Fasting Reverses Wrath!

Welde-Tensae

Welcome to Fast of Nineveh which we the faithful of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church observe for three days. This year’s fast of Nineveh will be held from Feb. 9-11 2009 /Yekatit 2-4, 2001 E.C/

A reading of the Book of Jonas gives a lesson worthy of notice to believers. This lesson is imparted through four parties in the account of the events. The four parties are God, Jonah, other passengers on board and the people of Nineveh.

1. God:

God is never happy when people sin. He is, therefore ,displeased by the sin of Nineveh. He may also bring His wrath unless sinners repent following the example of Nineveh and others in biblical history.

Whenever people sin, God will send his message in various ways of which one is sending messangers. Jonah was told to go to Ninneveh to Nineveh as a messenger because Nineveh sinned and God never wanted to punish them without the due process of warning to repent for their sins.

Though God wills to save His people through their repentance, chosen messengers may say no to His assignment either because they don’t feel they are fit for the job, as was the case with Mosses who temporarily resisted God’s call for fear his stammer might affect the effectiveness of his homily. The messengers may refuse to execute a mission for fear their reputation may be affected when God mercifully reverses the wrath he said he would bring against sinful people.

Ultimately, God is the winner. He wins Jonah through a tempest as he was fleeing. God does not leave Jonas to a tempestuous sea without any helper. A great fish gives Jonah its belly as a shelter where he could pass his three days of repentance. When the fish vomits Jonah at Nineveh, the people there repent through his warning. God visits them in His mercy when they repent.

2 Jonah:

Though a chosen prophet, Jonah tries to flee from the presence of the Lord forgetting at least temporarily that the Lord is everywhere be it in the celestial, terrestrial and aquatic world. Tarshish to which Jonah was fleeing was no exception to the domicile of the Lord. The same is true for the ship which carried him and the sea in which he was. God is also the ruler of the big fish which unusually refrained from terminating the life of Jonah one he was in its belly. As a mortal, Jonah fails to discern the omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience of the Lord until he wakes up due to the tempest.

A messenger's a fathers refusal to live up to the call of God may be a cause of disturbance for the lay or the grassroot. If fathers unwittingly try to flee from God or are sound asleep when they are supposed to deliver messages pertinent to the repentance of the sinful, chaos may reign amidst the ordinary faithful. Such a tempest is silenced only when fathers give away themselves to the hand of the Lord knowing their trespasses.

A Father or, any serevant of the faith for that matter, should always say yes to the call of God. Jonah said no because he was overzealous of his own personal glory which he felt would be marred when God ultimately visits repentant transgressors in His mercy. A messenger of God is, however, there to see the lives of fellow human beings saved through their repentance heeding words of God that come to them through chosen messengers. A father or messenger should therefore  be willing to save lives through sacrificing even himself as Mosses prayed to see Israel saved through the deletion of his name from the book of life.

As a mortal, if a father happens to be in a futile effort to flee away from the Lord, let it watch out the turmoil among his flock and repent to give them the serenity they have lost through his transgression. Let him then pray for himself and others. When he himself is visited by the mercy of the Lord, let him baldly tell sinners to repent and save themselves from any hovering wrath. If sinners listen to messages brought to them from God via a messenger and they repent, God is trusted to visit them in His mercy. This should be a cause of ecstasy for the messenger, and not of displeasure as was unduly the case with Jonah.

3. Other passengers on board

When they found their lives at stake due to the tempestuous sea, they resorted to prayer. They even woke Jonah up and asked him to pray unto his God in case his God may save them.

They represent us, the ordinary members of the Christian flock. Whenever we are in turmoil, we have to pray by ourselves and also ask our sleeping fathers to wake up and pray. Though adamant he was to God’s call, Jonah’s word has saved the passengers. He asked them to give him away to the hand of God knowing that the tempest was the making of his sin.

The times may be so testing that our fathers are not living up to the expectation of God. That would surely be a disgrace to our personal and communal lives as it has a spill-over effect. In such a situation, we need to pray for them. We have to also tell them in the modest way to save us from a possible tempest that may come due to their failure to listen to God. Let us help them to diligently execute their God-given role of patrology.

Just because their lives are not model enough, we could not say no to their spiritual fatherhood which they are divinely chosen for. Minus any possible heresy, we have to live under their umbrella refraining from any instance of disobedience. While housing ourselves under the house of God which they cater for, we need to pray unto the Lord to give them His spirit of diligence and grace. That will wake them up to their negligence and they will start to live up to the expectations of our testing time which is not of luxury but of hallowed sacrifice of the self.

4 Ninneveh:

The people of Ninneveh were so sinful but repentant. God did not leave them to die of their sins; He sent Jonah unto them so that they could listen to His warning to save themselves through repentance. They repented and reversed the wrath of God that was at hand to consume them.

Though the degree varies, every mortal sins. He is not fated to be condemned for ever unless he looks down up on the message of the Lord which any repentant receives one way or the other before God resorts to His punishment that a stubborn sinner ultimately deserves.

As soon as Jonah delivered his homily of repentance, Ninneveh realised how filthy it was in the eyes of God. Everybody in Ninneveh, the king and the rank-and –file alike, repented. As a result, God visited them in His mercy.

Ninneveh stands as an epitomy of repentance for us to listen to the word of God. We are witnessing various manifestations of the looming wrath of God which is a result of our sins. If we repent, we will be visited in God’s mercy which will manifest itself in love, fraternity, co-existence, benevolence and other graces. Otherwise, our insistence on sins will lead to even more curses. The tip of the iceberg that we observe here and there now will be even worse.

Let us listen to scriptures and preachers that bring the word of God unto us to reverse any wrath of God which is likely to come up on us unless we repent.

As a Summary:

The Book of Jonah mirrors what God does under the different circumstances of our sinning and repentance. Lessons are imparted to serevants of the faith, particularly fathers, and the faithful under their guidance on what their respective role is in the said circumstances. The people on board other than Jonah and those of Ninneveh are a lesson to us on what to do when we are in problem and when the word of God comes unto us. Let each of us take the relevant lesson depending on our position in the rug of the ladder of Christianity and serve God better following the example of Ninneveh. As we fast Ninneveh, let us fast it for our transgressions personally and as a community. Let us remember our fathers in the prayer we accord to God. The Lord who has the wayout will surely visit us in His mercy. Our earthly and spiritual querries will be solved provided we have repentant hearts. Have a spiritually blissful fast. Amen!!!      

May God Bless us, Amen.