Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 21, 2024
Jonah 3:1-5, 10+Psalm 62:6-14+1 Corinthians 7:29-31+Mark 1:14-20
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time... (Jonah 3:1).
This is how our reading from the Hebrew scriptures opens this morning, and I hope you were paying attention, because if you were, you should be thinking, "wait, what happened the first time?"
It is a shame that we only encounter readings from Jonah twice in our three-year lectionary, and only parts of chapters three and four, because if ever there was a story that provided a cautionary tale about human nature, this is it.
You probably remember how it goes, at least the part about Jonah being swallowed by a whale. It actually wasn't a whale but a large fish, but that is immaterial here. God called Jonah to go preach to the people of Nineveh, which the text says is a great city, but which was also the capital of the oppressors of Israel, the Assyrian Empire. Jonah wanted none of it, so he hopped on a boat headed the other direction, but when a great storm blew up, it didn't take long to figure out that God was not happy with someone on board, so into the waves Jonah went where the big fish swallowed him. You need to know that those on the ship did this reluctantly and only at Jonah's insistence that he was the problem. That's how desperate he was to get away from God and Nineveh.
Jonah spent three days in the belly of that fish before being vomited out on the beach. And right after that, we read, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time." You would think that Jonah had learned his lesson, and admittedly, he does obey and walks a day's walk into that wicked city telling them they'd better straighten up or God was going to flatten them. Imagine Jonah all grumpy with a thundercloud over his head giving what was surely the shortest and worst sermon of all time, but it worked. The king of Nineveh proclaimed a fast, and the people turned from their evil ways, and God did not flatten the city.
You'd think Jonah would be satisfied about that, but you would be wrong. He doesn't want those awful Ninevites to be spared. He rails at God for being merciful, saying that's why he ran away in the first place, and he sat down outside the city to have a little pity party for himself. God provided a bush to grow and shelter Jonah from the sun, but the next day, God made the bush wither, and Jonah got all angry with God about that. So, God said,
You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’ (Jonah 4:10-11)
Jonah was more upset about his shade tree withering than about the destruction of a city full of people and livestock.
Jonah looks awfully self-centered and unsympathetic, and we shake our heads at that, but how many of us are truly willing to have God bless the unjust as well as the just, to save the unrighteous as well as the righteous. Every Sunday we pray that God will forgive our sins as we forgive others, but do we really mean it?
Do we really want all nations and people to know God's love and mercy? Or that person we've been holding a grudge against for a decade, or the family member who caused physical or emotional harm to us? If God calls, will we go to them and tell them that God is giving them - and us - a chance to make things right? I encourage you to take a few minutes to read Jonah's four short chapters and find out the lengths that humankind will go to avoid responding to God's call, especially when that call involves doing the hard thing.
With characteristic brevity, Mark's gospel has Jesus calling the disciples, and off they go. Two weeks ago, we read about Jesus's baptism. We skip over the temptation in the wilderness which we return to in a few weeks on the last Sunday after the Epiphany. We have a single phrase telling us that John was arrested, and then Jesus begins his ministry, proclaiming, as John did, the Kingdom of God coming near. But Jesus says this with a twist. He says, "The time is fulfilled" (1:15). Whether those around him understood what he meant by that is doubtful, but following his baptism and the forty days alone in the desert, he is ready. He has no doubt what the fulfillment of time means.
Passing by Simon and Andrew at their nets, he calls them and tells them they will fish for people. "Immediately," they follow. The same happens moments later with James and John mending their nets. "Immediately," Jesus calls them, and they leave their boat and their dad and go with Jesus.
Now, a lot of scholars will look at the four gospel accounts of the calling of the disciples and their willingness to go with Jesus, and they speculate that all of them were followers of John the Baptist, but when John gets arrested, Jesus picks up the mantle. Since they all know one another, they know what this Jesus is up to.
I don't think we need to conflate our stories, though. Let's take Mark at face value. Jesus called, and they followed. Maybe they were sick and tired of being sick and tired and thought this new way would make a difference.
This coming Wednesday, the Church will remember the 80th anniversary of the ordination of the first woman in the Anglican Communion. Florence Li Tim-Oi was born in Hong Kong in 1907. Attending the ordination of a deaconess in 1931, she responded when the bishop encouraged the women there to give their lives to the work of the church. Li went to theological school in Canton, was later assigned to serve the refugee community in Macao and was made a deacon in 1941. When no ordained priests could get to that Portuguese territory on the South Coast of China during the Japanese occupation, her bishop ordained her as a priest on January 25, 1944. After the war and the ensuing controversy over her ordination, Li resigned her license to serve as a priest, but she did not surrender her priestly orders. It would be twenty-five years before her ordination was officially recognized again. During those years, Li underwent re-education under Mao, was forced to cut up her religious vestments with scissors and went through a period of severe suicidal depression. In 1971, she was restored to the priesthood, served in Hong Kong, and then emigrated to Toronto where she died in 1992.[1]
Florence Li Tim-Oi was not like Jonah. Many times, she could have chosen a different path, renounced God and the Church during the Cultural Revolution, resented that her priestly orders were not honored after the war, or simply given up. But from the time she heard God's call through the voice of the bishop ordaining a deaconess in 1931, she followed where the voice led.
Peter and Andrew, James and John, also followed. They could not possibly have known where it would lead them, but they did it anyway. All but John were martyred for their leadership in the early Church, and even John suffered exile and torment. They preached the gospel in the inhospitable land of the Roman Empire, and eventually, much like the people of Nineveh, the empire turned.
Maybe we aren't called to stand in the courts of power or walk city streets proclaiming God's reign. But along with Jonah, and James and John, Peter and Andrew, and Florence Li Tim-Oi, we are all called by God. What that requires of us is to listen, to pray, to keep our eyes open, and to be willing to say yes.
At the end of this service, we'll sing these words:
Will you come and follow me if I but call you name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?[2]
With all those others who have come before us, I hope we can all say "yes."
[1] http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/Li_Tim-Oi.htm
[2] Text: John L. Bell, © 1987, Iona Community