Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 and Mark 1: 14-20
I had an unusually full week last week. I’m sure it wasn’t busier than your week, but all of a sudden, on top of the usual stuff of work and familial responsibilities, I had a slew of deadlines, and I’d started a course and the work was way more than I expected. And a big town event that I’d been helping plan for months was about to take place. And on top of that there were some fun, social things that I had foolishly agreed to months ago, but now they seemed like a burden and a waste of time. Why did I say I would go to the Symphony?
You know those times when you’re going full tilt, and you just can’t accommodate people–you can’t do what they ask you to do, whether it’s pleasurable or serious. Everyday I had to say no to somebody: no, I couldn’t go to the movies, no, I couldn’t go for a walk, no, I couldn’t write a reference–how about next week?, no, I couldn’t attend the meeting that all committee chairs are required to go to.
There were phone calls that I didn’t answer and messages on my answering machine that I didn’t get back to.
Which is why, when I read the story of Jonah, the man who famously got a call from God and said no, I thought: I don’t blame you, Jonah. Sometimes you just can’t do it all.
Do you remember, when we were kids, the teacher would ask “Who will take this message to the principal’s office?” and we were all “Me! Me! Me! Send me!” Now we’re a little jaded, we’ve got our own priorities. We don’t have the time to deliver someone else’s message.
Granted, the job that God asked Jonah to do was a tough one. God asked Jonah to bring an urgent message to the vilest nation in the world, to tell them that their time was up. His chant was supposed to be, “Forty days, and Nineveh will be destroyed!” So Jonah said no, and he ran away, and got on a ship. Haven’t you sometimes felt like doing that when people make too many demands on you?
Jonah turned his cellphone off, and set his email to automatic responder. It said: “I regret that I will not be able to reply to your message. I am on vacation in Tarshish for an indefinite period of time.”
That’s the backstory on our first reading. In today’s Gospel reading, something very different happens.
A stranger walks up to four guys while they’re working, and says, “Drop what you’re doing and come on the road with me.” And—can you believe it?—they do!
The guys don’t even exchange words with each other. They don’t ask the stranger any questions. They don’t think about whether they’re qualified. They don’t pause to consider how their father will keep the family business going, or to prepare for life on the road. They just drop their work—their livelihood—and go. How does that happen?
What was it about Jesus? What was it about them?
You know, Jesus didn’t always get such an immediate and whole-hearted response when he called people. He spoke with great urgency—he came upon the scene saying, “The time is now! The kingdom of God is so close!”—but some people said “I am crazybusy. Can I catch up with you later?” You remember the man who said to Jesus, “Will you still be around next week?, because I have my father’s funeral to take care of.” Not everybody is ready to answer the call right away.
There is a question I seriously wonder about. What happens if we decide not to answer God’s call right now, or even not to answer it at all? Can we assume that a Good Samaritan will come down the road after us to tend the wounded person that we walked past? Can we expect that a voice will ring out against injustice when we decide to keep silent?
I wonder—maybe you do, too—will God’s kingdom come without our help?
I have this idea that God is looking toward—hoping for!—the alternate world, that kingdom world where you and I don’t decide to run away, or hide from God, or turn our phone off. I have this idea that God is looking toward a kingdom world where we drop our nets—the tangled and torn nets that keep us so occupied—and step out of our boats, and follow Jesus.
So, what kind of interruption would make you drop everything? Would it be for an adventure, for duty…? Maybe it’s that you get a call from a very unhappy client—forget lunch with your coworkers. Or, your daughter wakes up with a sore throat and a fever—the long list of errands will have to wait. Or your friend calls out of the blue with tickets for a Patriots game—you cancel everything. We all have something that can break through our barrier of “no thanks, not now.”
For those fishermen, what made them drop everything was just an interaction with the person of Jesus. I wonder what that felt like.
You may remember a moment in your life when a strong sense of God’s direction came to you and you followed it. You stopped what you were doing to do what God needed done. And at that moment, the repercussions of what you left behind didn’t matter. Or you got a message that you’d been going in the wrong direction, and you turned around, walked back up the road and up the driveway to where you belonged, like the prodigal son—a feeling of coming home to the person you were meant to be. You had a feeling of rightness, maybe of transcendence.
My sister and I compared notes the other night on calls that we had felt in our lives, whether life-changing or more minor. It was the same for both of us. Our first reaction was, “You’re kidding.” But right after that came, “Of course.” Maybe that doesn’t jibe with your experience—I don’t know, but I keep a quote on my bulletin board that says, “The sign of God is that we will be led where we did not plan to go.” The four fishermen—Peter, Andrew, James, and John— did not plan to leave Galilee. Jonah did not plan to go to Nineveh.
Jonah. After he convinces the sailors to throw him overboard, Jonah is swallowed by a huge fish, and stays alive in its stomach. That, I think, is a definite sign that God intervened. The fish spits him up on the shore, and then, the Bible says: “God spoke to Jonah a second time.”
If you missed the call the first time around…. Remember that God is not a one-chance-only God. That’s called grace.
Jesus told a story: “a man had two sons, and he came to one son and said, ‘Go work today in the vineyard.’ And his son answered, ‘I will, father,” but he did not go. The man came to the second son and said the same thing; and that son answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he regretted it and went. Which of the two did the will of his father?”
We may miss some possibilities. But God gives us a second chance to be a partner in ushering in the kingdom.
Of course, we have to discern what brings the kingdom of God closer and what does not. We can ask: will my actions increase the amount of love, or mercy, or justice in the world? We can make discernment easier by learning the words of Jesus: the beatitudes, the parables. We can train ourselves to pay attention to God’s call and to respond to the challenge, the adventure. We can practice letting God’s priorities be our priorities.
So if you have been screening your calls, answer them. If you’ve been letting your messages pile up, stop and listen to them. God may be calling you, again.
