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What nourishes our humanity? Where are the sources of spiritual sustenance, moral nurture, emotional health, physical joy, and humane maturity?

How do we grow into the kind of person for whom respect for others is a default disposition; for whom care for human flourishing is an active passion as well as a living aspiration; for whom compassion for life stretches from lichen to linnets, from seaweed to swans, from cats to catfish, and from forests to lochs?

I've just looked through the photos I've taken over the past month. Each was a deliberate act of framing, focus and click. But why were the subjects chosen? Because I saw something I wanted to see and take away with me. A photo allows me to carry away some of that seeing after the moment has passed; that's the time to explore the why, the significance of just this moment of seeing.  

My camera is a window out into the world I see; it is also a window into the mind and heart that sees. At the moment of framing and focusing, something is going on between what is seen outwardly, and what is felt and thought and envisioned inwardly. I'm aware of this as an oblique form of prayer; that is, it isn't praying, but it isn't not praying either!

I've spent a while this week reading about the big argument between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner over the validity of a natural theology. Can we see the fingerprints of God all over creation? Can we have knowledge of God other than what God has revealed in Jesus Christ as testified in Scripture? Does God also reveal something of his glory in the beauty of a sunlit loch, in the majesty of mountains, in the haunting honks of chevrons of geese flying in the dark over our house towards Loch Skene?

I'm on Brunner's side, and as a matter of fact on Calvin's side. The world around us is "the theatre of God's glory." Here's Calvin himself, writing from Geneva surrounded by the Alps!

"Ever since in the creation of the universe he brought forth those insignia whereby he shows his glory to us, whenever and wherever we cast our gaze. …And since the glory of his power and wisdom shine more brightly above, heaven is often called his palace. Yet…wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory.” (Institutes, 1.5.1)

As I try to understand what's going on inside me when I take photographs, I'm in danger of spoiling spontaneous fun by overthinking it! I know. But still, the joy of taking a good photograph is perhaps related to an inner recognition that this too is a glimpse into God's theatre, a moment to "discern at least some sparks of his glory."

What nourishes our humanity, as those made in the image of God, if not appreciation and gratitude for God's masterpiece of creation? Where are the sources of spiritual sustenance, moral nurture, emotional health, physical joy, and humane maturity, if not in our seeing, and willingness to share in, the productions performed in "the theatre of God's glory"?

That is at least one good reason for taking some of the photos I take. That, and perhaps a resonant sympathy with the words of an ancient poet of Israel, "Great are the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all who delight in them." (Psalm 111.2)

The moment when I lift my camera, frame, focus and click, I'm paying tribute, "Great are the works of the Lord."

Later, reviewing the photographs filed under their dates, I am pondering them, as one who "delights in those great works of the Lord."

Or so it seems to me…for now…anyway. These are three photos of such great works, each containing the joy of the moment, and later persuading the photographer to ponder in a spirit of gratitude. 

 

The short story of Jonah has provoked library stacks of research and exegetical study, and has behind it two thousand years of Jewish and Christian preaching, preceded by at least a further 500 years of Jewish commentary and midrash. This is not an attempted literature review. This is a two part post on six of the books that to date I have used, learned from, and could recommend to others who want a reliable guide or two on their journey to Tarshish…and back!

This post describes three; a second post will follow with a further three. I'll then do a select survey of several popular expositions just to round off the resources available, especially for preachers. 

Terence Fretheim's The Message of Jonah, the book that started me off on my travels chasing after Jonah on his travels, has an earlier post to itself. See here:

1976. Leslie C Allen, Commentary on Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah (Eerdmans, NICOT)

On publication this was one of the more substantial treatments at 60 pages. The literary genre is neither historical narrative nor allegory, but a 'parable', created "to explore God's dealings with man." Imagine a group of travellers, sitting round the fire, and a storyteller entertaining them with a story intended to make the listener think. The literary tone is playful satire, with elements of parody and irony. Allen sees the Psalm in chapter 2 as pivotal, the key to the whole story: "The Psalm plays its part in demonstrating an overall theme, depicting the inconsistency of one graciously brought back from the brink of deserved destruction (chs.1-2), then churlishly resenting the divine right to rescue other sinners from perishing.(chs.3-4)" (185) 

The message of the book is that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger – Jonah is a story that powerfully argues for God's sovereign compassion, while illustrating the all too human desire for the punishment of enemies. Jonah is a call to see the world through the eyes of God. All of this is worked out in exegesis full of sharp observations. For example on the repentance of Nineveh, Allen connects ch 3 back to ch 1. "Chapter 1 has served the purpose of softening the reaction of the listening circle toward comparatively innocuous foreigners before confronting them with an odious community of hardcore heathens." (224)

And so on throughout a detailed exegesis rich in expository suggestions, laced with humour like that of the book itself; humour used to enable truth to fly beneath the radar of our prejudices. This remains a valued conversation partner, despite its age. This volume is due for replacement in a few month's time, in a composite work covering Joel, Obadiah and Jonah, by James Nogalski, an acknowledged expert on the Book of the Twelve Prophets. I won't be banishing Allen to the reserve shelves any time soon though.

1990. Jack Sasson, Jonah, Anchor Bible Commentary.

Until the publication in 2020 of the Illuminations Commentary by Amy Erickson, this volume was the most substantial critical and technical commentary on Jonah. The real strength of Sasson's work is in philology, grammar and literary analysis, which are treated in near exhaustive detail. There isn't much theological reflection, more a clarifying of the text of a narrative that seems theologically inconclusive – that is the book ends without a resolution of Jonah's problem with God, or God's problem with Jonah! But the literary artistry, the rich syntax, the rhetorical devices and semantic choices, the derivations, parallel uses and intra-textual comparisons of each significant word – Jonah is a mine with numerous rich seams, and Sasson has worked them assiduously.   

In relation to the bigger picture, Sasson refuses to pin Jonah down to a single literary form or style – parable, allegory, myth, short story – satire, irony, comedy – all of these are possible interpretations and indeed the book is a masterpiece of ambiguity, fluidity and narrative art. He settles for Jonah as 'comic dupe', a figure used to teach a serious theological and life-lesson, through the art of inducing knowing laughter and unforeseen consequence. 

I confess to using this book as occasional reference now. For my own purposes of preaching, theological reflection on a narrative text, and personal reflection as lectio divina, there is less urgency for technical scholarship. This is especially true when a number of other commentaries while not ignoring the historical, critical and literary issues in interpretation, do so alongside theological interpretation and attempts to explore the continuing power of Jonah to challenge, upset and even contradict our favoured interpretations.

But as one reviewer said of Sasson's work on the minutiae of philology, grammar and text, his work is unlikely to require significant updating for at least a generation. It is, however, 30 years old. And as mentioned above, Amy Erickson's commentary has now appeared and it is all but encyclopaedic. Later in the year I will review it. More than that, the Hermeneia volume on Jonah, by Susan Niditch, is due at the end of April 2023, and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer's Jonah Through the CenturiesIt seems there is a Jonah renaissance underway.    

1993. James Limburg, Jonah, Old Testament Library, SCM / Westminster.

The driving thesis of Limburg's exposition is his view of the book as a "didactic story." If a story is told to teach a lesson, then any interpreting of the story should ask the question clearly, and require the hearer / reader to think about it and answer it. That's what God is about in the story of Jonah. It is a story, a comic tragedy, laced with humour and bristling with unsettling incidents, not least a story that calls in question the received theology of elect Israel, and the relation of the people of God to outsiders, pagans, others, even enemies, like Nineveh.

Limburg's exegesis is more spare than Allen's, and more accessible than Sasson. Like Allen he insists Jonah was designed to be heard. The best stories are spoken and heard, in the I-Thou of storytelling where reader and listener are present. The commentary proper is a running commentary on the story, supported by considerable scholarship sparingly used to clarify the rhetorical devices and theological digs and nudges throughout the story.

Limburg is a clever and entertaining guide through the text. There are sections of how Jonah has been interpreted in Christian, Jewish and Islamic thought. These are important glances at the reception history. As Philip Davies quipped, and he was no great fan of overblown commentaries; "Rarely do I think a commentary might have been longer; here is an exception."

More in next Jonah post.    

Many of us first heard the story of Jonah in Sunday School. If you’re older you’ll know the chorus, “Listen to my tale, of Jonah and the whale, way down in the middle of the ocean.” The story of Jonah is so familiar. It’s about the compassion and undeserved grace of God. The very idea that God would forgive Nineveh, the sworn enemy of Jonah’s people, is a scandal. What’s scandalous is that God chooses to have mercy on the world’s worst sinners, and Jonah resents it, and God has to talk him round.

Jonah is usually called the disobedient prophet. But it’s always worth asking why people do what they do. God said go to Nineveh. Jonah went to Tarshish, the exact opposite direction. He’s asleep in the bottom of the boat in the midst of a deadly storm. But he’s found out. He admits to the sailors he’s defying God’s command, and to save themselves they throw Jonah overboard. He’s swallowed by a great fish, prays a Psalm in which he promises to do as he’s told, and is spat out on the shoreline.

Jonah goes to Nineveh, but preaches the worst sermon ever. Nothing about God, repentance or mercy. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” That’s it. Five Hebrew words. Bad news. No hope. Countdown to the city’s destruction and Jonah has a seat in the front row. Then the whole city repents, from the king to the cows, and call urgently on God, God has compassion, and spared them and their city.

So Jonah goes in the huff. He paid his ticket for the best seat in the theatre of God’s judgement, and finds that the original programme is cancelled and there’s a new production called compassion and forgiveness.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (4.1-3)

If our view of the world is that everyone should get what they deserve, then we will have trouble understanding forgiveness. If we’ve been hurt time and again, and have come to wish harm on those who harm us, then forgiveness will seem like weakness. And if we think the world should be a place where life is fair, where wrong is always punished and goodness always rewarded, then we’ll be disappointed, and even resentful that life isn’t the way we think it should be.

All of this is the Jonah mind-set. And it still survives whenever God doesn’t do what we want God to do. Imagine giving God a row because he is “a gracious and compassionate God”! It’s OK for God to forgive us our sins, but the idea that forgiveness is God’s gracious decision, and he shows mercy on all who call on his name, sometimes just doesn’t seem fair. Especially when they have done much worse than we have. That too is the Jonah mind-set.

And God’s answer to the angry Jonah, sitting on a hillside in the heat of the noonday sun, is to make a plant grow up to give him shade. The next morning the plant dies and Jonah is exposed to the dehydrating heat and is angry that the plant has died, blames God, and even wishes the precious God-given gift of life should be taken away. That would teach God! Truth is, Jonah would rather die than have Nineveh spared.

At that point this story comes crashing into the world we now live in. Think of the politics of hate. Reflect on how we ourselves, our politicians, and the wider world, view asylum seekers, refugees, migrant and displaced peoples. As we think about what attitude we should have to those ‘others’, whoever they happen to be, what does it mean to have faith in the gracious and compassionate God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? How does my faith in Jesus, and in God’s justice and grace, God’s mercy and forgiveness, His care for all peoples, – how does that way of looking on God’s world, through God’s eyes, change my heart towards others?

The last two verses of Jonah are amongst the most moving words in the whole Bible. Go read them. This is God, God mind you, trying to convert Jonah’s heart from resentment to compassion, from hatred to mercy, from enmity to reconciliation. There’s a lot of hating going on in our world. The divisions are deep, damaging and hard edged. Instead of finding ways to work with and for each other, the style is to be over and against. It’s almost as if, like Jonah, people find their identity in decrying those they hate, oppose, and who disagree with them.

The book of Jonah is a brilliant sermon, preached by God, to closed hearts. For us as Christians, the faithful witness of the Church in our world at this time, will be as witnesses to Christ the Reconciler who heals enmities by the blood of the Cross; witnesses to Christ the Prince of Peace whose ambassadors we are; couriers of Christ the preacher of the Kingdom of God whose outstretched arms on the cross are held out in welcome and entreaty to all who will come.

We are called to echo the very words of Jonah, not from hearts angry against others, but from hearts that have felt the healing flows of God’s grace, known the touch of God’s compassion and been transformed by the gift of forgiveness: “We know that you are a compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (4.2)

Those words, about compassion, slow to anger and abounding in love; not a bad strap line to guide the way we think about others. They call us to learn to live amongst others as the presence of Christ, and the voice of God’s grace, and in Jesus’ name.

A book review 47 years late! But first, an explanation for doing this. My last email exchange with Terry Fretheim was just a few months before his death in late 2020. I wanted to thank him for his life of scholarship in the service of the church, in which his exegetical theology was worked out with a pastor's heart. My own debt to him is considerable and long term and spans many of his books. Here is some of what I wrote:

"Your book on Jonah taught me so much about OT exegesis as well as giving a credible insight into what the book of Jonah teaches us about God's dynamic mercy, and through a story more comedy than tragedy. The spine is cracked, pages are falling out, the cover is faded and it's held together by the books on either side…

His one line answer: "Jim, Thanks so much for your generous response to my work. You made my day!  Terry."

I'm glad I lifted his spirits during what was his last illness. I have numerous reasons to be grateful for the work of Terry Fretheim, but they all go back to my reading of this early study of the prophet Jonah. I'll keep an overview of Fretheim's work over the past 40 or so years for another post.

What Fretheim found as the focal point in Jonah was a theological conflict, an argument that created a problem, and caused a falling out between God and Jonah. The prophet is so annoyed at God he runs away and spirals from disobedience to despair. Jonah is a divided man. He believes in God but disagrees with the nature of the God he believes in! Grace and compassion are fine, but not to be bandied about indiscriminately as if mercy was going out of fashion! Sure, mercy, appropriate mercy. Only not for Nineveh, not for enemies, not for people whose behaviour is so "evil" it is unforgivable. 

But there's more. God's grace and compassion are so integral to God's nature that they are poured out on whoever seeks his mercy and trusts to Gods compassionate grace – even Nineveh. If that's not bad enough there's the outrageous game changer in theology – that if evil Nineveh repents and turns from its wicked ways God may relent, change his mind, and pardon them. 

To be clear, Fretheim is not saying there's no judgement on sin, evil and 'dire behaviour'. Sin and evil lead to death rather than life. But God will do everything to avoid that. The Sovereign Creator is not to be imagined in our image, created by our preferred theology, controlled by the moral demands and intellectual limits of the creature!

The starting point for all mission is that the God who sends is gracious and compassionate, given to mercy, constant in faithful love. God's mercy is free to all, is gift not earned reward, and as the Word of God, mercy has power to persuade and pull into the orbit of divine grace, even those we think least deserve it. 

That in a nutshell is Fretheim's argument. After that initial statement of what he is about, there are three further introductory chapters on the characterisation of Jonah as a person, and the historical situation of those early years of the people of Israel rebuilding after the exile. Confidence was low, faith was hesitant and timid, there was a low grade but chronic cynicism about the Word of God, and religious practice was more option than obligation. And it was Assyria's fault then, and Babylon's fault now, and every other Empire's fault since!

Chapter 3 is a lexical treasure trove setting out the importance of proper names such as Tarshish, Joppa, Assyria, Nineveh, and Jonah – each of them freighted with narrative (and theological) significance. Then there are words that are important because of repetition: Great, Evil, Hurl, Appoint, Call, Fear, Go down, Anger, Perish, Pity. These words are used and re-used for their rhetorical power, they are clues to what the author is trying to say.

The fourth chapter is 'Irony, Structure and Unity'. Jonah drips with irony, one of the most effective forms of argument and persuasion in human discourse. The structure is straightforward according to Fretheim. There are two main parts:

"The one focuses on Jonah's own deliverance, the other focuses on Jonah's reaction to someone else's deliverance. Jonah is joyful when he is spared and angry when Nineveh is. There is revealed here the heart of the argument between God and Jonah. Who is to be the object of God's deliverance?" (58) 

Chapter 5 meets head on the question, 'Fact or Fiction.' Is Jonah factual history? Fretheim is cautious: "The question of 'happenedness' is only preliminary to a discernment of the message of the book." Fretheim concludes that Jonah is best understood as a satirical, didactic short story. Interestingly.

Leslie Allen opted for the word parable, conceding that parables as stories can have historical origins, or even a developed historical context, as do historical novels. The point for Fretheim is that the message of Jonah, the theological core of the story, does not depend on proving what actually happened. It depends on a changed mindset about God as a result of hearing the story – as does the prodigal son, and the good Samaritan.

Four chapters follow in which the text is explored and the story unfolded, with clear and at times quite daring theological commentary, bringing the book to a well argued conclusion. I finish the review with some of the last lines of Fretheim's interpretation, which I find sound and persuasive:

"What is involved in God's being moved to spare? The use of the verb 'moved to spare' points us to the fact that God's action has its effect upon God himself. This verb has reference to suffering action, action executed with tears in the eyes…And so 'to have pity' would mean action undertaken with tears flowing down the cheeks. It is suffering action. Here God takes upon himself the evil of Nineveh. He bears the weight of its violence, the pain of a thousand plundered cities, including Israel's. God chooses to suffer in place of Nineveh. His tears flow instead of theirs. Someday he may even choose to die." (p.130)   

Sometime around 1978, I came across this book on Jonah in the now long gone Free Church Book Shop on the Mound, in Edinburgh. It cost me £2.50. I spent the following day reading it cover to cover, and over the next few days re-reading and making notes. Alongside it I read the then new commentary on Jonah by Leslie Allen. Later that year I preached four sermons on Jonah in Partick Baptist Church, Glasgow, my first full time pastorate.

Summer of 1979 I was invited to lead the Bible studies at Kilcreggan, a residential Christian holiday centre on the Firth of Clyde. I decided to explore Jonah as a text that taught us not about mission as such, but about the nature of the God who sends, the missionary God. I wanted to test-drive Fretheim's intriguing suggestion that Jonah is about the creative fusion of mercy and mission in the nature of God.

Anger and judgement are primary colours in the weaving of the Jonah story. But, Fretheim argued, they are woven within the overall pattern of God's mission and mercy. In 1979 Leslie Allen's commentary was one of the best and most up to date around. He gave significant exegetical support for understanding Jonah as a parable about the nature of God and God's ways with a world where evil and anger, hate and violence, grievance and vengeance are realities that destroy human flourishing and frustrate God's good purposes in creation.

I remember very clearly being anxious about folk getting hung up on the historicity of the book, straining at the word parable and swallowing a whale of a story. More seriously, many evangelicals stop listening to the message of Jonah at the first questioning of its historical credentials, whale, outsized Nineveh, gourd, worm, and all. But not that week.

Over that week of teaching I tried to enthuse people with the brilliance of the story, and the theological power of mission earthed in mercy. I wanted them to discover the utter surprise that God's grace is a scandal, and our being offered that grace is itself scandalous. And so to rejoice in a God who faces humanity's worst, and comes as mercy to those who see their own worst selves, and are rescued by mercy and grace that came looking for them. Mission and Mercy.

I needn't have worried. The whale was barely spotted, and was the least of our concerns. Each day I taught for about 40 minutes, and then 20-30 minutes discussion all together or in smaller groups. Most folk wanted to talk more about grace to the undeserving, and about a God whose judgement is always provisional, and to think through the message of reconciling love urging repentance, precipitating change and giving birth to faith, – life changing faith in the grace, compassion and mercy of God. 

Jonah has been in my system ever since. Jonah 4.2 is the moment of unveiling, a denouement to which the story has been leading, and from which it will flow on into an interrogation of Jonah, and the reader, whether you, me, or whoever.

Jonah prayed to the Lord, "It is just as I feared, Lord, when I was still in my own country and it was to forestall this that I tried to escape to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, long-suffering, ever constant, always ready to relent and not inflict punishment."

This is the recurring and core truth of Israel's faith. The words 'gracious' and 'compassionate' occur repeatedly in the Old Testament, always with God as their reference. Together they capture the meaning of 'hesed', the long-suffering faithfulness and covenant loyalty of God.

But it isn't all done and dusted.

Now and then I share Jonah's perplexity.

I too have questions, hesitations, and at times a grudging Jonah heart.

There's a question of fairness in a world where evil can flourish, prosper and defy God, and then at the last minute, grace opens eyes, touches consciences, and there is genuine repentance and pardon. What's the point of being good in a world like that?

There's a question of theodicy, of how all the victims of all the Ninevehs from then to now, ever get justice, and receive recompense for suffering. How is it that evil acts and evil people don't get what they deserve, finally and fully, because there's a get out clause of repentance and mercy?

There's a question of how we find meaning in our existence if we do not live in a moral universe in which good is good, evil is evil, and each has consequences beyond themselves. Why should anyone bother about whether they are doing good or evil if, in the end, evil doesn't get its come-uppance?     

Oh there are answers to these questions, good ones. The disturbing genius of Jonah is that in one short story all our questions are reconfigured and answered by a theology which isn't about justice, vengeance, punishment and ultimate destruction.

Instead there is a revision class in theology. Mercy, gracious compassion, constant willingness to relent – God is like that – for everyone. Including us, me, you…and them, whoever 'them' happens to be. 

More has to be said. The story of Jonah isn't a Reader's Digest comfort story. But for now perhaps it is enough to allow ourselves to be interrogated by the story, and unsettled by the God who is the main protagonist of both the Jonah story, and our own story.

The God who is "a gracious and compassionate God, long-suffering, ever constant, always ready to relent and not inflict punishment."

That God, and his killer, life-giving question, "Do you do well to be angry?"

Why do we take the photos we do?

So much of what we see is accidental; it's a matter of when and where we are, whether we look closely enough, and how much attention we pay. 

After heavy rain, walking to the car, I notice one leaf, sprinkled with rainfall, framed against worn tarmac, one of thousands within eyesight scattered along the street, discarded by trees now preparing for winter. 

This particular leaf is worn and torn, even the water drops have black specks which nature has not photoshopped out, and neither will I.

What made me stop, and look more closely, and decide to take a photograph of a fallen leaf on a worn pavement?

I have no idea; except that having seen it I couldn't unsee it, and the closer I looked the more I could see.

Is it a wonderful photo? That depends how we are using the word wonder. In one sense wonder is about feelings of awe, being mystified by what is new, or beautiful, or unusual.

But used another way it is a word nearer curiosity, an interest in something for its own sake. This photo, as I pay attention to it, makes me wonder.

I wonder what have been the countless stories of the countless footsteps that have worn away the surface of the pavement? 

I wonder about the transience, fragility and ubiquity of leaves, their role in helping to keep our air filtered, and the functional beauty of their structure.

I wonder about this particular leaf, jewelled with rain or nature's tears, anticipating the autumn of its existence as part of the great cycle of creation, dying and recreation.

I wonder about the contrast between geology and biology, stone and leaf, permanence and transience, road and tree, human construct and natural product, and all the other contrasts between what this world gives us, and what we make of it.

I wonder too, about the inner processes of human perception that sees and draws us in towards such ordinary things which then touch us with extraordinary feelings of wonder.

This photo was an accident of timing, the result of momentary paying attention, pushed further I might say a moment of epiphany, seeing both what is there, and what it signifies. 

Such accidents of timing, moments of attention and gifts of epiphany I choose to believe are the attention-getting whistles of the Holy Spirit, waking us up to the world around us.

And therefore this photo is a sacrament of a particular moment, a reminder of how the gift of wonder and wondering ambushes us and jerks us out of our shoulder shrugging complacency about the miracle of the ordinary and the invasion of the everyday by the extraordinary.     

Listen to my tale, of Jonah and the whale,

Way down in the middle of the ocean.

How did he get there? Whatever did he wear?

Way down in the middle of the ocean.

Preaching he should be at Nineveh, you see! 

He disobeyed, a very foolish notion.

But God forgave his sin, salvation entered in,

Way down in the middle of the ocean. 

This is Sunday School exposition, a way of telling the story that reduces a literary masterpiece to a cartoon comic. But there's no doubt singing it fixes the outline of the story, and the didactic soteriological lessons in the memory; evidenced by my word perfect recall from over 58 years ago! There's something about Jonah the prophet I've always liked, and something about the story of Jonah that has intrigued, provoked, and often enough interrogated my own understanding of God.

I live in and look at the world around, and wonder how I'm supposed to think about my own contemporary world where empire, power and cruelty still seem to go unrestrained, and their excesses unpunished despite the cost to human lives. Nineveh stands for any kind of overwhelming, oppressive power, whether nations, economic systems, or social structures which become abusive, unjust, self-perpetuating by holding on to the levers of power – from military superiority as threat or reality, to economic control of resources, to institutional systems that marginalise and depersonalise.

The sheer variety of interpretations on offer evidence the cleverness, ingenuity and ambiguities woven throughout the story of Jonah. A quick trawl of currently available studies, from devotional and popular expositions to more scholarly commentary, reveals quite a lot about the authors' presuppositions concerning the purpose of this very short story. Jonah – a Study of Compassion; Jonah – Running From God; Jonah – Preacher on the Run; Jonah, the Parochial Prophet; The Reluctant Evangelist; The Prodigal Prophet; Man Overboard; You Can Run but You Can't Hide; Jonah, God's Scandalous Mercy; Under the Unpredictable Plant.

Recently I've come back to Jonah for a closer look. I've preached on it, taught seminars on Jonah and Mission in a Pluralist Society, over the years read commentaries and monographs, and I'm glad to say I still haven't tamed this infuriatingly recalcitrant story, nor have I lessened its uncomfortable theological ambiguities. The scholarly literature is extensive, and every bit as varied in presupposition and conclusion as the titles of current popular treatments above indicate.  

But Jonah becomes a politically charged story when I ask where Nineveh is today, and who or what are the powers in my time that do great evil, whose behaviour is "dire", and whose power seems unbreakable by those worst affected by them.

Then I ask- so who are the Jonah figures today, the doom merchants, those morally outraged at abusive power, who want justice understood as punishment to fall on oppressive regimes and systems; who are today's Jonah figures with vividly seared memories of "dire evil"? Who are the fierce critics of Nineveh who want to see it brought down, humiliated, and replaced by something better?

Then there is the God who sends Jonah, pursues Jonah, argues with Jonah, threatens Nineveh with destruction, and then shows mercy. It's not often a prophet is disappointed in God; but Jonah is seriously disaffected, in fact he is (literally) mad as hell!

Reading the story again, I follow Jonah to Tarshish and inside the whale, eventually to Nineveh and then to his little hut on the hill to watch the eschatological firework display that finally gives Nineveh exactly and precisely the justice and judgement and punishment it deserves. But instead of judgement, mercy; instead of fireworks, repentance; instead of satisfaction at justice done, sheer frustration at the audacity of God's freedom to pardon. 

So what on earth is this short short-story meant to mean? Is it a rebuke to post-exilic exclusivism as recorded in Ezra Nehemiah? Is the story really about a reluctant preacher or a generous God, or both? Does Jonah fail, or was he set up? Does God change his mind, or did God know all along the moves that Jonah would make, and checked him towards submission like the ultimate cosmic chess master? Is Jonah really about mission in the way I used it 40 years ago? Or is that a hi-jacking of a much more complex story to provide a 'biblical' warrant for evangelism, and issue an early warning about having a too narrow understanding of what God is actually about in the world?

Alongside this annoyingly provocative and intentionally ambiguous story I sometimes read some verses of this remarkable hymn by Frederick W Faber:

There's a wideness in God's mercy,
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice
which is more than liberty.

But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

At the very least, the "tale of Jonah and the whale" leads to serious thought and re-thinking about the kind of God God is. The God of the expected and the unexpected, of judgement and mercy, consistent in divine freedom and final purpose, the God described in Jonah 4.2:  

“Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."

By the way, the text says Jonah prayed these words. This is Jonah knowing and trusting God sufficiently to have an argument, to rebuke God, to complain that God is who God is! It's one of the astonishing features of Jewish thought and faith that there can be such transparency of thought and feeling, expressed in the intimacy of anger – and the patience of God in explaining, yet again Who God is. 

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” Proverbs 31. 8-9.(NLT)

It's not as if this verse is out of step with the main thrust of the Bible. In the Bible 'justice' is a catch-all word that holds a variety of obligations: care for the poor, protection of the vulnerable, support for the weak, food for the hungry, hospitality for the stranger.

An entire Bible text concordance could be compiled with commands and imperatives, exhortations and incentives, stories and parables, about how to treat other people well, the importance of generosity as a lifestyle, and respect for the dignity and worth of each person whose path we cross.

So why is it that moral imperatives like those in that Proverbs text exert minimal purchase on our credit and debit cards, aren't enough to compel us to be the voice of those silenced by the powerful, and only occasionally feature at the centre and beating heart of our worship? Find a few contemporary worship songs that chime with "ensure justice for those being crushed." You might, but they are a barely audible minority report.

What would happen if a church community took these verses as their motto for 2023? We've done enough with verses about our own individual spiritual development, or renewed commitment to the disciplines of being the church community. These are often self-interested, perhaps even self-indulgent. How about a year when every agenda, from full church meetings to deacons' meetings, committees and task groups, had this verse as a specific, recurring, first item on our agendas?

First, it would force us to ask questions that dig beneath our comfort zones. Who are the people who can't speak for themselves? How can we help them find their voice? Are there times when we need to be their voice, or at least join our own voices to the chorus of the unheard to raise the volume levels? 

Second, who are those that our social systems, political policies, and our own social and political preferences and prejudices crush? 

"The poor may be defenceless against [the powerful] because they are too ignorant to counteract the obstructionist tactics of the legally savvy, too inarticulate to state their case convincingly, too poor to produce proper evidence, too lowly to command respect." (Waltke, vol 2 Commentary on Proverbs, p. 509)

These are the very people good government is there to enable, empower, and ensure that justice is available to everyone, regardless of status, wealth, power or social favour. 

Third, the imperatives are clear and uncompromising. "Speak up…ensure…speak up…see to it!" Do everything in your power to make this happen, church! What does that mean in practice? What is it the church is called to speak, to ensure, to see to, in relation to food banks, heat banks, fair and just wages, resources for adequate and humane social care, proper provisions for processing and humanely treating people seeking asylum? If the answers are not obvious, at least the questions are. And that's a start.

Fourth, in the light of this embarrassing text, what do we have to say about all of us being complicit in creating the kind of society that tolerates food banks as a growth industry? How can we better speak up for, and ensure justice for, those who now depend on food bank provisions to eat, be warm, retain some dignity? How do we "see to it" that justice and fairness can advance far enough to begin reducing the need for food banks, heat banks, and other support providers? Yes, they are hard questions, at times intransigent. But to be a follower of Jesus is already to be well down the road to loving our neighbour, questioning the status quo, and doing what is necessary for those Jesus once called, with exaggerated irony, the least of his family of brothers and sisters.

Fifth, and much more personally. I ask myself what difference it would make to my own way of living, my way of seeing the world, my responsiveness to the countless people I encounter day by day and week by week – what difference it would make if this text was printed at the top of each page in my week to view diary. A reminder that I am called to "Speak up…ensure…see to it." As a self examen at the end of a week – note down times this verse has galvanised my speech, energised my action, and so made a difference in the scales that measure out human well-being and social justice.

And thus, finally. Supposing I started my prayers by saying this text, and allowing it to question what I've been about. Use it as an intercession for those I know, or have seen in the passing – to pray for those who are indeed, without a voice, the poor, those disempowered by systems and structures, – unwanted, inconvenient, overlooked, superfluous to the requirements of a society sated in both possessions and possessiveness. To pray for justice and to speak up for it; to pray for the poor but also defend them; to pray for those seeking asylum, but also to befriend, support, be compassionate towards. That, at least.

I guess I could read those two verses from Proverbs and feel the inner slump of resignation. "I do what I can," might seem a realistic enough goal. But then I hear those imperatives of Proverbs, rephrased by Jesus and embodied repeatedly in the Gospels as his way of neighbour love and love for God in action – ""Speak up…ensure…speak up…see to it!"

Justice is what neighbour love looks like in public. Love your neighbour as yourself because you love God. Who knows, you may end up loving God even more in those very words and acts of speaking up, ensuring, and seeing to it that so long as you are in the neighbourhood, nobody is unloved.  

So Jim. Forget the complacent, "I do what I can." The text is not about shoulder-shrugging resignation. It's a yoke to be taken up with glad determination to learn and live Jesus' way. "See to it!" Do everything in your power "to ensure justice for those being crushed."

How? Well, God's grace is sufficient; God's peace guards the mind and heart; the Holy Spirit gives words to disciples under pressure; we walk every day in the love from which nothing can separate; and we serve one who came with his own manifesto of the Kingdom of God, and we buy into it with everything we are, and the living Christ walks with us on the road of the Kingdom of God:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”  (Luke 4.14-30)

 

New Year is a good time to say thank you. And don’t be too hard on the year we’ve just had. It has been difficult, unpredictable, at times infuriating, a bit scary, and a change of calendar to a new year doesn’t really solve anything. Except.

Years ago a lovely older friend remembered the family gatherings at New Year, and it was a big family. Her father used to look round the table and before giving thanks for the food would say. “Aye, isn’t it a mercy we’re all spared to be here?”

So here we are on the first day of 2023, and perhaps for all our complaints during and about the past year, our first words should be a thank you that we are still here, and ready to go again on the next part of our journey. Thankful too for all our friends out there who enrich our lives, touch us with grace, make us laugh, and help us live and love and interpret and understand something of ourselves, our world, and what matters most.

My current screen saver is this photo I took up on Brimmond Hill, with the sun rising over the horizon just ahead of me on the path. In 2023 there will be new paths to climb and follow, which is where hope points us. Every day, we walk towards the future that comes to us from the God who is always ahead of us. And as we walk towards whatever comes next, we’ll do so with our friends around us, and in the good company of God. And maybe find time to say, “Isn’t it a mercy we’re all spared to be here.”