By Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Jonah, Bush, and Obama

Jonah 3: 1-10

Jonah is one of the great characters in Hebrew literature, and the book named for him is a little gem. It is as though Jonathan Swift hopped into a time machine, transported himself back to ancient Israel, and wrote one of his satires based on what he saw there. What crazy things this book has: animals dressed in sackcloth; a city with many fewer people than our own but so wide that it took three days to walk across; a man reposing for three nights in the belly of a fish; and the most zany aspect of the story - the anti-hero Jonah himself. A would-be Prophet, chosen to call a decadent foreign city to repentance, who flees from the presence of God because he would rather see its 120,000 women, children, and men perish. A man in whom a prophet's anger does not kindle for the purposes of purification and redemption, but rather burns only to burn, degenerating into hate. It is the humour of the little book that makes it palatable, that makes reading it a nourishing experience, because Jonah's character laid bare on the page would offer the reader only bitter ugliness.

So what are we to make of this unlovely man? Besides enjoying him as we would a character in a Monty Python movie, what can we gain from him? We can gain the same thing we gain from meditating upon any of literature's most incisive characters, whether they are good or evil or some mixture: we gain insight into the human soul. Jonah's is a mean little soul. His refusal to be an instrument of God's grace tells us about his deep-dwelling orientation to life.

You are going to have to allow me to wander away from Jonah and his story for a bit -I want to explore for awhile this idea of a deep-dwelling, a primal orientation to life - but rest assured that we will come back.

One of the things the contemplative traditions of the world have discovered, is that if a person meditates deeply and daily, the mind stills, the noise and clutter of daily living falls away and she becomes aware of primeval conversations deep within the psyche. One of the deepest conversations flows from the question, 'is this thing called life good?' The question can be asked in other ways, of course: 'Is the world fundamentally a friendly place, or is it brutish?'; 'Can I trust this thing called life and the creatures that live it, or must I be suspicious and cunning?' Put into the language of faith, the question would sound something like this: 'Is the God who made me and the world a God of love, or a God of wrath?'

We answer this question very early in our lives, perhaps before the earliest events we can remember, and the answer provides our fundamental orientation to life for the rest of our days. Only ground-changing experiences, whether blessed or traumatic, sudden or steady can alter this embryonic orientation. Brain science is teaching us that even before children begin to store cognitive memories in the parts of the brain devoted to them, they register emotional experiences and impressions of life in other parts of the brain. These impressions strongly shape our character: they mould our responses to the events that go on around us; they make us agents of affection or antagonism, of harmony or discord.

One can only guess at the experiences that shaped Jonah's orientation to life, but the end result is clear: he is a hard-hearted and angry man who rejects a God of mercy and a world in which redemption is possible for a God of wrath and a world in which past failures surely condemn us to future misery.

This week millions of people, the world over were deeply moved by a speech by the man who appears to be the 'anti-Jonah,' a man who preaches a gospel that declares: 'we are not condemned by our past mistakes; we live in a world that offers us every day the chance to start again.' Barak Obama's rhetoric moves and captures people for a variety of reasons: the language is often beautiful; his words frequently capture the deep power of myth and faith; and they bend that power toward hope. Given what we have lived for the last eight years, however, I think there is one thing about Obama that stands out: his fundamental life-orientation. He lives in a world where life is good, people can generally be trusted, and God is a God of love. What's more, his politics flow from this orientation.

This stands in breathtaking contrast to what went before. We have become accustomed to a world run by Jonahs. Let's not shy away from the truth here. The people who have most shaped our world since 9-11 have a very dark life-orientation ... and they have shifted our collective orientation toward the shadows. This is tragic; for nations, even civilisations have fundamental life orientations, and, as with individuals, they are difficult to alter. The Bushes, Cheneys, Blairs, and Rumsfelds were able to shift the collective orientation of the western world through the manipulation of fear and outrage. Having lived in a desert of their creation, millions have been refreshed by the nectar of Obama's hope.

This week a sign outside Kingsway Lambton United Church said, 'Go Easy on Barak, The Job of Saviour is Already Filled.' Yes, as many are warning, we have to be careful about our expectations for this man. We are yet to know what kind of a president he will be. Outrageous expectations will only lead to disappointment. But Obama has already done us a great favour and he has done it with his preaching. (That's right, his preaching. Using biblical texts and other ones - the text of the American myth and the text of collective memory, the songs and stories of his people's emancipation, and the stores of lives being lived now - to articulate a gospel.) He, and the people who have rallied to his message, have created that rare historical moment in which a civilisation can choose to alter its life-orientation. He has given us an opportunity to make a choice, each for ourselves and all of us together, other than Jonah's choice.

Again, let's not shy away from the truth here. Having lived in the post-9/11 world for seven years, having witnessed the events since October, and having uncovered the greed and deceit that led to those events, it would be easy for us to make Jonah's choice. It would be easy to turn to cynicism. It would be easy to become insular and cunning. It would be easy to turn to a religion of fear and judgement. It would be easy to start hoarding our wealth for ourselves. It would be easy to start blaming victims. It would be easy to point to the thousands who will now fall into poverty and say 'you did it to yourselves; you do not deserve our help.'

The trap of Jonah's choice is set. It is set for each person. It is set for each household. It is set for each congregation. It is set for each nation. This is why the gospel preached by Barak Obama is so right for our time. For those of us who are Christian, it is right because it drives us from the death-dealing religion of Jonah and his contemporary incarnations; it draws us toward the capital 'G' Gospel of Jesus Christ. Obama's homiletics of hope are so powerful for Christians because they remind us of the original Gospel. They call us back to the one who is our Ground of Being. They evoke for us the one who truly provides our life-orientation.

Returning to Christ and his Gospel, placing our ultimate hope there instead of in any politician or political movement, we hear the Christ speaking to us (and to our time!) afresh: Do not choose fear but choose generosity; Do not build walls around yourselves, but pour yourselves into the world; Do not withdraw from the millions who will now be pushed to the margins; Rather meet them there and become brothers, become sisters. Friends, before this window President Obama has opened for us closes again let us step fully into this moment and be changed, each of us alone and all of us together.