MWR : A tribal God?

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March 1, 2010 issue

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Tags: Sunday School by Halteman Finger

A tribal God?

Lesson for March 14, 2010 — Jonah 3:10-4:5

By Reta Halteman Finger

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Be careful how you read Jonah 4:2, our “key verse.” It is not a word of praise. It is a bitter response to a deity who has betrayed the very prophet he pulled out of a fish and sent scampering to Nineveh. It must be screamed into the wind, words dripping with sarcasm and frustration.

Halteman Finger

“Oh, Lord! Isn’t this what I told you when I was still at home? Isn’t this the reason I fled to Tarshish in the first place? I knew it! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you! You’re not acting like Israel’s own tribal god. You’re being gracious and loving to our worst enemies! You’re a wimp! You forgive people who need to be tortured and killed for the way they treat us. And when you forgive, you betray your own people. I give up. Kill me instead, and be done with it!”

And our hero stumps off-stage to sit down at the city’s edge and sulk.

Why the fierce reaction? Our last lesson ended with the king’s city-wide order for everyone, humans and animals, to repent. Surprisingly, after only one day of preaching, people actually believed Jonah. What fate was about to overtake them? A crushing earthquake? A meteorite crashing into their city? What did this bedraggled foreign preacher know that they didn’t? Was his god more powerful than theirs?

Disaster adverted! … alas

All that fasting and sackcloth paid off. “God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it” (3:10).

You’d think Jonah would be happy about his persuasive ability. But, alas, he doesn’t like a god who changes his mind. Jonah wants a god who “stays the course.” Jonah wants Zeus-like thunderbolts. He wants justice. But all that God hands out is mercy and forgiveness to those terrorists. It’s just not fair!

The narrative ends oddly. Why all the fuss about a bush and a worm?

Sometimes, after big crises, it’s the little things that push us over the edge. So a bush grows to shade Jonah during his sulk. Thank God for small favors! But even that gets taken away, and Jonah is now “angry enough to die” (4:9). For all we know, maybe he does.

In the end, God has the last word, and it’s not what you’d expect. God doesn’t talk about repentance; he talks about innocence. Among these armed warriors waiting to conquer Israel are 120,000 innocent people “who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals.” What kind of anticlimax is that — God cares about human rights and animals rights!

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Comments

Last June I participated in a Conference at Loyola University, Chicago entitled, "Globalization for the Common Good" and one of the main themes for this conference was violence in conflict and tribalism. It seemed that there was a deep sense of fear about making god into a "Tribal Deity", because it would force the gods to fight each other in tribal conflicts. But is tribalism the real issue or is it fear of losing some type of privileged position, which will eventually cause violence? I personally do not believe that tribal identities should be lost, because those who hold the most power and status will make the determination of how people should act and how people should think. It's the difference between the inner logic and formal logic, but inner logic is always tribal, which is what we as Christians should be engaging the most.
In terms of tribal identities, we as Christians have to acknowledge the god of the incarnation found in Jesus, which at its very core is tribal. We claim that Israel's god made a covenant with her, to bring forth the redemption of the world through one tribe, that "all tribes" would be blessed. So, in the end, yes can we affirm the monotheistic faiths of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as having a commonality and pursue the good in humanity, but we also understand that we as Christians affirm that the fullness of the revelation of God is found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As Jurgen Moltmann has said, "Jesus is not like God, but God is like Jesus." (The Crucified God) This good will also not be brought forth without suffering and not without death, not for the sake of death, but simply because violence is not going away. Jesus neither retreated, nor fought back in violence, nor appealed to a higher logic or superior form of reason, but bore the violence of the enemy, because he knew that the enemy was very rationale, but simply fearful. Fear is not an absence of reason. Also, it seems a over simplification of the problem to just say, "How many Israeli settlers think about this as they take over Palestinian land because god gave it to us, the chosen people."
Remember, the Israeli's have way more in common with their Palestinian and Middle Eastern neighbors than Americans, so why are they really fighting each other?
Peace!

- Paul (feb 28 at 11:47 a.m.)

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