Sunday 21st January 2024 - Sunday of The Word of God

Jonah 3:1-5,10/ Psalm 24(25)/ 1 Corinthians 7:29-31/ Mark 1:14-20

How would you react if you were going about your daily business and a stranger walking buy called out to you to follow him and he would change your life. Would you ignore him and carry on with your business, would you ridicule him or send him on his way, or would you drop everything and follow him? I’m pretty sure I know what I would do, and it would not be to drop everything and wander after some strange passerby. In today’s gospel passage we hear Mark’s version of Jesus calling his first four disciples. They were all fishermen, presumably skilled at what they did but not highly educated. They were not the people that we might expect Jesus to rely on to preach his message to the world. When Jesus called them these four men immediately dropped what they were doing and followed him, leaving everything they had of value behind, James and John even abandoning their father.

The message today is about hearing the call from God and the response we make to it. In the first reading we hear about Jonah walking through the great city of Nineveh calling the people to repent. Jonah heard the word of the Lord and did what he was asked. The people of the great worldly city heard the word of the Lord from Jonah and immediately changed their ways and repented.

Simon, Andrew, James, and John heard the word of the Lord from the Lord himself, they immediately responded and became followers of Jesus, his disciples. We see the power of the word of God acting through Jonah and the effect it had on the four fishermen. They were open to hearing the call to them, they responded immediately to that call, and not only did it change their lives, but it also changed the lives of many people, in fact it changed the world.

We get a sense of the urgency Jesus felt about proclaiming his message. His kingdom is close at hand and repentance is called for. Not sometime soon, or when we are less busy or when or if we can be bothered, but now, immediately, at once. The call to repent is urgent and it requires an immediate response. Jesus wanted to call people around himself to form a body that would continue his work in the world. This group of people selected by Jesus were not what we might consider to be the obvious choices for such a mission. They were not learned teaches of the faith or known leaders of their community. They were simple flawed human beings just like you and me. In forming this group Jesus was founding his church on earth.

It does not matter who we are, what skills or experience we may have or not have, we are all called by Jesus to make up his body in the form of his church. Through the power of the word of God acting within us we can fulfil the call being made to us despite our human limitations. We only have to look at the choices Jesus made to form his church. Simon, who he renamed Peter the rock, to be the first leader. A simple man with an impulsive manner. At one time standing up for Jesus and at the next denying even knowing him. James and John nicknamed the sons of thunder because of their reactive natures. They later want to call down destruction on a foreign village and argue over gaining the best places in heaven. Jesus even chose Judas Iscariot who would betray him and sell him into captivity and death. It does not look promising from a human resources recruitment perspective, but history shows us the power of God working through these very human people. It is no different for us. God can and will work through us despite, rather than because, of who we are. God knows our individual faults and failings but still finds ways of working with us and through us to spread his good news even today.

Pope Francis designated this third Sunday of Ordinary Time as ‘Sunday of the Word of God’, calling us to ‘appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in the constant dialogue between the Lord and his people’. God has spoken to us down the ages through his prophets and through scripture. Eventually the Word of God became flesh in the person of Jesus living and teaching among us. In the Holy Spirit God remains with us and continues to talk to us through his church and through our prayer.

The message from St Paul in the second reading is as relevant to us today as it was to the church in Corinth. We live in a cynical disbelieving world, a world that believes itself to be self-reliant without a sense of sinfulness. We see this all around us where the sanctity of life and relationship is disregarded. Fundamental truths being denied in the name of a false goodness and compassion. The holiness of the human being, created in the image of God, is unrecognised and we become a mere commodity with an economic value or cost. Humanity is losing its sense of natural justice and consequently has difficulty in seeing the urgent need to repent. The worldly response is that having done nothing wrong there is no need to repent. Well, we do not need to look very far today to see the wrongs that are being perpetrated around our world, actions being falsely justified for this or that reason. People are starving, without safe homes, killed and injured in wars and disputes, babies destroyed in the womb and old and sick people being considered a burden on society. We have to deal with the world, but we must not become engrossed in it.

Today we are halfway through a period of prayer for Christian Unity. Disunity within our own communities yet alone amongst the various Christian denominations is yet another sign of the weakness of the human condition. In responding to the call to follow Jesus we must try to work together in what unites us rather than what divides us. The call from Jesus is as urgent today as it was on the lakeside in Galilee. We must respond at once to that call so that the world may believe. What are the things that tie us to the world? What can we leave on the shore as we seek to follow Jesus more closely? We might not be able to drop everything, but we can try to orientate all that we do towards the will of God and the building up of his kingdom rather than to the will of the world or ourselves.

God Bless Brendan