In the ancient folk tale of The Book of Jonah, Jonah is a prophet of Israel who is told by God to go to the enemy city of Nineveh, and preach to them about what they will suffer for the evil they have done. But Jonah tries not to go. He is afraid the people might actually listen to the message and repent of their evil, and then God will forgive them and heal them – which is the last thing Jonah wants to see happen.
In the Gospel of Mark, the story of Jesus begins with the preaching of John the
Baptist, and the readiness of the people for the coming of God’s kingdom in
their time. When John falls victim to the kingdom of the
day because of what he has been preaching, Jesus begins to gather people for a
new kind of community.
I
heard the crash. And then the cry.
When I got to the dining room where Aaron was playing, I saw one of the good dining room chairs overturned and lying on its side, and Aaron on the floor beside it holding his leg and crying. To my surprise – maybe also to Aaron’s at that point in his life, instead of me bending down to pick him up, to assure him everything was okay, and then sending him on his way to play again, before I had time to think both he and I heard these words come out of my mouth: “Well! If you hadn’t been climbing on the chairs in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened.”
I was shocked. I wondered where those words had come from. And I knew. It was my dad’s voice, and my dad’s words coming out of my mouth.
But not just my dad. I can’t – and don’t blame him. It was – and still is, a whole culture that he was shaped by, that he suffered from, and that he perpetuated and passed on, as I was now.
It’s a culture that when something goes wrong, looks for who is to blame. Assumes it must be somebody’s fault, and if only we can find the bad person – or a scapegoat, and make them suffer – make them feel bad, we will somehow be setting things right again. Somehow some cosmic moral balance will be re-established. Some imagined ideal account-book of right and wrong will be balanced again. Even if it’s ourselves we make suffer and feel bad sometimes. Although usually it’s someone else.
It’s a culture as old as the hills, as old as humanity. And it’s a culture that’s very religious and moral. Usually we are convinced it’s God will and respect for God’s laws that we are acting out and enforcing when we act this way – whether it’s a parent scolding a child for an accident and telling them what they did wrong to deserve their hurt, or good God-fearing Christians praying for gays to die of AIDS or not really caring that heathens die in floods or by diseases, or leaders of godly nations identifying other nations as axes of evil or just simply the “bad people” who we don’t really need to care about or be in good relationship with.
The problem is, though, when we actually read some of the stories of God that we have, we see that over time God doesn’t really accept that kind of world, and actually acts in ways to create a very different kind of world for us and others to dwell in together.
In the story of Jonah – a story of God a few thousand years old now, Jonah is a prophet of Israel called by God to go to Nineveh, an enemy city, to preach a message of judgement to the people who live there, and who are deadly enemies of Israel. At first you might think Jonah would be happy to do it – happy to go to Nineveh, tell them something terrible is about to happen to them because of their sin, say smugly that if they only hadn’t been so evil this wouldn’t be happening, and then stand back and watch the scales of God’s justice get balanced by tipping against Nineveh and for Isreael. How delightful it is sometimes when you see the bad guys get their come-uppance, and learn their lesson the hard way.
Except Jonah was anxious. He took the time to think this through. He wasn’t stupid. And he wondered – if he preaches coming judgement and the need to repent and live differently, what if the people listen and accept what he says, and repent of their sin and resolve to live differently? Jonah knows enough about God to know that God might just forgive, that judgement will not come, and the people of Nineveh will be saved without having to pay a thing for all the evil they have done.
Jonah knows, in fact, that this is precisely God’s will and purpose in sending him to preach. Which is why Jonah tries to run the other way and hide – not preach at all to the people, not even see them, just hear from a safe distance the happy news of their eventual, inevitable destruction because of the path they have been on.
God, though, really is determined. Runs after Jonah. Will not let him get away. Makes him go and preach to the city, so the city will not be list to its sin. Makes Jonah the “good guy” be part of the salvation and healing of the “bad guys.”
Because God is the God of them both – God of all humanity, together. And far from having a Nice List and a Naughty List like Santa, or an accounting book of right to be rewared and wrong to be avenged like a heavenly Judge Roy Bean, God has only a Book of Life in which all names and all stories have a place and which God is determined to bring to a good ending.
Jesus understands this about God as well. Except Jesus – unlike Jonah, is happy to live it out when he sees it, and when he comes to understand that this is God’s way – to create the kind of conversation and community in the world between all people that leads not to judgement and retribution, but to shared healing and salvation together.
First-century Galilee was as divided and polarized a society as any. There was rich and poor. There was free and slave. There was Roman and Jewish – occupier and occupied. There was patriot and traitor, zealot and collaborator. There was oppressor and oppressed. Privileged and disillusioned. And even within Jewish society, there was higher and lower, righteous and sinful, touchable and not.
And everyone on either side of any of those lines of division had their own ways of feeling how unbalanced things were, and of how things might be balanced out if you could just find who was to blame and make them suffer.
Except Jesus.
Because when Jesus begins to act out what he sees of God’s will, and to call others to become disciples with him – to become learners with him of God’s way, it’s a new kind of community he calls them to. He doesn’t subscribe to, nor give in to the easy polarization of things. He doesn’t preach righteous violence against the oppressors like some of the other preachers of the day. Nor does he preach or practice a kind of pious withdrawal into holy sectarianism to save your own soul while watching all the rest of the world go to hell. He doesn’t accept any such division of the world into good guys and bad guys, nor any of the normal strategies of rewarding the good and punishing the bad as though that somehow makes things balance out.
The image itself that he uses says a lot. “You are fishermen,” he says, “and I will make you fishers of men” – fishers of men and women, of persons around you, regardless of whether you or others see them as good or bad. We will cast the net, he says, and we will draw them all in – good and bad, fish we want, and fish we never thought of, and even fish we thought we didn’t want – we will cast out the net of God’s love for all people, and we will draw in whoever will come, whoever will let themselves be caught in any way by it and by its good news.
And thus a new kind of community – a community of healing and salvation together, is formed, and a new kind of world – the kind of world intended by the God of all life, begins to take shape against the kind of world that moral and religious humanity too often creates and imagines as having to be.
And isn’t that what our life as a church of Christ is really all about – what our pastoral care and our outreach, our Christian education and even our worship are about? About again and again casting the nets of inclusive love and care as widely as we can, in whatever direction and whatever way we can – to throw out the net of God’s healing and saving love, so as to draw in whoever is there and will let themselves be caught – good fish and bad fish alike, fish we want and fish we didn’t know we wanted until they are here, fish that all are part of God’s great plan for the healing and saving of all the world together.
When I got to the dining room where Aaron was playing, I saw one of the good dining room chairs overturned and lying on its side, and Aaron on the floor beside it holding his leg and crying. To my surprise – maybe also to Aaron’s at that point in his life, instead of me bending down to pick him up, to assure him everything was okay, and then sending him on his way to play again, before I had time to think both he and I heard these words come out of my mouth: “Well! If you hadn’t been climbing on the chairs in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened.”
I was shocked. I wondered where those words had come from. And I knew. It was my dad’s voice, and my dad’s words coming out of my mouth.
But not just my dad. I can’t – and don’t blame him. It was – and still is, a whole culture that he was shaped by, that he suffered from, and that he perpetuated and passed on, as I was now.
It’s a culture that when something goes wrong, looks for who is to blame. Assumes it must be somebody’s fault, and if only we can find the bad person – or a scapegoat, and make them suffer – make them feel bad, we will somehow be setting things right again. Somehow some cosmic moral balance will be re-established. Some imagined ideal account-book of right and wrong will be balanced again. Even if it’s ourselves we make suffer and feel bad sometimes. Although usually it’s someone else.
It’s a culture as old as the hills, as old as humanity. And it’s a culture that’s very religious and moral. Usually we are convinced it’s God will and respect for God’s laws that we are acting out and enforcing when we act this way – whether it’s a parent scolding a child for an accident and telling them what they did wrong to deserve their hurt, or good God-fearing Christians praying for gays to die of AIDS or not really caring that heathens die in floods or by diseases, or leaders of godly nations identifying other nations as axes of evil or just simply the “bad people” who we don’t really need to care about or be in good relationship with.
The problem is, though, when we actually read some of the stories of God that we have, we see that over time God doesn’t really accept that kind of world, and actually acts in ways to create a very different kind of world for us and others to dwell in together.
In the story of Jonah – a story of God a few thousand years old now, Jonah is a prophet of Israel called by God to go to Nineveh, an enemy city, to preach a message of judgement to the people who live there, and who are deadly enemies of Israel. At first you might think Jonah would be happy to do it – happy to go to Nineveh, tell them something terrible is about to happen to them because of their sin, say smugly that if they only hadn’t been so evil this wouldn’t be happening, and then stand back and watch the scales of God’s justice get balanced by tipping against Nineveh and for Isreael. How delightful it is sometimes when you see the bad guys get their come-uppance, and learn their lesson the hard way.
Except Jonah was anxious. He took the time to think this through. He wasn’t stupid. And he wondered – if he preaches coming judgement and the need to repent and live differently, what if the people listen and accept what he says, and repent of their sin and resolve to live differently? Jonah knows enough about God to know that God might just forgive, that judgement will not come, and the people of Nineveh will be saved without having to pay a thing for all the evil they have done.
Jonah knows, in fact, that this is precisely God’s will and purpose in sending him to preach. Which is why Jonah tries to run the other way and hide – not preach at all to the people, not even see them, just hear from a safe distance the happy news of their eventual, inevitable destruction because of the path they have been on.
God, though, really is determined. Runs after Jonah. Will not let him get away. Makes him go and preach to the city, so the city will not be list to its sin. Makes Jonah the “good guy” be part of the salvation and healing of the “bad guys.”
Because God is the God of them both – God of all humanity, together. And far from having a Nice List and a Naughty List like Santa, or an accounting book of right to be rewared and wrong to be avenged like a heavenly Judge Roy Bean, God has only a Book of Life in which all names and all stories have a place and which God is determined to bring to a good ending.
Jesus understands this about God as well. Except Jesus – unlike Jonah, is happy to live it out when he sees it, and when he comes to understand that this is God’s way – to create the kind of conversation and community in the world between all people that leads not to judgement and retribution, but to shared healing and salvation together.
First-century Galilee was as divided and polarized a society as any. There was rich and poor. There was free and slave. There was Roman and Jewish – occupier and occupied. There was patriot and traitor, zealot and collaborator. There was oppressor and oppressed. Privileged and disillusioned. And even within Jewish society, there was higher and lower, righteous and sinful, touchable and not.
And everyone on either side of any of those lines of division had their own ways of feeling how unbalanced things were, and of how things might be balanced out if you could just find who was to blame and make them suffer.
Except Jesus.
Because when Jesus begins to act out what he sees of God’s will, and to call others to become disciples with him – to become learners with him of God’s way, it’s a new kind of community he calls them to. He doesn’t subscribe to, nor give in to the easy polarization of things. He doesn’t preach righteous violence against the oppressors like some of the other preachers of the day. Nor does he preach or practice a kind of pious withdrawal into holy sectarianism to save your own soul while watching all the rest of the world go to hell. He doesn’t accept any such division of the world into good guys and bad guys, nor any of the normal strategies of rewarding the good and punishing the bad as though that somehow makes things balance out.
The image itself that he uses says a lot. “You are fishermen,” he says, “and I will make you fishers of men” – fishers of men and women, of persons around you, regardless of whether you or others see them as good or bad. We will cast the net, he says, and we will draw them all in – good and bad, fish we want, and fish we never thought of, and even fish we thought we didn’t want – we will cast out the net of God’s love for all people, and we will draw in whoever will come, whoever will let themselves be caught in any way by it and by its good news.
And thus a new kind of community – a community of healing and salvation together, is formed, and a new kind of world – the kind of world intended by the God of all life, begins to take shape against the kind of world that moral and religious humanity too often creates and imagines as having to be.
And isn’t that what our life as a church of Christ is really all about – what our pastoral care and our outreach, our Christian education and even our worship are about? About again and again casting the nets of inclusive love and care as widely as we can, in whatever direction and whatever way we can – to throw out the net of God’s healing and saving love, so as to draw in whoever is there and will let themselves be caught – good fish and bad fish alike, fish we want and fish we didn’t know we wanted until they are here, fish that all are part of God’s great plan for the healing and saving of all the world together.
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