Answering the Call

Sunday, January 21, 2024: Mark 1:14-20, Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Psalm 62:5-12, 1 Cor 7:29-31

Jonah and the Ninevites

Last week, I began with a discussion of the children’s swimming game “Marco Polo” to talk about seeking, finding, calling, and responding. Today, I will focus on answering the call of God. In this week’s reading from the book of Jonah, we hear about a prophet who was called by God but first rejected that call, then found himself in rough waters, and landed in the belly of a whale, or mythical “big fish.” I guess that was enough to change his mind.

And while I do want to take us into our Gospel reading for today, there is just too much living water in the story of Jonah to only swallow the mouthful that we were given in our texts. You’ve probably heard the story, but I bet you forget most of it. So let me share this comedic and archetypal whale of a tale with you. It’s a story that Jesus references in the gospel of Matthew in relation to his own life, death, and resurrection. The book of Jonah is like slapstick comedy – outlandish things happen, and it certainly can’t be taken literally. But while it may not be factual, it is certainly truthful. In fact, what is dismissed as merely “myth” often carries the deepest truth.

We’re told that Jonah heard “the word of the Lord” telling him to go “at once” to Nineveh, a city that is described as “wicked,” so that he can basically yell at them and motivate them to change their ways. Even though Jonah clearly hears the voice of God, what does he do? He promptly boards a ship heading in the exact opposite direction to get away from the presence of the Lord.

But we can’t hide from God. God whips up a good storm, the ship starts rocking and rolling, and the mariners on board are terrified. They each cry out to their own god, in fear for their lives. But Jonah goes below deck and falls fast asleep. The captain drags him back to the deck so he can also pray, and the shipmates cast lots to figure out who is calling all this trouble. This reveals Jonah to be the cause and they question him hard, asking where he’s from and who he worships. When he tells them, the other men get really scared and ask Jonah what they should do to make the seas quiet down. Things are getting worse and worse, so Jonah finally tells them to just toss him into the drink. They tried all kinds of things to escape the storm but finally they could see no other way and so they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea.

Then God sends a large fish – we usually say it was a whale – to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah spends three days and nights in that unusual and unappealing lodging. Finally, Jonah calls out to God from his distress, stating his confidence that the Lord will rescue him. Sure enough, God steps in and the fish vomits up Jonah onto dry land.

This is where today’s reading enters the story. Here God calls Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh, and Jonah obeys. We’re told that Nineveh is a “great city” and that it takes three days to walk from one end to the other. We’re told it has a population of 120,000.

While not yet even in the center of Ninevah, Jonah half-heartedly declares that in forty days Nineveh will be overthrown. The use of the term “forty days” in the Bible, I’ve read, simply signals a long time. It is like saying “Someday an expanding sun will consume the earth.” While true, we wouldn’t necessarily expect much of a reaction to that statement. But the Ninevites leap into action immediately! The king and the people all begin a fast and cover themselves – and their livestock! – with sackcloth as a sign of repentance. Because they did this, God sees their change of heart and decides to spare them. The Ninevites took Jonah and his God seriously, and 120,000 of them – plus animals – were led away from doom.

This is good, right? At least, you’d typically think that a prophet’s word having a profound effect and inspiring a whole city to change would be something to celebrate. But no. Jonah is not at all happy with this. He was mad because he hated those darn Ninevites. He wanted them to be destroyed. He even tells God that the reason he ran away from the call in the first place was because he guessed that God would be gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and just might relent from punishing the city.

In fact, Jonah is so displeased, that he says “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” God then asks, “Is it right for you to be angry?” So, Jonah goes outside the city and sits down in the blazing sun to pout. God sends a bush to give Jonah some shade. But Jonah won’t budge from his bad attitude, so God then sends a worm to eat the bush along with a hot wind.

Again, Jonah says “I just want to die.” God asks, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” and Jonah replies, “Yes, angry enough to die.” What a drama queen. Finally, God, in exasperation we must presume, says “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow…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?” And that’s where the story ends. It seems Jonah was left speechless.

Here we have a prophet who first runs from God’s call contrasted with a “wicked” city who responds immediately to God’s call to repent. Because of their response, they’re saved from destruction. We also see a clear lesson about God’s love and God’s freedom to do whatever God chooses to do with those we consider our enemies.

Jonah represents an Israel that held onto narrow religious and ethnic boundaries but this story urges Israel to recognize God as a universal God who is merciful toward all people – even their historic enemies. Instead of eternal conscious torment in the fires of hell, God foregoes punishment and forgives. How often are we willing to condemn others to the fires of hell because we’re so sure they’ve not met the requirements to be saved? How dare anyone presume that God isn’t free to love and forgive whoever God wants to love and forgive?

Jesus’ Disciples

Jonah stands opposite those that Jesus has called to follow him. As we saw last week with Andrew, Simon Peter, and Philip, in today’s Gospel reading we again see an immediate positive response to the call of God on the part of those whom Jesus calls. In fact, this sense of urgency runs throughout the entire Gospel of Mark. First, we see that Jesus’ ministry begins “immediately” after his baptism and temptation when he’s driven into the wilderness. In fact, the word “immediately” appears 27 times in Mark’s gospel as a whole, not counting instances of the phrase “at once.” “Immediately,” Andrew and Simon leave their nets, and then “immediately,” Jesus calls James and John. This is Mark’s indication of the urgency of Christ’s call to his hearers. Rather than being reluctant and pouty like Jonah, here we see a much different response to the call of God. We might ask, why so much urgency?

God is Making All Things New

We get an answer to that question when we look at Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he writes that “the appointed time has grown short.” The Greek language has two ways of talking about time: they differentiated between “Chronos” time and “Kairos” time. Naomi Matlow writes that

[chronos time] refers to measured, ticking, quantitative time. Chronos is the forward propelling time that we measure with clocks, on watches, and by the evolutionary phases of the moon. But time does not end there. The Greeks’ second word for time is ‘kairos’ — lesser known but no less important. ‘Kairos’ is what many philosophers and mystics would refer to as ‘deep time’. This is the time we’re talking about where the world seems to stop entirely. It can be measured in deep exhales, a shared laugh, or by a colorful sunset. Insert your version here. It is qualitative time where you have the opportunity to move forward in the present, untethered by any moving clock or calendar.

For Paul’s community, the “appointed time” is “Kairos time.” In Mark, Jesus declares the kairos “now” of God’s reign. In 1 Corinthians, Paul shows us his belief that the passing away of the “present form” of this world had already begun with the resurrection of Jesus as Christ. In today’s texts, Mark and Paul proclaim the immediacy of God’s reign while Jonah clarifies that the good news unexpectedly extends to outsiders.

If we take Paul, Mark, Jonah, and Jesus seriously, we see that God has already begun to make all things new, even though we can’t fully see the details yet. We’ve been meeting as a community in these last couple of weeks to talk about Redeemer’s future. And in this moment, things may not look very promising. But what if God has already begun making Redeemer new? Are we willing to follow God’s call to that new vision?