Third Sunday In Ordinary Time
The first reading for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is a selection from the Book of Jonah. Jonah’s first call to go to Nineveh, to the east, is omitted together with his foolish decision to take a cruise westward on the Mediterranean. The grumpy and disobedient prophet ended up in the sea and in the belly of a huge fish. Inside the gut of the fish he sang psalms of repentance for three days and three nights. Thus he becomes a symbol of the burial, then the resurrection of Jesus. His words of repentance can be summed up in this quote, “I called to the Lord out of my distress. I am cast out from your presence. How shall I again look upon your temple?” Jonah’s recognition that he had reached bottom led him to repent of his disobedience. One symbol of his sin is that he became fish vomit. Still better than exiting from the other end.
Our reading takes up at the point of Jonah’s second call. This time he obeys. If we know that Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, and that Assyria was the ancient enemy of Israel, then we can understand why an Israelite prophet hesitated to go to Nineveh and to see the Ninevites repent. In the rest of the story, (not included in our reading), Jonah is furious at the success of his mission. He deeply resents the conversion of the Ninevites. He sits on a hill above the city, hop-ing that God will destroy them. God still had to teach the unwilling prophet what we learn from Isaiah 55:8, where God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways.” Jesus gave us a concise summary of the lesson of Jonah in the Sermon on the Mount, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” The reason for the selection of part of the story of Jonah – his call reflects the call of Jesus’ first disciples in this Sunday’s gospel. The people’s response verse for today’s Responsorial Psalm 28: “Teach me your ways, O Lord.”
The second reading is a very brief selection from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Import-ant for understanding this reading is to know that St. Paul was convinced that the end was at hand, that Jesus would soon return to judge the world and rescue the Christians. Therefore Paul writes, “From now on, let those who have wives act as not having them.” To which we might quip, “There’s too much of that already!” The rest of his advice on this occasion is depressing.
“Let those weeping be as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing, etc.” Then the reading closes with Paul’s reason for his pessimism, “For the world in its present form is passing away.”
Even though those who arranged the Lectionary could have made a better choice, Paul’s conviction that the end was near does reflect the first part of today’s gospel, “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Good News.” These are the first words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. What does his choice of these words as Jesus’ first proclamation tell us about Mark? What is he teaching here? To answer that question we must know the circumstances that led him to write his Good News about 70 A.D. These factors influenced Mark. He wrote his document for the Church at Rome. They had recently undergone a horrendous persecution by the Emperor Nero. Secondly, an earthquake in 63 A.D. at Mt. Vesuvius gave warning of trouble to come. Thirdly, Jerusalem with its temple, to which Christians still looked as their city of origin and chief place of worship, was either still under-going the horrors of a long siege by the Roman army, or had already been captured and destroy-ed. For Mark, these events proclaimed the end and the return of Jesus. That was Good News for Christians.
In the second part of today’s gospel Jesus calls his first disciples to follow him and to prepare them for the continuation of his mission. Therefore he says, “I will make you fishers of men.”
Jesus is walking by the Sea of Galilee. He sees two fishermen casting their nets into the sea.
Mark adds the obvious, “for they were fishermen.” Their names: Simon and Andrew. They were brothers. We know from elsewhere in the gospels that their father’s name was John. In those days men were known by the name of their father, for example, Simon, son of John. Today they would be known as Simon and Andrew Johnson. Their fishing business, centered on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee, was not a small enterprise. It was a family business. Archaeology testifies that it was managed from a large tile-roofed house – a multi-family dwelling. This business center and home became Jesus’ headquarters in Galilee.
Jesus is a man of few words on this occasion, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
As Jesus the carpenter would soon build his church, so his first disciples were fishermen he sent into the world to fish for people to form the Christian Community. An illustration of a well-known saying, “Grace builds on nature.” The response of the brothers: “They abandoned their nets and followed him.” Did they really walk away from their business which supported their families? We know that these were responsible people, since Jesus made Simon the “CEO” of his own enterprise. From a historical point of view we could excuse them, since their business was multi-family and in a partnership with the Zebedee clan. Nor did the Johnson brother leave all. St. Paul informs us that Simon and the other apostles were accompanied by their wives on their mission travels. Better to understand Mark’s description of their instant response as the desired response to the Lord’s call. Jesus sees a second pair of fishing brothers, James and John Zebedee. He invited them also to follow him. They too respond instantly. Easier to understand their instant response. They were teenagers, stuck with the boring job of mending nets. Besides that, it is probable that Jesus was their older first cousin, (on his mother’s side, of course!).
