Homily for 3d Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the
3d Sunday
in Ordinary Time
Jan. 22, 2012
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10
Mark 1: 14-20
Collect
Christian Brothers, Iona College, N.R.

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying: ‘Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you” (Jon 3: 1).

In the Collect today we prayed that Almighty God “direct our actions according to [his] good pleasure.” The story of Jonah is an extended parable of human actions that accord with God’s “good pleasure.”

You’re familiar with the basic story of Jonah. Altho the book is listed among the prophetic books, it would more properly be called a wisdom book. It’s fiction—an extended parable, as I said, presenting to us divine wisdom, divine truth, in a story form that we can easily understand, much as Jesus used when telling us about a prodigal son, a good Samaritan, a farmer casting seed in his field, or a woman making bread.

In this very short book—4 chapters totaling 48 verses—God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and warn them of imminent doom because of their wickedness. Jonah doesn’t want to do that and takes off in the opposite direction. (No one in his right mind wants to be a prophet, of course. Nineveh, furthermore, was the capital of Assyria; the Assyrians were the hated and feared mortal enemies of Israel and of everyone else in the ancient Middle East.) A ferocious storm overtakes Jonah’s ship, the sailors appease God by throwing Jonah overboard, and a great big fish (there’s no whale mentioned) swallows him up. In the fish’s belly Jonah prays repentantly to God, the fish spits him ashore, and God tells him again to go to Nineveh—that’s our reading this evening. He goes this time, the Ninevites repent, and Jonah gets ticked off because God relents and doesn’t carry out the doom he’d threatened against the city. Jonah had rather been looking forward to watching the fire and brimstone. So God speaks to Jonah again, chastising him and explaining his compassion.

Jonah being cast overboard into the fish's maw: stone carving in the cathedral of St. Mary at Tournai, Belgium

What’s going on in this story is that God’s making known his “good pleasure,” to use the phrase from the Collect. And that “good pleasure” is that sinners should repent and be saved. To that end he sends Jonah on mission—to preach repentance. Jonah’s mission is a very particular expression of God’s “good pleasure.” In his compassion God even gives Jonah a 2d chance to carry out the divine will and assist the Ninevites in coming into line with God. God really desires that people be saved! He desires that everyone, even Israel’s mortal enemies, be saved. He’s extraordinarily patient with great groups of people, like the large city of Nineveh, and with particular individuals, like Jonah.

When the Ninevites repent of their sins—whatever they were, we’re not told, but the ancient Hebrew audience probably would understand them to be idolatry, warlike aggression, cruelty, sexual promiscuity—they take action, evidently more than fasting and putting on sackcloth. The sacred writer says, “They turned from their evil ways” (3:10). Genuine repentance, acting in accordance with God’s “good pleasure” rather than displeasing him, is implied, altho we’re not given any details beyond the outward symbols of their revised frame of mind—the sackcloth and the fasting.

What matters is that God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent and they took advantage of that chance. God was pleased with their change of heart—more than a change of heart, also a change of behavior!—and he bestowed salvation on them (as the Jews understood salvation at that time, viz., well-being in this life—in this case, no fire and brimstone).

God’s salvation is also the message in our gospel reading. The very 1st words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark’s Gospel are: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand” (1:15). That is, God is about to open up the path of salvation, the way to eternal life. Jesus continues by revealing how one gets onto that path: “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (1:15). That is, turn away from your sins, your evil behavior, just as the Ninevites did. In fact, in a controversy later on with the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus will hold up the Ninevites as examples of a proper response to the word of God: “At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here” (Matt 12:38,41).

“Repent” was John the Baptist’s message: confess your sins and change your behavior, e.g. by giving alms to the poor, respecting the rights of others, carrying out your own responsibilities (cf. Luke 3:10-14). Jesus’ message builds on that: sorrow for sin and a resolve to follow the Gospel, follow his own teaching about how much God loves us and how we are to share that love with everyone, even our enemies (cf. Nineveh!). Salvation comes not from our good deeds but from the Father’s forgiveness of our evil deeds and his empowering us—thru the Holy Spirit—to act like his children, to act like his Son. God’s “good pleasure” is still that people turn from evil and its consequences, and that we allow him to redeem us in Christ: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand.

Jesus calling the disciples at the lakefront, by an unknown artist

Jesus’ announcement that the time is ripe, that God’s power is present—how do we hear that now? How is the path opened up for us, too, to find our way to the kingdom of God? Jesus chose apostles, as God had chosen Jonah, to deliver the message of repentance and redemption. In the gospel this evening we hear Jesus starting to make those apostolic choices: “Come after me, come with me: and I will make you fishers of men; I will send you out on mission” (Mark 1:17). It’s God’s “good pleasure” that the Good News be preached everywhere thru all ages, that men and women be caught in the nets of God’s love by this new form of fishing. It’s God’s “good pleasure” that, like his beloved Son Jesus, “we may abound in good works,” as the Collect says; abound in deeds that reveal the kingdom of God present in our hearts, that reveal the mysteries of divine grace transforming us from sinners into saints. The Gospel announced to all the nations of the earth after Jesus’ earthly ministry by Simon and Andrew, by James and John, by their successors thru the ages into our own time by Benedict XVI and Abp. Tim Dolan—that Gospel continues to reveal God’s “good pleasure,” continues to reveal the kind of heart and the kinds of behavior that please God, the kind of heart and the kinds of behavior that closely resemble those of his beloved Son. And that Gospel continues to invite us to repent, to believe, to be converted, to be saved.