In the belly of the Word/7 - The true prophet speaks to the people, not to the powerful. And all of Nineveh converted
Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 31/03/2024
The Bible is not a book about God: it is a book about man. From the perspective of the Bible, man is a being in travail with God’s dreams and designs
Abraham Heschel, Who is Man?
The people of Nineveh converted to Jonah's preaching: all, "from the greatest to the least" (Jonah 3:5). It was not a predictable outcome: it was a surprise for Jonah, for the biblical reader and perhaps even for God: "Ah! City of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of booty – no end to the plunder! .... There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is mortal” (Nahum 3:1-19).
After the people, their king converted too: "When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes" (3: 6). A completely secular liturgy of conversion: there is no mention of temples, prayers, gods, but of sackcloth taking the place of the robe, of ashes taking the place of the throne.
Prophet and people, a civilized melee that took place in the squares, inside homes, along the streets. Jonah did not go to the king to announce his message. Instead, he went among the people, there he spoke and cried out. And the king heard about it from his people, he saw it in his people. It is the false prophets who go directly to the king, and this first wrong move of theirs is also an infallible indicator to unmask them. Whereas the true prophet speaks to the people, because by vocation and instinct he knows that the voice that speaks to him is also present in the people. We know that the people also called for ‘Barabbas’, so they can listen to the wrong voices; but it is always this same people who yesterday followed the wrong spirit that can and must recognize the good spirit today. And until this good meeting of spirits takes place, true prophets can only wait and suffer, resisting the temptation to go directly to the leaders who would be found celebrating with Barabbas and his friends.
At the beginning of this collective conversion, there is the voice of a prophet, which is the decisive factor that triggers the process. Then there is an entire people who understand that that voice is announcing a true and decisive message and they convert. Finally, there are the kings and the ‘greats’ of power (only the priests are missing, who are perhaps part of the ‘greats’).
The conversion of Nineveh is then a very clear icon of the ‘technology’ of effective collective changes. And it is therefore also an image of subsidiarity: at the beginning there is one single voice, then the people and finally the leaders. On the other hand, when changes begin from the top down, from the leaders, in societies, communities or businesses, there are no results or only fragile, emotional and superficial ones, because the conversions of leaders are almost never sincere but are induced by various forms of interests and strategies. If, on the other hand, it is the people who one day feels that the time has come to change, an almost irresistible force is released. This is a change that comes from within, from the base, in the midst, elbow to elbow, mouth to mouth. In these cases, one does not act for incentives, persuasion, propaganda or manipulation: it is the body that moves, it is the body that moves, it is bodies that react to a deep, primordial, carnal call. You act because you cannot fail to act, because you understand that life or death is at stake, nothing less and nothing more. When this happens, sometimes the ‘kings’ follow too and this second-stage movement makes them become like everyone else.
Perhaps the meaning of fraternity, is all here; and when a change or a revolution takes place under the sign of fraternity-soundness, the community of equals is born and reborn, authentic democracy is born and reborn because after these rebirths, the ‘kings’ are no longer the same as before (the problem is then to keep them in this state of grace when we return to normality). When Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on the bus to a white man and all the black people in Montgomery walked to work for a year, maybe something like that happened: first the feet moved then the head, those feet changed the ‘kings’ and ultimately the world. The resurrection was something like that, because it was a matter of a body, of the flesh. Those women and those apostles began to run through the streets of Palestine and of the world before understanding with their heads what had really happened inside that empty tomb.
What is missing today in our global non-conversions, from ecology to peace? The prophets who have been repeating for some time ‘Forty days more ...’ are there, but the flesh of the people is missing, the collective and global movement that dons sackcloth is missing. And therefore the ‘kings’ who follow are missing, who are instead increasingly isolated in their palaces, captured by their reasoning of death and power, seduced by a thousand false prophets. We are missing, you are missing, I am missing, entertained by many 'circuses' and little 'bread', distracted by a capitalism that invents new innocuous pastimes every day to cover, confuse and ridicule the voices of the prophets who, thank God, continue to cry out. And without the people moving, we will organize yet another summit of kings and their soothsayers but nothing or too little will happen.
In the ancient world, conversions had their own signs, which resembled those of mourning - ashes, different clothes, shaved hair and beard, eating differently and less, interrupting celebrations, lamenting, crying, and shouting. A conversion was a public affair, because everyone, even God, had to see that a process of real and important change has started. Anyone observing should understand at first glance. The Bible is full of these signs, so much so that we could tell its story through the narrative of its mourning, penances, conversions, from those of Job to that of Mordecai, from David to Rizpah, the eternal mother of the crucified (2 Sam 21:10). Ancient man knew that in important things, words alone are not enough, the voice is powerless. And in a Bible that has given the word an almost infinite spiritual status, when it is necessary to speak of life and death, the word falls silent and gives way to the body and its extensions made of objects; as if those ‘things’ that in ordinary events are almost mute, in decisive days become more eloquent than words. We forget but sometimes we remember: when a lock of hair takes the place of words which have been muted and silenced.
The Bible knew and knows that conversion is not an idea, that it is a reality, therefore it is a body, it is a social affair - the social exists only where bodies exist. It is listening to a word that convinces us and our conviction becomes flesh, an incarnate word. One day we understand, through a different word, a deeper intuition or a strong signal, that we must change our lives, and that we must really do it because if we do not change, we and our people will die. We rarely remember that for this sincere resolution to be effective and bring about change, it should touch the flesh, not just the head and the will. That we should change job, city, lifestyle, diet, friendships, sometimes we need to change many things so as not to lose them all; that psychological therapies or spiritual companions are not enough, because to truly change it is necessary that all words become flesh, or that at least some words become shreds of living flesh. And then remember that all this is not enough: to try to avoid death, that conversion must become plural: what is happening in our person and flesh must become social, I must tell at least one person about it and those around me who are involved in that conversion must see it and participate. A public penance is a promise, it is a testament.
The text then adds an important detail of the king's decree: "No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands”. (3:7-8) Not only must conversion translate into justice, economics and law (here there is all the prophetic tradition), but animals are also associated with that conversion, they too ‘are covered with sackcloth’. A truly prophetic passage (there is nothing ironic), if we think that today much more than in the time of the book of Jonah, animals are involved in the same fate as men, without being responsible for it. Animals and plants are not responsible for the ecological degradation of our time, but we will not be able to save ourselves without the involvement of all living species in solving the problem. So everyone, guilty and innocent, should wear sackcloth, as almost always happens in true conversions, where even those who subjectively have no guilt must behave as if they did because the conversion of those responsible alone is not enough to heal the wound - it is an essential part of the good craft of living to learn that sometimes we must participate in reparations for sins that are not ours. This participation of animals in the conversion of Nineveh is also biblical humanism, it is an expression of the culture of Shabbat: if on the ‘seventh day’ even animals participate in the rest of creation, if on that day even animals stops working, then the two works and the two destinies are intertwined and inseparable.
In the end, the king concludes his edict with these words: "Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish" (3:9) In the thousand steps necessary to reach salvation, the prophet, the people, the king, the animals can take the first 999 steps of conversion: but they do not control the last one, the last step is the step given by God, by Providence, by life, by someone who is outside the process - which then is also the first. As long as we manage to keep the last step of the processes of change out of our dominion, there is room on earth for true humility, for waiting, for hope, for meekness, for prayer. Much of the biblical faith lies in the awareness of this last decisive step that we do not control and therefore in the awareness that we possess the beginning of the processes, that we are free to take the second step after that of the prophet and then journey as far as the penultimate step. Ours are the women’s journey to the tomb and that of the disciples to Emmaus: but we are not the ones to empty the tomb, we do not create the third traveller. Faith in the resurrection remains alive as long as we are able to believe in a word, to embark on a journey of conversion, to reach the end and there, on the threshold, learn the stabat, in anticipation of God's final step. Happy Easter!
