Wednesday of 1st
Week of Lent
February 17, 2016 6:30am
The background to today’s first
reading gives us a helpful human lesson.
God has called Jonah to preach
repentance to the people of Nineveh.
Jonah resists.
His preaching of repentance –
that we hear this morning – comes only after a near death experience in the
belly of a whale.
I’m sure we all recall that
famous Bible story.
At any rate, Jonah is so
threatened by that near-death experience that he reluctantly succumbs to God’s
command and preaches repentance to the people in Nineveh.
Why doesn’t Jonah really want to
do this?
I see three reasons and human
tendencies at work in Jonah and leading him not to want to get the people of
Nineveh to repent.
First, Jonah sees them as
foreigners.
He thinks that God’s love and
salvation is exclusive and is restricted only to the Jews.
Second, Jonah looks down on them.
He feels that they are so sinful
they should be punished and not given the chance to repent.
And third, Jonah wants to be
proved right.
He has prophesied the destruction
of Nineveh because of its errant ways and he does not want to be proved wrong.
Of course, God’s ways are
different from Jonah’s.
First, God’s love and offer of
salvation reaches to everyone, not just those of our own religion or our own
country.
Second, God never gives up on us
no matter what we have done.
And third, God expects us to be
humble servants of his and not just promoting our own egos.
So, Jonah, a good man with some
human foibles at work, gives us some things to think about this morning.
