*Introit:
All
The Way my Saviour Leads Me VU
635
Call
to Worship:
One: Come and follow me. I will make you fish
for people.
ALL: That’s a whale of a tale.
One: Go to Nineveh and call on them to repent.
ALL: No Thanks, I’m kind of busy right now.
One: You can flee, but God will find you and
bring you back.
ALL: My days are pretty full, can I get back to you later?
One: Across time and space, the call to follow
resonates.
ALL: Simon and Andrew left their boats and followed.
One: Come and follow me. I will make you fish
for people.
ALL: Thank you God for finding us in the most unlikely of places,
and bringing us to
where we are meant to be.
Prayer
of Approach:
Gracious and
loving God, you have called us over the tumult of our lives … your voice
resonates within us yet too often we fail to listen … like Jonah, we throw out
excuses and run the other way … yet you persist …
You persist in calling us … you
persist in loving us … you persist in being present in our lives and our world.
O Holy One, call us and welcome us
in that we may be like the disciples who left their boats and nets, putting the
past behind them as they answered the simple words: “Follow Me”.
We will follow wherever it is that
you lead us,
We will follow
the love and grace your forgiveness gives us,
We will follow, sharing love with
the world as we join together in prayer,
*Hymn: Seek Ye
First The Kingdom VU 356
Scripture Readings:
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62
(VU 779)
I Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
*Hymn: Jesus You Have Come to the Lakeshore VU 563
Reflection:
I learned something new
this week about the book of Jonah. I’ve always known it has a fair bit of
exaggeration in it, but I had not encountered a commentary on it that stated
clearly that the book was a satire … the WPOG curriculum states flatly: “Jonah
is different from other books about prophets in that it is a satire profiling a
prophet who is disobedient rather than faithful.”
This kind of brought me up short. No one in the academic
community sees the book of Jonah as a historic text, but rather a metaphoric text.
No one can live in the gut of a whale for three days.
Not too mention that Jonah ran off towards modern Spain
before being swallowed by the whale, only to be barfed up on the shore a day’s
walk from Ninevah – an action that would require the whale to move at
physically impossible speeds from the Mediterranean sea, AROUND Africa up to
the Arab peninsula where modern Iraq sits …
But beyond the exaggerations and the metaphors, scholars follow
up the satire observation by noting:
The book of Jonah is
uncharacteristic, when compared to other writing in the prophetic tradition, in
its use of humour or irony to make its point. Humourous qualities, such as
exaggerated behaviour (running away fronm God) inappropriate actions (sleeping
through a violent storm) outlandish situations (offering a prayer of
thanksgiving from inside a fish’s belly) ludicrous commands (animals must fast
and wear sackcloth) and emotions either contrary to expectation or out of
proportion appear throughout the story. But all of these qualities serve to
underline the book’s themes.
The book has a
role disproportionate to its size within religious tradition, Judaism picking
up on its theme of repentance, reads it liturgically on Yom Kippur, the day of
atonement.
So, a book written while the Jewish nation was in exile in
Babylon, offers a satirical look at the life of a prophet, and from the inside
of the Babylonian empire acknowledges that the nation is in need of MAJOR and
immediate repentance … but in this story lies a mirror that the ancients would
see, and that liturgically is at play when the text is shared on Yom Kippur … repentance
is needed on the part of the Ninevites, but it is needed ALSO on the part of
the listener.
Where do we sit in the story?
Are we the hard headed and stubborn Jonah who needs to be
pulled back to God’s plan and desires?
Are we the people of Nineveh, quietly going about our days
oblivious to our misdeeds and our need for repentance?
Or are we like the king, who on hearing the message seizes
the opportunity and returns to God?
The power of that mirror is that it helps us reflect on the
places in our hearts and our lives that need to be addressed … the places where
grace can break through and bring transformation. Where we can have an epiphany
that calls to more than this moment and where we find ourselves.
This theme carries on in the reading from Mark where Jesus
calls more of his disciples.
We have four fisherman – they have secure employment, they
are comfortable in their lives and social status, they are pretty much set.
Then along comes this Jesus character inviting them to
leave their boats and nets behind and follow him … becoming fishers of men and
women instead. An epiphany to go … to go and see where the journey may lead.
It is quite the jump – leave everything behind – security,
certainty, comfort and follow an itinerant preacher as he wanders around the
country side talking about God … what would our reaction be if one of our kids
did that? If we did that?
Yet, here it is – central to our story and experience as a
Church – as a faith community, we have a radical departure from everything we
value and appreciate as a people and a culture …
And this is the discomfort we are facing as a people today
– the landscape around us has been shifting and changing, and things are not as
they once were, so we face a call … a call to faith.
We face a call and we await an epiphany that will show us
where we are to go.
This is where we can begin to understand some of what is
unfolding around us that leaves us scratching our heads in bewilderment.
Economically things are changing, the secure, good paying
jobs are simply not here anymore, and precarious employment and uncertainty
about retirement is the norm … people are frightened and uncertain and angry,
so when a political candidate steps up and starts talking about making things
better and offers simple answers to the complex issues, as frightening as it
may be, people jump at the chance to reclaim past glory and will support them …
Socially things are in incredible flux … all around us
there are people who are NOT like us – their language, culture and skin tone
are different … they want to live in little clusters and hang out with each
other and not mesh into our society (they aren’t like the Italians and Germans
and scots who settled vast tracts of land together, or lived in neighbourhoods
together …) But that difference can make us uncomfortable and uneasy and leads
to uncertainty, fear and even anger …
So, in the face of anger and fear we seek something …
anything … that will give us comfort and security.
Churches are not immune – instead of embracing the
uncertainty with the spirit of the disciples heading off to follow Jesus
wherever the journey might lead, we instead will entrench ourselves, tighten
the rules, clarify the dogmas, strengthen the thou shalt not’s and enforce the
us or them paradigms … and we seek simple answers for complex questions …
We seek comfort in the face of uncertainty
We seek certainty in the face of doubt
We seek safety in the face of fear
But God calls us to something that is truly uncertain … our
problem has been, as theologian Walter Bruggemann notes – that as Christians we
are used to being victors and triumphant. This new context where we are not the
victors, and we are not always right is different and truly disconcerting. The
epiphany will likely not bring comfort, but will guide us to FACE the
discomfort and meet it with faith and grace.
In the last forty years something has happened that we are
struggling to make sense of … when I started in ministry, a mere 25 years ago,
full time ministries were the norm. I remember class mates wanting a part-time
charge rather than full time, and they were out there, but they were rare.
Ministry was a secure job – there were lots of churches,
and there were lots of opportunities …
Today, the landscape is different. Part-time ministries are
the norm, and fulltime ministries are uncommon. Ministry is not a secure job,
and the likelihood of secure employment with a comfortable retirement as a
minister is more than just uncertain … and the context within churches is
similar.
Churches are struggling … they are fighting to keep the
lights on and the doors open … congregations are dwindling and the average age
is climbing … to be honest and blunt, as an institution the Church – across
denominations – is dying … and the grief that is in response to that palliative
journey is real and tangible and is leading to A LOT of anger … A LOT of
fighting.
When there is a death in a family, we ALL know stories
about fighting over stuff … cherished mementos or valued heirlooms … families
bicker and fight and real damage can happen over the silliest of things …
The epiphany moment for us, in community … in faith, is to
name the grief … to own the grief … to live the grief … and to begin to heal
through it.
In the Church today, we are in the same scenario as a
family standing by the grave of a loved one. Big changes are unfolding around
us, and things are changing rapidly … and like any family we are grieving, even
if we don’t use the language … so, shall we try to run away like Jonah? Flee in
the opposite direction to escape God?
Or will we get angry and lash out? Will we let our grief
turn to resentment and anger and tear down rather than build up?
Or will we respond like the disciples and the people of
Corinth? Will we face our mortality and embrace the epiphany? Will we have the
courage to face our grief by letting go of the familiar and the comfortable and
facing tomorrow KNOWING that God is with us, and that we are being called and
invited AND welcomed to join in the journey that lies ahead?
The WPOG summarizes it well when it notes:
Sometimes God calls when we least expect it, at an
inconvenient time, or from an unexpected source. Are we, like Jonah, trying to
avoid God’s summons? Or like the four fishers, ready to drop what we are doing
and follow Jesus? Whatever response we make, God does not give up on us. Like
the Corinthians that Paul was writing to, we are called to find ways to
rearrange our lives, set new priorities, and treat one another as Christ taught
us to. What is God’s ‘the time is now’ message to us, and to our faith
community at this moment in our lives?
And what are we prepared to do with
that message?
… may it be so … thanks be to God, let us pray …
