My friend Larry used to tell a story from his home state of Maine. It was about a farmer and a lost couple. The couple pulled up in front of his farm and said that they were lost and wondered if the farmer could help them find their way. The farmer said, “Yup. You go down the road a mile. Turn right. Take your first left, then first right…” “Thank you,” they said. A few minutes later they’re back in front of the farmer’s house. They said, “We did what you said – drove a mile, turned right, first left then first right. But it ended in a cornfield…” To which the farmer said, “Now that I know you know how to follow directions, here’s what you do…”
We could start today’s reflections with the gospel from Luke 11 where Jesus is being asked for a “sign.” He’s always being asked for another sign – because people don’t believe him the first time. They want more proof. So he says, “This generation…seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Humanity be to this generation.”
In short, he says that the people already had a sign and that they never learned to “follow directions” the first time.
So, naturally, it would be good to go and read the story of Jonah just so we can see what Jesus was talking about. And the church calendar provides this as our first reading from Jonah 3.
I have reflected on this story numerous times over the years which you can look at here and here.
And there are two main story lines in Jonah. First is Jonah’s process as the “reluctant prophet.” The other story is the process of the Ninevites when they hear Jonah’s message. I want to focus on the latter today.
Back in 2024, I did some research for a blog post on this reading. Author David Benjamin Blower had written a book related to what life was like in Nineveh and what makes this story so astonishing. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire, and the Assyrians were known for being militaristic occupiers who took over lands, stole the resources, displaced people and used violence against any dissenters.
So for them to turn their lives around and repent when Jonah shows up is quite an event. I imagine that Jonah was calling them to repent from the very things that our country refuses to repent from – racism, militarism, and economic exploitation (which Martin Luther King, Jr. often named as the ‘evil triplets.’ And if he were living today, I’m sure he’d add environmental destruction.)
But I want to pause for a moment and turn the lens back on ourselves.
For hundreds of years, we as a country have been talking about and working towards racial justice and civil rights. For more than a hundred years, we’ve been working towards gender equality. And for a little less than a hundred years we’ve been working towards LGBTQ+ and disability rights.
And still we are working. And still there is resistance. And we’re in an era not only of resistance but active assaults on justice.
We might resonate with the lament from the first words from Psalm 13, “How long, O Lord?”
I want to draw your attention to a comment on a blog post from a few days ago related to “Another World Is Possible.” My dear friend and teacher in the work, Melanie Funchess, posted a comment which has powerfully remained with me. If you are white, please read slowly and meditatively what she said,
“As a Black woman of a certain age and having a certain set of experiences; this hit different. I totally agree with all that you said. I just find myself feeling exhausted…I’m tired of illuminating things that Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Helen Keller can see. I’m tired of the exercise of offering up pounds of marginalized flesh for the hopes of an “Aha” moment. I’m tired of being the bridge. I’m tired of seeing all sides of things and having to explain this group to that group…Like the tree planted by the water I shall not be moved. That will NEVER change. That said, all the Black women in me are exhausted. This is what the reading brought up for me.”
I was so grateful that she wrote this.
Anyone who has membership in a marginalized group can probably relate to Melanie’s comment to some degree or another. People are tired of marginalization. People are tired of harm. People are tired of all of the things that are done to them.
And FOR YEARS marginalized peoples have explained what’s wrong. They pointed out the failures. They tried to educate people. They presented alternatives. They offered grace to those who were slow to take things up. They gave their bodies to the cause.
And yet those with power and privilege still ask “for a sign…” that they should change.
This is what makes the story of Jonah such an important story for us. It is a story of a people who – as a collective – had a change of heart and a change of behavior. They turned things around (the meaning of ‘repent’) and they did it in a way that was noticeable.
Today’s readings invite us into some big questions and asks us to find our place in the story. It asks,
When are white people going to earnestly and seriously take up the task of dismantling racism?
When are settlers going to earnestly and seriously take up the task of dismantling settler-colonialsm?
When are men going to earnestly and seriously take up the task of dismantling patriarchy and rape culture?
When are straight people going to earnestly and seriously take up the task of dismantling heterosexism and heteronormativity?
When are able-bodied people going to earnestly and seriously take up the task of dismantling ableism and discrimination?
When are people with wealth going to earnestly and seriously take up the task of economic redistribution?
And the list goes on…
I know that we can’t turn things around on a dime and I do not know how we might address all of these with similar earnestness and seriousness. I also know that not everyone is a group that has privilege is just sitting on their hands doing nothing. But as a collective, the groups with privilege move very slowly towards substantial change.
I do know, however, that the people of Nineveh heard the call and took repentance seriously. And that’s why Jesus told this story – so that his audience would say, “Hey, we need to be more like the Ninevites and turn our lives around…Now!””
Clearly there is much to repent, and clearly those who feel the direct impacts of injustice are beyond tired. During Lent, may we who have membership in the privilege categories listed above pray for the strength and grace to turn our lives around – through a daily examination of thought and action. And may we work with other members from our collective groups to seriously and earnestly engage this work of repentance.
3 Comments
George Dardess
James Baldwin spoke in A Letter to My Nephew” of the “innocence” of white people, and of how the innocence constitutes the crime. That apparent paradox struck me and began to open my eyes (“began,” because in many ways I sense I’m still buried in my infant, white-privileged sleep). But because the oppressed so easily become the oppressed (think of Zionist treatment of Palestinians), I also have to acknowledge that privilege itself is our drug, the one that infantilizes us, surrounds us with that “innocence” that blinds us to the effects of what we do to achieve that precious privilege. If this willful self-blinding is not what sin is, then what is it?
Courtney Davis
So many thoughts, Mike…so many thoughts and physical, visceral reactions while reading and processing your reflection today. It’s the question of “why” that flips the switch and fires up my circuit breaker. Why are we still at this – struggling to beat back every manifestation and reckless act of self-aggrandizing domination – year after year, generation after generation? Why as a community (sacred and secular, local and global) is our response to clear violence and injustice so shamefully feckless? Aside from microdosing the public water supply (although this would certainly be one way to translate Amos 5:24, please Lord, don’t anyone tamper with the water), what is it going to take to pry the comfortable, the complacent, and those lacking in courage out from behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows to effectively act in the interest of the common good? Because, yes, as your dear friend said, folks are tired…folks being those of us who can’t afford to be anesthetized, especially not when hundreds of millions of dollars have been cut from healthcare to fund paramilitary violence. When I consider that madness and the utterly pitiful state we’re in, I can’t help but think about Jesus who walked the planet but 3 decades before he ascended to heaven. If he was tired of the evil people of his generation waiting for a sign, then for me, as a middle-aged Black woman living with a disability, chronic fatigue takes on a whole new meaning. The sad reality of it all is that if we can’t move beyond feckless resistance to violence and injustice, history is going to repeat itself again and again and again ad nauseam until some future generation, like the people of Nineveh, rightly rushes to humbly and earnestly repent: That or until the next mass extinction event…
Mike Boucher Author
Thank you, Courtney, for the emotion and wisdom in your response. I pray for your continued strength and that we collectively may “rightly rush to humbly and earnetly repent” the many social sins that have plagued our world for so long.