the Sign of Jonah

So this is an idea I've been batting around for a couple of months now, and you can tell me what you think.

Matthew 12.38-42 and Luke 11.29-32 both relate how the "experts in the Law along with some Pharisees" (Matthew) and the "crowd" (Luke) asked Jesus for a "sign." Jesus' response is a little odd, because he points them back to the story of Jonah, and tells them their sign is the "sign of Jonah." Matthew clarifies this as being Jonah's stint in the fish's belly for three days and nights. Then Jesus continues by comparing his audience (unfavorably) with the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba. Yes, it's an odd little paragraph.

So . . . first, a little background before diving into the whole "sign of Jonah" bit: in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), "signs" are bad things because every time someone wants a sign, it's because they're looking for something sensational out of Jesus. Now, it's not wrong to ask God to confirm direction he's already given you (think Gideon and the sheepskin in Judges), but in this case, Jesus considered his teaching, his healings, and his exorcisms to be plenty of proof of who he was (think John the Baptist asks who he is, and Jesus replies with fulfillment of Isaiah's restoration prophecies). Basically, these people were asking for a sign because they weren't willing to take Jesus' actions by faith. They wanted some big miracle to convince them of a truth Jesus was spending three years to demonstrate to them. So in the Synoptics, asking for a sign was, in itself, a sign of a severe lack of faith.

So Jesus gives them a sign sort of like the virgin birth sign God gave to Ahaz back in Isaiah's day: not a miracle they can point to immediately, but one that will happen in the future and will be evident to those who have faith (both the virgin birth and the resurrection were explained away by Jewish authorities, but were evident and miraculous to those who responded to the news and to Jesus in faith, as the resurrection appearances seem to have been only to his followers). In other words, Jesus responded to their confrontational lack of faith by giving them a sign that could best be understood by those with faith.

OK, so here's where it gets interesting (at least to me!). The sign of Jonah has, in my experience and reading, been limited to Matthew's explanation of the three days and nights. Fine. Works for me. But if that's the sign, what's the significance of the sign? The sign pointed to Jesus' three-day stint in the tomb, but why use that sign? Was Jesus trying to say anything else--besides pointing to his temporary death? I think he was.

Remember how Jesus then mentioned the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba? Take a look (Matthew 12):  

The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented when Jonah preached to them – and now, something greater than Jonah is here! The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon – and now, something greater than Solomon is here!

Why mention Nineveh and the queen of Sheba? It could just be that Jesus was pointing out that even Gentiles had the faith and discernment to recognize God at work and believe, while the Jewish authorities refused to see what was right under their noses. That'd be insulting enough to these men. But it's also interesting to note that the whole story of Jonah is about God being more than just Israel's God.

Jonah is a prophet to Israel who tries to escape God's call by going to sea. That seems ridiculous to us, but in the Ancient Near East, the sea was mythically the source of chaos, destruction, and evil powers. It was the great nemesis of all the gods of all the Mesopotamian people. All of them had myths about their main gods vanquishing (or being vanquished by) sea monsters, which symbolized the power of the sea. You can see the same language in Psalms and in the prophets, but in this case, God consistently points out that he vanquishes the sea with a finger, or the "breath of his mouth." That last one's especially common, since it demonstrates so vividly how much more powerful God is than all powers on earth. But you get the point.

So why did Jonah think he could run away from God by going to sea? Well, in a lot of the early Israelite history in the Bible (especially Judges), you see a sort of tribal theology going on. In Hebrews, Japheth is praised for believing that God would protect Israel, his people, against the god and might of the neighboring tribes. In other words, Israel's god would keep Israel safe against the gods of the other peoples. So YHWH was Israel's god, just as the Hittites and Philistines had their gods. Tribal theology. What that means is that if you ticked off a tribal god, you went to another tribe, preferably one with a stronger god or one already in conflict with yours, and you could hope for some incidental protection as one god would protect his territory from encroachment by another. Crazy stuff now. But it sure seems that that's what Jonah's doing.

But look at what God does: he creates a storm (demonstrating his power over the powers of chaos), commandeers a really big fish (again, power over chaos, this time in the form of sea monsters), and spits Jonah out to preach to a bunch of heathen Gentiles. Said Gentiles repent, God is pleased, and Jonah has a royal hissy fit. Moral of the story? God is bigger than your people and your land, and his mercy and salvation extend beyond political or ethnic boundaries to include all peoples in all places. Again: God is the true God over all the earth and over all tribes, and he desires to be merciful and save all, and for all to worship him.

So put that next to Jesus' little commentary in Matthew and Luke, and suddenly it gets really interesting. What if the sign of Jonah pointed not just to the sheer stubbornness of the Jewish authorities but also to the the ramifications of Jesus' death on the cross? That God's great plan to offer salvation for all people in all places will be realized? That God is gloriously revealed as not just the God of the Israelites but as the God who created the world and has now given himself to redeem it. Pretty powerful stuff, and as a sign for those who believed in Jesus, a phenomenal paradigm shift as the mission to the Gentiles got underway.

Just a thought.

about treasures and things that are old and new

Well, most of my writing time in the last four weeks has been taken up with prep for the Greek tools class I taught at church. It was a lot of fun to teach, and I think those who took the class really enjoyed it, too. I'm glad my husband hounded me into teaching this one and the class last fall. After staying at home with the kids for so long, I think I'd forgotten how much I love to teach. Maybe all those gifts assessments weren't wrong, after all! Seriously, though, teaching is addicting for me . . . in a good way, that is.

But the downside is that my writing fell so far by the wayside you couldn't find it if you tried. Drat. I suppose I'll have to work on that.

Seriously, I wanted to finally wrap up some of my thoughts on Matthew 13.52.

The analogy in the verse compares the expert in the Law to the owner of a house who brings out his treasures in front of his guests. What does that mean? Well, the person who owns the home is legally responsible for the building and has significant influence over what activities are allowed and encouraged, and those that are forbidden. There are a lot of other things involved in home ownership, even back in the first century, but these two will suffice for now.

So if it is my goal to study God's Word and be trained for God's kingdom, what is my house? The simplest answer is that my house is the area, or sphere, over which I have influence and responsibility. It's my privilege and responsibility to continually move myself and those within that sphere toward kingdom-building and God-glorifying activities. That most definitely includes my mind and my heart. What do I think about throughout the day? How do I spend my down time? What do I take for granted or assume I'm entitled to? All of these fall within my sphere, my house, and must be submitted to the overarching purpose of obedience and kingdom-building.

What about my treasures? Besides being the physical things that I value, my treasures as someone studying God's Word are my knowledge and skills. These, in turn, must be expanded and honed consistently, continually, and--not least--strategically in order that I might be transformed into a disciple trained for and useful to God's kingdom.

Finally, what does it mean to bring out of my treasures--my knowledge and skills--things both old and new? Well, if you look at the preceding chapter, you can see Jesus doing just that. He sets out an example in his parables and explanations. It's brilliant, profound, and--not least--intimidating. The new that Jesus teaches is the kingdom of God. The kingdom ways of God, to be exact.

God's ways in the kingdom are surprising and puzzling when you're used to the world's ways. Like James says (3.13-18), God's wisdom is frequently not the cleverness or common sense of "well, that's just how the world works." His ways often don't make sense until hindsight explains them--and sometimes not even then! But now I'm getting sidetracked.

What's important is that Jesus taught about the kingdom of God in a way that his listeners identified with, understood, and that invited them to think deeply and investigate the mystery (the puzzle?) that the kingdom and the God of the kingdom are.

Yet Jesus also drew heavily from the OT in his teaching, and drew from strong traditions within the OT that would attract attention and cue big ideas about God's ways, his promises, and the hopes and fears of Jesus' listeners. As Christians and students of God's Word, we are not just part of the last 50 or 100 years of the church, but we are privileged to join at least 4,000 years of history of God drawing his people toward him and teaching us bit by bit about himself, his ways, and his plan for his creation. It's our responsibility to know our history well and to draw on the wealth of experience, imagery, and wisdom within that. And as we teach the "new" of God's kingdom, the "old" stands as a backdrop to a vast drama, adding depth and power and a sense of the profound that calls us out of today into the timelessness of God's love, calling, and purpose in his kingdom.

So as disciples of God's Word, we must devote ourselves to its study, to seeing clearly where the New draws out the Old and adds that depth of experience and wisdom. And we must use our knowledge and skills to their utmost to communicate God and his kingdom in ways that are new, yet rooted in the old, and that invite our listeners to come with us and explore the mysteries of kingdom, and calling, and the joy of obedience.

And that, I think, is at least a beginning, a step toward understanding what it might mean to be an expert in the Law who has been trained for the kingdom.

life happens . . .

 . . . and when it does, sometimes this blog doesn't. Sorry about that. I got caught up in two weeks of intense writing for scholarship applications for postgrad work, and Liam, my nine-month-old, hit his stride teething. And by "hit his stride," I mean he's cutting four teeth at the same time! I've discovered that it's impossible to get much of anything done when I'm holding an unhappy 25-pound baby most of the day. And my back hurts.

And now that I've shared way more information than you wanted to read, let's move on . . . and check out the latest post I've written for the blog my husband and I write together. Micah and I are trying out the blog format to dialogue and, hopefully, get some feedback on a few concepts we've been working through over the past few years.. Take a look, see what you think!

Trained for the Kingdom, redux

I've been turning this verse over and over in my mind, and I realized this morning I forgot a few things in my last post. Namely, I forgot to actually apply some of those exegetical skills I spent so long acquiring. So here goes.

First let's look at this word "trained." This is one of those cases when it actually can be helpful to know the original language of a text. The word translated as "trained" here (μαθητυθείς) is the verbal side of the Greek noun that means "disciple." That's right: as in Jesus' twelve disciples. So what did it mean to be a disciple in first-century Israel?

Jesus' disciples are a pretty good place to start. As the Gospels record Jesus calling each disciple, they also note--sort of in the margins, sometimes--that each disciple simply left whatever they were doing, whatever career or profession they had, and just wandered around the country with Jesus. They left everything they had, including their futures, and traded it all on the kingdom of God. Turns out, they didn't even have a clue what they were getting into. But Jesus called them, and they came immediately. And that was the standard for discipleship at the time. Being called by a rabbi (a teacher) was a huge deal. It's recorded that many rabbis had followers--groupies--who hung around just hoping to be "called" into the rabbi's closer circle of teaching and mentoring.

So being "trained" isn't just about acquiring skills or going to school. It's about leaving your own hopes, dreams, present, and future to "seek first the kingdom" in everything you do and are. It's about putting all your eggs in one basket, everything you've got, and pursuing that avidly--and letting your new set of priorities inform and transform the lenses through which you see life, the activities you do, and the future you pursue.

Let's look at the rest of the phrase now. What we translate as "for" in English actually isn't a preposition in Greek at all. It's a noun with a special ending that tells the reader what part it plays in the sentence (for those who'd like to know, it's in the dative case). Even in English, "for" has a whole host of possible meanings, including "for the purpose of," "to the advantage of," "directed toward," etc. The dative case has a slightly broader range than that, but its range can be narrowed down just by what makes sense in that grammatical construction (sorry if I'm losing anyone!). Here, your options are: "for the benefit of/to the advantage of," "with reference to," "belonging to," "place of," "time when," "by means of," "because of," etc. Obviously, some of these don't fit. But the first two options really do fit: "to the advantage of" and "with reference to." So the "for" here is about studying and understanding things of the kingdom, and about doing what benefits God's kingdom.

But what is the kingdom of God? Granted, thousands of pages have been written on that question, but the heart of the answer has never changed. The kingdom of God is all about God being king. And how can you tell--with any king--where his kingdom is? It's where his ways, his laws, his person, are obeyed. God, in the person of Jesus, came to earth and inaugurated God's rule on earth. And where and how and in whom God is obeyed, there you will find God's kingdom on earth.

So what does all this mean? It means that training for the kingdom is all about devoting yourself to continually studying God, his words, and his ways. It's studying these things in light of God's kingdom, and strategically equipping yourself to grow the kingdom as God leads you to, inaugurating God's rule wherever you are and in whatever sphere you have influence. But most of all, it's immersing yourself in prayer with the intent to follow wherever God calls you and to know him personally, experientially, every bit like Jesus' disciples did so long ago.

Unpacking It

So let's look at the first part of that verse:

"Therefore every expert in the law who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven . . ."

That's the NET translation (which, if you've never checked out, go do it. Now.). Other versions use "scribe" and "teacher of the Law." The Message even goes as far as saying "student well-trained," but misses out completely on the point by not including the bit about the Law. Strong's describes them "a man learned in the Mosaic law and in the sacred writings, an interpreter, teacher. Scribes examined the more difficult and subtle questions of the law . . ."

So these were the guys who spent their lives studying the Scriptures (in this case, what we Christians call the Old Testament), seeking to understand them in order to communicate God's message, his ways, and his character to God's people. Sound familiar?

OK, let's move on. What does it mean to be trained for the kingdom of heaven? That's a tough one. I've got an idea, but let's do a little checking around first. This one isn't like the "experts of the Law" bit, since we can't just go to a Bible dictionary for the answer. When you run across phrases in a verse that don't immediately make sense, take a look at the context and then at the language itself.

We'll start with the context. This verse comes at the end of a whole bunch of parables Jesus has told, all about the kingdom of heaven. These are the "the kingdom is like . . ." parables. So let's talk briefly about parables. Parables are stories that have a surprise, a riddle, a mystery, or just plain oddness about them. Something about the parable is strange or surprising, and it is that element that makes the parable mysterious and hints at a deeper meaning. That's why Jesus so often said, "He who has ear to hear, let him hear." In other words, if you caught the oddness of the parable, it was an invitation to come and look deeper into it and figure out the mystery, find the answer to the riddle.

In a lot of ways, the kingdom of God is like a parable itself. There's a lot about the kingdom, about kingdom life and God's ways in the kingdom that doesn't match up with what we think is true about the world, what we accept about how life and relationships and smart choices work. Kingdom thinking is just different than how the rest of the world thinks. And this is a hint to those who are aware and listening that there's a lot about the kingdom that still needs to be figured out. The kingdom is a mystery, a riddle, that calls us to study it and try to understand it, to get to know and--as much as we can--understand the God who rules it.

So in this light, someone who's trained for the kingdom is one who accepts that invitation to look deeper and studies God's Word in light of the kingdom, seeking to understand the kingdom and the God who rules it.

Putting it together, an expert in the Law who's trained for the kingdom is one who gathers all of the resources, skills, and knowledge he (or she!) has accumulated in their study of Scripture and unleashes them all in service to the kingdom. It's reading the Bible with kingdom eyes: reading the Old Testament with eyes that also see Christ and God's grand plan unfolding through time and space, reading the New Testament and remembering the ways of God throughout the history of Israel, pulling forward through time images, stories, principles, and truths about God that were revealed and written in the Old Testament but find added depth and expression in the new kingdom age. It's appreciating the Bible in its own time-space context yet also knowing it was written to be as relevant and true today as yesterday.

And with that, I think I may be getting ahead of myself. There's still the rest of the verse to unpack, after all!

Matthew 13.52

Those of you who may have followed me from my previous blog are probably wondering "Why the change?" I gave a brief explanation in my last post on that blog, but will try to expand that a bit, and in so doing, try to put into words what the purpose of this blog will be.

Purpose is something I've been struggling a bit with lately. I graduated with a Master of Divinity this spring, and am taking a year off to be a stay-at-home mom of a 3-yr-old (almost!) and an 8-month-old. I love my kids, I love my family, and this is a good season for me. But it's still been a difficult time for me as well. My son didn't really sleep more than 2 hours at a time until he was 6 months old, and I went from intense study and writing while I was working on my thesis to complete sleep deprivation with the only mental stimulation being grocery shopping and housework. Transition is a mild word for it.

So I've vacillated between loving the time I get to spend with my kids, and aching to get back into academia, both the study and the teaching. Sometimes I feel like two completely different people. And I've wondered if a Ph.D. program really is the next thing for me. Do I really need to do it? Is my family going to survive me doing it? Is God's purpose for me to be stay-at-home mom and a pastor's wife, and nothing more? Or am I called to juggle those with teaching and taking classes, doing language, research, personal study, and writing? And I've not found very many answers, aside from my husband's unwavering confidence in my calling to further studies and his also unwavering belief in my ability to juggle what seems at times to be an overwhelming mix of roles.

But this morning as I was sitting in church, I made a surprising connection between an Old Testament story and something Jesus said. Immediately following that was a snippet of Matthew 13.52, with God's voice somewhere inside me saying, "This is it." It was one of those big voice rumbling down the Grand Canyon moments, where you get the chills and wonder if everyone around you heard what you did. And then the skeptic in you wonders if you just made it up to answer the painful questions you've been asking. But the bone-deep certainty sort of drowned out his voice in a wash of calmness and peace I've not had about my future for a long time.

So let's talk a little about Matthew 13.52, and I'll take you with me as I seek to understand what that passage really means in its original context, and in its context this morning.

Here's the verse, NET translation:

Then he said to them, “Therefore every expert in the law who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and old.”

And since this post is already getting a little long (the stream-of-consciousness confession was a little unpremeditated!), I'll leave you to think about that for a little bit, and I'll figure out a good place to start this journey in another post.