lcc liberal arts studies / 2010 volume iii - LCC International University

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MICHELE HERSHBERGER / A NEED FOR ORDER AND DIVERSITY: HOMOGENEITY AND PARTICULARITY
The book of Jonah provides an interesting take on the tension of
homogeneity and particularity. Seen by some scholars as an allegorical sermon
directed at the returnees from Babylon, (Limburg, 1988, pp. 138-151) Jonah could
represent the majority of Jews who didn't want God to bless every family on earth
through them. God sent Jonah to Nineveh to bring a message of judgment for their
wickedness. As the capital of Assyria, Nineveh symbolized the worst enemy. Jonah
instead fled to Tarshish via the sea, in an attempt to escape his calling. The pagan
sailors showed more compassion than Jonah did for Nineveh, hesitating to sacrifice
Jonah's life, even though their own lives were in peril. But eventually they did throw
Jonah out of the boat, only to be swallowed by a big fish, a possible metaphor for the
Babylonian exile. The fish spat him out at Nineveh with a second chance to do the
mission he was called to do. Surprisingly, Nineveh repented, God granted them
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mercy—and Jonah was upset. Unlike God, he didn't show chesed and for that God
punished him. Jonah, like the returnees from Babylon, had a second chance to
understand his chosen status in a different way and be a “priest” connecting others
to God, but unfortunately, he failed. As the story ends, Jonah is more upset about a
bush than about the potential death of a city and God has a revealing rhetorical
question, “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which
there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their
right hand from their left and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11, NRSV)
But what if Ezra and Jonah were right? What if they had been chosen
because they were God's favorites? What if the monarchy was God's ultimate will
and altogether needed? The Old Testament narrative contains evidence for both
sides of the argument. One way to resolve the dilemma is to look at the life of Jesus
for the best understanding of God's original intention. Did Jesus strive to renew a
culturally homogenous people? Was he ethnocentric?
The gospels contain stories of Jesus reaching beyond the Jewish ethnic
people group. In John 4, he spoke with a Samaritan woman and she became the
first evangelist as she ran to tell the good news to her village. And while Samaritans
were a different group than the larger category of Gentiles and Jesus reaching out
to the Samaritan woman perhaps represented a restoration of united Israel rather
than an outreach to Gentiles in general, her conversion is significant, as
Samaritans were hated by the Jews (Sloyan, 1988, pp. 52-55). The inclusion of the
Samaritans was the beginning of the breaking apart of ethnocentrism that was
common to many Jews of Jesus' day. In Luke 7, Jesus healed the slave of a Roman
centurion. The centurion asked Jesus not to come into his house because he
believed himself unworthy to have Jesus enter. He also stated his belief that Jesus
could heal the slave by merely speaking the word from where he stood. Jesus
LCC / LIBERAL ARTS STUDIES / 2010