In one of those odd coincidences I went to Muncie today to speak to a District UMW meeting. OK, odd maybe, but where is the coincidence, you are asking. The coincidence is that this weekend is also UMW Sunday. Funny thing, don’t you think? Two independent events coalesce like that out of the blue. Eerie. Two disparate worlds align in orbit for once in a lifetime observation. Wow.
OK, maybe not such a bit big deal in the end. But it is at least interesting. Like it was planned or something. Spooky. We like to find those little connections, don’t we. We pay attention to the fact that sometimes things work out in ways we didn’t foresee, and yet it just seems right. "I was just thinking of you," we say to the person who calls us out of the blue. We take a different route to work and bump into a friend we hadn’t seen for years. We go shopping for one thing and come home with something different. (Act of God, honey, honest. I don’t know how those cookies got in the bag!) OK, maybe that’s something different all together.
But you know what I mean. Connections. Coincidences. Things come together, words bring results we didn’t expect. Hearts are opened, lives are changed, and we never saw it coming. Something fishy, we say. Maybe we enjoy it, maybe we are unnerved by it, but it happens. Who knows how it happens, but it happens. And we are surprised.
Unless, of course, we work for the source of constant surprises. Like Jonah. Gotta feel for the guy. He got set up. He got thrown into the deep end, into the lion’s den (I know that was Daniel, go with me here). He was reluctant at best, and yet was probably the single most successful prophet in the Old Testament. Our reading for this week comes from the middle of the story, but it is the climactic point - at least from a preacher’s point of view. Take a look:
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. ... When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
A second time, did you hear that? The Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time... because the first time didn’t go so well. The first time the Word came Jonah went ... the other way. God’s Word said go, Jonah’s feet said no. And for his troubles he got a sea cruise berthed in an inside cabin with no view and a pervasive smell, and don’t get me started on the plumbing! But that was then, this is now. The Word of Lord came to Jonah a second time. And this time he decided he’d better go the direction the Word pointed.
The problem was it pointed toward Nineveh. Yikes. If there was ever a town you didn’t want to go to it was Nineveh. If there was ever a place full of the wrong sort of folk, it was Nineveh. You know how in some cities there’s a side of town you’re told you ought to avoid? Well, that’s the good side of Nineveh. No wonder Jonah didn’t want to go. They didn’t like him and he didn’t like them and they were both happy keeping things that way. Except... the Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.
God has a thing for lost causes. And it was a cause God was trying to enlist Jonah in. So he went. Dragging his feel all the way. Into a city three days walk across, he walked one day, so a third of the way in. He plants his feet on a busy street corner and mutters his eight word sermon while picking fish bones out of his beard. Check that off the list, Jonah thinks to himself and turns to make his way back out of town. Ready to duck the rotting vegetables and pointed sticks he hunches down, and then realizes that the city is eerily silent. His eight word sermon froze them in their tracks. They were staring at him with that deer in the headlight, hand caught in the cookie jar kind of glaze. And one by one, they turned. First they turned in and didn’t like what they saw. So, next they turned out and began grasping at straws. They put on sackcloth as a sign of how bad they felt. They poured ashes on their heads. Whole families, whole neighborhoods turned. That’s what repent means, you know, they turned. They were heading in one direction and then because a word, well eight words, they turned a whole new direction.
That’s the fishy bit, at least as far as I’m concerned. How could that possibly be? How could a few words turn a life around? It is almost too incredible to be believed. Why, if we were to accept the possibility of such a thing, then we would find no situation beyond our ability to affect, we would find no life beyond the possibility of redemption, we would find no excuse to wash our hands of anyone at any time. Because we just might have the word that would cause their lives to turn around. No, it can’t really be possible in the real world. The real world is hard and cruel and there are good guys and bad guys and we know who is who. Or is it whom? We live a world different from Nineveh, at least the Nineveh that Jonah found, or helped to create. No our world is a world of hard work, back breaking labor to get anywhere. The kind of world guys like Simon and Andrew, James and John lived in. Men who knew their trade, who knew what mattered, who kept their noses to the grindstone. Right? Well...
Mark 1:14-20 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." 16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
In the Wednesday Bible Study, someone said, they must have known him before. Or maybe they heard about him. It just seems incredible that with a word - follow me - that they would follow him. It seems like there must have been more than that. More to it than we see. It seems too fishy. Too unbelievable.
There is power in words. God’s word certainly, but even in our words. Knowing this, we now have the responsibility to use them, to turn lives around. Our own certainly, but others as well. We have an obligation and a joy, we have been given a gift that we can’t horde, that we can’t keep secret. It is a part of the gift itself that we share it. It is woven into the fabric of love that it is shared, multiplied infinitely until all know what we know, all know who we know. Even those we don’t think are worthy of it.
That was Jonah’s problem. That’s why the word had to come a second time. We discover in the final chapter that Jonah’s reluctance came from the fact that he was afraid that God would love the Ninevites as much as God loved him. That God would forgive the citizens of Nineveh like he had been forgiven. And that burned him up. God’s grace was fishy to Jonah. It was too incredible, too encompassing, to accepting. After all, Jonah was caught up in that net of God’s love, who knows who else might be included.
I’ll make you fish for people, says Jesus. But before they could fish they had to be caught. Which means we are all fishers and fish at the same time. Hmmm. Something’s fishy.
Shalom,
Derek
No comments:
Post a Comment