No sign but Jesus, a miscellany

With a new digital collage, "The sign of Jonah"

Gentle reader,

It’s rough out there.

It’s rough seas, and as we move through and try to love this broken, bleeding world, we’re easily cowed by death looming. We look to Jesus for some sign to navigate the way, and he gives us nothing but himself and so he gives us everything.

“… no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, because just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea creature for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. (Matthew 12:39-40).

In the midst of death, Jesus is here, bringing us signs of life, of new creation:

“When people asked him for ‘a sign from heaven’, he saw their request as a sign of unbelief. They wanted things to be obvious. The only sign he would give them, he said, was another prophetic sign: the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12.39). Jonah disappeared into the belly of the whale – and then came out alive, three days later. That, said Jesus, was the ‘sign’ that would tell his generation what was going on…Jesus’ ‘signs’ (John gives us a neat catalogue of them) were all about new creation: water into wine, healings, food for the hungry, sight for the blind, life for the dead. The other Gospels chip in with several more, including parties with all the wrong kind of people, indicating a future full of forgiveness. All these were forward-looking signs, declaring the new thing that God was doing. Was doing now.” — N.T. Wright, God and the Pandemic

From the belly of the fish, let us cry out to God, as we’re invited to pray together with Jonah:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.

The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.

When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.

Those who cling to worthless idols
    turn away from God’s love for them.
But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” (Jonah 2: 2, 5, 7-9)

Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin…He was not subject to death, since death came into the world through sin. He dies, therefore, because He took on Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the Father for our sakes…Wherefore death approaches, and swallowing up the body as a bait is transfixed on the hook of divinity, and after tasting of a sinless and life-giving body, perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up. For just as darkness disappears on the introduction of light, so is death repulsed before the assault of life, and brings life to all, but death to the destroyer. (John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Bk. 3.27)

“The sign of Jonah,” by Beth Felker Jones. In this collage, I’ve played with some watercolor whales and some traditional imagery linking the story of Jesus to that of Jonah. Feel free to download and share this image. Hi-res print products, without the watermark, are available at my Redbubble store.

“How many are your works, Lord!
    In wisdom you made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious,
    teeming with creatures beyond number—
    living things both large and small.
There the ships go to and fro,
    and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.” (Psalm 104:24-26)

Inside the Blues Whale
By Afaa Michael Weaver

1978-1979
for Vincent Woodard

It is not just my problem. It belongs
to us all. I have been cajoled into
coming to the emergency room where
everything scares me. Black folk
shoot and cut each other until they end
here where guards have guns. I refuse
to be taken upstairs and locked away.
I was trying to think of a poem. It got me
to this place. With my mother, I stand
against the wall, guards on either side.
They have guns, and this is my mother.
It is now everybody’s problem. A bird
is singing in my hair, more important
than Thorazine. My head is a tree
stretching its leaves to burn in the sun.
They say if I make a treaty to take
the medicine, I can leave with my family
since my family is crazy. I look at the guns
on the hips of the guards and know I must
be as still and quiet as death or this will
turn into psychosis as sick as nightmares.
I am angry that they would have me here
with my mother, angry at white doctors.
I am in a whale in the ocean. Who can
swim out to me? Who can cast a line?
If I take out the first guard by breaking
his neck, I can protect my mother, but
it is more important that we are all now
underwater, inside a whale who laughs.
Later the therapist they say likes me
keeps talking about the appointment.
She is doing something subliminal with
the word “come,” repeating, repeating.
She leans to me when she says it.
It bothers me that such people think
crazy people are stupid, but it is more
important that my head is a tree
with a bird singing in it inside a whale
in the ocean. The most important thing
of all is that this whale that ate us
likes to laugh a lot. He has the blues.

Afaa Michael Weaver, “Inside the Blues Whale” from Multitudes: Poems Selected & New (Sarabande Books, 2000).

Books featured in this post:

Grace & peace,

BFJ

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