Weekly Reflection 012206AD

Sunday, January 22, 2006AD

Third Sunday in Greentime

Does Jonah Sound Familiar?

Most people are up on the saga of Jonah and the whale. Jonah’s saga is one of the best known biblical stories. (Actually, a large fish, not a whale, is what the Bible says.). Since the Book of Jonah is short, a mere four chapters, which can easily be read in a few minutes, why not take the opportunity today to do so and get reacquainted with this man? He may be more familiar than you think. He may be just like many of us.

Jonah was a God-fearing Jew who was asked by God to go to the pagan city of Nineveh (which represented the stronghold of one of Israel’s most hated enemies). God called Jonah to preach a message of repentance to the city because God was going to destroy it for its sins.

Good Jew that Jonah was, he did not want Nineveh to be spared. Jonah hated the Ninevehites and felt that God might in the end cut the Ninevehites some slack and not destroy them. Hence, instead of traveling east, Jonah headed west to the Sea headed for Tarshish (Spain).

God was calling Jonah back. The turbulence of the sea was a way to get Jonah back on the job. Finally, when the crew threw him overboard, the great fish swallowed him up and spit him out three days later on the shore whence he had begun. (UGH!!!)

Finally, Jonah got to Nineveh and preached his message and told them to repent. After Jonah completed his mission, he went outside the city to watch the fun, hoping that the Ninevehites would not repent. However, repent they did. God spared the city. Jonah resented God’s mercy.

Jonah is like many of us. We write off people whom we consider less than ourselves. They may be of other races or other religions. They may be even sinners. (We forget the fact that we all have a pedigree in that regard.)

If they are bad, then are we good? In the minds of many, yes, we are. Why does God worry about those people who are patently different than we, viz., “the ‘in crowd’”?

Since the beginning, cultures and religions have established boundaries about who is acceptable and “in” and who is unacceptable and “out”. It comes as a shock to many (if they ever even reach the point) to realize that this is an anthropological trait of a fallen humanity. It is hard for many to realize that God loves all people, even the ones that I or my group has written off as inferior or evil.

Secondly, once we write others off as “rejects”, it is easy to scapegoat them for all the reasons that things are not (from our own perspective) the way that they should be. Oddly, the irenic Blessed Juliana of Norwich wrote in the 14^th century that men and women demonstrate what she called “contrariness”, the desire to single out one or another as someone not so quite as good as we happen to be ourselves. The technique of “contrariness” is characteristic behavior of a humanity that eases God out in many ways. Jonah lives.

However, the Christ Quantum can amelioriate the contrariness of Jonah. Ask Jesus to help us to do so. We all can use it. 012206AD jfq