Epiphany 3
January 22, 2012
Mark 1:16-18
Passing along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw Simon bar Jonah,
and his brother Andrew net-fishing. Fishing was their regular work.
Jesus said to them, "Come with me. I'll make a new kind of fisherman
out of you. I'll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch
and bass." They didn't ask questions. They dropped their nets and
followed.
Ever since I was a youngster I’ve been fascinated by the story of
Jonah and the whale – now as an adult I still find the fable one of the
richest stories in our Scripture. Nobody knows who wrote it but
whoever it was an amazing story teller that had a great imagination,
sense of humor, along with a remarkable insight into the nature of the
one God that showed a depth lacking in many of his contemporaries.
Jonah 3:1-5,10
Next, God spoke to Jonah a second time: "Up on your feet and on your
way to the big city of Nineveh! Preach to them. They're in a bad way
and I can't ignore it any longer." This time Jonah started off straight
for Nineveh, obeying God's orders to the letter.
Nineveh was a big city, very big—it took three days to walk across it.
Jonah entered the city, went one day's walk and preached, "In forty
days Nineveh will be smashed."
The people of Nineveh listened, and trusted God. They proclaimed a
citywide fast and dressed in burlap to show their repentance. Everyone
did it—rich and poor, famous and obscure, leaders and followers.
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God saw what they had done, that they had turned away from their
evil lives. He did change his mind about them. What he said he would do
to them he didn't do.
Sermon
If you go to Bagdad today, which is on either side of the Tigris River,
and go up the river for about 200 miles, in what is now northern Iraq,
you will find the excavated site of the ancient city of Nineveh – the
capital of what was then called Assyria. A city which in biblical times
was described as grand and glorious – idolatrous and violent.
The Ninevites were responsible for the brutal conquest - the
subjugation of Israel. That was the wickedness for which they were
being judged. But God, apparently, cared for the Ninevites. And so God
looked around for a prophet to go and speak to Nineveh and announce
the need for the Ninevites to repent – to changed their evil ways or
face the impending destruction of the city because for the great
wickedness which the inhabitants inflicted on Israel.
God selected the son of a Mitite, Jonah, and Israelite. And God said to
Jonah, “Go to Nineveh and preach.”
Jonah upon hearing this, hops a ship in the opposite direction, getting
as much water between him and Nineveh as possible. There was no
pious, “Here I am send me,” business, like in the story of Isaiah! No, he
hightailed it toward Tarshish.
You have to understand, no sane Israelite would have wanted to go to
Nineveh – I mean the Ninevites were noted for their absolute cruelty,
especially when it came to Israelites. It would be analogous to a Black
man in the 1950’s going to an all white restaurant in Mississippi
standing on a table and telling the diners that God wanted them to just
get over their racism and if they did God would maybe forgive them
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and bless them. Wouldn’t be something anyone would want to do if they
cared for their life.
But when you read the book of Jonah you find out that it wasn’t fear
that made Jonah head for Tarshish, no he wasn’t afraid for his skin –
he didn’t want to go there and speak the message God wanted him to
speak because he was afraid that it might work – even though the
chances of anybody getting through to the Ninevites were slim, the
remote possibility that the Ninevites might listen and repent and God
might forgive them was the last thing Jonah or any other Jew for that
matter, wanted. Mercy and forgiveness for the Ninevites? Forget
that, God!
So Jonah finds a boat headed hopefully to – Wherever God is not. He
paid his fare, and as novelist Herman Melville says,
‘with slouched hat and guilty eye he skulked on board’
This leads to the only bit of the story of Jonah most people know
anything about. God hurls a tempest, and strong wind against the ship.
And they were afraid these sailors – this was no ordinary storm – this
was like the storm in the movie, “The Perfect Storm”. They threw
things overboard to lighten the load and ride the storm better – it
didn’t help and finally in their fear they decided to cast lots to find out
who among them God must be angry with. The lot fell upon Jonah.
Who are you?
Where are you from?
What are you up to?
What’s your country?
Jonah said, “I’m a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of heaven, the
Creator of the sea and the land.
To make a short story even shorter they agreed it was best to throw
him overboard and when they did, the seas immediately calmed. And
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God appointed a great fish to swallow him. After three days and nights
of severe indigestion, Jonah praying to God inside the fishes belly, the
big fish “vomited out Jonah on dry land,” on the very shore where
Jonah had left in the first place.
God comes to Jonah again and saying, “Arise go to Nineveh, that great
city, and proclaim to it the message I tell you” Jonah, still reeking like
the inside of a fish, sapped of all his strength can no longer resist, so
he begrudgingly does what God commands and goes.
Now according to the Bible Nineveh was ‘an exceedingly great city.’
It took three days to walk through it (that’s roughly sixty miles) which
makes it a really BIG city. Prof. Eric Meyers of the Religion Dept. at
Duke claims that archeological excavations at the ruins on Nineveh
reveal that it was only about three miles across – but if you believed,
literally, that bit about the belly of the big fish, why quibble over a
sixty mile wide city?
Jonah goes day’s journey in, delivers his one sentence, 7 word (in
Hebrew) sermon, packs his bags and prepares to head home. In his
sermon there are no illustrations, no poetry, no clever stories, none of
the alluring alliterative allusions we preachers love to inflict on you ,
just "In forty days Nineveh will be smashed."
There, are you satisfied, God? I went. I preached. It’s done. I’m outa
here!
And the response to the shortest and worst sermon ever is the
greatest and most wonderful in the entire Bible – in the history of
homiletics. The people of 60 mile wide Nineveh repent. All of them.
They start fasting, they put on sackcloth from the oldest to the
youngest, they roll in ashes. Even the king, who heard the sermon, only
second hand, leads their repentance. Even the cattle repent! Bovine
repentance! Dogs, cats kings, everybody repents. Later, Jesus used the
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repentance of the Ninevites as a standard by which to measure
repentance. (Luke 11:29) “This is a wicked generation! It asks for a
sign, but none will be given except the sign of Jonah …. Jonah was a
sign for the Ninevites … The people of Nineveh will stand up at the
judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at
the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here.” Back
to the story …
And Jonah? Upon seeing this great demonstration of repentance he
gets mad, gets depressed and says he wishes he were dead!
“I know this would happen!” pouts Jonah. “This is why I ran to Tarshish,
I knew you were a God who was merciful and forgiving, a lover of
rabble like those Ninevites. I mean even the cows!”
So, what in the world is wrong with this Jonah? What’s wrong with a
merciful God, we wonder? Isn’t mercy what we all would like from God?
Yet when the mercy of God for me is also the mercy of God for them,
when I’m at church on Sunday feeling all cozy with my merciful God
only to find God working the other side of the street with them, ---well, it just doesn’t feel all that cozy anymore.
We all like to divide the world into good guys/bad guys – God is the God
of the good guys which, of course, is us – our God is not the God of the
bad guys. What it is, is that we are in denial that there is one God, who
is God of all creation, all life, all beings. Three thousand years after
Israel met the one God, after Moses taught us the pray the Shema,
“Here O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” We still find it tough to
monotheize. We have our God, the Ninevites have theirs. And our toxic
polytheism leads to deadly tribalism which denies what all Scriptures
struggle to teach – “Hear O People, the Lord your God is one.”
To my mind the most important point that this wonderful fable of
Jonah is trying to hammer home to the Jews, to us, to all who like to
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think they have a claim on God: Sorry! God is not the property of Jews,
Christians, Moslems, Sufi’s, Hindu’s, or anyone. God is the God of all
creation – to those of us who like to carve up the world into competing
camps and claim that God is on our side this story of Jonah is
dedicated.
In the Gospel reading is the story of Jesus calling his first disciples,
one of them named Simon bar Jonah, (later to be renamed Peter). He
was called first by Jesus and later God spoke to his heart, saying,
‘Simon bar Jonah’, I am the God of all creation, ‘go and tell of my love
and compassion to the gentiles, for all are children of mine.’
Reluctantly, with some of the reluctance and resentment of the first
Jonah, Simon bar Jonah, who was at Joppa, left his Joppa, and went to
Caesarea and to the house of a Roman military man, an oppressor of the
Jews, much the same way the Ninevites were - a soldier with the army
of occupation in Israel.
Simon bar Jonah, Peter, looked around and said, ‘well, looks like God
embraces these people too.’
And then he said, ‘can anybody here hinder these people from knowing
and experiencing the welcome, the love, the mercy of God?’
- And there was silence
- And Peter told them of the one God and like the Ninevites they
repented of their ways, they laid down their arms and became
follows of The Way.
Mind you, Simon Peter was called on the carpet when he got back to
Jerusalem for reaching out as he did to the Roman enemies.
That kind of struggle is still not over. (Harmesh and Amir)There is
within all of us a cultural and historical shaping of our lives in a certain
way. But then at some moment – surprise – God taps us on the shoulder
and says, “Get over it.”
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It is so difficult to be a faithful follower of the God who is the god of
all creation. Think for a moment about the opinions and feeling we
often harbor toward:
- Those who pray and plot for the demise of our country
- Those we label as racist, or sexist, or homophobic
- The Occupy protestors who become destructive, violent
- The folks we know are taking advantage of our welfare system
- The 1% whose greed seems to know no end
We all have our lists – but God says, surprise – I love them too!! YOU
LOVE THEM TOO!!
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