Today we have a feast of options to pray from: Jonah’s reluctant prophecy, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, and St. Francis of Assisi’s feast day.
Jonah
We all know the story of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet. God called him to “preach against the city of Nineveh.” For whatever reason, Jonah didn’t want to do that. So, he set out in the opposite direction for Tarshish. He got into a boat. God sent a great storm. The mariners thought the boat was going to be destroyed in the storm. Being people of various faiths, but believers in God, they prayed, then, (as a result of their prayer?) cast lots to see whose sin was the cause of their predicament.
The cast lot process identified Jonah—who was sleeping through the storm. He admitted he was running away from God. With some trepidation, the mariners took Job’s advice and threw him overboard. The sea calmed, the mariners worshipped, and Job was swallowed by a large fish. He was in the belly of the fish three days.
From the belly of the fish Jonah prayed
to the LORD, his God.
Then the LORD commanded the fish to spew Jonah upon the shore.
That’s not the whole story of Jonah. We will continue it for the next several days in the first readings.
Teaching Stories
While there was a Hebrew prophet Jonah (II Kings 14: 25-27), the book of Jonah is not about him. It is a teaching story, a piece of wisdom literature, probably written after the Babylonian exile in the 5th or 4th century BC. Jonah was developed in part to help the post-exilic Jews see God called them to witness for him to Gentiles, and that God was (and is) interested in all people. Nineveh was a very old city on the banks of the Tigris River. It was part of the Assyrian empire and had a reputation for sin. Today it is a part of the city of Mosul, Iraq. Tarshish as a city appears several times in the Hebrew scriptures. It may have been in modern Spain. The main points about the city names is that God wanted Jonah to go East, but he headed West.
The Gospel today is another teaching story, Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. We are used to thinking of the Good Samaritan as a teaching story. Jesus was also developing on the theme that God is interested in all peoples—and that all peoples can be used by God to help and teach. Remember the question Jesus was asked that led to the story, “Who is my neighbor?”
St. Francis
I have heard it said that St. Francis is THE most beloved saint. God met him and turned him around, just like he did Jonah. For Francis, the conversion moment was when he stopped throwing coins at lepers and started meeting them close up, eye to eye, and touching them. Actually handing a leper a coin had the effect on Francis that being thrown overboard had on Jonah. From what we know, he gave up everything and pointed his life in a new direction with substantially more willingness than Jonah. Stripping naked in the middle of the street in front of God, the bishop, your father, and doubtless many surprised people—now that’s a radical act of conversion! That’s what Francis did.
Yet, how appropriate today’s readings are for St. Francis, for he served a prophetic purpose: he lived his life as a radical Christian in contrast to the emerging commercial, competitive political, and softened spiritual world around him. He didn’t predict doom—but he, along with St. Dominic, led a re-conversion of Europe as mendicant friars left the monasteries and joined the people in the streets. From a historical perspective, he moved the church from where it had needed to be through the centuries of agrarian Europe to where it needed to be as cities and trades developed: out on the streets with the people.
St. Francis walked the streets and called people to live their faith—just like Jonah. He did even more radical things—like go to the Middle East to meet the Sultan, rather than fight him in a Crusade.
The picture today is the San Damiano cross. The story is that Francis was walking in the woods one day when he saw a small, run-down church. As he stopped to pray in it, he heard Jesus say from the crucifix, “Rebuild my church.” Francis took Jesus’ direction literally and began to repair the church. But, before too long it became clear that Francis was actually living his Christian faith with such fervor that God could use him to re-form, re-vitalize, re-Spirit the whole Church.
Obeying a Prompt of the Lord
Francis didn’t foresee all that when he simply began to repair walls and interior of a small, hidden chapel. He simply did “the next good thing” he could see to do. Others joined him, and he changed more than his little corner of the world.
The Good Samaritan
And what about Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan? Last Lent when three groups of ACM readers and I were studying Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti (Brothers and Sisters All), I made a study of how saints and theologians viewed the story of the Good Samaritan through the centuries. I was amazed to discover that only in the last hundred years or so has the fact that the Samaritan was a foreigner been a focal point of meaning in the story. The Good Samaritan is the Scripture centerpiece of Fratelli Tutti. Pope Francis uses it as a foundation for calling us to a sense of world brotherhood and sisterhood—a sense of solidarity with people around the world.
The Good Samaritan saw need and recognized he could meet that need when he saw the Jewish man lying on the side of the road. He didn’t think of ritualistic contamination or cost to his time or money. With a real empathy for the man, he dressed the man’s wounds on the spot, saw that wasn’t going to be enough, carried him to an inn, watched him through the night, and left the innkeeper with instructions and means to enable him to recover. He was a brother to the man.
Radical Christianity and the Fringes
I tend to think of radical faith like what was shown by Jonah, the Good Samaritan, and St. Francis as being on the fringes. They all did some radical things. But that is where today’s readings get between the marrow and the bone for me. Some of the actions might have been radical; certainly, the stories are. But the reality is they all simply put their faith to work in the issues of their times in ways that spoke to their cultures according to what God asked them to do.
I don’t see myself as Jonah. I am sometimes a reluctant Good Samaritan. I can’t imagine throwing off my clothes in the street or walking into the middle of Afghanistan and saying to the new leaders, “Let’s be friends.”
But I can speak truth about end-of-life issues, I can willingly respond to needs I see around me of people who need a listening ear, and I can be helpful to new Afghani refugees in Central Kentucky. Hmm. I can be a prophet as I teach (Jonah), a priest by offering Works of Mercy (Samaritan), and king (St. Francis) as I meet mental health needs of refugees and immigrants. I am called to all those roles by my baptism and to those tasks by prayer. Brothers and sisters–all. Not radical in appearance–but radical in faith.
As we all are called to be not-so-radical radicals.
Prayer:
Lord, keep me from being paralyzed by polarities in the culture around me, by hesitations that come from my fear of the unknown, so I can be “sister” to all. Solidarity is just empathy in work clothes. Pull me toward solidarity in such a way that in my little corner of the world I can be a beam of Your Light, Your Life, Your Truth—like Jonah, like the Samaritan, like St. Francis. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
