February 21 2018 - Wednesday of the 1st week of Lent – Jonah 3:1-10

      The tale of Jonah is often thought of as a children's story complete with a whale and a great adventure. As a college student in North Carolina, I recall attending a Sunday morning service in a Baptist church in which there was a tent fashioned into a whale at the front of the church in order to re-enact the story of Jonah.  All of the children entered it in order to simulate the fantastic journey that Jonah took; they seemed absolutely thrilled to do so.  Yet, the real message of the book of Jonah is very serious, giving us an opportunity to stretch our understanding of God and his salvation. 

     Today’s first reading tells of God's second call to Jonah and his less than enthusiastic response.  He tells Jonah to go to the great city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the nation that had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and that held the southern kingdom as a vassal state for almost one hundred years.  Assyria was a brutal occupying force that forever changed Israel's future. Jonah is called out by God to go and prophesy to the capital city of Israel’s enemy.

       We could berate Jonah for his little faith, but, instead, we would try to identify with Jonah rather than to criticize him, to empathize with the seemingly impossible mission to which God has called him.  With the tasks we are called to in our modern world, we could consider Jonah a patron saint who struggled with the same things.  We may think that we cannot make a big difference in the world, that we might as well just fall in line and make the best living we can for ourselves and our family.  Our calling from God and our values may tell us we need to head East to Nineveh, but we all too often turn around, walk away, and get on the boat with Jonah as a means of escape.  Perhaps we find it too difficult or too lonely to walk the way of faith, to choose the path of faith over the ways of our secular world.  And by running away, perhaps we find ourselves in the belly of the whale, or out of touch with our calling from God, or very distant from a sense of meaning and purpose.  We are called to think about those things that we try to flee in our life of faith, things that we are being called to do by God, but we are scared or uninterested or just don’t have the inclination to do what God is asking us to do.  This story of Jonah’s calling gives us pause to think and reflect, doesn’t it?