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January 23, 2000
(The Story of Jonah)
Our reading from the Gospel of Mark presents us a Jesus, early in his ministry, strolling along the Lake of Galilee and recruiting his first disciples. He asks Simon and his brother Andrew to follow him and "IMMEDIATELY THEY LEFT THEIR NETS AND FOLLOWED HIM." (Mark l:16-18). Then Jesus sees James and his brother John, working from a boat, and similarly invites them to follow him and "THEY LEFT THEIR FATHER ZEBEDEE IN THE BOAT WITH THE HIRED MEN, AND FOLLOWED HIM." This is how we would like discipleship and everything else in our lives to work - simply, neatly, in a direct, linear march of cause and effect. In this instance there is the cause - Jesus -and then the immediate effect - someone follows. Jesus himself is a superb example of this natural flow of cause and effect. Jesus seems always to have had a direct connection with His Heavenly Father and could walk a path always clear and straightforward. The only instance of any serious reluctance on Jesus' part to follow his singular star of destiny came late in his ministry, in the Garden of Gethesame when he knew what was ahead of him. He was reluctant for a few hours but then he got on with the seemingly straight trajectory of his life right to the cross! The problem is that often our connections are not so clear and our paths not so linear. Often does not your life seem to go in circles more than straight lines? Our Old Testament text of today gives us another figure, Jonah, whose mixed up, back and forth life, seems more typical of real human biographies.
Most people know that Jonah resisted God's call and ended up in the stomach of a big fish for three days. God wanted Jonah to go to the great city of Nineveh and preach repentance to its people. The Ninevites were a part of the great empire of Assyria which had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and threatened the southern kingdom of Judah. The Assyrians were bad news to any Hebrew prophet and especially one so reluctant as Jonah. Asking Jonah to handle this assignment is roughly comparable to asking a Christian leader in Lambok, Indonesia, to go to the Muslim stronghold of that island and preach repentance. I haven't heard of any Christian prophets volunteering for that assignment. The natural response when asked to do some serious work with people we despise is to lay low or, in the case of Jonah, go the opposite direction. At chapter 3, where we enter the story in today's reading, Jonah has just been vomited out of the whale and is sprawled forth on a beach in Palestine when God repeats his demand to the reluctant prophet to go to Nineveh and preach repentance: The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." 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. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, (human beings and animals) great and small, put on sackcloth." Jonah goes, still reluctant and grumpy, and in Nineveh he that one liner sermon, the shorted on record: "FORTY DAYS MORE, AND NINEVEH SHALL BE OVERTHROWN!" (Jonah 3:5). The writer of this short story of Jonah is playing with the prototype of the prophet. Jonah is a typical prophet in his reluctance but an extreme example. Amos and Ezekiel and Hosea were at first reluctant to follow God but they merely stayed at home, hoping that God would go away. Jonah is much more over the edge. He flees in the opposite direction from Nineveh, to the sea on the west, and, he thinks, from God. Jonah is an atypical prophet in this way: Jonah is wildly successful. Most prophets finally delivered their message of repentance but with little positive effect. Jonah is asked by God to undertake a more difficult task of going to alien people, and he succeeds. During his first escape attempt, Jonah converts pagan sailors to the God of the Jews by his brave example and his teaching to them. In chapter 2 we learn: "THEN THE MEN FEARED THE LORD EVEN MORE, AND THEY OFFERED A SCRRIFICE TO THE LORD AND MADE VOWS." The sailors did not throw Jonah overboard because they were bad but only because Jonah insisted on it. Again, when he hits Nineveh, his one sentence sermon converts the king of the city and everyone in it. These folks are not just sorry for their wicked ways; they are ll0% sorry,. The king has every citizen of the city and even the animals wear sackcloth, or a simple, rough yardage, to witness to their repentance. Grumpy to the end, the prophet, far from being pleased with God's mercy to the Ninevites and his own success with them, sits outside the city, pouting and arguing with God because the Lord is "A GRACIOUS GOD AND MERCIFUL, SLOW TO ANGER, AND ABOUNDING IN STEADAST LOVE, AND READY TO RELENT FROM PUNISHING" (4:2). God is so kind to Nineveh that Jonah just wants to die. True to Jewish story telling, God argues back with Jonah accusing him of keeping his eye on petty things and missing the big picture of God's mercy. AND SHOULD I NOT BE CONCERNED ABOUT NINEVEH, THAT GREAT CITY, IN WHICH THERE ARE MORE THAN A HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND PERSONS WHO DO NOT KNOW THEIR RIGHT HAND FROM THEIR LEFT, AND ALSO MANY ANIMALS? (4:11). While Jonah is over the top in his reluctance, God seems over the top to me in his concern about the cattle and sheep of ancient Nineveh. God loves animals in this story and they are given the same opportunity to repent and wear sackcloth as are humans. But the theme of salvation for animals needs to be deferred to another time and interpretation! The reference to the citizens WHO DON'T KNOW THEIR RIGHT HAND FROM THEIR LEFT is equally curious. In the literal sense, persons who don't know their right hand from their left would seem to be babies and very young children and the mentally handicapped, who do not know reason. In a figurative sense, the phrase may just mean everybody in Nineveh who in their pagan ignorance lacked an understanding of right from wrong. And/or the phrase may be a symbolic reference to that huge majority of the population in that imperial city who were wholly lacking in any power to influence events. For the poor it would not have made the slightest difference if they did know their right hand from their left because they could in no way influence the course of events in the Assyrian city and empire. No matter how we interpret the phrase it points to a remarkably kind and inclusive God in contrast with Jonah's desire to narrow and confine the mercy of the Lord.
Now I don't know about you but I more easily identify with Jonah who goes back and for in attitude and commitment than with those early disciples who so seamlessly and easily stopped their fishing jobs, abandoned their status quo lives, and took up with Jesus. In the geographic sense the travels of Jonah, going the opposite direction and arriving at his true destiny only in the most roundabout way, and after bizarre adventures, seems more true to my life, than the easy, simple way of the first disciples. Try this exercise to see if that isn't true for you: Imagine a big map of the world before us this morning. You have in your hand a piece of string l00 feet long. Pin that string to the place of your birth; then carry the string through your early years of education and growing up to each new place you lived and visited. Perhaps you left your home city and jouneyed to some Nineveh for education or for early work; put a pen at those geographic places. Then, did you return to your original home? If so, bring the string back to home base and pin it. Or did you go to another city; continue with your string there and wherever next you landed. I would imagine that for most of us our life journeys are seldom straight lined. The pattern is more back and forth, up and down, more circular than linear. And yet we have arrived here and how. There is a parallel application of this same exercise. Try to map along your spiritual journey all the times you heard the call of God, or didn't hear the call of God but wanted it. I imagine that journey also has been circular, in and out, much more like loops within loops, circles within circles, than straight lined. Sometimes when helping to straighten up the worship site after the service has ended I come upon worship bulletins upon which children have expressed their artistic inclinations during the sermon. Their drawings are usually scrawlings which go in every direction. Those childish loops within loops represent not only what they thought of the sermon but maybe their aspiration in life. Lives that go every which way, which go over the top; of the page, are usually much more interesting than lives which stick to the page and draw only straight lines upon it.
The story of Jonah is a quite funny tale; not just funny in the sense of strange although this brief narrative contains delightfully bizarre elements - the fish, the animals wearing sackcloth, the bush and worm with which God alternately blesses and irritates Jonah. It is also a funny story as in being hilarious. Jonah is a parody of the prophet and his reluctance toward God's commission pushes the envelope toward the extreme. Jonah, in his over the edge conduct, is a quite modern figure! How are you doing at this point in your story? Can you identify with Jonah? Are you fighting God and seeking to carve out your own destiny? Are you grumpy with what life is giving you? Are you only moderately reluctant, or extremely reluctant, to let go and let God lead you? Are you able to see the hilarity in Jonah's predicament and laugh at your own predicament in your life? Are you in the belly of a whale when all you wanted was to escape from your destiny? This is for sure: We modern people are just as big characters as Jonah: We are extreme in our independence, in our stubborness, in our insistence on experience and adventure, and in the exercise of our idiosyncratic character. And life has not straightened out and become simple and linear for us. Life is becoming more circular, more convoluted, more loopy, and more extreme. There must be meaning in the earth being round, nor square; in the universe being always expanding and not confinded. There must be meaning, including spiritual significance, in the internet having replaced the machine as the cultural icon of this millenniun. The word YAHOO says a lot about where we are in our wanderings. YAHOO! Let's look at just a few of the ways that modern life draws us into circles and loops of experience rather than assigning us to march straight lines toward our destiny. …We are seeking adventures and experiences largely, I think, because we want to be able to tell great stories. Far from being a disaster we want to end up in the belly of a big fish so we can come out and tell others about it! Possessions and professions drove our recent ancestors but we are more like Jonah, and for that matter Simon and Andrew - we hunger for great adventures and fantastic stories to share. What you have is not so important as what you have experienced and can tell about. …That adjective "extreme", once a negative word, has entered into many phases of our lives and has been converted to a much desired experience. We seek extreme adventures as in bungy jumping, hang gliding, deep water diving, sheer vertical rock climbing. The Christian writer Leonard Sweet points out in his new book SOULTSUNAMI that the word extreme is suddenly appearing everywhere: .FedEx sends packages that are "extremely urgent." .NASA sends up a new satellite called "Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer" (EUVE) .At Taco Bell you order an "Extreme Combo Meal." .The car manufacturer Pontiac announces that it's "taking it to the extreme." .Toy maker Mattel's successor to the "Street Sharks" series is "Extreme Dinosaurs." .Fortune magazine has a cover article on "eXtreme investing" and INC. magazine the same week does a cover article on "Extreme Managing."
There is even a movement afoot in the modern church for Christians to be extreme Christians. And why not!
I love the poet W.H. Auden's invitation to extreme Christian discipleship: "He is the Way. Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeliness; You will see rare beasts (like cattle in sackcloth and the insides of whales!) and have unique adventures. (Jesus said: Come and follow me!)
One way to get extreme with Christ is to recover the power of symbols and metaphors in our lives and when we do we discover that our lives are not linear, not simple, not sharp edged. The back and forth biographical journeys each of us can chart in our souls, as across the globe, are metaphor for God who calls us, chases us, and finds us. While at the outset I said that Jesus seemed to follow a straight path in his calling, that doesn't quite measure the man Jesus. His primary way of relating and teaching to folks was not straight lined logic. It was in parables. Jesus was the greatest user of images, metaphor and jokes, of any teacher in history. Jesus taught analogies, figures of speech and startling, extreme illustrations to stir the sediment of people's hearts and open their eyes to the deep meanings of life. For Jesus, his anecdotes were much more than images: They were the healing antidotes of insight, humor and perspective that helped people understand their journeys, themselves, and their God. Jesus would surely have loved and laughed with Jonah because of the extreme predicaments he got into. I would guess that Jesus found life to be much more loopy than straight lined. Someone has said that life is an inflated balloon which richochets in loops through complex systems: All the phenomena that affect us are more circular and convoluted than linear: Think of the weather, the economy, the stock market, the universe, the molecular structures. All of them are, like our life journeys, much more loopy, back and forth, in and out, than straight lined. Like Jonah we may go west to end up east; we flee from God only to bump into God. The fantastic loopiness of the internet is the supreme parable for our life stories now. We humans are as wired and interconnected and looping upon one another as is the internet. Your being at worship this hour is more likely an example of the loopyness of your life than of some straightforward exercise of duty or intention. Quite a few of you are here, protesting like Jonah, and wishing you were elsewhere. But you are here. Why? Because you want the experience of God! Because you know that God is tracking you and you want that connection. You want to have a bigger experience of God. And that is quite okay. I believe we worship because we all want to pass, if only briefly, from this life into the next, that is we want some of the divine in the temporal. We want to move beyond our constrained, straight-jacketed selves into the next life where we can put on flowy robes and become, if only for a while, divine/human transvestites. That connection with God is wondrously mystical and mysterious and transcendent. It is a divine circle which wraps around us and not a box which confines us. And, of course, we are changed. Transcendence in our earthly lives does change us. And why come to church unless you're ready for change! You want to get real which means you want to get spiritual! To "get real" in this new millennium is going to mean less and less "Show me the Money" and more and more "Show me the way"; less of "help me make more money": and much more of "help me make a life!" We all want a relationship with God. The story of Jonah evidences that God wants a relationship with us, even the most truculent of his children, and God is interested in even the most wicked of peoples. The story of Jesus shows us how to get a life by finding the Way. And the glad ending of that story is that we shall one day, maybe now, or tomorrow, or at eternity, hear the happiest words any human could ever here: They are spoken to Jesus at Mark l:11 just before today's reading: "WELCOME! WELL DONE! YOUR LIFE BROUGHT ME GREAT PLEASURE! That is the Holy Spirit speaking to Jesus at the beginning of his real life. That is the promise of God to us now. YOUR LIFE BROUGHT ME GREAT PLEASURE! Just this final point: If you really want to get a life with God you need to become more extreme, more over the edge. You need to become in your spiritual journey participatory, experiential and inter-active. You need to do what you are not inclined to do. It's not enough merely to hit the web site branded "God and Worship" and show up here when you feel like it. You need to experience more of God and that comes when you participate and become inter-active with others who are also on the spiritual internet. That's why being at worship is the first step; the second is participating with a small group. We have several beginning this week. Get participatory, become inter-active, and you will experience God. Be an extreme seeker. Go all the way like Jonah over the edge and end up in the arms of Jesus.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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