THE THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – B

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1:14-20

 

 

This is the only Sunday in the three-year cycle of readings that we hear from the Prophet Jonah.  Maybe that is not surprising since the book is short, only four brief chapters.  In some ways the book is a comic opera given the hapless and reluctant prophet that is Jonah.  Reluctant is the operative word.  God called Jonah to be a prophet to the people of Nineveh.  A people of longstanding animosity with Israel, Jonah wanted nothing to do with them and so fled by ship hoping to reach Tarshish and so escape God’s call.  You know what happened next.  God sent a storm that threatened to envelop the boat and sink it.  The mates on board saw the storm as a punishment from God but directed at whom? 

Jonah acknowledges that he is fleeing from God’s will so the storm is probably directed at him.  He offers himself to be thrown into the sea so that the ship will be spared.  Overboard he goes only to be swallowed by a giant fish in whose belly Jonah resides for three days.  Jonah repents from there.  God hears him and commands the fish to spew forth Jonah.  Sputtering on the shore, Jonah hears God’s message again: Set out for the great city of Nineveh and announce to it the message that I will give you.  The message?  In forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed – the epitome of a sermon of fire and brimstone.  Jonah expects his announcement to be ignored by the people of Nineveh and looks forward to finishing the three–day trek through the city so that he can climb the hill on the other side and from there watch the destruction of the detested people.

Imagine his consternation when, after a single day’s journey into the city, all the people hear the prophecy and repent, declaring a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.  Even their king repents.  And so does God.  Nineveh is spared, much to Jonah’s disappointment.  He so wanted to see the fireworks.  Instead, he witnesses God’s mercy and finally experiences that mercy in his own heart.

So, what is the point?  When we hear the word of the Lord, we ought to respond wholeheartedly.  But you have to wonder what was in the hearts of the people of Nineveh that they repented so quickly and thoroughly.  For what were they longing?  And isn’t Jonah the epitome of the judgmental haranguer?   In spite of Jonah’s hardness, God’s grace goes out through Jonah’s message and finds reception in the people’s hearts.  They hear a message of hope, theirs if they will only change their ways.

After John the Baptist had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.  His message, like Jonah’s is a call to repentance but without the threat of immanent destruction.  The word gospel means good news.  Jesus invites all who hear him to get ready for the time of fulfillment, what the prophets foretold, the coming of the reign of God.  If they change their lives and return to God’s ways they will experience God in their lives – God living not only among them but also in them.

The first thing we come to realize is that Jesus does not want to be the sole bearer of the good news.  He invites others to take up his ministry.  He calls the fishermen Simon and Andrew.  It would seem at their first hearing of the message they respond wholeheartedly.  Come after me, and I will make you fishers of humankind.  They will still be throwing out nets but not to ensnare fish.  Immediately Simon and Andrew abandon their former way of life and follow Jesus.  By the way, this does not imply that the brothers were living an evil life.  They were honest and hard workers.  It means that Jesus called them to something new and they held nothing back in responding.

The same holds true for the next pair of fishermen-brothers, James and John, who hear and immediately leave their father, Zebedee, and the crew of workers and follow Jesus.  One can’t help but wonder how thrilled Zebedee was with this turn of events.  But for the brothers Jesus was the answer to everything that they longed for and desired.  For them there was nothing else to do but answer his call.

Abandoned everything and followed Jesus.  Left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed Jesus.  The call goes forth and the response is total.  The example is for us to do the same.

You might ask what these men understood when Jesus invited them to follow him and become fishers of humanity.  Probably not very much and certainly not what they would come to understand to be the gospel.  They had a lot to learn.  Jesus must have had a magnetic personality.  Everywhere he spoke, crowds immediately gathered.  It is likely that those first called thought Jesus was the Messiah, the one who would restore Israel to power and drive out foreign rule.  Perhaps they imagined themselves as important personages in that coming realm.  That really doesn’t matter.  Jesus spoke.  They followed and they never looked back.  They would come to a whole new understanding of Messiah and experience God who does not want to be served but to serve.  They would be formed following the example that Jesus was before them.  They would come to understand that Jesus is the message that invites all people to experience a new unity with God and each other, a new peace.

For us, it is the same.  Whatever fascinates us about Jesus in the beginning doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that we recognize the call and dare to imagine that the message is for us.  What matters is our willingness to change our lives and conform them to Christ.  What matters is that we follow him and learn his ways.

That is what making this journey through the Liturgical Year can accomplish.  We hear the Gospel as living word.  We listen and let that good news that is Jesus take root in our hearts.  And we change and learn to do what Jesus does.  If Jesus is the norm, then imitating him must be our response.  Over time and with each gospel’s proclamation we will come to know more and more what that imitation means, what in us has to change.  It is not fear that draws us.  It is love.

I don’t know how long it is that we are walking in Jesus’ footsteps before we realize that his call is never for ourselves alone.  I don’t know when it is that we realize that the love that drew us must go out from us and draw others.  But I do believe that once we hear the rest follows.

That is why our lives soon begin to revolve around Sunday Eucharist.  We gather to be renewed in Jesus’ dying and rising, to take and eat the Body of Christ so that in the week ahead we find the strength and the courage to be fishers of people, catching them up in God’s love that comes to us through Jesus.  And inviting them to follow.

Sincerely,

Didymus