Loving our neighbors — we aren’t there yet

We Americans have just observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We revel in King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but we still wallow in the realities of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

We seem to forget King was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to be the advocate for garbage collectors. We forget that he had become a leading critic of the U.S.-instigated war in Vietnam. We gloss over the implications of his call for justice in every facet of life. We need to be reminded that in trying circumstances, he gave us a dream. He gave us a dream of racial harmony, economic justice and a world at peace.

I am appalled at how little interest our current crop of presidential candidates has in the issues of justice of which Martin Luther King spoke. It is not just the words of King that they ignore; they ignore the commands of their collective religions that call for love of neighbor. Thus far, it is an exercise to determine who can be the most selfish and self-centered.

It is a good time to retell an old story. I love the story of Jonah because of its message. I also love retelling the story because it has been misunderstood by so many. Most folk only know that one of God's prophets was swallowed by a big fish. Their primary concern is about whether or not Jonah could survive for three days in the belly of a whale.

The Jonah tale is in fact a tract that challenged a prevailing attitude among Jewish people. It has wonderful subplots, full of exaggerations and unanticipated outcomes. The unknown author was part of a protest movement that believed the restored Jewish community had become too narrow, too rigid and too self-centered. The setting was in the 5th century BCE. Jews had rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. Under Ezra and Nehemiah, Jews were encouraged to be exclusive, based on a pure faith in their God, Jehovah.

Nineveh was a large Persian city northeast of Jerusalem. In the eyes of faithful Jews, Ninevites were despised neighbors. God's prophet, Jonah, was dismayed when the Lord gave him a task. He was to go to Nineveh and warn them that they were to repent of their evil ways and embrace Jehovah or suffer the consequences. Jonah was so upset that he said "no" to God and took off running in the opposite direction.

Jonah hopped on a boat headed for Tarshish. The boat ran into a horrific storm, and the sailors accused the runaway Jewish prophet of being the cause of their troubles. They threw Jonah overboard and, according to the story, Jonah was swallowed by a big fish and lived there for three days before the whale threw him up on the shore near where he had started. God was waiting for him.

Jonah reluctantly was now willing to go to Nineveh. He delivered God's message, and to Jonah's surprise, every one of Nineveh's 120,000 residents repented and were saved from God's wrath. Jonah was completely displeased. God had made him feel like a fool, as he surely was. Jonah had decided how God should behave, and God did not cooperate with popular Jewish opinion.

The final paragraph to the story is my favorite. Jonah went outside the city of Nineveh and sat down in a shelter to escape the heat. The shelter came with a vine that made the shade complete. Jonah even asked God to let him die. God did not honor his request; rather, he sent a worm to eat the vine. The vine died. Jonah was left scorching in the heat of the day. The commandment to love our neighbors predates the Jonah story by several centuries. A recurring task of every religious community is to define what "neighbor" means. The Jonah story is a part of that discussion. At the same time that Jewish leadership in Jerusalem was defining neighbor in very narrow terms, there was an unknown author who wrote a story that said very plainly, "God has very long arms." The word "neighbor" includes a lot more people than we might think. It includes Ninevites.

Jesus was a part of the Jewish community that insists that neighbor includes everyone, especially the poor, the sick, the homeless and every outcast.

We need to be reminded that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister/preacher. He was never a political figure, but he operated in the political arena with grace and skill. The context of his ministry was racial bigotry, economic injustice and a war that should have never been started. A dream of what can be is the heritage that he left for us all.

We need to be reminded that religious communities have the power to be the dreamers for a more just society. Religious communities should and can lead in defining the meaning of neighbor.

We have not yet arrived at that "more just society," but if we get the dream right, we can move toward that just society that King saw from the mountaintop.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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