To Speak Truth to Power

 

To Speak Truth to Power

January 17, 2021

 

Poor old Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it because of its wickedness. The Blues Brothers may have believed that they were on a mission from God. Jonah wanted nothing to do with this particular mission from God. So instead of going to Nineveh, that great city, he took off for Tarshish. We’re not entirely sure where Tarshish was, but it may have been in Spain far to the west of Israel. It’s not hard to understand why Jonah wanted nothing to do with Nineveh. Nineveh, that great city, was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. At one time, perhaps during Jonah’s time, Assyria had been the major imperial power in the Middle East. It arose in Mesopotamia, in today’s Iraq, hundreds of miles to the east of Israel. Assyria expanded rapidly through military aggression. In 722 BCE it conquered and destroyed the northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel. It drove that kingdom’s Hebrew residents from their homes resulting in the ten northern tribes of Israel being lost. Hence the famous lost tribes of Israel. It made a vassal state of the southern Hebrew kingdom of Judah. Assyria was nasty business, and Nineveh, that great city, was its capital. No wonder Jonah headed for Tarshish instead, perhaps heading west when God told him to go east.

We all know what happened next. Jonah got thrown overboard from the ship he was on to save that ship from a great storm that he and the crew of the ship believed the Lord God had stirred up precisely because Jonah was going the wrong way. Jonah got swallowed up by a large fish, popularly called a whale. (The ancient Israelite who wrote this story may not have known that a whale isn’t a fish. Whatever.) The great fish/whale vomited Jonah up on a beach, presumably in a pool of whale vomit. Yuck! Well, at least Jonah survived.

Then God came to Jonah a second time and told him to go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim there a message God would give him. I suppose if we’d ended up on a beach in a pool of whale vomit because we’d tried to run away from doing something God had told us to do we’d have second thoughts about defying God again. Poor old Jonah certainly did. This time he headed for Nineveh, that great city. When he got there he proclaimed that in forty days Nineveh would be overthrown. Much to his amazement and irritation everyone there, from the king on down, believed him and repented in sackcloth and ashes. So God didn’t destroy Nineveh after all. Which ticked Jonah off no end, but the story ends with God telling Jonah in effect, well, they’re my people too, so deal with it.

Jonah is a great story. I think of it as biblical comic relief. A good standup comedian could have great fun retelling it. God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, that great city. Jonah says yeah. Right. Sure. Then he heads off in the opposite direction. He gets thrown off a ship, swallowed by a whale, and vomited onto a beach. So when God tells him again to go to Nineveh, that great city, he says sheesh. All right already. I’ll go. I don’t want to, but I’ll go. Then when everyone there repents at his word he sulks, presumably because like every good Israelite he would have loved to see Nineveh, that great city, the capital of the hated Assyrian Empire, destroyed. They rejoiced when the Babylonians finally did destroy it in the late seventh century BCE. To hear them rejoicing over the destruction of Nineveh read the Old Testament book of Nahum. It’s nothing but an ancient Israelite author reveling in the bloody destruction of Nineveh.

The story of Jonah really is quite funny. It’s funny, but it contains a powerful message for us Americans in these troubled and difficult days. What is it that God tells Jonah to do? God tells Jonah to go speak God’s truth to power, to the people of what probably in Jonah’s time was the greatest military power in that part of the world. Jonah couldn’t assume that doing that was safe. God had told him of Nineveh’s wickedness, not that he probably needed to be reminded of it. Every Hebrew, Jonah included, knew Assyria as the despised enemy. Empires never like hearing God’s truth proclaimed to them. We know that better perhaps even than Jonah did. Rome didn’t like it when Jesus proclaimed God’s truth to them, so they crucified him. Speaking God’s truth to power has gotten a great many faithful people of many different faith traditions imprisoned or killed over the centuries. Even poor old Jonah knew enough to know that speaking God’s truth to Nineveh, that great city, was risky business. He went to do it only after he figured out that God wasn’t about to let him get out of it.

I suppose the story of Jonah wouldn’t matter much to us if Jonah had been the only person God ever called to speak truth to power, but that is hardly the case. God calls all of us to speak truth to power. We are the only voices God has for speaking truth to power. If we don’t speak God’s truth to power, who will? It’s so easy to do what Jonah tried to do, to run away from the call. To say nope, I’m outta here. That’s what most of us do most of the time, myself included. It’s not what God wants from us. God calls each and every one of us to speak truth to power.

What is the truth that God calls us to speak to power? It is the truth of the kingdom of God against the lies of the kingdoms of the world whatever their political structure. It is that violence, including military violence, is always sinful and against God’s will. It is that God demands distributive justice for all people so that all have what they need to live. It is that those who have the means to do it have a moral obligation to care for those who don’t. It is that God has a preferential option for the poor and that we should have one too. It is that God didn’t create us to be consumers of material goods, God created us to be messengers and bringers of God’s love to the world. It is that we are stewards of the earth not its owners and that we have a moral obligation to care for and preserve it. It is that God loves each and every person. No exceptions. Not one. It is that therefore racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and any other way of thinking that makes some people less than other people is always a sin and is against God’s will. It is that God is a God of love and grace, not a God of violence and violent punishment. It is that God dreams of a world transformed from the ways of the world to the ways of God, that God wants us to have that dream too, and God calls each one of us to do what we can to make that dream a reality.

It’s no wonder that worldly power never wants to hear that message and usually does whatever it can to silence those who proclaim it. It condemns all violence, and earthly powers are always violent. It condemns economic exploitation, and worldly powers are always economically exploitative. It calls, as Mary sings, for the proud to be scattered in the thoughts of their hearts, and earthly powers are always ruled by the proud. It calls for the powerful to be brought down from their thrones of whatever sort they sit on be it on an actual throne or in an oval office, and the powerful want nothing more than to retain their power. It calls for the lowly to be lifted up, filled with good things, and the rich to be sent away empty, and those of wealth and high social status want nothing more than to hold on to their high status and their full bellies. That’s the message God calls all of us to speak to power. It is the message power desperately doesn’t want anyone to hear.

Jonah had to walk to Nineveh, that great city. We Americans are already there. We live in the center of the world’s political, economic, and military power. Our leaders are the leaders of today’s Assyria. They are the ones to whom God calls us to speak God’s truth. They won’t like it any more than Pontius Pilate liked it when Jesus spoke it so long ago. They will try to silence us, not perhaps with imprisonment or death but by convincing us that the military is noble despite the fact that it exists to kill people and destroy property, that nonviolence doesn’t work, that greed is good, that what is good for the wealthy is good for everyone, that we don’t have the resources to do things like create a system of universal health care paid for with tax dollars, and that our dream of a transformed world is just that, a dream that never can be realized and wouldn’t work if it were. Thus it has always been (at least when the rulers weren’t actually killing people who spoke God’s truth). Thus perhaps it will always be. No matter. God’s call is God’s call. God’s truth is God’s truth. We must never let the powers to whom we speak silence us. Jonah went to Nineveh, that great city. We’re already there. Let’s make the most of it.