Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for March 31, 2010

Beautiful. Classic Wiley moment.

If he didn’t walk…could have used the Remax balloon.

Joe, I doubt that the point is to “make fun” of Passover Week, but that the advent of Passover combined with the rotten economy (and people actually walking away from mortgages) has just inspired this weird take on Moses. It’s irreverent, but still rather clever.

Well, I like it, even though I’m sometimes the one standing in front of the congregation, reading this very story in the Easter vigil. Nothing wrong with a good religious joke.

It only gets offending when jokes are used as anti-religious propaganda without real background information. I’m actively roman catholic and know well enough what’s going wrong in my church, I don’t need outsiders to point their fingers.

But as I said, jokes like this one are always welcome.

BTW, learning from the Bible, what do you do when an angel appears and tells you not to be afraid?

RUN!

There is not a single occurence like this in the Bible that doesn’ mean work or trouble or both!

Ah, the famous parting of the In-the-red Sea. It may well be Passover, but they appear to be passing under…

Actually, I’d say they were just passing through…

I’m a nit picking @#$!%.

Symbolically great. Absolutely liberating.

Passover , second biggest bailout the World will ever Witness .

@ Jungverdorben

Well said! I am not at all religious, actually I’m an atheist, but I always respect those who can laugh at themselves. That goes for any individual or group of people, not just the religious crowd. As long as jokes are tasteful and are not hateful go ahead and laugh at yourself!

Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused!

I think it’s great and provocative. One word that has yet to be used this morning is “exodus,” in both applications.

@ vexatron

Aren’t atheists that non prophet denomination?

Thanks Wiley, great strip today!

This is a more subtle cartoon than you might think–many people stuck with “upside down” mortgages (where the buyer has little/no equity and owes much more than the house is ever going to be worth) are starting to look at just walking away (also known as “strategic default”) as a path to freedom. This is starting to put some fear into the banking industry, to the point where they’re trying to tell people it’s somehow morally wrong to exercise the default clause in their mortgage contracts (of course, banks do this kind of thing all the time when they decide they don’t need a building; they just don’t want their customers doing it).

The phrase “Let my fellow mortgagees go!” didn’t have as much cachet so a quick rewrite and ….. Charlton Heston strode forth.

No it’s not a knock at religion, except the religion of greed - the pharoah being the CEO of Wells Fargo I presume.

Not Wells Fargo - Barclay’s.

jsprat, I went ROFL on that “non-prophet” remark! Good one!

Passover concerns the time the Jews were faced with the final plague God sent on Egypt to free them. They were commanded to mark the doorways of their houses with lambs blood so that the Angel of death would “pass over” their house. Thus their first born were spared. Nothing to do with the Red Sea except in the media sense that you get the “10 Commandments” on TV every Resurrection Day week. Wiley’s merely indulging in the TV traditions. The Crucifixition occurred on the passover holiday week, giving a new meaning to the lamb’s blood and the reprieve from death.

LOL, dogsniff.

Yes, jack75287, that is absolutely right.

Moses & Co. made it through, but it left the Egyptians in the Red (sea)

Moses, you put $10,000 down on a $400’000 house at variable rate. Does it take a prophet to see what’s going to happen?

HA! love this one.

walked away from his mortgage and spent 40 years in the wilderness.

Bless Moses for making the Red Sea open wide enough and let those people walk through from start to end.

The Hebrews are escaping Pharaoh Madoff and his pyramid scheme.

@ Jungverdorben :

“BTW, learning from the Bible, what do you do when an angel appears and tells you not to be afraid?

RUN!

There is not a single occurence like this in the Bible that doesn’ mean work or trouble or both!”

I don’t understand the comment in light of Jesus birth. There are several angelic appearances recorded in the birth narratives alone.

@ Jungverdorben Elijah (1 kings 19) and Jonah tried your plan. it turns out that running away from an omnipresent God is more difficult than one might think.

As I recall, from the Gospel of Luke, the Shepherds were told “Fear not!” They feared naught, and obeyed. I don’t recall any untoward events in their respect.

Phil, dude, please its a comic. Its a satirical play on a literary character and event (red flag to some I’m sure). Please look at it again and smirk

@ Phil @POPPA

ok, I was exagerating. The shepherds did their little cameo and were alowed to go home again. But who knows, maybe they spent the next few days trying to gather their sheep again? Just thinking…

And for Elijah and Jonah: well, I admit that running away might not be the best idea. Maybe it would be better to kindly refuse the offer. We once had an interesting discussion among young believers about Mary and her first encounter of the angelic kind (again, “Fear not!”). Soon we started to wonder if Mary was really the chosen one or only the first not to fight back too much. We even asked our priest about it and he could’t help but laugh. We weren’t even threatened with hell or something!

Sometimes I wish the critics would just be there to witniss once in a while…

those mortgages, scary….

Jungverdorben, I got your joke. Really, though, it’s more when someone gets a blessing in the bible. Just look at Abraham or Jacob got blessings.

BTW, how did you get so verdorben, and how did it happen so jung?

Sigh.

Y’know, there was a time when this was just a comic strip…

@NightShade, last I checked, it still was. Just with lots of entertaining comments and dialogue…

jack75287 said, about 8 hours ago

The Lord said let my people go from low variable rate home mortgages that the Democrats demanded by calling the people who fought them racist and are now being blamed.

—-

I don’t remember the Democrats specifically demanding that all those subprime mortgages be rolled up into derivatives with an abnormally high stability rating either.

Don’t be under that particular tract of houses of derivative cards when it comes crashing down. There’s nothing in it, and it’ll be really ugly.

Remember, if they want to evict you, they have to come up with the original note that you signed, to do it! (And after a few trades and consolidations, it ain’t there!)

For G’d’s sake, this IS Wiley - at his best. Far from the first time that he has visited Moses with humor in mind.

If you can’t handle this you should not be allowed to read Non Sequitur! Check with your parents.

Inasmuch as they were slaves of the Egyptian rulers, Moses and the Jews did not have to worry about mortgages or the ancient equivalents thereof.

Actually, the most recent archeological evidence from Egypt is being interpreted as showing that the workers of Goshen who built the pyramids - whether Moses people or not - were well treated and (probably) paid workers who lived in rather close proximity to the resident Egyptians of similar class. Hardly a slave’s life, exactly. And yes, this is a story that is far from settled.

@ cdward google it, if you dare ;)