The Sunday of the Word of God: The Urgency of Now and Evangelizing the Evangelizers
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
Today, “urgency” and the “evangelization of evangelizers” characterize the language of our readings. With a sense of radical urgency, our first reading declares, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed”; our gospel reading corroborates this sense of urgency saying, “ “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” As for our second reading, time is up: “For the world in its present form is passing away”. For us today, political happenings around the world make it imperative to evangelize the evangelizers. Radical groups around the world are emboldened because the words and examples of leaders are catalysts for evil. Good leaders and role models incite peoples to good actions, bad leaders breed insubordination and chaos. Look at the leadership of the world and imagine their constituencies—their personalities reflect easily in the conditions of their states, organization and group. The evangelizers are both political and religious leaders. All those entrusted with the position of leadership, in the family, state and Church are evangelizers. Many hold and take to their words. Their examples take the imagination captive. The fear of the Truth is the greatest casualty, when evangelizers are not evangelized. With the collapse of Truth is the rustication of God from human affairs and public sphere.
The state of a country, community and group may be measured by its leadership, whether it promotes evil or good. Our first reading addresses the problem of bad and evil leadership in political culture. The sins of the Assyrians, whose capital city was Nineveh, necessitated a designation of a specific prophet to address it. Jonah, whose name means “dove”, preached conversion to the Ninevites. Although a “dove” symbolizes “innocence” in many culture, the out cry from Nineveh oozed a stench of corruption and sin, a far cry from innocence. There was a need for the restoration of innocence in Assyria, so a “dove” was sent to them. The leadership that led the people in sin showed courage by leading the people out of sin. It was the leadership that proclaimed a fast and imposed it. The repentance of the Ninevites began with the example of their leadership. The 360 degrees turn from evil to good tells us the good news that no sinner is a write off until he/she has been given sufficient opportunity to change. The miracle of conversion is a possibility for even the most hardened of sinners. The story of the conversion of the Ninevites reminds us that only evil evangelizers and people glory in the damnation of sinners. God is patient with sinners, so must everyone who believes in him. The increasing numbers of the prophets of doom we have today simply show the absence of evangelizers according to the mind and example of God, who is mercifully kind to every sinner. Conversion is as a result of the display of love, God’s grace and the power of one’s exemplary life.
For our first reading to call out Nineveh suggests the importance of Nineveh as an example for us today and for every generation. Assyria, as the most important empire at the time, and Nineveh as the premier city, exemplifies how the sin of an expire spreads abroad and corrupts other nations, cities, towns and villages. God could not find a handy and ready evangelizer in Nineveh, and he had to go in search of an unwilling evangelizer, Jonah. In Jonah we see the grace of God dominating the will of an unwilling agent, prior to the grace of conversion extended to the Ninevites. Even Jonah needed conversion from a blind stubborn belief in the condemnation of sinners, to love of sinners, in order for him to become the channel of God’s grace to others, the Ninevites. How true the Latin saying, “no one gives what he/she hasn’t”. Only those who have accepted their personal fight and struggle with sin and weakness can understand and love sinners, before becoming God’s channel of grace to sinners, leading them to conversion.
Our gospel reading tells the story of an itinerant God. God’s journey is never blind, but purposeful and focused. This is one of the connections with the first reading of today. If God journeyed to the Ninevites, through Jonah, to seek their conversion, our gospel narrates the journey of God in Jesus Christ to meet our Christian generation, for our conversion from sin. An itinerant God is one who shows his creativity for the conversion of sinners by refusing to sit put and wait for sinners to die in their sins because he considers them evil. On the contrary, an itinerant God takes risks on behalf of sinners. Imagine that it was after the arrest of John-the-Baptist that Jesus starts the journey to go looking for substitute evangelizers for John-the-Baptist. Jesus never thought that the human person was so evil that he deserved condemnation. As the political leadership imprisons John-the-Baptist, God looked for a replacement. Although John-the-Baptist will be beheaded for preaching conversion, Jesus was undeterred by the fear of imprisonment and death—he carried on, anyway.
Rockstar conversion, as it was the case in Nineveh with Jonah, is not the only way to evangelize. An itinerant God evangelizes people, future evangelizers, where they are at. Jesus goes to fishermen at work. Two brothers were fishing, and two others were mending their nets after fishing. There was no salary negotiations or any forms of remunerations promised, just a change of trade —“you will become fishers of men!” In this case, conversion begins with the lost of human and pecuniary security. For the sons of Zebedee to abandon their father and for Peter and Andrew to abandon their nets, the symbol of their trade and source of their sustenance, their conversion was complete. There was a total surrender to God and the resolute determination to risk their lives for God’s venture. But it was Jesus, the itinerant preacher and evangelizer, who sought them out first.
The evangelization of evangelizers is so important today that sin multiplies for want of true evangelizers. When evangelizers are richer than those to be evangelized, when evangelizers take no risks of and lack the crave for martyrdom, how can they be God’s evangelizers? When leadership in religious circles becomes how many sinners to be sent to Hell of Fires, without even recognizing their own sins as leaders: what use for God are such evangelizers? When the 11th Commandment—“thou shall not be caught”—is the refuge of evangelizers, is there any future for evangelization and conversion? The good news is that Our God is an itinerant evangelizer, he journeys around to make up for the lapses of his evangelizers and finds suitable evangelizers himself—this is the case in the gospel, God makes new recruits from ordinary persons to humble the great and the powerful.
There must be some gravitas and charm in Jesus Christ for him to simply call people and they abandon everything to follow him. Jesus’ experience is NOT the typical experience of preachers and evangelizers: why the difference? The answer is simple: Jesus makes his ministry that of his Father and the Holy Spirit, not his alone—it was a communal affair. Remember that, prior to his evangelizing mission, Jesus went to be baptized by John-the-Baptist, after which he received the approbations both of the Holy Spirit, who descended upon him, and the voice of the Father that spoke to and about him. By the synergy of the Trinity and the 40 days and forty nights of prayer and fasting in the wilderness those Jesus called along the Sea of Galilee listened and obeyed him. In our age of consumerism, how many evangelizers fast and prayer? In our desire for stardom and extreme freedom, how many seek the communion of the Trinity in what they do? In our autocracy and cult-of-the-self, how many listen to God’s directives? You see why evangelizers too need evangelization?
Our second reading provides us with a suggestion, if we want to experience conversion in ourselves. It is the power of the urgency of now and the ephemerality of earthly life and successes that are catalysts for conversion and attractiveness to an evangelizer. Jesus who walks along the Sea of Galilee seeking out evangelizers had no bodyguards, beautiful dress of opulence but the dynamite of love that attracted others to himself. It was what came from within Jesus Christ that charmed those who heard him calling. The Holy Spirit of God goes ahead of Jesus Christ to prepare people to hearken to his call, because of their unity and communion. As an example, Jesus already spoke with future John-the-Baptist from the womb of Mary as both Elizabeth and Mary spoke with each other; that power penetrates Jesus’ hearers towards conversion and giving them the capacity to do good.
The urgency of now, which our second reading talks about, is the realization that we are pilgrims on earth, Heaven is our Home. Marriages, political power and positions, money and stardom, will all come to an end. In order to drive home the ephemerality of earthly realities, Coronavirus keeps taking our brothers and sisters, in record numbers, out of the earth on daily basis, yet we are not learning lessons of conversion. In the words of Paul, “From now on, let those having wives act as not having them . . . For the world in its present form is passing away”. In other words, only those who have undergone personal conversion can be evangelizers today, whether as political or religious leaders. Condemnation of sinners only makes one a worse sinner than others—lovers of sinners and martyrs for sinners are the only evangelizers God recognizes, because we are all sinners, safe for the grace and forgiveness of God!
Assignment for the Week:
Seek a reconciliation with your worst enemy, that will remind you of who you truly are —a sinner like others.