January 25, 2009
(Third Sunday after the
Epiphany)
God's Presence
By
The Very Rev. Terry White,
Dean
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 • Psalm 62: 6-14 • 1
Corinthians 7: 29-31 • Mark 1:14-20
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Our first lesson begins, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” Such an unassuming opening. But a great deal occurred between the first time God called Jonah and the second.
The story told in the Book of Jonah, if it had an accompanying sound track would feature the theme from Mission: Impossible.
The Rev. Todd Weir writes:
“Nineveh was one of the greatest cities of its day. It was a city of conquerors, with a strong commercial base, superior technology and a powerful war machine. Jonah was from a strip of wilderness that the rest of the world passed thorough as a way station to somewhere else, kind of like I-95 running through New Jersey. Jonah had no credentials for such an act of international diplomacy.
“Imagine yourself suddenly being sent to Zimbabwe. God tells you to march through the country and tell their leaders to repent, to stop using violence, to hold democratic elections and respect everyone’s civil rights, use their wealth for the good of all the nation’s people. Do you think you would get their leadership to dress up in sack cloth and ashes? Or do you think your doom would be certain?
Faced with this type of call, Jonah panicked. He literally went in the opposite direction from Nineveh, boarded a ship in the port of Joppa, and ran away to sea, in order, as the scripture says, to get away from the presence of the Lord.
Such a phrase. Choosing to act in such a way that we remove ourselves from the Lord’s presence. Now, immediately we recognize the fallacy here – we can never escape the Lord’s presence. Thanks be to the Holy One that we are never out of God’s sight and love and care. Yet most of us, me included, have felt what Jonah felt: I cannot do this task, or I cannot go there, and we either literally or more often figuratively travel in the opposite direction. That futile act is a part of the journey of faith it seems, and is rarely a single occurrence. We create the illusion that for a time we are separated from God so that we can sort things out on our own.
The story of Jonah illustrates how successful we are at sorting it out on our own! A vicious storm hits the ship, and the sailors determine Jonah is the reason they are in peril. He is cast over board, and may just be content to let it all end. But he is saved by God’s messenger, a great fish.
Now here is where Jonah does an amazing thing. He praises God. You know you’ve had a bad day when, once in the belly of a great fish, you are now in the right frame of mind to praise God! It wasn’t the literal location, but the spiritual reality of the moment that caused Jonah to rejoice. There, in the midst of his despair and running away, he realized that God had never left him, and he in fact, had never left God. Jonah is returned to dry land, and gets a divine do-over. He hears the call of God a second time, and responds by heading in the right direction toward Nineveh.
The lectionary invites us to contrast Jonah’s response to the responses of four fishermen. The Gospel says that immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus. St. Mark uses the word “immediately” 33 times in the 16 chapters of his Gospel. What took Jonah four chapters and quite a journey to realize took the first four disciples a matter of moments. The focus for Mark is two-fold: 1) The kingdom of God is near, 2) get to work immediately.
Again, the words of Todd Weir: The immediacy of Mark’s Gospel is contained in the simple message Jesus delivers in verse 14, “The time has come. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” Jesus does not spend a lot of time analyzing the big picture. His program is not very detailed. He didn’t write a two volume best-seller about how the world works, and he probably would not have been a very good guest on “Hardball” or “The O’Reilly Factor.”
He is more intent on telling us God’s picture of the world. God is near, God’s power is at work, hear this good news and follow me. Do you sometimes wonder if all our social analysis of problems, our therapies and our self-improvement tapes are just ways of protecting ourselves from the simple, life-changing power of the call of Christ?
Here are a few of Jesus’ teachings: “Love your neighbor as yourself. Feed the hungry, house the homeless and you have done it to me. Abide in my love and I will abide in you. You are the light of the world, so let your light shine before all that they may see the glory of God. The reign of God is among you, within you. If you have faith, the mountain shall be moved for you.”
From Jonah we are given the assurance that we can never flee God’s presence and that God never withholds that presence from us as found.
From Mark we receive the proclamation that God’s kingdom is near, and the time is now to respond, immediately.
If as Todd Weir suggests, that the book of Jonah needs to be accompanied by the theme song from Mission: Impossible, I’ll end this way. Some of us may remember the TV show of the same name starring Peter Graves, who learned of his team’s assignment each week via a taped message. Each message always stated, “If you choose to accept it.”
By virtue of our baptism, each day, in ways not usually as obvious as a taped message, God invites us to participate in the mission of reconciling the world to himself. Some tasks seem more possible than others, and others may well evoke a Jonah response to head in the opposite way. Times are tough. Needs are great. People need God’s love. Now is the time to proclaim the Good News.
Let us choose to accept the Lord’s call. Immediately.
