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.
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