“Our Enemy Is Not God’s Enemy”
Our Scripture readings today simply tell us that we must believe in the Gospel, we must repent and change our bad attitudes and our actions NOW and not wait until a more convenient time that may never come. Life is so fragile especially nowadays during this time of pandemic. Death is all around us. We are also called to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to all peoples. – this is Jesus’ missionary objective in a nutshell.
Each Sunday at Mass as we hear the readings from Sacred Scripture - we are called to renew our promise to follow Christ, the true Word of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Unfortunately, some people - when they leave the church, they don’t even remember what was said during Mass…as if the Word of God proclaimed was not important to them. Some hear the Word but do not act on it. To describe their attitude – with all due respect, using the language we often hear people say especially from the young ones – they seem to say: “WHATEVER..”
My brothers and sisters - The kingdom of God is at hand. Eternal life begins now… we must not live as if we are saying to God’s call to us: Whatever…
We must show, by the way we live out our lives, that, like the apostles, we have heard the call of the Lord and have decided to follow Him to the end.
To each one of us the Lord says, “follow me” every day, not only on Sundays. He asks us to do so with the same eagerness and generosity that Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John showed… as we heard in the Gospel.
The Lord knows that as we live in this world, we have so many other obligations to meet. But our primary obligation should be - our own conversion… conversion of our minds and hearts.
Conversion comes in different ways to different people but let me just use our first reading from the Book of Jonah as an illustration of God’s call for our own conversion.
In our first reading, we heard a short part from the Book of Jonah. The book of Jonah is a story intended primarily to teach a moral lesson. Like the parables of Jesus, it sounds like a story about someone else - but it is really about us.
The whole story is very interesting… you should read it, very short, only two pages… God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach to the people about repentance.
Just to give you a background to help you realize how difficult this calling was for Jonah.
Jonah was a Hebrew and the Hebrews despised the Assyrians because they conquered and destroyed Israel. The Assyrians tortured the people… they are immoral as far as the Hebrews are concerned.
Of all the places, God called Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria.
So, Jonah, instead of going east to Nineveh, Jonah went west. I’m sure we can all relate with this part of the story. God tells us to go one direction, so we go the other direction.
Jonah hoped that if he ran away from the Lord, the Lord would look for someone else for this difficult mission.
Running out of land as he headed away from Nineveh, Jonah took a boat out into the Mediterranean Sea. A storm came and the crew found out that Jonah was trying to avoid the mission that God had called him to… they tossed him overboard, a large fish came and gobbled Jonah up whole…. Eventually he ended up back on the shore…
This time, Jonah realized that he had no choice but to journey to Nineveh and tell the people there that God's wrath is going to come upon them due to their immorality. Now, the reading says, Nineveh is a large city, it took three days to walk through it. But after only one day, the people heard Jonah's message and repented, even the king, and prayed that God would have mercy on them. The Lord wanted their conversion. God did not want their death. So, God did not carry out his plans.
Now this really infuriated Jonah. He told the people that they were all going to die, just as God told him to proclaim, and it seemed God changed his mind.
Angrily, Jonah went into the desert east of the city, built a hut for himself and waited to see if God would change his mind again and, this time, destroy Nineveh… which Jonah wanted or preferred to happen.
The miracle in the book of Jonah is not Jonah's surviving for three days in the belly of the big fish. The miracle is that God sent a Hebrew prophet to preach repentance and forgiveness to the pagan city of Nineveh, the capital city of the much-hated Assyrians… showing that Israel's God is everyone's God!
Practical application - It is a very difficult thing for most of us to learn that God is not the enemy of our enemy. So, think of the people you do not like, your own enemies, your own Assyrians, your Ninevites…the people you cannot stand. God wants us to learn that He loves our enemies as much as He loves you and me.
The story of Jonah is also more than the story of God’s attempt to convert the city of Nineveh. It is also the story of God’s attempt to convert the prophet Jonah himself, and all of us. This is a story of God’s effort to change Jonah’s mind and heart, to challenge him beyond his prejudice, to widen his narrow view of God’s grace, and to move him outside of his own comfort zone.
And so, if we listen, it is the story of God’s effort to convert us in the same way…
to challenge us beyond our prejudice, beyond our preconceived ideas of what reality is, of who and what God is.
to widen our narrow view of God’s grace
and to move us outside of our own comfort zone; to change our bad habits and bad attitudes.
Just as God would not give up on Assyria, despite their stubborn evil, God would not give up on Jonah, despite his stubborn narrowness and anger. In the end, the Ninevites repented. In fact, very ironic,as the story concludes, only one person is left unconverted—the prophet Jonah himself.
The book of Jonah ends with God attempting to invite Jonah to join the city in the joy of God’s grace and mercy. Like Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, which ends with the father outside the house begging the older son to join the party, because his younger brother was lost but was found… We do not know if older brother eventually went inside the house to join his Father in celebration.
Similarly - Jonah’s story ends without a clear resolution. Did Jonah convert? Did he learn his lesson? Did he come down into the city to dance in joy for the grace of God that had come to them all, or did Jonah remain on the hillside fuming, refusing the love of God if it included people like the Assyrians, he hated?
Perhaps the story ends unfinished because God wants us to finish it for ourselves. Like the story of the older brother of the prodigal son, so, which way will we choose? There is a party of God’s grace going on, and it includes people whom we think do not deserve it, such as people we do not like. And the question, the invitation, is for us. Will we join the party? Well, will we?
God bless…
