Epiphany III

Continuing on the journey with Jesus and newly-called disciples, at the start of what is called his 'public ministry' after being baptized by John in the Jordan...

...we hear Mark's account of this call, and -- in Mark's succinct fashion -- just what is their work together as 'fishers of people.'

They're all fishermen, working along the sea of Galilee.  So, Jesus explains what their work will be in terms they can understand from their daily life and its struggles and aims -- fishing for fish.  Well: we'll be fishing, but for people.  Get it? Not to catch them in a net and eat them up, or sell them in some grand accounting of numbers, or to convince them of some tired dogma to which they must intellectually assent in order to get some reward.

No: our work in this sort of 'fishing' is simply to tell them that the kingdom of God is at hand - 'has come near' - and that we are all to turn from ways that are not of abundant life and peace -- to repent, to turn -- to ways that bring the healing long promised to those who can turn, turn, turn, and see the reality of God -- the 'kingdom of God' among, near, within and forever.  

Use what you are, what you have, what you know and what you do: in all these things, find ways of health and peace so that you may proclaim this healing, ultimate reality.  And, where proclaiming this reality rubs up against, or exposes, those things that are necessarily not of life, health, peace, and abundant life... then turn from them, and call others to turn away from them.

That is our life together, as we follow this strange rabbi around the seashore.

It can be scary, this call to live and proclaim - in your living - this life, health, peace, and the need to re-turn toward it continually.  

In the lectionary, the story paired with this call in Mark's Gospel is the famous call of Jonah, centuries earlier, to go to that great and powerful city, Nineveh, and call out the powerful, the greedy, the exploitative in that city: call the city to repent.  And... Nineveh repents.

The Book of Jonah is read as the Torah portion on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement and repentance.  We read a small segment of the story tomorrow, right in the middle of the wider narrative, after the famous part with the whale.  This part begins saying, "...the Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time..."  skipping over with all decorum what had happened the previous time: Jonah ran away from this call to proclaim the reality of truth and abundant life, because he feared what would happen to him in Nineveh if he brought this word of the Lord.  

So, God made it extraordinarily obvious to him that he - yes, he! - was the one called to do this particular work, and that God would make it easy and obvious.  So: flee in a boat?  The sailors will toss you overboard in a storm to lighten their own load (a fleeing prophet is such a burden!).  Can't swim?  The Lord will send a terrible Leviathan to swallow you up and toss you back up on the shore in the direction you need to head.  

We pick up the thread here -- succinctly told, even: the prophet then goes to the city, calls them all to repent (the Lord will destroy the city otherwise! -- what powerful, seductive words to declaim, for a recalcitrant prophet!)...  and they do!  Sackcloth and fasting, even, to underscore their seriousness.  The Lord does not destroy the city.  The poor are not exploited.  Everyone repents of their violence! The city follows the way of righteousness again!  And, the prophet?  Success? Happiness?  Go back home?

No.  The Book of Jonah has a telling coda:  "But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry." 

"Why are you gracious to sinners, O Lord?"  This is Jonah's cry.  "I put a lot of effort into coming here to explain to Nineveh the error of its ways (I mean, a whale!); I'm faithful!  I deserve a little justified violence, a little show.  Something for the effort?" 

God attempts to reason with Jonah ("Is it right for you to be angry?"), to no avail.  So, God lets Jonah experience a little prophetic parable, just for him.  

Jonah has made a little hut to sit in, to look over Nineveh, to wait for its destruction.  God causes a little tree to grow up and over him - miraculous! - for shade, seemingly just for Jonah in the solipsistic cosmos he imagines.  Then God causes the bush to wither and die.  

The sun was hot the next day. Jonah sits in the sun, sad and angry about watching his little bush die: pissed-off, sun-stroked, and petulant.  "I knew you were 'gracious', and that is why I ran away when you first called -- I feared the task you gave me, and I knew you'd relent in the end, ya big dumb softie, so - yes! - I am angry and petulant, and I am going to sit right here and die. Then you'll be sorry, and then you'll make Nineveh pay, extracting the cost of my sorrows.."

God responds:  You were angry about the little tree dying, yes? You did not labor for its growth, and yet you were concerned about its health.  May I not be thus concerned about Nineveh?

Friends, there is much call for 'unity' these days, and much call for retribution.  And many wiser things in between, outside of a banal binary or politically expedient platitudes. 

'Unity' - or, an enforced politeness - is useless unless it follows after an actual call to repent.  But, repentance does not need to look like violence and destruction.  It is right to be concerned for the wider health of the city we inhabit in common. Repentance can look like many things, but it always follows after truth has been spoken.  No matter how briefly, truth to power (of various sorts) must be spoken; no matter the result, a call to follow truth-speaking where it leads must be our commitment.

God is gracious.  Or, perhaps it is more useful to say that -- in addition to Being Love -- God is Grace, or (actively moving) is Graciousness.  We are to emulate this (way of) being, and Become it, as it is the Way of Life.  Truth, however, must be spoken first -- with ease or with difficulty.  Take heart, for you may trust that you are indeed called by God to speak truth, always, and that truth-spoken-in-God will always have grace hidden within it, like a seed waiting for its time to grow and blossom.

Striking a poetic note between 'unity' and 'retribution' - and embodying a certain call, and a call to repentance,here is the poem for Inauguration Day, 'The Hill We Climb,'by Amanda Gorman. Worth your time, and interesting to read after hearing it declaimed aloud to the Great City of Nineveh on Wednesday. She even references the Book of Jonah in the text -- 'the belly of the beast' -- clearly imagining the ancient prophetic role of the Bard speaking to the city, calling us to... repent. Whatever you thought of the poem-as-a-poem, it was truth spoken in love, in hope, and in realness, among and to the powerful, and to us all.

Come, proclaim that the Kingdom of God has drawn near -- today, tomorrow, and always. 

God is graciousness, always; do not fear.