Faith

Mercy without measure – Wednesday, 27th week in ordinary time- Jonah 4: 1-11

How well do we know God? Jonah for one knew God very well and that accounts for his tantrums all through this book. Jonah knew God so well that he not only knew that God is merciful but he knew the inner depths, the quality of that mercy. This is why in today’s passage he says, “I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loath to punish.” Jonah knew that God’s heart would melt if Nineveh, the hated enemy of his people, would as much as blink; and blink they did.

The prophets of Israel were for the most part nationalistic; God was the Lord of Israel and, through his prophets, addressed the chosen people.  But in addition, as Jonah’s; book makes clear, God was also profoundly concerned with the behaviour and lot of all mankind.  The violence and evil of the gentile citizens of Nineveh were of no less concern to God than was the evil of his own people. 

Yet the mercy of God always seeks to turn aside evil and offer mercy to those who repent.  The story of  Jonah Is the story of a reluctant prophet who was sent to Nineveh  to demonstrates the concern of God for gentiles and the possibility of gentiles repenting and finding God’s mercy.  Thus, for the gentile reader of the Old Testament, the book of Jonah reveals the grand nature of a compassionate and universal God. Ironically, The Assyrians did what the Israelites took a long time to do; repent at the first invitation from God.

So Jonah does not only highlight God’s mercy but a particular quality of that mercy; a mercy that is unmerited and above all a mercy that God is free to give it to whomever he pleases.  This book is an excellent book to study the theology behind ‘divine mercy.’ God would not be pleased by mere recitation of prayers if our lives mirror the behaviour of older brother in the parable of the Prodigal son, or for that matter that the attitude of Jonah.

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Faith

When nightmares become realities- Tuesday, 27th week in ordinary time- Jonah 3:1-10

Today, Jonah’s nightmare turns into a reality. He tried to dismiss several times the possibility of this scenario playing out in in his mind and had hoped that this would not happen. All he had to do was say five simple words in Hebrew, then pack his bags and head home. Who would really take notice of five words he thought? Unfortunately for Jonah, while this was the shortest homily in the history of humankind, its effects were mind boggling by any standard.

Jonah had just spent three the worst days of his life in the belly of a stinking fish. That’s all it took for this reluctant prophet to cave in and relent to God’s will. I guess torture by fish entrails, was God’s latest weapon. Jonah would do as he was told even though his ‘repentance’ was most certainly half hearted. But if that is what it took to get out of this stinking fish, then so be it. It had now become evident that the all merciful God of Israel was bent on making a point. His mercy was to be offered to all, Jew and Babylonian.

There was no love lost between the two nations; the Jews and Babylonians hated each other. Battles like the siege of Lachish had left the Jews beheaded and impaled on spikes; such memories were hard to forget for a conquered people.  So one can completely empathise with Jonah’s lack lustre homily consisting of five Hebrew words; eight in English, “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

Jonah now obeys because he realizes the futility of flight. God had sealed his escape routes first by a storm and then by a large fish.  Perhaps Jonah must have still clung on to the hope that Nineveh would reject his message and God would destroy the city. That would make Jonah a hero back home; the opposite would make him a traitor.

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Faith

The reluctant prophet- Monday, 27th week in ordinary time – Jonah 1:1-17; 2: 1,10

If you have never met a reluctant prophet then meet Jonah. Jonah is told to go to Nineveh (northeast of Israel), on a long trip over land.  Just to put this in perspective, Nineveh and Israel were no dancing partners for the hatred between the two nations was as old as the hills. When God asks Jonah to take a message and go north east he immediately sets off in a westerly direction for Joppa and buys a ticket for the slow boat to Tarshish (perhaps Tartessus, in Spain)

Why would Jonah be so defiant, why disobey God? Perhaps it’s because you and I read the text of God’s message to Jonah but only Jonah understood the sub text. Jonah’s people have long known the tender heart of God; a heart they have also taken advantage of several times in the past. They knew that each time God threatened to destroy them they just had to sit in sack cloth and ashes and repent and God had a change of heart.

Jonah knew that if he took a message of repentance from this loving God, to his hated enemies, they would repent and be saved and Jonah would rather have them destroyed. Jonah could not bear the possibility of God’s mercy extended to a wicked and hateful people. His nation and people, on the other hand were more ‘deserving’ of God’s repeated mercy for after all they were His ‘chosen people’.

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Art/ Heritage

THE SALVATION STORY: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants by Maarten Van Valckenborch

Time crept, Time strolled, Time ran, Time flew, Time gone!

The inherent, invisible, uncertain and ubiquitous feature of Time has always fascinated the human mind. It caused a visualization of seasons and months that commonly featured as ‘calendar art’. Over the years calendar art has been swayed by genres like landscapes, portraits, historical, religious, allegorical and mythological themes.

From within this context looms forth our painter and painting in consideration. Maarten Van Valckenborch, a Flemish Renaissance artist, was born in Leuven in 1535. In his ‘cycle of seasons’ Maarten presents 11 paintings (December missing). These paintings include illustrations from the New Testament in connection to the labours of the month.

Come October, Maarten paints the ‘Parable of the Wicked Tenants.’ (Matthew 21: 33 – 43). We are visually introduced to a lush green vineyard planted by a landowner. ‘He put a fence around it, dug a hole for the wine press and built a watch tower.’ As depicted in the top left corner of the painting, ‘he leased the vineyard to the tenants and then went to a distant country.’ All was well until harvest!

With autumn came the rich produce. However the scandalous tenants refused to give the rightful share to the landowner. They ‘beat, killed and stoned’ his slaves. In this circumstance, ideally, the landowner should have sent troops of armed slaves to enforce his rights and punish the wicked tenants. But he mercifully does the unthinkable. He sends his son thinking, ‘they will respect him.’

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Faith

God RE-MEMBERS- Saturday, 26th week in ordinary time- Baruch 4:5-12, 27-29

God, in the Old Testament, reminds me of parents in every age. No parent in their right mind gets pleasure from punishing a child, much less sending them into ‘the exile’ of their room or a corner. No punishment comes out of the blue, but is the result of several warnings and many of these are communicated with great love.
True to their nature, children believe they have figured out their parents and assume that this is a game they can beat them at. Foolishly, the children of Israel thought that they could play this childish game of deceit with their God, for they seemed to think that God did not notice their wicked ways.

In this prophetic address, Baruch speaks of the exile, not as a result of an unhinged God, but as consequence of disobedience to the Law of Moses. It is the Israelites who ‘angered’, ‘provoked’ and ‘forgot the everlasting God’. Baruch brings the charges up like a good lawyer representing the state in the face of a people caught several times with more than just their hand in a cookie jar. It is their disobedience that led them to worship other gods. Now that they were caught red handed, the people of Israel realize that it’s too late, for God was justified in His anger and God does not bring trumped up charges.

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