JONA
- en barneandakt av Harald
Kaasa Hammer
(CREDO 15/1977 / Knattholmen 2012)
Jeg skal fortelle om Jona.
Han levde flere hundre år før Jesus ble født.
Jona var profet. En profet er en som får et spesielt budskap fra Gud å gå med.
Nå satt Jona på en haug utenfor den store
byen og gråt. Gud var hos ham. “De vil ikke tro på meg,” sa Jona. “Etter det
som er skjedd, vil de ikke tro på meg.”
“Det er ikke så farlig om de ikke tror på deg,”
sa Gud. “Nå tror de jo på meg.”
“Jeg visste det ville gå slik,” sa Jona og
pustet tungt. “Åhh, det har skjedd så mye de siste
dagene. Jeg skjønner ingen ting.”
“Nei,” sa Gud rolig. “Bare gråt du.”
Jeg skal fortelle hva som hadde skjedd. Det
er litt rart. Jona var den eneste profeten som opplevde at folk hørte på ham,
og vendte om. Men Jona ville gjerne være som de store profetene, sånn som
Jesaja og Esekiel. Dem var det ingen som hørte på.
Noen dager før hadde Gud kommet til Jona og
sagt: “Gå inn i den store byen og si at de må vende
om. De er så onde mot hverandre. Jeg kan ikke se rolig på det lenger.”
“Å, nei!” sa Jona. “Det kan jeg ikke. De vil
ikke høre på lille meg. Hvem er vel jeg?”
“Jeg har sendt deg,” sa Gud.
“Ja, men hør nå her! Tenk på hvem du sender
da, hvem vil høre på det jeg sier?”
Men Gud sa ikke mer. Han hadde sagt nok.
Jonas kjente at han ble helt tom inne i seg.
Redd ble han også. Så solgte han huset sitt og eselet sitt, og begynte å gå mot
havet.
Han gikk først gjennom Ninive, den store
byen. Han kjente at han fikk vondt inne i seg. I en grøft lå en mann og gråt.
Kongen hadde tatt gården hans. Oppe fra et vindu hørte han en kvinne som skrek
- og brølene fra mannen som slo henne. Midt i en klynge av barn, lå en liten
stakkar og snufset neseblod.
“Å, Herregud, de tenker bare på seg selv alle
sammen,” sa Jona.
“Ja, alle sammen,” sa Gud.
Da lukket Jona munnen, for han forstod hva
Gud mente.
Jona kom seg ned til havnen i Joppe, og gikk og så på båtene.
“Hvor skal du hen, da?” spurte Gud.
“Åhh, kan du ikke
la meg være alene!” knurret Jona.
“Vil du det?” spurte Gud.
Jona klarte ikke å svare, og gikk oppgitt
videre.
Han så en lasteskute, som hadde heist flagget
til Tarsis, og spurte om å få være med. Den gang var
de redde for passasjerer som hadde farlige guder etter seg, så skipperen spurte
først hvem Jona var og hva han skulle.
“J-jeg heter e-- Petter,” sa Jona. Så gjorde
han seg kjekk. Han dultet skipperen i siden og fortsatte: “Jeg skulle se om
dere hadde en bedre gud borte hos dere.”
“Jasså?” hvisket
Gud i øret hans.
“La meg få fred!” tenkte Jona.
“Freden har du hos meg,” hvisket Gud. “Du ser
jo at du må begynne å lyve og bedra så snart du går bort fra meg.”
Jona hadde ikke noe å svare nå heller.
Skipperen smilte, og ville gjerne ha ham med
som passasjer. Så seilte de av sted.
Men da de var kommet ut på havet, kom det en
voldsom virvelvind. Bølgene slo inn i båten, så den holdt på å fylles. Men Jona
lå og sov på en pute bak i båten. Mannskapet vekket ham og sa til ham: “Petter!
(De visste jo ikke hva han egentlig het.) Petter! Bryr du deg ikke om at vi går
under?” Da reiste Jona seg og så at vinden og sjøen truet.
Og han så alle øynene som stirret på ham.
“Ja, det er sant,” sa han fortvilet. “Det er
min skyld. Det er jeg som rømmer fra guden min. Dere får kaste meg over bord,
så berger dere livet.”
Men det skulle han ikke ha sagt. For de
gjorde det med en gang.
Der lå Jona og plasket og harket og hostet og
spyttet midt ute på havet. Stormen var stilnet, og han så skipet gli langsomt
bort i kveldsbrisen.
“Å, Herregud!” skrek Jona, og plasket med
armene.
“Ja,” sa Gud.
Da ble Jona så forskrekket at han sank igjen.
“Herre, hjelp!” hostet han da han kom opp
igjen.
“Ja,” sa Gud.
Jona trådde vannet.
Så steg et fjell opp av havet. Det sto en
svær vannstråle til værs, og Jona så rett inn i et grådig gap. Nå var alt håp
ute.
“Herre, du sa jo at du skulle hjelpe!”
“Ja,” sa Gud.
“Men ser du ikke at jeg blir slukt?”
“Jo. Jeg gjør det på min måte, jeg.”
“Du pleier det,” sa Jona. Men så rykket han
til: “Du har vel ikke tenkt at hvalen skal sluke meg?”
“Jo,” sa Gud.
Men da fikk Jona panikk. “Du vet vel at ingen
kan overleve i en hvalmage!” ropte han.
“Denne hvalen har jeg sendt,” sa Gud.
Så fosset Jona inn i hvalgapet. Han ble sugd
ned gjennom halsen, og kastet rundt i hvalmagen. Jona var roligere nå, men han
slo seg både her og der.
“Nå er du trygg, for nå er du i min plan,” sa
Gud. “Nå har du fred.”
“Fred? Sa du fred? Jeg slår meg både gul og
blå, --- og grønn blir jeg i fjeset.” Jona kastet opp. Og så sukket han til Gud:
“Jeg har hørt at alt skulle være glede og fred og lovsang hos deg, jeg.”
“Å, nei du,” nå var det Gud som sukket. Og
sukket runget gjennom den store hvalmagen. “Du er trygg hos meg, fordi jeg er
sterkest. Men så lenge det er ondskap og sorg i verden, har jeg det vondt, og da
vil de som er hos meg ha det vondt også.”
I tre døgn ble Jona ristet og knadd i hvalens
mage, - men så begynte hvalen å hoste.
“Kanskje jeg har smittet deg,” smilte Jona.
Men han smilte ikke lenge. Han ble slengt ut gjennom halsen, og PLASK ned på en
sandstrand. Der lå han og dro pusten, fillete og forslått, og lurte på om han
levde.
Etter en stund klarte han å løfte hodet.
Han likte ikke det han så.
Tak, tårn, Ninive, den store byen.
Og han som trodde det var over nå.
“Du gir deg ikke,” sukket Jona.
“Pleier jeg det?” spurte Gud.
Jona gikk inn i byen, innover og innover. En
hel dag vandret han forbi gråt og sorger, forbitrelse og forbannelser. Han gikk
fremover mot lyder i det fjerne: sang og trommer, basuner og harper. Det var
fest på slottet. Kongen hadde nemlig fått tak i det siste jordstykket i landet.
Nå eide han alt.
Jona glemte helt å se seg for, og gikk rett
på kongens vaktmann. Vakten grep Jona i den fillete skjorta og brølte: “Hvem
tror du du er?”
“Jeg? - Jeg er Jona, Guds sendebud til
kongen. Han må vende om.” Jona hørte seg selv si det.
"Ha!" sa vakten. “Den var god,” sa
han. “Den må kongen få høre!”
Vakten tok Jona med inn i tronsalen. Kongen måtte
le da han fikk se den fillete sveklingen midt mellom alle de stivpyntede
gjestene.
Kongen løftet hånden til stillhet. Dette
kunne bli morsomt.
Jona stotret og stammet: “Jeg skulle hilse
fra Gud og si at Ninive må vende om. Ellers må han ødelegge byen.”
Kongen stirret på Jona. Lenge.
Damene begynte å fnise. Mennene flirte.
“Stille!” brølte kongen.
“Gå hjem alle sammen. Festen er slutt.”
Da kom statsministeren bort til kongen: “Hva
går det av deg?” spurte han.
“Du,” sa kongen. “Hvis det hadde kommet en
mektig, myndig profet - sånn som Jesaja eller Esekiel - da hadde jeg sagt:
‘Ikke blås deg opp!’ - Men denne sveklingen her! Han hadde aldri turt å komme
hit av seg selv. Gud må ha sendt ham! - Kall hele byen til omvendelse. Jeg skal
også omvende meg. Halvdelen av det jeg eier skal jeg gi til de fattige, og har
jeg presset penger av noen, skal han få firedobbelt igjen.”
Så satt Jona der utenfor byen. Han forstod
ingen ting. Her hadde Gud kalt ham til profet, og så hørte de på ham! Folk
pleide ikke det. Jona kunne ikke annet enn å gråte.
“De vil ikke tro meg! De vil ikke tro at det
var sant det jeg sa, når byen ikke blir ødelagt likevel. Jeg visste at du ikke
ville ødelegge den byen.”
“Jasså,” sa Gud.
Da lot Gud et tre vokse opp over Jona, der
han satt i solsteiken. Jona tørket bort svetten. Han smilte opp mot treet og de
tette bladene. Han tørket tårene og hadde det godt.
Da lot Gud treet visne.
Jona gråt over treet.
“Hvorfor er gledene så korte hos deg, Gud?”
“Jona,” sa Gud stille. “Du gråter over dette
treet, som ikke er ditt en gang. Skulle ikke jeg gråte over alle menneskene i
denne byen? De er jo mine. Og så alle dyrene da! De er også mine. - Si meg en
ting Jona: Ville du virkelig at jeg skulle ofre dyr og mennesker, bare for at
du skulle bli en profet som de andre profetene?”
“Du har alltid rett du, Gud,” sa Jona.
“Ja,” sa Gud.
“Jeg gråter likevel jeg,” sa Jona.
“Ja, gjør det du,” sa Gud. “Nå er du hos meg.
Og nå er du i min plan.”
JONAH, told
by Harald Kaasa Hammer (Credo
15:1977, translated 1996)
I want to tell you
about Jonah. He lived several years before Jesus. He was a prophet. A prophet
is a man who carries a special message from God. People hardly listen to
prophets.
Jonah was sitting
on a hill outside the big city. He was crying. God was with him. “They won’t
believe me,” he said. “After all that happened, they won’t believe me.” “Does
it matter?” God asked. “Does it matter if they don’t believe you? The fact is
that now they believe in me!”
“I knew it would end
up like this,” Jona sighed. “So much has happened
these last days. I am not capabel to understand it.”
“No,” God comforted
him, “but it helps to cry, my friend.”
Would you like to
know what had happened? After all, it is quite odd, the whole story. You see,
Jonah was the only prophet ever who experienced that people followed his
warnings. That’s why he was so confused. Jonah wanted to be like the great
prophets.
Some days earlier,
God came to Jonah and said, “I want you to go into the great city of Niniveh, and tell the people to make amends. They are so
cruel to each other. I cannot bear it any longer.”
“Oh, no, please
no,” Jonah said. “I can not do that. They won’t
listen to me. Who am I?”
“I am sending you,”
God said.
Jonah protested:
“Wait a minute! Consider who you are sending. Who will listen to what I say?”
But God gave no
argument. He had told Jonah enough.
Jonah got quite
empty. Empty and afraid. He sold his house and his
donkey and started to walk towards the sea.
First he walked
through the great city of Niniveh. He was hurt by
what he saw. In the ditch lay a man, crying. The king had taken his farm. Out
from a window he heard the scream of a woman, and her yelling husband trashing
her. In a crowd of shouting children, a little boy sniffed the blood from his
nose.
“Oh, Lord, they are
just thinking of themselves all of them,” Jonah whispered.
“Yes, every single
of them,” God answered.
Jonah shut his
mouth. He had got the point.
Jonah reached the harbour in Joppa, and went along the quays looking on the
ships. “Where are you supposed to go?” God asked.
“Oh, leave me in
peace,” Jonah murmured.
“Do you want me
to?” God asked.
Jonah had no
answer. He closed his ears and went on.
Atop a freighter he
saw a Tarshi flag. He went up to the captain and
asked if he would take him on as a passenger. Back then, people feared
strangers, who could be running away from dangerous gods. So the captain asked
Jonah for his name and his purposes.
“Eh, my name is eh
P-peter,” Jonah stuttered. Then he made himself more brave,
slapped the captain on his back and winked his eye at him: “I would like to see
if you have a better god back where you live.”
The captain stared
at him some seconds.
God whispered to
Jonah: “So that’s what your
up to?”
“I said I wanted
peace,” Jonah muttered.
“Only by me you
will have peace,” God said. “You can see for yourself, how you start to lie and
cheat as soon as you leave me.”
Again, Jonah had
nothing to object.
The captain,
however, was not aware of voices inside Jonah. He felt that Jonah would be a
good passenger, and let him on board.
The ship set sails,
and went out of the harbour. But then a furious
squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly
swamped. Jonah was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.
The crew woke him
and said to him, “Peter (they did not know his real name), don’t you care if we
drown?”
Jonah got up an was rebuked by his conscience.
“It is true,” he said i despair, “it is me beeing hunted by my God. You’d better throw me into the
sea, so you can survive.”
He should not have
said that. They did it at once.
And there in the
middle of the sea he splashed, spitting and coughing. The wind had died down
and it was completely calm, and the ship glided away in the smooth evening
breeze.
But then he got
panic: “Oh, Lord!” he cried.
“I am here,” God
said.
That frightened
Jonah even more, and he sank with lifted arms. “Lord, help me!” he coughed when
he reached the surface again.
“I will,” God said.
Jonah treaded
water, waiting.
Then a huge
mountain rose next to him. An immens jet of water was
sprouted up in the air. Jonah looked into an enormous set of jaws. Now the end
had come!
“Lord, you said you
would help me!”
“Yes, I did,” God
said.
“But don’t you se I’m close to be swallowed?”
“I’m doing things
my way,” God said.
“You usually do,” Jona said. But then he panicked again: “Do you mean the
whale to swallow me?”
“I do,” God said.
“But don’t you know
that nobody can survive in the whales stomack?”
“I sent this whale,”
God said.
A big wave sloshed
Jonah into the chops of the beast. He was thrown through the throut, and found himself in the bottom of the belly. He
was calmer now, though he was badly bruised all over his body.
“Now you may relaxe,” God said. “You are back in my plan. Now you have
peace.” “Peace!” Jonah laughed scornfully. “Do you call this peace? I’m beaten
black and blue, and green of sickness.” Jonah vomitted. “I was told that by you people should
experience happiness, joy and songs of praise.”
Now it was God in
term to sigh. His sigh echoed in the great whale stomach. “You are told wrong,
Jonah. You are safe with me, because I am the stronger one. But as long as
there is evel and unjustice
in the world, I suffer and worry, and so will my companions, if they ceep close to me.”
Jonah spent the
next three days and nights in the whale’s big belly. Then the beast began to
cough. “Are you infected by me?” Jonah laughed. But it was no time for jokes.
Jonah was thrown out of the throat, and smashed down on a beach. Once more he
thought he was dead. He lifted a finger, a hand, and raised his head. He did
not like what he saw. Roofs, towers - the great city of Niniveh.
“You don’t give up
easily,” he sighed.
“Do I ever?” God
said.
Jonah entered the
city. He walked and walked. A whole day he walked through crying, cursing and
despair. From far away he heard a sound: singing and trumpets. The king
celebrated at his great castle. He had taken the last piece of land. Now he was
the owner of every square inch of the nation.
Jonah did not watch
his steps. He bumped into the kings guard.
The guard grabbed
Jonah by his raggy coat and yelled: “Who do you think
you are?” “I-I-I am Jonah, a messenger of God. He sent
me to the king, to make him make amends.”
The guard rocked in
a rough laughter. “Oh, that’s a good one. The king must hear this one!”
He pulled Jonah
into the great hall where lots of guests surrounded the happy king on his
throne.
The king burst into
laughter when he saw the poor creature in the midst of all his splendour. He raised his hand, and the hall fell silent.
“Hi, you wommit!” he shouted. Jonah, still dangling
in the grip of the guard, stuttered his mission: “I bring you a message from
God. The people must repent. If they don’t, he will destroy the city.”
The king gave Jonah
a long look. The ladies of the court began to giggle. The men were sneering.
“Silence!” the king
shouted. “Go home, everybody. The party is over.”
The guests were
paralyzed.
The prime minister
went up to the king: “What’s with you?”
“Look,” said the
king, “if one of the great prophets had come with such a message, an Isaiah or
a Jeremiah, I would have told them to cool down. But this
wretch here. He would never dare to come here by his own. God must have
sent him. So. Tell all the people of the city that
they must make amends. Half of my possesions I will
give to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay
back four times the amount.”
And now, Jonah is
sitting on the hill, looking out over the city. He did not understand a thing.
God made him a prophet, and then the people listened to him. They shouldn’t.
They did not do so to the great prophets.
Jonah could not
help crying. “They won’t believe me. They won’t believe what I said, when the
city will not be ruined. I knew you would not ruin it!”
“You did what?” God
asked.
God made a three
grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head. Jonah dried his sweat. He looked
up at the three and smiled. He dried his tears and felt comfortable. Then God
let the three wither. Jonah wept over the three. “Why are the
joy so short by you, God?”
“Jonah,” God said,
“you are crying over a three that does not even belong to you. Shouldn’t I then
cry over the people of this city? They are mine. Tell me, Jonah, did you really
want me to sacrifice them to make you a great prophet?”
“You are always
right, aren’t you, Lord?” Jonah said.
“Yes, I always am,”
said God.
“I cannot help
crying,” Jonah said.
“You do that,” God
said, “you are mine.”