You Cannot Run Away From God

Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

This morning’s first reading comes to us from the Hebrew Scriptures, the book of the Prophet Jonah. We are given a short excerpt from a very short book of the Old Testament. One could easily read the entire book in no more than a half-hour. The story that is told in this book is that of a disobedient prophet who did not heed a commission given him by the Lord God. We pick up the story in chapter 3 of this short book. Jonah has tried to run away from God’s voice, but his plan has been disrupted by a storm that threatens not only his own life but also the lives of all the sailors who are the crew of the boat which he has boarded in order to flee from God. Interestingly, the first verse we read today is almost exactly the same as the first verse of chapter 1. In other words, despite Jonah’s attempt to run away, he finds himself right where he started.

Why did Jonah disobey God’s command? The answer is really quite simple. The city of Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. It had been the Assyrians who had destroyed the temple and taken all the young and healthy people two Babylon where they lived in exile for more than 70 years. These were the enemies of Israel. Jonah had no interest in preaching God’s word to these people. In fact, he dearly wished that the punishment that God promised would in fact be carried out. He wanted to see Nineveh destroyed as Jerusalem had been destroyed.

When Jonah reaches the city, he goes about telling the people that God would destroy them in 40 days. Notice that he does not tell them that they can escape this punishment if they repent. It is their own king who decides that everyone and every beast will put on sackcloth and sit in ashes as a sign that they have turned away from their evil ways. Chapter 3 ends with some powerful words: “When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.”

Because of their repentance, Jonah becomes the only prophet of Israel who succeeds in the mission of preaching repentance. The prophets of Israel were numerous; there were entire guilds of prophets. Not one of them, other than Jonah, succeeds in convincing people to turn away from their evil ways. One would think that his success would please Jonah. However, chapter 4 begins with these words: “But this greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first toward Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, repenting of punishment.” He uses the very words that God speaks to Moses atop Mount Sinai in a moment of self-revelation. God is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.

Jonah’s message to the people of Nineveh is the same message that we find in the opening chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel. John has been replaced in his role by Jesus; however, the message that Jesus preaches is the same message that John had been preaching by the Jordan River. “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”
St. Paul picks up this same theme in his First Letter to the Corinthians: “Time is running out.” Now is the time to repent; don’t put it off any longer.

You may be sitting here this morning thinking to yourself, “I wish God spoke to me as directly as God spoke to Jonah and the other prophets.” The fact of the matter is that God does speak to you directly whenever you are considering what you should do in any particular situation. We call that voice our conscience. Each of us knows exactly what we should do when faced with a situation that calls for action. We know that we are often tempted to follow our own path. Our conscience bothers us just as Jonah’s conscience bothered him. When Jonah failed to follow the voice of his conscience, the voice of God, chaos ensued. Not only was the life of Jonah threatened, but the lives of all who were around him were threatened. When we fail to follow the voice of God, we throw everything and everyone around us into chaos.

The moral of the story is very simple. Don’t try to run away from God. Listen to God when your conscience speaks to you. Failing to listen may just be your downfall, just as it was Jonah’s downfall. When Jonah is thrown overboard by his fellow travelers, he is swallowed by a great fish. This is a metaphor for what will happen to anyone who fails to listen to God. We will be swallowed up by the world around us, pulled away from virtue and creating chaos in our lives.