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"Will You Take This Call?" | Jonah 3:1-5; 10 | January 26, 2003 |
Most of us know the story of Jonah, at least the part with the big fish which tradition has turned into a whale. Most of you in this room have seen our children present a musical based on the Jonah story. I have had the honor, I think it was an honor and not just type-casting, to play the whale–twice.
Recall again the story. Being a preacher was the last thing on Jonah’s mind. Above all, he would not want to go and preach to Nineveh, worst of the tyrannical regimes of the ancient Near East. As a good citizen of Israel, Jonah hates the Ninevites and would welcome their destruction. But the voice of God came to Jonah, Go to Nineveh! So Jonah goes in the opposite direction. He boards a ship going to Joppa, as far away from Ninevah as the travel agent can book him. The ship gets caught in a ferocious storm. The crew jettisons the cargo and prays to every god they can think of. Finally they cast lots to see who might be cursed. Jonah wins this lottery; confesses that his God may be the one upset and suggests they toss him overboard with the cargo. They do. Jonah is rescued by being swallowed by a great fish. From inside the fish Jonah prays and vows obedience. The fish returns him to land. There is marvelous imagery in this part of the story: Jonah goes down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the depths of the sea. God throws a storm at the ship; the crew throws out the cargo, throws lots, throws Jonah overboard; and the fish throws Jonah up on land.
Jonah now begrudgingly does what God commands. He goes to Nineveh which we are told was “an exceedingly great city.” He goes to the edge of town, delivers his one sentence, five-word (in Hebrew) sermon, packs his bags and prepares to head home. No poems, no pity slogans, rhymes (no If you want God to relent, you’d better repent), or alliterations (like “No, No, nattering, negative, Ninevean nabobs”). No stories, just “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
The response to the world’s shortest and worst sermon is the greatest response in the entire Bible.
The people of Nineveh all repent. They start fasting, they all put on sackcloth from the oldest to the youngest. The king, even the cattle, repent! Dogs, cats , kings–everybody repents.
“I knew this would happen!” pouts Jonah. He explains that he had refused to go to Nineveh because he was afraid that his sermon might actually have a good effect. The Ninevites might actually change and God might forgive them. This story reminds us that if there is one thing worse than an evil, cruel people in the world, like the citizens of Nineveh, it is when evil, cruel people in the world change for the better!! With complaint, Jonah throws an accusation at God which we often use as a prayer of thanksgiving. He says, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” (Jonah 4:2) The fear that God will not share Jonah’s hatred for the evil empire leads the petulant prophet to treat the call of God as if it were from a telemarketer at dinner time.
Compare this to the response of Zebedee’s boys and Simon and Andrew when Jesus issues the call “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” They drop their nets and follow–immediately the scripture says.
There are some unusual elements in the text we might overlook. First, those who answered Jesus’ call to follow him did not all belong to the same socio-economic circles. Simon and Andrew probably were poor fishermen. There is no mention of a boat. It is likely they cast their nets from the shallows of the sea, and sorted their catch on the beach by themselves. James and John, however, walked away from a boat, hired men and their father Zebedee. Furthermore, rabbis did not seek students; students sought them. Teachers waited for people to come to them and such candidates were interviewed carefully before deciding whether they had what was necessary to study. No self-respecting rabbi would have gone out to recruit his own followers and he certainly would not have picked the first four people he laid eyes on. Stranger still, they went with him, not one or two out of the first group but every one of them.
There is an interpretation that says that Jesus would be known as the son of a carpenter, an artisan. He would have common cause with people who made their living fishing for it is probable that they all suffered from the same oppressive economic and political situation. Jesus announcing that the reign of God was at hand would make it tempting to Zebedee, who might have paid as much as 40 percent of his catch in taxes, to be willing to hire more day laborers to replace his sons if everyone’s lot could be improved by an overthrow of the Romans.
Usually we read this brief, brief call of the first four disciples and wonder if we would have been willing to drop everything and follow. Could we really just leave the keys in the car and go. Could we take such a risk? Barbara Brown Taylor says there is a risk of reading this as a hero story about the disciples. This risks falling into the delusion that we can, by our good decisions and good deeds, save ourselves. “If we will just work hard enough, we tell ourselves, if we pray enough and help enough and give enough, then God will claim us in the end.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way) This is a particularly American form of idolatry because we do have so many choices and we have had it drilled into our heads that God helps those who help themselves.
Maybe this story of Jesus calling these four to come fish for people is not about their heroic response but about something that just happened to them, “something almost supernaturally beyond their control.”
While the Jonah story is about someone agonizing with a decision, the Mark story is about what God does when people are caught up into the flow of the Divine. If that is a possible interpretation then all we have to do is be alert, listen, pick up the spiritual phone, take the call. That, I think, also means that discipleship is not self destruction. There was a story that makes the rounds of preacher literature about a little girl who was suffering from a rare blood disease. It seemed that her only chance of recovery was to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had survived the same disease and developed the antibodies to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. He hesitated for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “OK.” As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled seeing the color return to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked, “When do I start dying?” You see, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood. Yet he was still willing.
Sometimes we think answering the call to discipleship will drain us dry, or that we will have to leave everything just like Simon and the others. But following may mean staying at home. “It may mean taking care of Zebedee when he gets too old to fish. It may mean casting the same old nets in a new way, or for new reasons. It may mean doing something different with the fish you catch, or spending the money they bring at market in a different way.” (Ibid)
We are unlikely to be called to go preach repentance to Nineveh, or Naperville, or Newark. We are unlikely to be called to abandon all that is familiar to us. But we will be called again and again to be faithful, to pay attention, to love one another. So when our spiritual cell phone rings, will we take the call?? Amen
Joe Dunham
| Copyright © 2003 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved. |