Monday, 16 January 2006
Epiphany 3 Year B
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 NRSV text
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31 NRSV text
Mark 1: 14-20 NRSV text
Jonah or Jesus? Which of these is the prophet after the heart of God? We are spoiled for drama with this week’s texts. On the one hand, we have Mark’s play that hurtles us from scene to scene with dramatic suddenness, and on the other, the second act of the drama of Jonah – surely the highest point of biblical comedy. And in all the parallels of the prophetic announcement of Good News, the thing that stands out most clearly is the fact that Jesus is himself part of the Good News he announces, whereas Jonah decidedly is not!
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10
Act 2, Scene 1: The Beach. The curtain rises on a huge pile of the stomach contents of a whale (yes, let’s call the great fish a whale, shall we? It makes for a whale of a story, anyhow!). Suddenly, the voice of Yahweh is heard: “Jonah, let’s talk about you and Nineveh again, shall we?”
Act 1 began almost identically. Yahweh calls Jonah to go to the “great city” of Nineveh and prophesy against it. Jonah foolishly responds by trying to flee from Yahweh. There is a delicious, hilarious irony to the chapter. Imagine trying to hide from Yahweh! We see Jonah, crouched among the sailors on a ship, apparently hoping that Yahweh won’t spot him! Jonah ends up in the belly of the fish, which is his place of conversion. He refers to the belly of the fish as the belly of Sheol – the grave (2:2). He prays, and Yahweh causes the fish to vomit Jonah up on to dry land! Imagine it – the fish swims into the shallows of a bay, and from several yards offshore, gives a mighty heave of the stomach. And in the fountain of stomach contents that fly through the air and land on the shore, there we see the prophet of Yahweh. Well, we probably don’t, at first: he’s indistinguishable from the rest of the stomach contents! And Yahweh addresses the pile of dead fish, plankton, seaweed, shells etc: “Jonah, get up!”
Now the pile begins to shake and dissolve, and a bedraggled, stinking human being emerges. It is Jonah! This time, Jonah’s only response is to set off for Nineveh without a word.
He arrives at the “great city”. Everything in the story is in hyperbole, exaggerated for comic effect. The city is apparently three day’s walk across – some 108 miles! The irony, of course, is that this is precisely the length of time that Jonah has wasted in the whale’s stomach!
But look at his sermon – all of 8 words long! Hardly a great sermon – but note how astoundingly, ridiculously effective it is! The people believe, proclaim a fast and put on sackcloth. Everyone! And when the news reaches the palace, the king decrees that even the animals must don sackcloth and repent. Has there ever been such a wholehearted response to the word of the Lord? And so, in verse 10, Yahweh changes his mind about visiting calamity on the city.
The whole focus of the book, however, is not Nineveh, or the success of the prophet’s message. Rather, it is about the prophet himself. In the very next verse (4:1), Jonah is displeased! He goes into a grand sulk, and rails at God.
“I knew it! I knew this would happen! I knew you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing! That’s why I ran away in the first place! And see? I was right all along! No fire from heaven, and all that satisfying judgement! Instead, you’ve let them off!”
Jonah is furious because God is loving and merciful, so that what he fondly hoped would be Bad News to the people of Nineveh turned out to be Good News after all. God’s love and mercy mean that God always desires the best for us. This is a book about a prophet who bitterly resents the fact that the God whom he serves is a God of love and salvation. It is a comedy about the contrast between God and one of God’s people. The book ends with God chiding Jonah: “Jonah, isn’t it right that I be concerned about Nineveh? After all, there are more than 12,000 people there, and many animals!”
Mark 1: 14-20
We’re in Act 1, scenes 4 &5. This is a very different sort of play. “Scenes” is actually a misleading term: “vignettes” is more accurate. We’ve been hurtled from the Prologue to Scene 1 (the appearance and preaching of John outside Jerusalem) to Scene 2 (the appearance and baptism of Jesus) to Scene 3 (Jesus wrestling with Satan and the wild animals in the wilderness). Here in Scene 4 (Galilee), the stage is cleared of John, that other great character. He’s been arrested. He’s offstage. Mark begins his focus on the great central character of his drama, Jesus. Here in v14 is the Man and his Message – his Gospel. This is a summary statement of Jesus’ message: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe in the Good News!”
We have already been given strong hints that the kingdom of God is something that is going to cause huge ructions. This is a message of confrontation between the powers of Imperial Rome and the religious authority of the Temple and its leaders. This isn’t a message that will be received with the enthusiasm that Nineveh showed! The message of the kingdom will set Jesus and those who respond on a collision course with those who will oppose it. It is the beginning of a life and death struggle. This is not a message to be assimilated quietly and easily. To “repent and believe” requires a fundamental reorientation and the embracing of a whole new set of values and norms. It will change forever the way in which those who respond – the disciples – will view the world and live in it. It is a call to take up the Struggle against the Strong Man and all the powers that hold the world and its people captive – demons, sickness, hatred, discrimination, political and religious authorities.
That is the point of Scene 5 – the lakeshore near Capernaum. Jesus calls – and the fishermen get up and follow immediately! There is no demurring, or argument, or demand for further details or explanation. It’s as though they recognise in an instant both the authority of the one calling them and the truth and urgency of the message.
These first disciples show us what Jesus means by “repent”. In this context, it doesn’t mean to don sackcloth and ashes. It isn’t a call to a religious act. It takes us to the root meaning of the word – to change one’s whole way of thinking and being in the world. “Stop living how you are doing! Change your plans for your life’s work and your future! You thought you were going to be fishermen? You’re going to fish … for people! You thought you were going to live out your days in this village on the lakeshore? You’re never coming back here!”
“The time is fulfilled” and 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
To announce “The time is fulfilled!” was political, social and religious dynamite in Jesus’ context. It meant that all that God had promised was coming to pass. The time of waiting and agonising was over. Jesus was telling the people that all they had been waiting, hoping and yearning for was about to happen. Time (as they had known it) was running out. This is the equivalent of Jonah’s “Forty days – and then it happens!”
1 Corinthians 7 is similarly Paul’s message that time is running out. Paul was expecting Jesus to return at any moment. After all, Jesus had promised that the fulfilment of everything was going to take place within the life of that very generation. We are right in the middle of one of the earliest New Testament shocks – the delay of the Parousia. In fact, this is written as expectation of Jesus’ return is reaching fever pitch, before disillusionment, puzzlement and despair, and before Paul’s Thessalonian correspondence.
Paul is not anti-marriage, or anti-sex, or anti mourning, celebration, or commerce. He’s saying, though, that these things require energy, time, priorities, reserves and long-term planning which is fine if you have time stretching ahead, but wholly inappropriate now, given that Jesus is coming back at any minute. These priorities belong to the world as we have always known it, and that world is in the very process of passing away (7:31).
Paul was wrong about timing. So was Jesus. Yet he was right about the urgency of the gospel call. The kingdom of God is indeed at hand. We still stand at the moment of decision: are we going to live life as though the world is still held captive, nothing has changed and we can plan as we have always done, or are we going to recognise that God is at work right now, transforming the world into the kingdom? Because if the latter is true, that requires urgent decision and change.
So – Jonah or Jesus?
Jonah was the living contradiction of the character of the God who called him. The messenger was definitely not part of the Good News! Part of the good news for the Ninevites was that God was not like God’s people! The people of Nineveh were being saved from precisely the sort of attitudes exemplified by the prophet. Mark presents us with a stark contrast. The kingdom is near because Jesus is present. Jesus is the living presence of the Good News. To be committed to the kingdom is therefore also to be committed to Jesus. Jesus is the Good News, in this sense. And therefore, like those first disciples, we are called to come and follow – to repent and believe in the Good News.
Amen.
21:23 Posted in 1 Corinthians , Jonah , Mark , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Monday, 12 September 2005
Pentecost 18
Jonah 3:10-4:11 NRSV text
Matthew 20:1-16 NRSV text
Grace is unfair and the injustice of it sticks in the throat. That is what the parable of the labourers in the vineyard is about. At its heart is the difference between just deserts and grace – between fairness and outrageous favouritism (as it seems to the onlookers). Isn’t it interesting to see the landowner’s negotiations with each group of hirelings? The first group is hired early in the morning, at the outset of the working day. There is no problem about settling on a wage: it is “the usual daily wage” (v2). The second group, who had not been hired at 6am, still hoped for work during the day. They would expect to bargain hard (within parameters) for the best deal possible over the remaining hours. Note that the landowner doesn’t bargain. He asks them to trust him “to pay them what is right” (v4). In other words, he is saying, “I am making no commitments about your pay: simply trust me enough to believe that, when you see what I will choose to give you, you won’t feel cheated!” He says the same to those hired at noon and at 3pm. The last group is hired at 5pm, within an hour of knocking off. To them, the landlord promises nothing and they expect nothing. There is no promise of a wage from the landowner and presumably no thought of anything other than a meal in return for an hour’s work. The point is that they know that they have no right to expect much at all – and nothing financially.
The fact that the landlord pays the workers in reverse order of hiring serves only to make the outrage of his bizarre generosity more keenly felt! Those who had put in 12 hours’ work have to stand and watch while those who have worked only an hour and been promised nothing receive a full days’ wage. Those who had been promised that they would not be disappointed at their rate of pay for 9 hours’ work find the promise fulfilled beyond their expectations! They are paid a full day’s wage – more than they would dared to have pushed for if they’d bargained! One can imagine, therefore, the thoughts going through the heads of the last group. Here is a boss who clearly has more money than sense, and who is ridiculously generous! Will they, who have worked hard and consistently all through the 12 hours of the day, perhaps get a double days’ wage? That’s not too much to expect under the circumstances, is it? And then comes the shock! They get precisely what they had contracted – a day’s wage!
If they had been paid first, and then had to watch the others getting the same, their outrage would not have been as keen. They started off expecting only a day’s wages. It was the landlord’s generosity to the others that raised their hopes – because the last were first. That’s the shock of it all. The landlord’s – God’s – generosity is paraded before them all, to the point of rubbing their noses in it. If our every sympathy as readers isn’t with the grumblers, we have somehow found ways of inoculating ourselves against the shocking unfairness of grace.
Have you noticed something about so many of the parables that begin, “The kingdom of heaven is like …”? The subject is the kingdom of heaven. The parables tell of situations – but what they really tell us is what God is like. The point of the parable is surely to say, “God is like a landowner who … etc”. These are moments of revelation – glimpses into the heart and mind of the God whom Jesus calls Father. And what we learn about God is that God is a generous God (v15)!
God’s grace flows out of generosity. It is always extraordinarily and outrageously extravagant. It is over the top – whether doling out wages or forgiving limitlessly and without strings. In each case, the generosity is seen in the fact that those who have no claim on anything, who expect nothing and deserve nothing, are given everything that those who do what is right receive as just desserts. No one is cheated. But grace means that those who, by rights are last, by grace are first.
We ought perhaps to read this parable in this very Jewish gospel as reflecting some of the differences between the old and new covenants, in much the same way as Luke’s parable of the Prodigal reflects the outrage of the older son who has worked faithfully at home. The old covenant is surely about grace – God’s grace in choosing to covenant in the first place. But to the extent that it depends on and requires the faithfulness of the people in response, there will always be those who fail and are excluded. It is to these – the last – that grace comes as the pure gift of God’s generosity. And it gets up righteous noses in a big way!
Isn’t it strange how deeply resistant God’s people are to grace showed to others? This is the message of the book of Jonah. Jonah is a wonderful book! It is a hilarious tale, rich in ironic but deeply sympathetic humour over its central character, Jonah, who just cannot cope with the fact that God intends to save Nineveh! The commissioning of the prophet follows the standard formula: Jonah is to go and “cry against the city” because of its great wickedness (1:2). It is set up so that Jonah appears to be the herald of God’s wrath and judgement. Jonah flees from God and from his mission. He wants nothing to do with it. Today’s passage is the denouement and we learn why Jonah has been such a reluctant servant of Jahweh. It is not because Jonah wants nothing to do with a wrathful God, but with a compassionate God! In the story, he is one of the most successful preachers of all time! Everyone – even the animals! – repent with sackcloth and ashes, and turn to God. So God changes his mind about destroying the city. Jonah is furious (4:2). “I knew it! This is exactly what I feared would happen! I knew you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing!” It is because God is gracious that Jonah would prefer to die than live (v3).
Compassion for people who are lost. That is at the heart of grace. It is the lesson that Jonah has to learn. He can feel compassion for a plant, but not for the citizens of Nineveh. In his heart of hearts, Jonah longs to see the wicked people of the city get what’s coming to them. We need to recognise the dynamic in ourselves. There is a deep-seated desire in the hearts of many good, respectable, religious, righteous and faithful Christians to see others who are “wicked” get sorted out. There’s a voyeuristic streak in all of us that wants to sit and watch the equivalent of fire and brimstone rained down on those who have laughed at our beliefs and ethics. We want to see ourselves publicly vindicated and to be rewarded with our just desserts.
That is what prompts the sincere but sick pronouncements of those who speculate that the Tsunami, or Hurricane Katrina, or AIDS are manifestations of God’s judgement on wicked people. Those who do show that they, like Jonah, have failed totally to understand that God is a compassionate God.
I am shocked at the equanimity with which good, decent Christians will contemplate a God who will apparently consign people to everlasting torment, death in tragic circumstances or a slow and agonising death by a horrible disease. The attitude of “Well, they deserve it – they didn’t listen! It’s their choice!” runs deeply counter to what we learn of God in today’s readings. Like Jonah, they will be saddened and outraged at news reports of cruelty to animals, but hardly blink at news of yet another murder. I'm shocked - but the readings remind me that the temptation to think like this is never far below the surface!
Yet we shouldn’t be surprised. Philip Yancey, in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace?” echoes the parable and the story of Jonah when he reminds us that we live in a world of un-grace – the world of rewards and punishments and just deserts. In this sort of world, grace comes as a shock. It is offensive. And the God who is gracious – the generous and compassionate God – is not welcome. This is not the God that good, religious people want. And when this God came to us in Jesus, we good, religious people crucified him.
Amen.
22:10 Posted in Jonah , Matthew , Year A | Permalink | Comments (7) | Email this