Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Jonah chapter 3:
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
The story of Jonah is the story of a whole nation’s collective reckoning. “By the decree of the king and his nobles,” all human beings and animals were with sackcloth, and they all cried out mightily to God. “All [turned] from their evil ways and from the violence that [was] in their hands.”
We are such a moment now when it comes to race and racism. To be sure, not everyone is repenting. There are plenty who see no need, still find no reason for redress. But then there are the millions who have been awakened. They have heard the voice of the prophet. They have put on sackcloth and ashes — or their modern equivalent, a Black Lives Matter sign out front of the house.
But then we read these words from the king of Nineveh, “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.” Even the leader of Nineveh himself had repented, which is not the case for us here in America, though many leaders of some of our most important institutions have shown genuine conviction about the need for change.
How will this go for us? We don’t know. The eyes of millions have been opened. The systematic and systemic abuse of black lives are now in our collective consciousness for the first time since the 1960s. But the fact is, in the 60s we lost the nerve to do what it would take to truly bring about greater equality in America. We put on sackcloth by integrating schools and opening the voting polls, but the root of the economic consequences of 250 years of chattel slavery plus another 100 of racial apartheid was left largely untouched.
We don’t know how it will go this time — how far our repentance will reach.
The message of Jonah tells us that it can be surprising just how ready to repent a whole people can be. But it didn’t happen without leadership; and that for us is a mixed bag, and will continue to be until we finally realize that the fate of this country really is bound up with the fate of our most historically marginalized and oppressed.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow’s Lesson comes from Isaiah 1-8.
No comments:
Post a Comment