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Y DDOLEN the LINK Cylchgrawn Plwyf Your Parish Magazine Awst 2021 August ______ Y DDOLEN THE LINK Cylchgrawn Plwyf Your Parish Magazine Awst 2021 August ____________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ PARISH OF PENARTH AND LLANDOUGH PLWYF PENARTHYG A LLANDOUCHAU £1.00 _________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS Father Mark writes: The Prophet who teaches about God without using Words! 3 Editorial 6 Admin Corner by Rachel Elder 7 FEATURES Ellacombe Day at St Augustine’s by Helen Kerbey 8 The Twelve Apostles – in Devon by Judith Martin-Jones 10 Commemoration of the Month: Mary Sumner, founder of 12 Mothers’ Union Mothers’ Union - St Augustine’s Branch and into the 14 Future by Viv Liles Econews from Tom Blenkinsop 16 FROM THE ARCHIVES Writing Letters from the Church Times of August 20th, 1971 18 FROM THE REGISTERS 21 PARISH DIRECTORY 22 With Music in Mind 23 2 FATHER MARK WRITES … The Prophet Who Teaches Us about God - Without Using Words! My last article probably prompted the putting on of many ‘thinking caps’ – this one is a little lighter, but no less stimulating, I hope! I want to talk today about the prophet Jonah, who is described in the short book (4 chapters, or just 2 pages in my Bible!) of the Old Testament with the same name. The account appears in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran, as well as the Christian Bible. Some people view the work as an historical document (placed somewhere between 793-753BC), claiming that Jonah was a contemporary of Amos and Hosea - whilst others view the account as parable or allegory, written much later. Whatever your view, it’s full of interesting things to mull over! It all starts off with a character called Jonah receiving the word of God. My research tells me that Jonah’s father was from a village in Galilee (Gath- hepher), about 5 km north of Nazareth, and that Jonah is reported to have been buried here - so it is likely that this is the location for the start of the story. God commands Jonah to go to Nineveh (which is approximately where Mosul in northern Iraq is today) - the largest city in the world at the time – and capital of the increasingly important Neo-Assyrian Empire. There he is to preach a message of impending judgement against the 120,000 pagan inhabitants. Jonah, however, has different ideas. Not keen on the idea of reprisals, presumably from turning up at the largest city on the planet and telling them they’ve got to change their ways, Jonah sets off in a different direction. Instead of going east to Iraq, Jonah wants to go west… as far west as was then known to his peoples - Tarshish may have been a town in Spain, close to the Straits of Gibraltar, Sardinia or Tunis. Jonah obtains passage on a ship at Jaffa (called Joppa in the accounts), and they set off. A huge storm arises, and the sailors discover ‘by casting lots’ that the cause is Jonah, who had previously admitted he was running away from his God. Jonah is questioned and he confirms that the storm is down to him. We then discover that Jonah is a man of bravery – he tells them to throw him overboard, that they might save their own lives. They are similarly resilient, and try for a long time to avoid this 3 outcome. Clearly human beings have something positive within them that God loves to see. Eventually they pray to the God of Israel for their lives, and that they not be held responsible for the loss of Jonah’s life. They eventually throw him overboard, and immediately the storm ceases. They are given supernatural verification of Jonah’s account. But this is not the end of Jonah. God has a purpose for him, and Jonah is famously rescued by being swallowed, and held, in the belly of ‘a great fish’ for 3 days and nights. Now we could get side-tracked here over what species could have swallowed him, but the whale shark and many types of whales are favourites. The real point is that (a) his life was saved, and (b) that Jonah had time to reflect on what he was doing. I think it is very interesting to compare the prophet Jonah, who refused to carry out God’s wishes (in fact he initially did the opposite!), with Jesus - who was afraid too, but who did what was asked of him. Both also spent 3 days, after a calamitous event, in pitch darkness, as far as outsiders were concerned, somewhere between life and death. Jonah eventually called out to God (from within ‘the belly of Sheol’, and he was vomited up near a beach to carry out the task that had originally been given him. Clearly Jonah was not in the actual Sheol of pre-500BC times (or he would have encountered all the others who had died before him), neither was he in the Sheol as envisaged between 500BC and 70AD (as the idea started to become more widespread in those days that there was indeed a distinction between the places where the good and the bad went before the Last Judgement). It appears that God has saved him, and also given him some time to reflect and gain perspective on what the important things in life really are. Having come face-to-face with death, what now does Jonah think it is important to do in life? We find out that Jonah believes that, on reflection, a good way to live life is always to have in mind the eternal and the divine - and thus he risks death by setting off for Nineveh. Jonah proclaims the destruction of Nineveh at God’s hand, but the people believe, and make a last-gasp effort to persuade God to do otherwise by repentance. God indeed changed his mind. And this is where the account again become interesting. In Christianity, Judaism and very especially in Islam, prophets have a certain character, and people are supposed to hold them in a certain light, and emulate them- after all, they are in a special position to tell us about the nature of God. In this account though, Jonah throws a wobbly! He is angry that God is merciful, and he tries to justify his former behaviour by saying that he didn’t really want to deliver the message anyway, since he knew it was all going to be a waste of time – God was always going to be merciful! That’s a good observation, Jonah! However, Jonah decides to be all emotional, stating that it’s better for him to die than to live in such a world, presumably because God has either made him look foolish, or because Jonah, like many 4 converts, has developed an incredible zeal, and a black and white attitude to everything. “Is it right for you to be angry?”, questions God, leaving the question hanging - and Jonah stomps off - setting up a makeshift shelter overlooking the city - where he can get a good view of any righteous destruction God might have in mind following Jonah’s righteous tantrum. Even though he’s having a tantrum, God provides for Jonah, and a large-leafed plant miraculously provides Jonah with shade from the strength of the sun and allows him to survive. Jonah is once again given time to reflect, this time overnight – and next morning, God forces the situation. The plant is suddenly removed through the action of some invertebrates! Sulky Jonah claims that he loved the bush and suggests that God didn’t have the right to take it away; that he didn’t have the right to decide about the life and death of the shrub - whereupon God remarks that the city lying there in front of them contains over a 120,000 people and thousands of animals - who don’t know their right hand from their left - and didn’t have the ability to argue their case with God as Jonah was – and yet God loved them regardless. It seems that the message from the Book of Jonah is not about Jonah at all – but about God – about his role as Creator and Sustainer of Life; about his ultimate power over life and death; about his compassion and care for all the organisms of the planet, sentient or otherwise. In human terms, regardless of nationality, language and religion - the Creator God shows His power, His sustaining of us, His love and His compassion for all. And he demonstrates all of this in how he deals with the not-very-likeable character of sulky Jonah – who, paradoxically, succeeds as a prophet - not by telling the reader more about God’s nature using his words - but through how we see God behaving towards him and others in the account. Jonah’s words about the nature of God are hardly even recorded in this book of the Bible – yet everywhere we discover the nature of the loving God who sustains and cares for all his creatures. It may seem difficult to understand why God chose Jonah in this account – but I think you’ll agree that because of this strange choice, we have discovered more about God from these two pages of the Old Testament than we could possibly have hoped for! God bless, Fr Mark 5 EDITORIAL You will have noticed (I hope!) that this month’s cover bears a picture of Jonah inside the whale and so, even for him, at a particularly climactic moment in his biography; the point of the cover, of course, is that it leads us into Father Mark’s reflection on the meaning of Jonah’s life and faith.
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