3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Mercy For Your Enemies

In the three-year cycle of scripture readings for the Mass, this is the only Sunday that we hear a reading from the Book of Jonah, a narrative about a Jewish man named Jonah who lived probably about 700 years before the birth of Jesus.

God called him to go east to the city of Ninevah to preach repentance to the people there. To say he wasn’t excited about this command would be an understatement. He tried everything in his power to avoid what God was asking of him. None of it worked. Jonah was again commanded: “Go to Ninevah and tell them to repent for their wickedness.” Wet and worn-out, Jonah finally went.

So why didn’t Jonah want to go in the first place? Ninevah was the capital city for the Assyrian Empire, located in the northern part of present-day Iraq, about 250 miles north of Baghdad. In Jonah’s time, the Assyrians were the dominant military power in that region of the world. It would have been recent, that they had brutally enslaved and decimated the Jews of the northern kingdom.

And so what God was asking of Jonah would be like asking recent survivors of the Pearl Harbor invasion, to go to the headquarters of Imperial Japan and insist that their leaders repent. Aside from likely fearing the people of Ninevah, Jonah didn’t even want them to repent. Repentance—that is, change of heart—would mean that they could receive God’s mercy—that God’s anger against them would be abated. As one whose heart burned in anger for the people of Ninevah, Jonah didn’t want that.

Even though Jonah lived in the 8th century B.C., this story was probably written about four or five hundred years later. By that time, the Jewish people had been beaten and trampled by not just the Assyrians, but after them, the Babylonians, and then the Persians.

When they were eventually allowed to return to their homeland, not only were they still brooding with resentment, but more, they were convinced that the suffering they endured was brought on by their straying from the distinct Jewish way of life that God had commanded. Therefore, upon returning to their homeland, they not only detested any foreigners that lived among them, but also all their foreign customs.

Simply put, the story of Jonah was told to the Jewish people to counteract the extreme nationalism that was swelling. It was written to reveal the fact that all peoples of the world could be embraced by God’s mercy: including the cruel Assyrians of Jonah’s time, and the foreigners who lived among the returning Jewish exiles.

As Christians, we firmly declare that God loves all people and that Jesus died to save everyone. We say it, but do we mean it? Do we really want everyone to be saved? I’ve raised this crazy hypothetical question before, but it’s good to ask it once in a while: What if we celebrated a Mass for deceased terrorists? What if we prayed for the soul of Osama Bin Laden? I’ll admit, I have a hard time even saying it. I can relate to how Jonah felt: Not only was he expected to associate with the Assyrians, but in the end, he was being asked to be the instrument of God’s mercy to them.

The devil uses particular tactics to stifle our becoming who God calls us to be. He confuses us, causes us doubt, creates division among us, and loves it when we’re unable to be instruments of mercy. But again, regarding the people of our world who make life miserable for others: maybe we should ask ourselves: What does it mean to pray for them? Well for sure, we aren’t praying that they thrive at being horrible.

In the Gospel today, Jesus says “Repent and believe in the Gospel”. There’s a Greek word that we translate in English as ‘repentance’: metanoia. It means to change one’s heart or more literally to turn in a different direction. Let’s face it, there are a lot of people who need change their direction, including myself. But ultimately—whether one is malicious, impatient, hateful, disrespectful, self-righteous, prideful, indifferent to suffering, driven by lust, materialistic, selfish, envious, conniving, divisive, or dissenting; whether one is a gossiper or leads others to sin or clings to anger and resentment—true metanoia requires knowing first of all, that I’m deeply loved by God, but also having the desire to surrender to that love. When one does that, sin loses its hold on us. That’s the repentance Jesus calls us to.

So who is it in your life or what group in your worldview, has taken up residence in your heart, where it burns? If you can’t change the situation or bring about true justice, Jesus would certainly call us to pray for them: that they know they are loved deeply by God; that that love transforms them to reflect that love. In humility, and free of self-righteousness, let us pray for all God’s children: even those we regard as enemies, those whom we find it hardest to love.