Well today brings our journey with this most inept prophet to an end. The image on today's blog is one of Jonah in the Sistine Chapel. with him under the shelter of the short-lived plant and a fish nibbling on his leg... Given his longing for judgement to rain down on Nineveh, I find it interesting that his painting is perched just above Michelangelo's troubling "Last Judgement" that he painted some 30 years after the chapel ceiling, including dear old Jonah.... Was the artist saying something to the princes of the church who at the time it was painted would have entered opposite the Last Judgement and have seen Jonah and this frightening tableaux (which I am told includes images of a few of his opponents in the Vatican within it)? I don't know, and I won't get into this today in Belfast South, but sometimes I think that artists understand Jonah better than preachers... There is perhaps too much of him in many of us...
(Jonah comes in gasping and covered in
sun-block)
I just don't believe it! A few weeks
ago I was drowning in water... Now I'm gasping for it... Any chance of a drink?
(Takes drink) Ah! That hits the spot!
Anyway... Did you get my postcard,
from sunny Nineveh? Dreadful place! Give me Belfast any day. But you'll never
guess what happened after I wrote the postcard... There I was, I'd done what
God had asked me to... I'd told the Ninevites exactly what God thought of
them... I didn't miss them and hit the wall, let me you! I told them they had
40 days before God was going to destroy them... And you should have seen their
faces. They knew their number was up. I'd really got to them... They started
weeping and wailing, and did the old sack-cloth and ashes bit. Its always the
same; tell people they're doomed and they start on about how dreadfully sorry
they are... Well, I said, it’s too late... 40 days and you've had your chips.
40 days later I pack my bag and head
out into the desert to the east of the city, and sit myself down on a hill to
watch the fireworks...
And nothing... I knew it. I knew that
once God saw all their tears and heard how "dreadfully sorry" they
were he would change his mind. Too soft, that’s what he is.
I sat there all day in the shade of a
bush... furious with God... well could you blame me... Why did he bother with
all that palaver about the big fish and everything only to have me go to
Nineveh and make a liar of me? Why didn't he just let me drown? I told him! I
didn't miss him and hit the wall either. Just let me die, I said, there's no
point in living any more. And I went to sleep.
But as if that wasn't bad enough, the
next day when I woke the bush I'd been sitting under was dead... and the wind
was whipping up a sandstorm, and the sun was beating down... And that was it,
the final straw. How dare God treat one of his servants like that, and yet let
the Ninevites off scot free! If that's how he treats his friends its little
wonder he has so few of them! The only comfort I had was one, single, solitary
bush, and he had let it die. Just let me die too, I said...
And all God said was "What’s more
important? Plants or people?"
I really don't know what he meant...
Selah
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