Word to the Wise
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 -
[Jonah 3:1-10 and Luke 11:29-32]Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day's walk announcing, "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed," when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.
Jonah has a unique distinction. He was the only "successful" prophet in the Bible if by "success" we mean that people listened to him and acted on his words. Nowadays, if someone would come through town announcing the destruction of the town in 40 days, they might be arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist! In today's gospel, Jesus refers to Jonah as the model of a "sign to this generation," because people listened to him. There is irony in Jesus' comments because his audience had someone far greater than Jonah standing in front of them, and they were resisting the message!
The prophetic voice is rarely easy to listen to. Prophets are not soothsayers, trying to predict the future. Rather prophets proclaim unpleasant truths and challenge us to live according to them. They warn us of the consequences of failing to listen and act, and in this sense they seem to predict the future. However, those certain consequences are simply the inevitable outcome of our failure to listen. Perhaps in our day, that failure is manifested more often in "selective listening." If a pope proclaims a teaching that we don't like to hear, we may simply ignore it. This is sadly the case when the particular truth does not match our political opinions or lifestyle preferences. I am amazed at times when individuals claim I'm preaching politics when I'm merely mentioning what is the teaching of the church!
It might be an instructive Lenten exercise to ask ourselves what we find difficult to accept in the teaching of the church and try to understand why it is that we find it difficult. Maybe if we learned about the background, history and purpose of the teaching, we would find that the truth is deeper than our initial emotional reaction. It may be that the teaching is prophetic and Jonah is speaking to us. AMEN
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