THE BOOK OF JONAH: A Rosh Hashanah Meditation

James Ishmael Ford

20 September 2015
Pacific Unitarian Church
Rancho Palos Verdes, California

A Story

Now God said to Jonah, “Arise, go to Los Angeles, that great city, and cry against their wickedness.” But instead Jonah rose up to flee to Seattle and went and found a ship. God sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest, so that the ship was about to be broken up off the coast of Santa Barbara. The mariners were afraid, and cried every one unto their god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it. But Jonah was down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. The shipmaster came to him, and said, “O sleeper, arise, call upon thy God that we perish not.” When he saw what was happening Jonah admitted that he was the cause of the storm. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. Then God prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights when Jonah prayed from within the fish’s belly, repenting his sins and his flight from his task. And so God caused the fish to vomit Jonah upon the dry land in Ventura. And for the second time said, “Arise, go unto Los Angeles, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Los Angeles. And Jonah entered the city and he cried, and said to them, “Yet forty days, and Los Angeles shall be overthrown.” And the people of Los Angeles thought, well, it could be so, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.” And God saw their work and that they had turned from their evil ways; and God forgave them. But this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed to God, and said, “I beseech thee, take my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.” So Jonah went out of the city and up on top of the Palos Verdes Peninsula sat in the dust. And God prepared a vine, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might shelter his old bald head from the heat.

The Book of Jonah (abridged and slightly adapted from the King James Version)

A psychic friend once said I’d been a rabbi in a recent life. However, my Jewish friends have to a person said the psychic was a fraud. I am, they all seem to think, about the most goyish of their friends, pretty much pure white bread and mayonnaise. And I have to acknowledge while as a grown up I have come to like rye and mustard, still, yes, I do consider white bread and mayonnaise part of my pantheon of comfort foods.

I certainly didn’t know a lot of Jewish people as I grew up among poor white fundamentalist Christians. My first encounters with real Jewish folk were actually “JuBus,” Buddhist-identified Jews. Which is also why pretty much all the Yiddish in my vocabulary was learned as a young adult living in a Buddhist monastery.

And, now, and for many years, I’ve been a Unitarian Universalist. You’ve heard the old joke, I presume. How the guys were sitting in the coffee shop reading the morning paper when Joe looked up from the obituary page and said “Oh, my. Fred died. He was just buried from the Unitarian church. To which Sam replied, “I had no idea Fred was Jewish.” It’s a small joke with a real point. Just as with the Western Buddhist community we UUs count an outsized number of members who come from Jewish backgrounds. In most cases without feeling they’ve ceased being Jewish. Complex and interesting.

And, I think even more interesting is how this influence goes both ways. Judaism has been an important current in the development of our contemporary liberal religious tradition. There are a whole host of areas where our traditions touch, but none so important as our UU sense of covenant taking precedent over creed, which is derived through the Puritan tradition right to the Jewish scriptures.

So, it should be no surprise how in many Unitarian Universalist congregations we mark a couple of traditional Jewish holidays as part of our informal but important to us religious calendar. It’s an unusual UU congregation that somewhere in December doesn’t annually take up Hanukkah themes, even if mixed up with other festivals of light. And, in my experience in congregations across the continent, the themes of Rosh Hashanah and especially Yom Kippur are explored annually pretty close to where they pop up in the Jewish hybrid solar/lunar calendar.

And here we are. Rosh Hashanah means “head of the year.” And as you probably know it is the Jewish New Year. Actually the celebration this year began on the 13th marking the beginning of year 5776 in the traditional Jewish calendar. The Days of Awe, which begin with Rosh Hashanah won’t end until Yom Kippur on Wednesday the 23rd. So, we’re more or less in the middle of the season.

In a UU Liturgy for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we learn. “The spirit of (this) time is woven about two books: the Torah and the legendary Book of Life. According to legend on Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, the Angel of Life writes each of our destinies for the year to come. During the ten days following, the Days of Awe, the Book of Life is kept open. If we then merely try to understand how to take the Torah’s insights with us into the everyday world, the Angel of Life must reconsider what has been written… (Then, at) the last sound of the Shofar on the day of Yom Kippur, says the legend, the Book of Life for the year to come is sealed.” So, it’s important to right wrongs and to put our lives in order while we have the chance. A big part of this is really seeing who we are. Looking hard, repenting where it is appropriate, and trying to fix things, best we can. As a small aside, you might recognize this as the source of some of the wisdom at the heart of all twelve-step programs.

Reflection and repentance are the heart of the matter of Rosh Hashanah, and worthy for us to consider, I suspect. At least for one or two among us, I suspect. One text closely associated with this time and theme is the biblical story of Jonah. In fact the entire text is usually read aloud during this season. We’re UUs, so what you heard Kim read, while trying to keep the heart of the matter was cut by about half. And, okay, while you might have missed it, I also renamed a couple of the towns. We’re a more humanistic oriented community, here, but please, don’t let the word God get in your way. There’s something important for all of us, I really suggest, if you’ll just allow the story to unfold.

Me, over the years I’ve thought a lot about that story of Jonah. I really like how it starts with that rushing off for Tarshish, I mean Seattle. To the writer, that meant Jonah got his divine commission, and takes off in the exact opposite direction. He was heading for the very ends of the earth. So, we have a first class shirker being picked by God for his important job. What’s not to love here? Sounds like my story. And yours? What task you know deep in your heart you should be attending to that you are not living up to? What calling from the depth of your being are you avoiding?

Another bit of wisdom known for a very long time. This avoiding those tasks we know deep in our hearts we should be doing, invariably leads to some hard time in the belly of some beast. By the bye, this belly of the fish thing was a favorite point for mocking by the other religious current in my young life, my Robert Ingersoll influenced father; who counted the fish story along with pillars and four corners to the earth as evidence these stories were myths. And for my dad “myth” meant lie.

I, I hope you have picked up, have a different take on myth, on the value of story as a way into our human hearts that can be found if we don’t cling to the stories as literal truth. I don’t try to take this old story as history, it isn’t. But rather as our spiritual ancestors attempting to address something really important about human lives, which it is. I suspect the rabbis who chose to reflect on this story during Rosh Hashanah often had a similar desire. So, back to that belly of the fish in which we land as we try to avoid what our hearts call us to. Most of us can describe our personal version. What consequences have you found in your life out of avoiding your deeper responsibilities?

When Jonah finally, finally gets up and goes and does the prophesying, and the people in their turn repent, I love that he’s royally annoyed that they did what they were called to, and didn’t get their divine punishment. He wanted fire and brimstone. He got repentance. In fact he’s so angry he wishes he were dead. So, Jonah starts as a jerk and ends as a jerk. Along the way he does a couple of good things. And, this is so important: we find in a complete and unrepentant jerk doing those couple of good things, he redeems himself. That idea gives me some hope.

What captures me here is the theme of second chances. Here the divine strews second chances before Jonah like a child throwing fistfuls of rose peddles during a wedding processional. Great globs of second chances picked up in a chubby hand and thrown indiscriminately in our path. I believe the greatest gift of our humanity is that we get these second chances. And, here’s another important point. We don’t all get them. A child born into a decade long drought in the third world doesn’t even get a first chance. And, frankly, there are people here in Rancho Palos Verdes who aren’t getting anything like a fair shake, much less a fair chance. So, if we got them, first or second or whatever; we’re lucky.

So, the rest of us have an enormous responsibility to take these chances, first and second, and beyond, to grab them, and to allow the changes in our lives they hold out. In reality the hope of those children from that destitute place at the edge of our consciousness to the hidden corners of our own community may depend on us living into our possibility of largeness of heart and from that of doing the right thing.

So, the question of second chances, of turning hearts, and moving in new directions is really important. We do not know where our taking these second chances will lead. But, what I do know, is that they open possibilities where there were few before.

On this way our intentions are critical. We need to notice and intend to change. That’s the gate. We may not succeed the first time, or the second. Frankly it strikes me Jonah never completely comes to terms with the gift of his life. But along the way at heart he intends to do the right thing, as complex and confused as his intention is. And that’s very important. But even that’s not quite enough. It’s a gate into the garden, but not the garden. Hence, that notion of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. You can’t just intend good things. We need one more thing that can inform our actions in healthy ways.

Frankly, what that more is, is a small distinction, easily missed. But, it makes all the difference. And, that’s where I think about the vine. Jonah does the job, people repent, and he, filled with anger that they did and didn’t get fire and brimstone, he goes out of the city and sits in the dust, sulking. As I noted, a world class jerk. Then in that lovely coda to the story God causes a vine to grow up and shade, as I imagine it, his old balding head that had been burning red in the harsh Near Eastern sun.

Now in the fuller version of this story the vine is created and destroyed and a relatively obvious moral is drawn out of the event. But I’ve found the most value for me in just contemplating that vine and that shade provided even for foolish, shirking, vindictive Jonah. What that suggests to me, what that sings to me is that I’m not doing this alone. Never have been. The problems come when I think I’m responsible all by myself and must make it happen, must, as one wise person described it, push the river. Can’t be done. The intention that fails us is the one that tries to control things. The intention that leads to the good is surrender to our better angels, and specifically to our willingness to work together.

So, here’s my counsel for a New Year, maybe this new church year. There are still a couple of days before that Book of Life is closed for the year. Still, not too late. Here’s what to do. Notice your shortcomings. I bet you there’s something. There are reasons this is done every year. And then repent. You know, regret the ills you have caused. And then, maybe just ever so slightly humbled, just reach out your hand to another as a companion, as a co-worker, as part of the great family.

That’s all.

Our task.

If we are willing.

So be it. Blessed be. And, amen.