O.T. III SUNDAY JONAH 3: 1-5, 10; I COR 7: 29-31; MARK 1:14-20

The story of Jonah and the Whale is one of the oddest accounts in the Bible. God commanded Jonah to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. Jonah found this order unbearable. Nineveh was known for its wickedness. It was also the capital of the Assyrian empire, one of Israel's fiercest enemies. Jonah was a stubborn fellow so did just the opposite of what he was told. He went down to the seaport of Joppa and boarded a ship to Tarshish, heading directly away from Nineveh. 

God did not want to leave him. God sent a violent storm, which threatened to break the ship to pieces. The terrified crew cast lots and found that Jonah was responsible for the storm. The waves got stronger and higher. The sailors finally tossed Jonah into the sea, and the water immediately grew calm. But, Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. In the belly of the whale, Jonah repented and cried out to God in prayer.

Jonah was in the giant fish three days. God commanded the whale, and it vomited the reluctant prophet onto dry land. This time Jonah obeyed God. He walked through Nineveh proclaiming that in forty days the city would be destroyed. Surprisingly, the Ninevites believed Jonah's message and repented. God had compassion on them and did not destroy them. Before preaching repentance, Jonah himself needed to repent and come to God’s way and obey him. That made his ministry among the Ninevites more effective and powerful. People could listen to the story of how Jonah was thrown into the sea and finally got repented the hard way.

One day one Christian lady sitting next to a man. When he saw her pull out her Bible he gave a little chuckle and went back to what he was doing. After a while he turned to her and asked "You don't really believe all that stuff in there do you?"

The lady replied "Of course I do! It is the Bible."

He said "Well what about that guy that was swallowed by that whale?"

She replied "Oh, Jonah. Yes I believe that; it is in the Bible. The Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and I believe it. And if it had said that Jonah had swallowed the whale, I would believe that too!"

He asked "Well, how do you suppose he survived all that time inside the whale?"

The lady said "Well I don't really know. I guess when I get to heaven I will ask him." "What if he isn't in heaven?" the man asked sarcastically.

"Then you can ask him when you reach the hell," replied the lady.

Call to repentance is the message of all the prophets. Prophets called people to turn away and repent. John the Baptist warned people and urged them to repent. Jesus admonished the people to repent in order to prepare themselves to receive the good news. He said, repent the Kingdom of God is at hand. Is the Kingdom of God still only at hand even after 2000 years later? Well, repent, the kingdom of God is at hand, is what Jesus said. So, if we don’t repent, it will always remain only at hand. We will never enter there without repenting.

When Jesus demanded repentance, he demanded a total change of heart. But, we often confuse two things – sorrow for the consequences of sin and sorrow for the sin itself. Many of us feel sorry for a certain action because of the mess it gets us into, but if we can reasonably get out of it we would do it again. It is not the sin that we try to avoid but its consequence. Real repentance is that a man should avoid the sin itself.

Repentance means changing our life-our mind, our spirit, our attitudes, our behavior, our relationships, our plans--long range and short term. It means coming to a new understanding of life's purpose and direction, and acting differently from now on. The graceful ability to change our mind and to change our behavior is the gift of God that we call repentance and faith.

J. Edwin Orr, a professor of Church history has described the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Protestant Welsh Revivals of the nineteenth century resulting in real metanoia. As people sought to be filled with the Spirit, they did all they could to confess their wrongdoings and to make restitution.  But this created serious problems for the shipyards along the coast of Wales.  Over the years workers had stolen all kinds of things, from wheelbarrows to hammers. However, as people sought to be right with God, they started to return what they had taken, with the result that soon the shipyards of Wales were overwhelmed with returned property. There were such huge piles of returned tools that several of the yards put up signs that read, "If you have been led by God to return what you have stolen, please know that the management forgives you and wishes you to keep what you have taken." 

 In today’s Gospel, Jesus challenges each one of us to revive our lives with a true spirit of repentance. Those of us here today are not mass murderers and devil worshippers. But we still need to repent. We must take all those things out of the top drawer of our hearts, and put Christ there instead.

The disciples Jesus called in today’s gospel made their graceful move by leaving their ordinary business, an honorable one, and their boats and nets, their relatives and families, and enter into discipleship. We all need a repentance, a turning towards Jesus every day, choose him as first, to enter into the kingdom of God.