Christchurch Parish News, June 2016
Next time we have a major decision to make in the parish, shall we pray earnestly and then dispense with the vote and instead flip a coin?
Amidst the mighty storm sent by the LORD which threatens to break up the ship, the mariners resort to desperate measures. In an effort to lighten their load so that they might outrun the storm, they throw their cargo overboard, jettisoning in the process all that would have made their journey to Tarshish profitable, rightly concluding that their livelihoods are not worth more than lives.
But they don’t throw quite everything from the hold overboard, do they? For there’s something else, someone else in fact, weighing them down, preventing these sailors from escaping the divinely sent storm.
The captain’s boots barely touch the steps as he jumps down below deck. There he finds Jonah, sleeping like a baby. How can he, amidst the crashing waves and the dramatic pitching and rolling of the ship? And we as readers ask, what peace has Jonah found as he flees God, and how long can it last?
‘What are you doing asleep?’ the caption yells. ‘Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’ You see, the captain doesn’t rouse Jonah because he thinks Jonah is somehow to blame for what’s happening. No, at this stage, it’s simply that the situation is so dire that every single person on board must do the only thing that could possibly save them now, namely, call on their god. When things are desperate, the divisions that preoccupy us in our more everyday lives fade into the background. You worship a different god? OK. Be that as it may, in this moment, right now, frankly, I don’t care. We’re about to sink. We’re all about to die. Get down on your knees and pray. And we might just survive to tell the tale.
The scene shifts. Are we now up on deck or still below? It’s not clear. But all the sailors have gathered together. They’ve decided that there’s got to be a reason this storm has whipped across the seas taking these experienced mariners totally by surprise. What do they conclude? That one of them is to blame. This kind of storm doesn’t just happen. It’s not a regular meteorological event that in other (more enlightened?) times would be given a female (!) name and tracked by satellite from the comfort of a TV studio miles away. No, this only happens, the mariners’ understanding of the world tells them, when someone’s done something very wrong and the gods, whoever they may be, are angry, and punishment is the order of the day.
Pause for a moment. The last time there was a really dramatic weather event that threatened the lives of many (and I write this after hearing that the southern most island of Japan, Kyushu, where I lived for a while, has been struck by two major earthquakes in 48 hours), did you think it was because someone had done something to anger the gods and this was the divinely wrought consequence? No, I suspect not. That’s not a view that’s generally held, though it is interesting to note that when very dramatic weather events do occur, for example the Indonesian tsunami in 2004, some do still conclude that such events are deliberate acts of God. But even then, at least in our part of the world, it’s not a widespread way of interpreting weather events.
But assume for the time being that you did think that way, just like the sailors do in our story. How would you then go about figuring out who had done whatever it was that had so angered the gods? I should imagine that some form of interrogation would take place, a stream of questions posed both to others and to yourself. The one thing I don’t think you would leap to do is to draw lots. The notion of resorting to some method of random selection to find out the truth is not much in fashion these days. How could (what we perceive as) randomness lead to truth? It raises all sorts of questions, that in our own time are receiving fresh attention in the light of the insights afforded by quantum physics (and if such matters interest you, check out Catherine Keller’s ‘Cloud of the Impossible’, where she theologically explores quantum topics such as entanglement).
As a related aside, it’s striking that to this day, the Egyptian Coptic church, after much prayer and discernment, chooses its pope by having a blindfolded child randomly pick one of the three candidates. The child draws one piece of paper out of three from a box, obviously without knowing which name he or she is selecting. In this they draw on the choosing of Judas’ replacement, recorded by Luke in the beginning of the book of Acts (Act 1:26).
But note, that on all such occasions, the act of random choosing is preceded by prayer. The sailors pray to their gods first. Then they draw lots. The apostles pray to the LORD. They they draw lots. Next time we have a major decision to make in the parish, shall we pray earnestly and then dispense with the vote and instead flip a coin? Even if we did, being Anglican, we’d probably say, ‘Better make it best of three, just to be sure…’
Back to the story. Of course, the lot falls on Jonah. Again, note the sequence. First prayer, then random selection, then, and only then, questions (our order, even if it included the random element, would most likely be the reverse). ‘What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ ask the sailors. No hint of doubt that the lots have been cast correctly. Their gods have spoken. Jonah’s to blame.
It’s interesting that the type of questions the sailors ask is different to what we might expect. They don’t ask Jonah for a specific act to explain the storm. It’s not like a police interrogation, ‘Where were you on the night of xyz.? … What have you specifically done to anger the gods?’ No, instead the questions are more like the ones you’d find listed in a census. They’re all to do with identity. What is your job? What’s your background? What nationality are you? What’s your ethnicity?
So why do the sailors ask these kind of questions to do with identity and not more precise ones to do with actions? I think it’s because there’s a very different theological assumption underpinning their worldview, one that stands in stark contrast to the worldview that shapes the answers that Jonah’s about to give. But I’m going to leave that for next time, where we’ll also explore which worldview we share, because it’s too important to squeeze in at the end of this article.
So for now, as the sea grows more and more tempestuous, picture the lots of straw lying scattered on the deck, apart from the shortest one, which Jonah is left rubbing ruefully between his fingers and thumb, as he prepares to tell these frightened men who he really is and what these poor sailors unwittingly have got themselves caught up in.