Inherent Risk

Jonah 1:1-5, 10.         The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Mark 1:14-20.            Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

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There is a sense of urgency you get when you read the gospels, isn’t there?  Lots of things happen “immediately,” particularly in Mark’s gospel.  Mark seems to like that word; it is well suited to the overall tone of Mark’s message: We need to tell these things; we need to hear these things, because we need to respond to these things immediately.  The time is now. 

The time is fulfilled, Jesus says as he comes to Galilee.  The time is now.  So make up your mind to repent and believe, make up your mind to follow me.  Come, for all things are ready.

Jesus calls Simon and Andrew and they come.  He calls James and John and they come.  Immediately.

But look - they left Dad in the boat, was the shocked reaction of the roundtable this week.  What an inappropriate thing they did.  We fretted about Dad for a few minutes, wondering how he felt.  Abandoned by his sons – his help, his business partners.  Well, he still had the hired men with him, to get the work done of mending and cleaning the nets and so on.  But still, it’s offensive that his sons just walked away from him.

The gospel is demanding.  It’s urgent.  And it’s offensive.

But the roundtable also noted that the sons weren’t just abandoning Dear Old Dad – they were abandoning their own livelihood and inheritance.  These boys walked away with nothing.  They weren’t just rude, they were rash.

Picture the scene:  Andrew and Simon were in mid-cast.  They were in the act of casting their net out to catch some fish.  Jesus called, “Follow me,” and immediately they dropped their nets and followed.  Did they drop their nets in the sea? Leave their boats and wade to shore and start a new life with Jesus of Nazareth – never looking back?

It’s demanding, urgent, offensive, and rash.

At some later point, one of the disciples says to Jesus, “You know, we left everything behind to follow you.”  And it was true – they had.  They left home and family and vocation and friends.  They left behind security and they followed him.  It was the only way to do it. 

There were other men, on other days and in other places, who said, “Jesus, I want to follow you, I truly do.  Just let me go back home and get my finances in order.  Let me go back and take care of some personal things.  Just let me go pack a bag.”  And Jesus said, “No.”  Anyone who hesitates, or has one foot in the old world while trying to step into the new world, is not fit for the kingdom work they are setting out to do.

That’s so harsh, isn’t it? 

The gospel is demanding, urgent, offensive, rash, and harsh.  And yet, we love to tell the story, as the old song goes.  It does make you wonder, though.  Is this the same story that we love to tell?  I wonder, because this story is full of urgency, offensiveness, harshness and risk.  To follow Jesus is, without doubt, full of risk.

This all might not be what you think you bargained for when you walked through the doors of the church.  Maybe you were just looking for some good fellowship, a supportive community, some good programming for your children.  Maybe you were looking for some sanctuary, a harbor from the storms of life.  Maybe you were looking for a better spiritual life. Maybe all these things, maybe something else, but I’ll bet you were not looking for someone to say “Drop your life and follow me.”

Stories like this one make you a little wary about following Jesus, don’t they?

It’s been a long time since Jesus walked along the lakeshore and called those first disciples.  It’s a whole different world now, a different place than the one where those men dropped their nets and followed him.  I wonder how we can compare our own journeys of faith with those of Andrew and Simon, James and John. 

They didn’t have any idea what they were walking into.  They might have known Jesus because they were all from Galilee, but they certainly didn’t know what he was about to do and where this journey would take them.  It was a very risky thing they were doing when they decided to follow his call.  This may be hard for us to connect with today.

Although we can get passionate about the risks of the faith in other places – like North Korea, for example.  It’s as risky there to be a Christian as it ever was anywhere.  We think of Jeffrey Fowle, a local man who was just last year imprisoned in North Korea for doing a tiny bit of evangelizing.  He left a bible in a public place, hoping a Christian would find it, he said.  He also said he didn’t fully understand the risk he was taking.

So while we have sympathy for those who live in oppressive societies where faith is so risky, we don’t feel any risk to ourselves.  Places of worship still command a certain amount of respect in most of the world –

As long as they don’t try to interfere with business as usual.  That is the condition.  That always has been the condition.  Once you start rocking the boat, though, there will be trouble.

Jesus interfered with business as usual.  He pulled these men, Andrew and Simon and James and John, away from their boats and their families and everything they had, to follow him.  But that’s not all.  He challenged the temple leadership, the priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees, for their hypocrisy in their leadership of Israel.  He challenged them for their cooperation with the Roman Empire, whose practices were antithetical to the kingdom of God.  He made it clear that there are inherent risks in having a relationship with God because God is demanding and urgent. 

The story of Jonah is an example of that.  Although it’s nestled in among the prophets in the Old Testament, Jonah is more of a quirky little parable about how a relationship with God works.  God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah didn’t want to.  To make a short story shorter, God convinced Jonah that he didn’t really have a choice, and so, under duress and against his better judgment, Jonah dragged himself to the evil city of Nineveh to warn the people of the judgment to come.  He walked through the city and, with no great amount of enthusiasm, calling out, “Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!” 

And, strangely enough, the people of Nineveh believed it.  They changed their ways.  They repented with full sincerity.  Every single person in the city put on sackcloth and ashes, fasted, and turned from their evil ways.  It happened instantly – they responded immediately, you could say, just like the disciples responded immediately.

But here we see a different way of responding.  They repented; they turned their lives around toward God.  They didn’t leave Nineveh.  They didn’t walk away from their families and jobs. That’s not what they were called to do – they were called to change their lives in the place where they were.  Most likely, God wanted them to turn from violence and become more peaceful.  God probably wanted them to stop the hate, stop objectifying other people and nations, treating them like mosquitoes that should be swatted off the face of the earth.  God probably wanted them to practice compassion in all aspects of their lives.  That’s a different thing from dropping your nets and walking away from everything you know. Yet it’s no small thing God is asking of them, either.  God doesn’t always ask you to follow with your feet, but God always asks you to follow with your heart. 

Nineveh repented, and then God also repented, as some translations of the book say.  It’s a funny word to use when we’re talking about God, but it simply means that God turned in a new direction.  God determined that punishment would not be necessary.  We are assured that God is as forgiving as God is demanding.

But the urgency of the good news is something we lose sight of in our lives, and that may be connected to the inherent risks.  It is always risky to act with urgency.

Last week I joked about the prudence of Midwesterners, saying that it’s in our nature, and probably one of our virtues, to act with deliberate caution.  But I think there is a bit of tension between our cautiousness and the call to faithfulness.  If we are not mindful of this we risk turning our backs on God.

What if Nineveh had heard Jonah’s warning of the judgment to come and they had responded with skepticism?  What if they had reacted defensively, attempted to justify their lives and cast aspersions on Jonah?  According to the story, that would have been the end of Nineveh.

What if Andrew and Simon and James and John had heard Jesus calling them and turned away? What if they continued casting and mending their nets, perfectly content to catch fish for a living?  What if they thought, “It’s not my place to be a wandering preacher; my place is here in my fishing boat.” 

What if all the people throughout history who heeded the call of God, and changed their life course – in small ways or big ways – had just ignored it because of the risks?  And what if everyone who had ever heard the call had responded with urgency and courage, and brought the kingdom of God that little bit closer to us?

Following the call of God has inherent risk – whether it involves a big move or just changing the way you interact with the world from where you are.  But it’s the only way anything good happens.  The call falls upon us all.  Some would simply call it the better angels of our nature.  Whatever you call it, there is a divine message in the universe saying we can be better – we can love better – we can live in community better, reaching out better.  And the time is at hand.

Call Waiting

1 Samuel 3:1-20         Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.” Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.
John 1:43-51  The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

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The other day when Kim was reading the paper he mentioned to me that there are two new micro-breweries in Dayton.  Craft beers, is how the paper referred to them; places where the beer is brewed in small batches and sold on site.  This is something that has been very popular for a number of years in Bloomsburg, the small town in Pennsylvania we came from.  I would never say Bloomsburg is the kind of place that’s on the cutting edge of culture, but in this case … maybe.

I said to Kim that this idea seems to be something that is taking off in Dayton these last couple of years.  He looked up from his paper and said you mean it’s finally coming to the Midwest. 

Well, I speak as a Midwestern native when I say this: yes, of course, we take our time with new things – isn’t that what sensible people do?  You don’t just want to jump on every bandwagon that passes by, do you?  You wait to make sure it’s going to work – that’s the prudent thing to do.  You take your time, think about it for a while, then – maybe – venture into the waters.

In technology they use the term “early adopters” for those people who will be the first ones to buy the newest technological gadget.  I guess we need those people, but I can’t for the life of me understand what motivates them.  Why be the first one to have the new thing?  You pay more for it, you have to figure out how it works, and you end up being stuck with working out all the kinks because the first generation of any new tech gadget is always full of kinks.  Maybe they get a kick out of people constantly stopping them to ask them, “what is that thing you have around your head, in your ears, on your wrist – what is that space-age thing?” and then having to explain this new, new thing to the rest of us luddites.   

There might be a certain attractiveness about this for some people, but I think most of us are more cautious.  We want to have a reasonable amount of certainty that it’s going to be the right thing before we step out into it.  We have more of the nature of Doubting Thomas, asking for proof, than that of Peter who is ready to leap out of the boat to walk on water.

In this story from John about the call of the first disciples, we might find that we can identify with Nathanael – the one who is skeptical.  He seems a world apart from his buddy Phillip.  The story says Phillip meets Jesus and Jesus looks at him and says, “Follow me.”  So Phillip then turns around and says to Nathanael, “Hey, we found him – the Messiah, the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Early adopter – that’s what Phillip seems to be.  Nathanael, on the other hand, is more the cautious Midwesterner, guided by common sense.  Using what knowledge he has of Jesus, which is nothing, except that he comes from Nazareth. 

Now what do we know about Nazareth?  Nazareth may have been some backwater hick town.  That’s been the conventional wisdom for quite some time.  But if you attend our adult Sunday school class, where we’ve been watching the PBS program From Jesus to Christ, you know that the more recent thinking, based on newer archeological findings, is something different.  Nazareth was near a rather sophisticated city called Sepphoris, which dominated the region.  And Sepphoris was, apparently, a hotbed of radicalism – full of hippies and protestors and troublemakers of every sort. 

So maybe you would agree with Nathanael when he says, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? 

We know that a new thing is not always a welcome thing – even if it is coming from God.

It was certainly not a good and welcome thing for the boy Samuel and the priest Eli and his family.  When the call came in the night, Samuel had no idea what this was, because the word of the Lord was so rare, so unknown, in those days.  It was as though the Lord had stopped speaking to them, the Lord had stopped appearing to the people of Israel.  It must have been a barren time, a dark time.

It was a dark time in the life of Israel when Samuel was a boy serving in the temple with Eli because the future was so uncertain.  The word of the Lord was rarely heard, and the sons of Eli were probably not in any position to hear it if it should occur.  The traditional custom in Israel would have been for Eli’s sons to learn the ministry of the priesthood from their father and take over when he became too old to carry out his duties.  But Eli had somehow failed to train his sons in the ways of righteousness.  Maybe it wasn’t his fault; maybe they were just bad kids.  Maybe they were just ordinary kids who had been thrust into a position they were not well suited for. But it didn’t really matter why.  It didn’t matter whose fault it was – the priesthood of Israel, their direct link to the Lord, was in danger of becoming extinct.  Eli knew this somewhere in his heart.  The people of Israel surely knew it.  It was a dark time in Israel.

And when the word of the Lord came to the boy Samuel, and he didn’t even know what he was hearing (he thought it was the voice of Eli calling to him), it was because the Lord found a ready and willing ear.  Each time Samuel heard his name he replied, “Here I am.” And when he finally realized who was addressing him, he obediently replied, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

You know, when we read this story in church we usually stop at that point.  We stop after Samuel says, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” because that’s such a nice place to end.  We are left with an inspiring and uplifting message.  Yes, Lord, here I am, Lord.  I would do the same thing, we think.

But let’s go on, read the rest, and stick a pin in the balloon.  It’s not what we were expecting.  It surely wasn’t what Samuel was expecting.  He didn’t know what he was about to hear when he gave the Lord his full attention.  If he had known, he might have ignored the call, because it wasn’t welcome news. 

The news was that things were going to have to change.  The news was that the people who were sitting in the seat of power were going to lose it, that it would no longer be acceptable for the priestly family to exploit their position and the people who depended on them.  Because with great power comes great responsibility, and if you disdain the responsibility you bring harm to the people and shame to yourself.  The news was that it was time for justice in Israel and that would not necessarily be a good thing for those at the top.  It’s no wonder that the word of the Lord was rare in those days – who among those in authority would have wanted to hear it?

When it comes to justice, one thing of which we can be sure is that there will be upsets.  Justice doesn’t come from tweaking the edges, making minor adjustments.  Justice won’t arrive merely because we increase our good works a little bit or increase the budget a little bit.  Do these things, by all means, but also know that if God’s justice is going to come it will mean some seismic shifts in the landscape. 

I was very young when the Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated, but I remember the day.  I remember I was with my grandmother watching TV and the news report interrupted the show we were watching.  I asked my grandmother who this man was, and she said, “Oh, he was someone who did some good things for his people.”  The message was clear that his people weren’t my people and his life and death had nothing to do with me – but she was wrong. 

Reverend King was one of the greatest advocates for justice our nation has known.  We celebrate him because he made his life’s work the pursuit of justice for all– justice for all, not just for some.  He recognized, while many others didn’t, that when some people are denied freedom and justice, all people are deprived of freedom and justice along with them because our destinies are inextricably tied to one another.  We celebrate his birthday every year because of this.  And we celebrate him in church because his driving force was the Word of the Lord. 

He was only a man – not a Messiah; but he was a disciple of the Messiah, and there are times when the disciples are called upon to step forward and lead the way for others.  For those who have ears to hear and eyes to see there is a message, a call to stand up for what is true and right.  What is true and right is not always what is popular, any prophet could tell you that.  Sometimes it can even get you killed.  But there are worse things to die for.

In the terms of technology, you might say that Reverend King was an early adopter.  He got out there and led the way.  Sometimes I think those early adopters are crazy.  But sometimes I sure do admire them.

That man from Galilee … that land of radicals and activists … you might call him an early adopter too, leading the way to a radical new relationship between God and the world.

You and I might not be early adopters, and that’s okay.  But the call is out there, for you and me to answer.  The call is waiting.