Wednesday of the First Week of Lent
After returning home from a mission trip (where I volunteered to work with children who had been removed from their homes as a result of the situations there), I was seriously angry at God. Realizing the anger was something that I needed to deal with I sought the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
“Jonah, isn’t he the whale guy?” This was the question that I asked the priest who had just assigned me reading Jonah as part of a penance. As a teenager who was unfamiliar with the story beyond the children’s illustrated version of the Bible,I failed to see any connection whatsoever between my confession and this penance.
However, the story of Jonah demonstrates several different categories into which our sin can fall. Jonah’s disobedience of failing to live his discipleship and go to Nineveh on God’s command, demonstrates a sin of omission. Jonah’s looking for schadenfreude (delight in the pain of others) as he waited for Nineveh to be destroyed demonstrates, a sin of commission--actively doing something contrary to the life of discipleship. While Scripture is vague about what was happening in the city, the Ninevites can demonstrate our individual sins contributions to a systematic wrong in society, these are the collective or social sins that can permeate a society.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes reference to this story, saying just as Jonah was a sign for the need of the Ninevites repentance, so too is Jesus a sign for the need of our generation’s repentance. There are things for which we need to repent. Our repentance leads us to experience God, whose name is mercy. Mercy both for the individual, like Jonah and for the community, like Nineveh.
Our individual actions do need to be examined and our individual failings require repentance. While each of us examines our conscience, may we be inspired by Jonah. May we not measure our sins against the sins of our sisters and brothers. May we not fail to do what God asks of us. When we stray, may we return to, and accomplish, the mission God has commissioned us to.
Collectively, as society, we have things for which we need to repent. We live in a world that is undoubtedly fractured. Jonah warned the Ninevites that in forty days their magnificent city would be destroyed. The Ninevites took action to demonstrate their repentance. May we be inspired by the actions of the Ninevites and work over our next forty days to actively work to right the wrongs that exist in our society today, such as the perpetuation of violence, throw-away culture, or the inconsistent ethic of life we encounter.
Lord God, I am sorry: for the times where my actions were not in keeping with my call as a discipleship; for the times where my discipleship called me to action and I failed to act; for the terrible situations that my individual choices have collectively contributed to; for the times where I have sought joy in the shortcomings of others. You sent your only begotten son, to forgive sins, in his name, my God, have mercy on me a sinner. Amen.
—Will Marsh