put This Tall Leggy Blonde in Front of Me at the Supermarket and We Both Noticed That We Liked Pickled Herring and Fell Madly in Love and Now Have Ten Perfect Children, a House in the Hamptons, and a Successful Multi-Million Dollar Christian Donut Business and the Best Sex Ever All Because We Stopped Looking for a Spouse! I mean, I'm being extreme, I know. But it's also true.

See, the thing about Adam and Eve is that it says that they were naked and were not ashamed. And for relational dynamics today, I think this means that two people have to be comfortable enough with themselves and each other--at home in their own skin--that they can be transparent and still count on mutual recognition and mutual acceptance. And since we live in a fallen world, that's not the sort of thing you find when you aren't really looking for it. God has to be as involved in it as he was with Adam and Eve, but at the same time, it seems like there's a process that has to go on where you're knowing that you're in need of companionship on that level, and you know what you need is someone who's made out of the same stuff you are and you seek that out. God's not just going to hand things over to folks who are totally oblivious.

I think all the longing and the looking and realizing that dogs, hermit crabs, iguanas, and man-o-wars aren't suitable companions is part of that process. And even if you think you've already found that other who's made out of the same stuff you are, I'd advise you to be really careful and make sure you haven't gotten ahold of a skunk or a dung beetle.

the streamlined man

2008-05-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

Originally published 21 June 2006 on freedies.com
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monday i shaved off my beard. it had gotten very big, and chris nicola said i looked like a paintbrush. i hadn't intended to do the whole thing, just down to a goatee. but then i realized that i'd quite forgotten what my chin looked like. and so there went the beard. and immediately i realized that i had made a terrible mistake, because really there's not much chin there. that beard is my definition, it's what turns my head into something more than just a bulbous, oversized lump growing up out of my neck. and so now, i'm walking around looking very silly and feeling as naked as as eve and adam when they got scared and hid from God amongst the trees of eden.

it made me think about what hair represents, the complications and whatnot. think back to the jacob and esau story, when jacob says "i am a smooth man, but esau is a hairy man," he's defining himself in terms of his brother--what he lacks (hair) and his brother possesses. hair represents complications and the potential for uncleanness--dirt and bacteria congregate in hair and make us odious, hair gets tangled up in stuff. and yet, just like my beard, it provides the appearance of definition--shape where there is really only contour. in his own eyes, when jacob looks at esau, he sees his brother as a "hairy" man--someone you can see in sharp relief--he is "smooth"--he lacks definition. he's something of a blank, even to himself.

the thing is, and this is the whole point of this--it's the complications surrounding us (the "hair"; think of when people speak of a "hairy situation," they mean it's complicated), the stuff that has all that potential for discomfort, that can get in the way, that gets dirty easily--that give us definition--depth, substance, contour. sometimes we seek to streamline, which is good, but we can easily go overboard--like when i shaved off my whole beard--and when that happens, we might just find that we have lost all of our self-definition, and have become so "smooth" that we just blend into...

beatitudes for today

2008-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on Facebook, Christmas, 2006:

blessed are those who identify and align themselves with the distressed, oppressed, and marginalized--the kingdom of God is realized in them.

blessed are those who recognize their culpability in the state of the world and repent--they will become the consolation.

blessed are those who know that power is made perfect in weakness, and thus do not feel any need to own, control, or manipulate--they will find that everything is actually at their disposal already.

blessed are those who hunger and thirst to see God's justice-love realized--they will ask for it, seek after it, knock at its door, and find it, and taste and see how good the LORD truly is.

blessed are the empathetic--they will find reciprocity.

blessed are those who seek with all their heart--their eyes will be opened to the presence of God, though the rest of the world be blind to it, they will find it because they were looking.

blessed are those who labor at reconciliation and redemption, and seek empowerment through the Spirit to forge wholesome and healing environments--they're only doing what they have already observed in the actions of their Heavenly Father.

blessed are those who sacrifice themselves in the pursuit of God's restorative justice--the kingdom of God is realized in them.

Reflections on the Tower of Babel*

2008-01-31T11:59:00.000-08:00

The landscape of ancient Babylon was already littered with the ruins of the ziggurats--towering temples used to communicate with the gods in cultic rituals--as the book of Genesis was being composed. These towers were remnants from the earliest days of human culture, from before the time some civilizations even had pottery. It was in those days, when "the whole earth had one language and few words" (Gen. 11.1), that one of these ziggurats caused a huge catastrophe.

It seemed like a good plan at first. People came from out east, and settled in the plane of Shinar, and there they hatched what seemed like a sensible scheme. "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11.4). This was one of those projects I could imagine Republicans and Democrats alike agreeing upon, launching the building program with great fanfare and holding a formal ground-breaking ceremony, with some bigwigs taking shovels and digging a symbolic little dent in the ground. Someone probably would have made a long speech about this being a great triumph of the human spirit, and the Tower being a lasting monument to human ingenuity.

The builders envisioned the Tower as a symbol of human solidarity. They wanted everyone to work together and accomplish something great. "Let us make a name for ourselves," they said.

When God looked down and saw their little building project, he had other thoughts. "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them!" (Gen. 11.6). The humans were so focused upon their own glory, their own ambition, and their own acheivement that they had taken God out of the equation. Solidarity--concord--is a great thing, but solidarity based upon humanness, when humans are well known, no matter how much progress we might make, for being extrordinarily dumb, is doomed from the outset. "This is only the beginning of what they will do," God gasped. One wonders if God saw in this venture the humans planting the seeds of their own destruction.

Well, God is a God of action. When he revealed himself to Moses, he did so using verbs--YHWH ("he who causes to be") and ehyeh asher ehyeh ("I am who I am"), and so he knew he had to do something about this. He responded to their, "Come, let us..." with one of his own. "Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." (Gen. 11.7).

Can you imagine what it must have been like? You're talking to your wife, and ZOOP!, suddenly, she canot understand you, and she sounds like she's coughing up hairballs everytime she goes to speak. Or you're at work, in the middle of a board meeting and WHOOSH!, suddenly your boss is delivering his presentation, but it now sounds like nothing more than a series of clicks and grunts.

I wonder how many accidents happened that day? Did anyone fall off the great Tower? Did anyone get brained by a large brick as they worked, because they didn't understand they guy yelling "Heads up!"? How many marriages ended? How many fights started? All of this must have happened, and more...much more...all because the humans couldn't understand one another.

Whatever else may have happened that day, God's plan worked. For the story goes: "So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth" (Gen. 11.8-9). It was like when you kick an anthill, and all the little buggers go scurrying off in all directions.

I know God had to do this, and I know why. Remember what God said to that remnant of humanity who stepped off the ark: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" (Gen. 9.1). I know that humans couldn't fill the earth if they packed themselves into one city. In fact, the place would quickly become so over-crowded that they'd all either starve to death or kill one another.

And yet, there are also dire consequences to what happened at Babel that day, too. When we don't understand one another, it makes us uncomfortable. You know how disconcerting it can be to be in a crowd full of folks who do not look like you, do not dress like you, do not act like you, and to be surrounded by the babbling of tongues that you cannot comprehend. It makes us suspicious. If a group of these different people starts to laugh sort of loudly near us, if they are standing in a cluster in some corner, it makes us wonder, "Am I safe? Are they laughing at me?" Suspicion leads to fear, which leads to frustration, which leads to agression, which leads to wars. Had Babel not gone down the way it did, perhaps names like Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Beirut, and Baghdad would not reverberate so chillingly in our minds.

"This is only the beginning of what they will do..." There's something terrible about those words. God scattered humans because they were trying to set themselves up almost on par with him. Even as scattered as we are, we're still pretty good at trying to play God when we put our minds to it, as such things as nuclear weapons, abortion clinics, prophylactic devices, electric chairs, gas chambers, the Pill, test-tube babies, and suicide doctors all attest to. God had a good reason to be greatly disturbed at the thought of humans being able to do anything they put their minds to as long as they stayed one tribe.

Then again, the Babel curse was somewhat lifted one Pentecost, sometime between 30 and 33 AD. You know what I'm talking about: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language." (Acts 2.4-6). In the church, God is at work among us to re-make one tribe out of them all. "Therefore, if any one is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5.17-18 ); furthermore, "There is no Jew nor Greek; there is no bondman nor freeman; there is no male and female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3.28 ). This new arrangement is based in solidarity and concord, yes...but this time not founded on our humanness, not upon our desire to make a name for ourselves, but on the fact that God has called us into community, with Jesus as our peace, "who has made us...one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph. 2.14).

Father, may we, as your church, learn to speak to a confused, frustrated, and hostile world, with one voice.

* Originally posted on freedies.com, November 26, 2004