God wants even pagans to come to Him

FIRST READING — The prophet Jonah is better known for his sojourn in the belly of the fish than for his prophecy concerning God’s mercy to all nations through the mission given to Israel. The book is about God’s compassion to all people, even those who were not “chosen.” God’s compassion and mercy are clearly to be extended to all peoples through the ministry of the nation of Israel. Christians have come to see Jesus Christ in the collectivity of the people of God sent to all nations to call them to salvation. Jonah himself represents the Jewish people who, after the Exile, had come to a rather rigid attitude of defensiveness and exclusiveness with respect to other nations. They saw all outsiders as enemies and as threats to their religious purity. Surely, God could not love and forgive all those pagans! Jonah is angry that the Ninevites repent and are forgiven. The lesson is that even God’s Chosen People need to change, to repent also.

© 2017 Portland Diocese / Father Clement D. Thibodeau. Used with permission.

God calls for conversion while there is still time to change our ways

FIRST READING — There are lots of ways to tell the story of Jonah. Today’s liturgy gives us our prim maiden aunt’s version with the pithy preaching of the prophet and the people’s pious turn-around. Our delightfully outrageous young uncle would never tell the tale without the details of Jonah’s flight from God into the belly of a whale or his self-absorbed annoyance at the fact that Nineveh actually repented and God reneged on the evil planned for them. Some describe the Book of Jonah as the comic strip of the Bible. But that doesn’t disparage its message, it simply says that the teaching comes in a different, perhaps more entertaining package.

Of course, the end result is transformation. Jonah’s full story includes his adventures in the belly of the whale and crossing Nineveh, the people’s conversion and his devastation that God did not decimate the people and yet destroyed his shade tree. (Such a man of God, more concerned for a plant than for the population of the city!) The author doesn’t want us to miss the references to three days: Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale and three days crossing the city. Neither place was to his liking, but both resulted in unexpected salvation.

An ironic dimension of the story is that the power of the message far outshines the messenger. Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh at all, but when he was backed into a corner, he went and carried his chip on his shoulder all the way through the great city as he preached. As if to spite him, the people took his message to heart. St. Thomas Aquinas created an axiom to explain this detail: “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.” Applied to this story, that explains that the people of Nineveh were more disposed to grace than was Jonah. His preaching saved them, even if it didn’t affect him. The underlying message is that God calls for conversion while there is still time to change our ways.

©2018 National Catholic Reporter. All Rights Reserved. Sr. Mary McGlone is a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet. 2018 Reflections, 2020 Reflections can be read at National Catholic Reporter website.

Points to consider

• I read about two calls and two responses.  First, God commands Jonah: Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you.  I know that it is really the second time God has said it, and I will say it as if to remind the man to get going.
• Sure enough he does: Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh.  Again I can suggest that he undertakes the trip against his will: according to the Lord’s bidding.
• Later I hear Jonah’s announcement to the people of Nineveh: Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.  On the one hand no children of Israel felt any pity on this empire that had long tormented their nation.  But then none would have dared to travel there to shout such a judgment in the midst of its people.  That is why I search for the right combination of temerity and brashness.
• And Jonah, indeed all Israel, was shocked to hear the response.  He had gone just a single day’s walk when the people of Nineveh believed God.  I cannot say these words in matter-of-fact tone.  The God of Israel speaks to Israel’s worst enemy and they repent, turning from their evil way.  That phrase is truly the memorable point in the entire book of Jonah, because like in the book of Job our expectations are shattered and our understanding of God becomes more mature.
• The seat of the evil empire is an enormously large city; it took three days to go through it.  Let me think of today’s urban centers and how long it would take to walk through them.  This is one point of contrast with the Gospel for today, in which Jesus visits small fishing villages to call his disciples.
• Finally, I want to capture in my voice some of the surprise and even disappointment that Jonah would feel about the evil empire’s change of heart.  The remainder of the book deals with it.

Key elements

• Climax of the story: The moment when the people believed God.  It is the response to Jonah’s message and leads to a new favorable judgment from God.
• Message for our assembly: All three readings for today are set in God’s time, when we should feel a kind of urgency about our calling.  Now is not the time to think it over or put off a decision as we often do in our lives.
• I will challenge myself: To show above all an admiration at the power of God’s word to change the lives of persons who like ourselves people the secular cities.

SOURCE: Paul J. Schlachter at LectorWorks.org

Introducing the reading at Mass

Sometimes God’s first chosen people thought they were the only people God could ever favor. This is a story about pagan people who turn to God, and how God used a reluctant servant to bring that about.

Oral interpretation

The liturgical setting

Over the Sundays of ordinary time this year, we’ll read consecutive passages from the Gospel of Mark. In today’s passage, Jesus calls several disciples, who follow him immediately. The first reading tells the story of Jonah’s similar effect in Nineveh. As a conscientious liturgical minister, you’ll want to know the larger picture, larger than your readings, that is, so read the day’s gospel.

The literary background

Jonah’s apparently easy success in chapter 3 is quite ironic because of what has gone before. Of course the first thing we think of when we hear his name is that whale. How did Jonah come to spend three days and three nights in the belly of that beast? Well, chapter 1 of Jonah starts with the Lord calling the man to go to Nineveh and prophesy. Jonah, perhaps out of fear or disbelief that the Ninevites could respond to his preaching, runs the other way and sails on a ship. A terrible storm threatens the ship, and the others aboard surmise that God is coming after Jonah, so they throw him overboard. That’s when the whale gets him, at the beginning of chapter 2. Jonah prays, the whale spits him up, and, in chapter 3, God directs Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh and preach repentance. In the fourth chapter, Jonah expresses bitter disappointment that Nineveh repented and God did not destroy the city! God rebukes Jonah for his smallness of vision, and the story ends.

The historical setting

The book of Jonah was actually written after the Jews’ exile. Some of them were quite nationalistic, and filled with a smug sense of superiority over other nations. Like Jonah, they wished God would destroy the nations perceived as enemies. The story of Jonah is meant to rebuke their smallness of vision, and teach them that God has care for other peoples as well as for them.

Proclaiming it

Even if your listeners won’t know all that background, you can bring out the truth that God can evoke repentance even from unlikely people. In the middle sentences, use your tone of voice to express this astonishing truth. Stress how large is the city (“It took three days to go through it.”), that Jonah “had gone but a single day’s walk,” that Jonah’s message was vengeance: “Nineveh shall be destroyed!” and that all of the Ninevites repented, “all of them, great and small.”

Then pause before the final sentence that tells God’s merciful response. Deliver that soberly and gratefully.

SOURCE: Greg Warnusz at LectorPrep.org

How our own work in God’s service is like Jonah

FIRST READING—Although Jonah initially refuses to participate in God’s blessing for his adversaries, in the end his faithfulness to God overcomes his disobedience. Eventually he does warn Nineveh, and to his dismay they respond passionately to his message. The entire city, “everyone great and small” (Jon. 3:5b), from the king and his nobles to the people in the streets to the animals in their flocks, “turn from their evil ways and the violence that is in their hands” (Jon. 3:8). “The people of Nineveh believed God” (Jon. 3:5a) and “when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it” (Jon. 3:10). This is dismaying to Jonah because he continues to want to dictate the results of the work God called him to. He wants punishment, not forgiveness, for Ninevah. He judges the results of his own work harshly (Jon. 4:5) and misses out on the joy of others. Do we do the same? When we lament the seeming lack of significance and success in our work, are we forgetting that only God can see the true value of our work?

Yet even Jonah’s small, halting moments of obedience to God lead to blessings for those around him. On the ship, he acknowledges, “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven” (Jon. 1:9) and sacrifices himself for the sake of his shipmates. As a result they are saved from the storm, and moreover, they become followers of the Lord. “The men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows” (Jon. 1:16).

If we recognize that our own work in God’s service is hobbled by disobedience, resentment, laxity, fear, selfishness or other ailments, Jonah’s experience may be an encouragement to us. Here we have a prophet who may be even more of a failure at faithful service than we are. Yet God accomplishes the fullness of his mission through Jonah’s halting, flawed, intermittent service. By God’s power, our poor service may accomplish everything that God intends.

SOURCE: © 2014 Theology of Work Project, Inc.; Used with permission. (Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.)

The time is short for the coming of the Lord

SECOND READING — Paul in writing to the Corinthians now deals with the urgency of spiritual priorities in view of the Second Coming of Christ. Since the time is indeed short, should we not give first attention to the things of the spirit? Paul may have been convinced that Christ was to return in the immediate future. Or, he may have been saying that whatever time we have, it is always very short, when we will have to give an account for our lives. In this context, marriage is not an absolute requirement for all people. The practice of consecrated celibacy in the Church today continues to call attention to the fact that life in this world is not forever. The rest of the Church and the world at large need to be reminded that the time is short. Those whohave given up marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God testify daily to that teaching.

© 2017 Portland Diocese / Father Clement D. Thibodeau. Used with permission.

Seeking sustainable development in today’s world

SECOND READING — Today’s short selection from 1 Corinthians might be dismissed as something written in a very different time and place, scarcely applicable to our times. Some commentators think Paul was speaking of an imminent end of the world — something we know didn’t happen. Others say that Paul was referring to the end of a way of living; the world his community knew was quickly losing meaning in the light of Christ’s resurrection. The more people came to understand Christ, the more the meaning of their world was changing.

To understand this reading better, we should know how Paul understood time. In his conceptual world there were two kinds of time. Chronos is the time that passes in regular, measurable intervals, of seconds, weeks and centuries. It is always the same. Then, there is time called kairos, the meaning-filled dimension of time. The time Paul talks about here, is kairos, grace-infused time, the kind of time that calls forth life-changing decisions. Paul told the Corinthians that their kairos had come: The old world was passing away because Christ was risen. It was time to give all their energy and attention to the new reality happening among them.

Our situation today is different but hardly less urgent. According to what Francis has written in Laudato Si’, the most pressing and universal problem of our day is environmental destruction. Francis sounds like Paul and imitates his passion as he laments that efforts to seek solutions to the environmental crisis have been stymied by powerful opposition, lack of interest, obstructionist attitudes, denial, indifference, resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. Just as Paul suggested that the Corinthians adjusted  to the most basic dimensions of their lives to respond to their times, Francis is calling for a “new and universal solidarity” to “redress the damage caused by human abuse of God’s creation” (#14).

Where Paul and Pope Francis coincide most closely is in seeing the demands of their times as extraordinarily urgent. Francis addresses his appeal to all people living on this planet because it is imperative that the whole human family become involved in seeking sustainable development. Although he wrote to all people, Francis explained his certainty that solutions are possible in the light of Christian faith and hope. He reminds us that the Creator does not abandon us, that we still have the ability to work together in building our common home (#13).  Neither Francis nor Paul lack hope, but they both beg us to recognize that time is running out.

©2018 National Catholic Reporter. All Rights Reserved. Sr. Mary McGlone is a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Her 2020 Reflections can be read at National Catholic Reporter website.

Points to consider

• I spend most of my waking hours planning for the future of my family and my household.  The sun will rise tomorrow and the high and low temperatures will be such and such.  My listeners plan their lives in equal fashion.  That is why we should all be startled to hear the apostle say that the time is running out.  Of course he is writing to a community a short time after the Resurrection, and they all expected the imminent return of Christ.  But I cannot let the church off so easily.
• Every time we gather to give thanks, we are proclaiming God’s time, the last days when appearances are reversed and the truth will out.  Look at our daily priorities.
• First, our commitments to others.  Let those having wives act as if not having them.
• Then, our reactions to success and failure in our daily lives.  Those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing.
• Finally, our wealth.  I invest my wealth for the long run and I consider it a personal affront to fall short in my own finances.  I fill my house and study with appliances, recordings and other possessions.  And yet, those buying as not owning, those using the world as not using it fully.

Key elements

• Central point: It is stated in the beginning of the passage and also at the end, and each deserves equal weight.  The world in its present form is passing away.
• The message for our assembly: We must begin to see our world with God’s eyes.
• I will challenge myself: To believe firmly what I am saying, against all appearances in 2015 forecasts and plans, peeking as it were over my glasses to suggest to the congregation that there is a lesson for us here.

SOURCE: Paul J. Schlachter at LectorWorks.org

Introducing the reading at Mass

At the time he wrote this early letter, Saint Paul, like most Christians then, believed Jesus was soon to return in glory, and everything would change. This is some of his advice on getting prepared.

Oral interpretation

The historical situation

There were many reasons why Saint Paul had to be strict and detailed in his moral teaching to the Christians in Corinth. Among them:

• Corinth was a bawdy seaport, where visitors and the locals who would accommodate them had a typical seaport’s set of ethics.
• Corinth, while not an Athens, was a center of philosophical and religious ferment; new and bizarre ideas were constantly in the air. Christianity seemed to be at least an ambitious development of old Judaism, if not an entirely new religion, with plenty of yet unanswered questions.
• Christians believed that Jesus was soon to return in glory, bringing the world to an end. That changes your long-term planning, if not everything else.

For all these reasons, Paul spends all of chapter 7 on marriage and sexual morality. If you read the whole chapter, you’ll see that the Lectionary’s three verses are the the most tame.Dan Nelson quotes a scholar with interesting ideas about the meaning of “those weeping … rejoicing … [and] buying …” Even if you interpret Paul’s directives to the married, the weepers, rejoicers, and buyers more generically, the point stands: The imminent coming of Christ again in glory changes everything.

Proclaiming it

The reading is bracketed with statements about the end of the world. Be sure to emphasize those. I say this not because I anticipate the coming of the Lord in glory immediately, but because that anticipation, however immediate or remote, is part of who we are as Christians.

SOURCE: Greg Warnusz at LectorPrep.org

Maintain the proper perspective

SECOND READING— Paul addresses the question of whether the promised return of the Lord implies that Christians should abandon ordinary daily life, includ­ing work.

I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on . . . let those who buy [be] as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. (1 Cor. 7:29–31)

Apparently some believers neglected family duties and ceased work­ing, in the same way you might neglect to sweep the floor before mov­ing to a new house. Paul had previously dealt with this situation in the church in Thessalonica and given unambiguous instructions.

Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. (2 Thess. 3:10–12)

Paul’s logic will be easier to understand if we recognize that verse 29 does not indicate merely that “the time is short” in the sense that Jesus’ second coming is almost here. Paul uses a verb here that describes how an object is pushed together (synestalmenos), so that it becomes shorter or smaller as a whole. “Time has been compressed” might be a better translation, as suggested by the NASB rendering, or “Time has been shortened.” What Paul apparently means is that since Christ has come, the end of the vast expanse of time has at last become visible. “The future outcome of this world has become crystal clear,” writes scholar David E. Garland.[1] Verse 31 explains that “the present form of this world is passing away.” The “present form” has the sense of “the way things are” in our fallen world of damaged social and economic relationships. Paul wants his readers to understand that Christ’s coming has already effected a change in the very fabric of life. The values and aspirations that are simply taken for granted in the present way of doing things are no longer operative for believers.

The proper response to the compression of time is not to cease work­ing but to work differently. The old attitudes toward everyday life and its affairs must be replaced. This brings us back to the paradoxical state­ments in 1 Corinthians 7:29–31. We should buy, yet be as though we have no possessions. We should deal with the world as though not dealing with the world as we know it. That is, we may make use of the things this world has to offer, but we shouldn’t accept the world’s values and principles when they get in the way of God’s kingdom. The things we buy, we should employ for the good of others instead of holding tightly to them. When we bargain in the market, we should seek the good of the person from whom we buy, not just our own interests. In other words, Paul is calling believ­ers to “a radically new understanding of their relationship to the world.[2]

Our old attitude is that we work to make life more comfortable and satisfying for ourselves and those close to us. We seek to gather things into our possession that we think will bring us status, security, and ad­vantage over others. We compartmentalize worship of our gods first, then attention to our marriage second, then work third, and then civic engagement fourth, if we have any time and energy left. The new atti­tude is that we work to benefit ourselves, those close to us, and all those for whom Jesus worked and died. We seek to release the things in our possession for use where they will make the world more as God desires it. We integrate our lives of worship, family, work, and society and seek to invest in—rather than shuffle around—physical, intellectual, cultural, moral, and spiritual capital. In this we emulate the forefather of the people of God, Abraham, to whom God said, “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2).

SOURCE: © 2014 Theology of Work Project, Inc.; Used with permission. (Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.)

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No Commentary — for this passage

SOURCE: Content taken from The Life Recovery Bible notes by Stephen Arterburn & David Stoop. Copyright © 1998, 2017. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.

Jesus wants disciples to follow him now

GOSPEL —In Mark’s Gospel, there is always a note of urgency to everything. “Immediately after this or that, Jesus went on right away to do something else.” “The time is now!” “At once, Jesus asked them to come with him.” There is no time just to be casual about so important a message as the one brought by Jesus. We need to hear: “The kingdom is now!” Waiting for another time in the future will not work.

The Good News which Jesus brings consists in this: All that God has done in the past will now begin to bear fruit. Salvation is available to all now, not just a promise of salvation for some future life, after death. God’s reign is made real in Jesus. All who surrender their lives to Jesus do come under the rule of God, immediately. That surrender happens when we repent. To repent is not just to feel sorry for our sins. It consists in the action of turning our lives around to bring them into conformity with God’s will. To “believe in the Gospel” is notjust something in the head and mind and feelings. It is a handing over of one’s whole self to the message and to the messenger, Jesus Christ.

One of the formulas used in imparting ashes on Ash Wednesday goes like this: “Repent! And believe in the Gospel!”

Once we have given ourselves over to Jesus Christ and to his values, we need to continually renew that self-giving. A once-and-for-all conversion is not much of a conversion. It wears thin with time. The liturgy and the Lectionary offer us the recurring of seasons during which we will dig ever deeper into the mystery of our conversion.

With whole-hearted abandon, we have come close to Jesus; with urgency, we follow him on the road to the cross and to his resurrection. “They left their nets and followed him. They left their father, Zebedee, in the boat along with the other men!”

© 2015 Portland Diocese / Father Clement D. Thibodeau. Used with permission.

The Gospel calls for a radical response

GOSPEL — Today’s reading from Mark is like a Gospel in miniature. Mark frames John’s arrest as the decisive end of the old and the beginning of the new. Jesus began his preaching saying “The time … is at hand.” This “time” is kairos: the definitive time, not a season of the liturgical year or a lunar month, but the time of fulfillment. There has never been a time like this.

The reason Jesus proclaims this as “the kairos moment” of history is that the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of which Jesus spoke was not a place and it had nothing to do with governance in the normal sense of the word. As Scripture scholar James Edwards explains, Mark’s Gospel never speaks of God as king, but rather of “entering the kingdom as entering a new state of being” (The Gospel of Mark). The kingdom of God is a reality that springs from relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. It is a state of heart and mind that comes from getting caught up in his vision of life. The kingdom of God is a way of living and thinking, a radically new orientation toward existence. It affects absolutely everything about a person’s life.

As we envision today’s Gospel scene, we might consider how this news affected Jesus himself. Mark has already told us that Jesus was being led by the Spirit of God (1:12). It was the Spirit who inspired him to proclaim that the new moment of history had arrived. We rarely consider the enthusiasm Jesus must have felt and exhibited as he spread this idea. Jesus believed that God was at work as never before, and that it was happening through him and the mission he was given. That announcement, Jesus’ preaching to the masses, must have communicated an almost irresistible joy and hope. It led people to repent and believe by accepting the invitation to adopt a wholly new perspective on life.

Jesus made his announcement in public, he invited the crowds, the ordinary folks in plazas and synagogues, around the seashore and on the hillsides; he wanted everybody in on it. Then, there were some others who were represented by the four fishermen we hear about today. These were the ones he invited to give themselves entirely to spreading the message with him. “They abandoned their nets and followed.”

Everyone who heard Jesus was called to recognize the kairos and make a decision for or against his message. Everyone who accepted him was called to learn a new way of living, a new way of hoping, a new way of understanding life and even death itself. Some were invited not just to live in that way, but to make spreading the news about it the core activity of their life. We know some of their names: the Twelve (variously named) who represented the new Israel, the women who traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem and who remained as witnesses to his crucifixion, the 72 (from Luke’s Gospel) and Paul. These, known or anonymous, shared not just Jesus’ message, but his mission journey. They gave up their ordinary occupations to go with him and learn what it meant to continue his mission. Because Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel began with the handing over of John the Baptist, they knew the risks; they had to learn that accepting the invitation to follow in this way would cost them their lives, sometimes in martyrdom, always in learning to give everything they had and were.

Today’s Gospel narrative summarizes the entire Gospel and invites us to step into it. The kairos time of fulfillment that began with Jesus’ preaching continues and everyone is invited to become caught up in it. It is simply a question of allowing ourselves to be so influenced by Jesus that his vision colors everything else. This Gospel also calls us to prayerfully ponder our Christian vocation and to pray particularly for those who may be called to leave everything behind to dedicate themselves to a lifetime of spreading the Gospel.

The Gospel calls for a radical response. Not everyone can or should leave their nets and boats, but all of us are called to discern God’s will and respond to our kairos. Like the people of Nineveh, we have time, but as Francis warns us, it is running out.

©2018 National Catholic Reporter. All Rights Reserved. Sr. Mary McGlone is a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Her 2020 Reflections can be read at National Catholic Reporter website.

Points to consider

• What a contrast with the forecasts of doom and destruction we heard in the other two readings!  Jesus is proclaiming the gospel of God but not in a hellfire way: This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Jesus is the most constructive preacher I have ever heard.
• At the same time, Jesus remains the most radical, most uncompromising preacher I have ever heard.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.  How can I find the tone to convey such biting and climactic words?
• Jesus passed by the Sea of Galilee.  I recall certain crossroads moments in my life—this retreat, that visiting speaker, this news report—never to be repeated.  Just as in my life, most likely his reputation preceded him and they all knew him from before.  But now the time has arrived to take a stand.  Come after me.  He called them.  There is really no call unless someone hears you, as it happens in the passage, and I will make sure that people hear me say it decisively.
• They abandoned their nets and followed him.  Let this not be a storybook encounter, but one that could and has happened to each of us.  How else explain our presence in the assembly today?  When we repeat in song the catchy phrase, ‘No turning back, no turning back,’ how deeply do we mean it?
• Central theme: I can hear a suddenness all through these words, and through all the original Greek of Mark’s Gospel.  The word ‘immediately’ appears often there, although the translators of the Lectionary have removed it from our readings.  They abandoned their nets.
• Message for our assembly: Are we attuned to God’s time?  Are we ready to repent and give our lives for the Gospel?
• I will challenge myself: To speak to the sudden arrival of God’s kingdom and the urgent need for reform.

Word to Eucharist

• Do we process again as we always have?  Or are we open to change, to the growth in the Spirit that Christ urges on us?

SOURCE: Paul J. Schlachter at LectorWorks.org

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No Commentary — for this passage

SOURCE: Content taken from The Life Recovery Bible notes by Stephen Arterburn & David Stoop. Copyright © 1998, 2017. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.