A whale of a chance to change
During my first assignment as priest, one day after serving in ministry for over 12 hours. I decided to take care of some office work. Sitting down at the desk I heard the emergency phone ring. I thought oh no, Lord, I’m never going to get this work done. The hospital was only blocks away and not inconvenient, I was just tired. Arriving grumpy, I mumbled a hello to the nurses on duty then walked into the room. The man was lying on his back, didn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes were open starring at the ceiling. I introduced myself, but there was no response. He died I thought. There were no family members to pray with, no nurses in the room; it was just the two of us. Don’t know why but I said out loud: I’ll pray and bless him with holy water since he is already with you Lord. “In the name of the Father and of the Son…” Just then, he began to move his right arm to his forehead, very slowly pulling his arm up toward him. I continued with the prayer, he continued to slide his arm towards his head. All during the prayers he struggled to make the sign of the cross. Reaching for the Holy Oil I anointed him, concluded the blessing with absolution: “May the Lord who frees you from all sin save you and raise you up.” “Amen” he responded, completed the sign of the cross and gave his last breath. He had waited long enough to receive God’s forgiveness before going to the Lord.
God taught me a huge lesson that night, being a faith witness is not at all about me—it is about being open to God’s grace at work for others and using me to help. It isn’t at all about us. It is one of the lessons from God to Jonah in our first reading for this Sunday. The people were ready to repent and awaiting the call to forgiveness. But Jonah didn’t want to go and preach repentance and healing—he thought he knew the situation and the people they won’t listen or repent-he even judged God’s mercy and thought they should be punished and destroyed by God. Jonah was hoping for the destruction of Nineveh by God and not its conversion
Jesus like Jonah also calls people to conversion, to change their ways and follow the ways of God. Of course there are huge differences between Jonah and Jesus, in addition to the obvious. Jesus came to teach us not to destroy one another to live his ethical behavior. To follow Jesus can be scary for daily we need to think about and be responsible for our words and actions, and it means like Jonah our view of the world is at stake—it could change, we could be wrong-and that is scary to some. We may convert our understanding of how God can work in others, even in those we may not like. Having faith in what cannot be seen or faith in what others have received and we have not is hope.
Such hope is what Paul preached when he stated, “For the world in its present form is passing away.” What he means is that when we change our lives in Christ our world view changes with us. Calling people to change their lives in Christ and realize how much better life is with the Lord is how brought hope. And the benefit of converting people to Christ resulted in establishing an incredible number of Christian communities-mostly converts from idol worshipping pagan religions. Paul and his converts believed that the immanent return of Jesus the Christ would take place any day and change the entire world. Such a belief resulted in Paul’s statement in our 2nd reading for Sunday: “…let those having wives act as not having them…” is not a biblical loophole for husbands!
Nor are there loopholes for us when it comes to living our faith and the religion we claim. Our conversion from sinful ways comes with a joy in knowing that we are doing so for our personal integrity, moral formation, and witness for the good of others. We strive to live an ethical Christian life in a country that all too often can easily resemble idolatrous Nineveh. There are the temptations for social status, and the lengthy list of status symbols, the belief that failure is not having enough money to have all our material wants met. We know too well all the man-made idols that call out to us to worship.
It is a significant social struggle to follow Jesus. All of us know those times and places when the Lord is calling out to us to witness that we have joy in our lives because of Christ and our desires to walk with Him. Such witness is especially important for young people in need of our guidance, in need of hope in God, and a great need for true joy. Values that reflect conversion from hollow idolatry into life-giving peace, joy, and stability come from living the gospel and not being swallowed by the whales of temptation that surround us. There are no loopholes in being Christian. Conversion is on-going. Let us also be open to conversion in others by giving God a chance to change them; perhaps others might be waiting for us to change. Rejoice, Fr. Gordon