Hi all,
After a busy summer of placements and preaching I thought it was time to publish something... so here is the sermon I preached this morning at Ashburton Uniting Church. You'll find BB's sermon on the same reading here.
Enjoy... it's nose back to the grindstone from this week!
Blessings
SB
Today we have two rather fishy stories. Jonah, famous for being eaten by a fish answers God’s call to speak with the people of Nineveh. And in Mark’s gospel the call of the disciples to give up their fishing nets and become “fisher’s of men.” Two very different stories of God’s call and human response which contrast with each other in interesting and rather surprising ways.
Jonah, a very short book of only a page and a half is one which we don’t tend to read very often. I reckon if we took a poll around this and other Uniting churches people would recognise that it’s the story of “Jonah and the Whale” but what happens before that? Why does he end up in the whale’s belly? And what does Jonah do once he’s released? It’s a vivid and interesting story which definitely bears re-telling, especially if you haven’t heard it since Sunday school! It also holds an eternal message which is just as relevant to us today as it was to its ancient audience.
The story begins with Jonah being called by God to be a prophet to the city of Nineveh, to cry out against their wickedness. Jonah is not keen on the idea.
Instead of going east to the city of Nineveh, Jonah gets on a boat and goes west towards Tarshish, as far away as he can from the call. God sends a great wind and a mighty storm blows up. Jonah is asleep down in the hold of the ship and the sailors go down to wake him up. They beg him to do something. They discover that Jonah is fleeing from the presence of the LORD who created the sea and the waves and decide finally to throw him overboard in the hope that the Lord will then calm the sea.
Once overboard, Jonah is swallowed by a big fish. He stays in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights during which time he prays to Yahweh acknowledging that God has responded to his plight and promising that he will give thanks on deliverance. At the end of chapter 2, just prior to today’s story, the LORD spoke to the fish, and, as the NRSV delicately puts it, the fish “spewed Jonah out upon dry land”.
After being saved from the belly of the big fish, comes the story which Andrew shared with us earlier. Jonah hears the call of the Lord a second time asking him to go to Nineveh. Jonah has been given a second chance. This time he heads straight off! We’re told that he walks across the city for three days and cries out: “Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!” Instead of asking why this will happen, or indeed who is creating this catastrophe, we’re told that the Ninevites believed God, proclaimed a fast and put on sack cloth. The King on hearing the news proclaims that all should cry out mightily to God – and everyone, humans and animals should be covered in sackcloth. It’s hard not to see a comedic moment in all of this, the dogs, pigs and poultry of the town clad from head to tail (literally!) in sackcloth and parading about the town.
And God’s response? When he was what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity he was going to visit upon them - he changed his mind and didn’t do it.
Now you’d think at this point that Jonah would be pleased. Mission accomplished! Job well done! But no. He became very angry at God. He knows that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and ready to relent from punishing. He tells God that it would be better for him to die than live, and goes and sits in a booth outside the city and waits to see what will happen. So the Lord creates a bush to grow up over Jonah so that he will have shade and be saved from the harsh heat. And this makes Jonah happy. But the next day at dawn God appoints a worm to attack the bush and it withers and Jonah becomes faint with the heat. Again he tells God that it would be better for him to die than to live. The story ends with GOD calmly and compassionately making his point to Jonah: that he has become blinded by his anger to the enormous graciousness of God and the forgiveness shown to the city of Nineveh, the same graciousness shown to Jonah when he was saved from the sea. The evil of the Ninevites did not bring punishment which they deserved: they are saved because of the sincerity and wholeheartness of their repentance: because of the way in which they turned to God.
It’s hardly surprising that the story of the Ninevites is re-told at Jewish festivals as an example of true and complete repentance. But we often respond to stories like this in the same way that Jonah did: with righteous indignation. So often we struggle with the concept that "good people" can suffer while "bad people" appear to get away with it. However this story reminds us that it is the very nature of God to accept our repentance without question and to invite us back into relationship with God.
There is much discussion amongst scholars about the form, the genre of this little book. One biblical scholar even lists 20 different genres he can find within the story! 20 styles of writing in 4 short chapters, 1 and a half pages, now that’s a lot! But one thing they do agree on is that the story has comedic elements. It is meant to be laughed at. And the theological point is expounded to us as part of the comedy.
We could berate Jonah for his lack of faith or courage, for not following God’s call and immediately setting forth for Nineveh. But in some ways I think we can identify with him. He was given a mission impossible. Nineveh was one of the greatest cities of its day. It was a city of conquerors, a commercial powerhouse whose rulers lived lives of comparative luxury and indulgence. The Ninevites were not Israelites, why would they respond to a call from God to repent? I can see how Jonah might have felt that God was asking for just too much.
That’s why the good thing about this story is that God is able to make use of Jonah the reluctant hero to save Nineveh even in spite of himself. The amusing comedic moment in the story where Jonah is swallowed by the big fish and spewed back up on the beach three days later is evidence of Yahweh’s enormous grace and compassion. Jonah mightn’t be a perfect prophet, but God is able to use him all the same. God doesn’t just make use of the best of us – “best”, afterall, is a human standard. Before God we are all inadequate, and even our “best and brightest” often don’t get it, often don’t respond in the way God wants us to. And yet God responds to us with grace and compassion, which, even though it points out our foibles and often seems to pull the rug out from under our feet, is nevertheless the love of God drawing us to God.
Jonah is the reluctant prophet - it takes him three chapters to get to Nineveh. By contrast, it takes a very short 4 verses for the fishermen in Mark’s gospel, our second fishy story for the day, to leave their nets, their security, and their families to follow Jesus. In true Markan style, the fishermen respond immediately. The author tells us nothing of their inner deliberations, whether the fishing was good or bad, if they were religious people or not, if they got along with their father or wanted to get out of their home town and go and see the world. Mark merely says, “And immediately, they followed him.”
Not surprisingly, this connecting phrase, “and immediately,” is the most common phrase in Mark’s Gospel, occurring 33 times in only 16 chapters. It is a powerful phrase because it draws our attention to who Mark says Jesus is: when Jesus speaks, people immediately follow him, demons are immediately cast out, the diseased and disabled are immediately cured. In this context, “immediately” is not a symbol of perfect faith or obedience – it is a symbol of Jesus’ power, of his capacity to draw people to him and respond effectively to human need. “Immediately” highlights the power of Jesus’ call to discipleship.
When Jesus is calling these first disciples to follow him, what is he asking them to do exactly? The answer is found in the first two verses of our reading today when Jesus proclaims the Good News of the Kingdom. He says: the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.” This statement of Jesus, right at the outset of his ministry encapsulates for us the purpose of his entire ministry: to bring people to an awareness of the coming Kingdom, so that they can repent and respond to God’s gracious love. And the very action of Christ’s death on the cross is the action which makes possible our response, building a bridge across the chasm of human brokenness so that we can respond to God’s invitation into relationship that is the Kingdom.
If we think about the situations of our world right now, we can see all too clearly the need for God’s grace. Economic downturn, global warming, and war and chaos are but the most obvious examples. Everywhere, people seem to be in crisis – even our own Uniting church is facing difficult decisions concerning its life and mission. But instead of succumbing to despair or cynicism, or the perverse pleasure of seeing our predictions of doom come true, Jesus’ call to discipleship is a call to focus on working towards the kingdom, toward being “fishers of men”. The call to discipleship is a call to hope: the waters in which we fish may indeed seem troubled, but then, Jesus never said: “Come follow me to a life of ease and comfort”.
Of course, it can sometimes seem all too hard – I can understand why a swift boat to some nice desert island somewhere (Chrystal clear blue waters, clean white sands…. palm trees) might sound much nicer than confronting some of the harsher realities of our time and place. Just as Jonah was a reluctant prophet, not wanting to answer God’s call, so might we be at this moment in history. But if ever our world needed to hear this story of grace and forgiveness, of God’s great love for all of us, not because we are good enough, or because we deserve it, but just because God desires a relationship with us, then surely this is the time.
