Sunday, September 20, 2020

When God Provides a Worm

Yesterday, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. It felt like just one thing too many to handle. I never met her, but I almost believed in her the way you believe in a Bible character (I read Notorious RBG but also knew her to be heroically serving the country for the good of us all in spite of multiple rounds of cancer and the fact that she was a frail 87.) Her death felt like the worst kind of blow. How can we survive her loss in the midst of everything else? It was too much.  


I had been on a long walk with colleagues, talking about the dismal state of educators and education when the news broke, and I was cold. I decided to take a hot bath and read the book of Job. Job loses everything. And yet, he somehow manages to still bless God, to say, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And when things get worse still, and even his wife says, “Why don’t you just curse God and die?” he tells her that if we are going to accept blessings why should we not also accept hardship? It’s oddly helpful stuff. 


Before I got to Job, though, I finished the book of Jonah, which I had started the night before. Jonah feels familiar. We were both called to serve people who we sometimes think maybe don’t deserve us. We both tried to run away from the call. We both eventually gave in and did what God wanted. And then the people who we thought would certainly not hear us, oddly... do. Here I am, doing a job I didn’t plan to do and was weirdly called into doing--twice. And now, again, I’m being called into teaching in an impossible situation for a community this is being vocally disrespectful and mean. And then kids email me from last year and say mine was their favorite class, and could I please write a letter of recommendation? And what can I do with that except sigh, cancel a few more hours of sleep, and write the letter? And then the kids who are currently failing suddenly turn in all of the things from the last month with a sweet email saying they are sorry it’s all so late, but it’s finally done. Sometimes I just want to walk out of the city of Nineveh and lie down in the blazing sun. I get it, Jonah. I get it.


I had gotten so far in the story on Thursday night and stopped because that was the part that I had really needed. I figured, “Why not finish the last chapter before moving on to Job?” 


In Jonah 4, God provides a great plant to grow up over Jonah and shade him from the sun, and Jonah is very happy about the plant. But the next day God PROVIDES a worm that chews the plant and makes it wither. Then God PROVIDES a scorching wind. It made me pause, this repetition of the word “provides.” Like it’s a gift? Like it’s something Jonah needs? Jonah, still angry that he has successfully saved the unworthy-now-worthy Ninevites is angry. So angry, he wishes to die. And God says, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” 


The end. 


Seriously. The book ends there.


I must have known that. I’ve read Jonah many times before. But I still felt shocked. 


All along, I’ve been thinking about the story of Jonah as our (his and my) story: we get called, we resist, we get called again and again, we obey. The Ninevites hear, repent, and live. Jonah might be a jerk, but he saves them. I never thought the book was about the Ninevites. I thought it was about getting called until you cannot resist, about how we can choose to ignore God, but eventually God can be really really persuasive. I had not really thought about what it means that after Jonah obeys, after the Ninevites are saved, God provides a worm. Even after Nineveh and the 120,000 people and also many animals are spared, God is still saving Jonah from himself. 


The story is God’s. The people and animals are God’s. The plant is God’s. The worm is God’s. He will save us from ourselves, whether it takes a storm, a fish, an asshole prophet, or a pestilent worm. 


The book of Jonah ends with the words of God, as it certainly should, but that means we don’t know how Jonah responds. Maybe, for once, he doesn’t talk back. Or maybe it’s because the story is as unfinished as it feels. Fish, worms, winds, pandemics, political chaos: God provides.