April 1: Jonah, Simultaneous Sign of Both Death and Life
♫ Music:
Monday, April 1
Jonah, Simultaneous Sign of Both Death and Life
Scripture: Jonah 2:1-10
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Poetry:
Of Politics, And Art
by Norman Dubie
—for Allen
Here, on the farthest point of the peninsula
The winter storm
Off the Atlantic shook the schoolhouse.
Mrs. Whitimore, dying
Of tuberculosis, said it would be after dark
Before the snowplow and bus would reach us.
She read to us from Melville.
How in an almost calamitous moment
Of sea hunting
Some men in an open boat suddenly found themselves
At the still and protected center
Of a great herd of whales
Where all the females floated on their sides
While their young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers
Just stared into what they allowed
Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow’s
One visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.
Today I listened to a woman say
That Melville might
Be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked, “And why not?”
The first responded, “Because there are
No women in his one novel.”
And Mrs. Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above the windows.
There was a blue light on her face, breasts and arms.
Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
Peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room
With thirty children
Rapt, confident and listening to the pure
God rendering voice of a storm.
JONAH, SIMULTANEOUS SIGN OF BOTH DEATH AND LIFE
In Of Politics, & Art, Norman Dubie juxtaposes the horrifying story of Moby Dick with the intimate “still and protected center” of a herd of nursing whales. At the same time, Dubie juxtaposes the horror of Mrs. Whitimore’s impending death by tuberculosis, and the raging storm outside the schoolhouse building, with the beauty and peace Mrs. Whitimore and her students experience as they read together. It is here, in the clash of the tender and terrifying, that God is rendered.
Jonah’s prayer also reflects a concurrent encounter with the horrifying radical otherness of the God before whom all of heaven cries “holy” (Isa. 6:3), and the tender mercy of the God who carries His people close to His heart (Isa. 40:11). It is after Jonah is cast into the “the belly of Sheol” that Jonah cries out, “O Lord my God,” like a nursing newborn crying out for his mother’s breast. In response, God rescues Jonah from the “heart of the sea”—by sending a whale to swallow him whole.
Albert Herbert’s painting captures the terror of Jonah’s salvation: a whale resembling a sock-puppet on a child’s hand. It is a hand cloaked in primal darkness that bears Jonah up from the sea. Although some may be inclined to consider Jonah’s whale as a form of punishment, it more accurately embodies another instance recorded in Scripture of the deep, thick darkness wherein God dwells. Throughout Scripture, God invites those closest to Him into that darkness: Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Job, Elijah, John the Baptist, and the disciples all met Him there at some point. To be near to God is to know both His tender love and His mysterious, terrifying power. It is a proximity that breaks our attempts at apprehending him through our minds or domesticating him for our own ends. Christ has torn the veil that we might enter boldly into the Holy of Holies, the thick cloud of glory that rested on Sinai. Let us not draw back from the terror of His mysteries, but go humbly into the darkness in which our God the Consuming Fire dwells.
Prayer:
Father, today I surrender my heart, mind, and spirit to you. Jesus, I ask you to give me a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know you. Holy Spirit, lead me into the knowledge of the mystery of God.
Amen
Christian Gonzalez Ho
Writer, Designer, and Cultural Theorist
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Jonah and the Whale, 1987
Albert Herbert
Oil on canvas
11 x 14 in.
Along with other work, artist Albert Herbert produced tiny oil paintings in the simplistic abstract style he was exploring with his etchings. These often had religious themes, such as Jonah and the Whale. Herbert said that he realized later that Jonah’s story was also his story; a man fleeing from his calling only to be swallowed by the whale of modernism and thrown back on to the strand of figuration from which he had been fleeing.
About the Artist:
Albert Charles Herbert (1925-2008) was a British abstract and religious artist, painter, and etcher. In 1954 he began part-time work at Leicester College of Art and in 1956 he became a lecturer at the Birmingham School of Art. He joined the staff at Saint Martin's in 1964 and stayed for 21 years, becoming a principal lecturer. Herbert was liked but seldom taken seriously by the art establishment. He stopped showing at the Royal Academy when his paintings were contemptuously "skied" (hung high on the wall). From early in his career, Herbert instinctively wanted to make figurative, emotive, and symbolic images. Drawn towards the Catholic Church in the late 1950s, he had an affinity to the imagery and rituals of Catholicism. His idiosyncratic, mystical paintings utilized biblical themes and religious subjects, but were not exclusively Christian in their meaning. His later works – the seemingly naïve, yet highly sophisticated small paintings he produced from the early 1980s – revealed his exploration into what "what lies beneath the surface of the mind.” Sister Wendy Beckett, the writer and art critic, who championed Herbert's work for many years, commented that his art "comes from so deep in the psyche that it almost forces itself out.”
About the Music:
“Deep Down” from the album Songs For Our Family
Lyrics:
Now God told Jonah to go up
To a city where he should show up
Tell the people the place was gonna blow up
For all the evil they’d done
But Jonah knew that God was kind
And if the people repented, they might find
That God was gonna change his mind
And forgive them for what they’d done
So Jonah had to go deep down
In the whale he had to go deep down
In the water he had to go deep down
To see what was in his heart
But God had a plan to send his Son
To accomplish the work of redemption
To undo all the bad that had been done
And show a new way to live
So Jesus descended from heaven
To show God’s love for all nations
Through the act of his crucifixion
He gave up his life to forgive
And Jesus chose to go deep down
In the tomb he chose to go deep down
In the grave he chose to go deep down
To show the love in his heart
And now we have a decision
To accept the gift of salvation
Or carry the weight of all our sin
Till we fall down onto our knees
If we taste forgiveness through God’s grace
It’s gonna put a smile upon our face
We can share God’s love for this whole race
Including our enemies
Cause Jonah didn’t stay deep down
And Jesus didn’t stay deep down
And we don’t have to stay deep down
If Jesus lives in our hearts
About the Composer and Lyricist:
Greg Stump (b. 1971), originally from Cerritos, California, has degrees from California State Long Beach, Chapman University, and Fuller Theological Seminary. He worked as a Resident Director at Biola University for seven years and has been full-time staff elder at Redeemer Church in La Mirada since 2012. He currently oversees a number of ministries there and works to develop new ministry teams and leaders. He also serves as the director of the church staff and helps plan the worship services each week. Greg helped to create Gospel-Centered Churches for La Mirada, a collaborative network of local ministers and churches in the area, and also founded Love La Mirada, an organization which brings the community, schools, city government, businesses, nonprofits, and houses of worship together for the good of the city. Greg has been married to Michele since 1999 and they live in La Mirada with their three children: Katrina, Nathaniel, and Elisabeth.
About the Composer:
Justin James Sinclair (b. 1994) is a vibrant soul whose pursuit of a meaningful life spills out into song. Growing up in an all-musician family on a steady diet of The Beatles and Queen, Justin learned the drums at the age of 10, began writing songs on piano and guitar at the age of 13, and stepped into street-performing at the age of 14 equipped with a ukulele and a kazoo. When Justin’s songs started packing venues in Santa Barbara during his junior year of high school, he and his best friend crowd funded an album as The Portion. Since releasing that album Justin has graduated as a music composition major from Biola University, and serves Biola, his church Redeemer, and his local community as Brother James. Brother James’ home shows as a solo artist have been said to turn strangers into family, and he’s opened for the likes of Dominic Balli and The Brilliance.
About the Performers:
Songs for Our Family is the first worship album created by the musicians of Redeemer Church, La Mirada. The album is comprised of favorite songs of the church: original works, children’s songs, and rousing folk arrangements of traditional hymns. Pieces were selected, arranged, and recorded during the summer of 2017; the album was produced by Phil Glenn and Justin Sinclair, engineered and mixed by William Caleb Parker, and mastered by John Sinclair. All performers are regular members of Redeemer’s worship team rotation who delighted in giving this gift to their church family.
About the Poet:
Norman Dubie (b. 1945) is an American poet and the author of more than 20 books. He has received numerous national grants and prizes, including the Bess Hokin Award of the Modern Poetry Association. He has authored many individual publications and his work has appeared in virtually every major journal of poetry over the last four decades from The American Poetry Review to The New Yorker. Professor Dubie is included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, which represents the best poetry published in England and America from Walt Whitman's time to the present. He is the recipient of many fellowships from various organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ingram-Merrill Foundation. His collected poems, The Mercy Seat, won the PEN USA Prize for Best Book of Poetry, and his collection, The Quotations of Bone, won the 2016 International Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches in the graduate Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona, where he is Regents' Professor of English.
About the Devotional Writer:
Christian Gonzalez Ho
Writer, Designer, and Cultural Theorist
Christian Gonzalez Ho is a cultural theorist, writer, and designer. He holds an M.A. in Architecture from Harvard University. Christian's work focuses primarily on the way art and architecture relate to the epistemologies of a culture. Christian and his wife, Christina Gonzalez Ho (HLS ’14), live in Los Angeles. In 2018, they wrote Los Angeles: Mestizo Archipelago (Pinatubo Press), an ethnography of the Los Angeles contemporary art world and its relationship to faith and spirituality. Christian and Christina are also the creators and directors of Estuaries, an experiment in cultivating space for young Christian thinkers to rigorously consider their faith in contemporary society, encounter God, and reimagine the structures and possibilities of their disciplines.