The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." 3 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. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
10 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. (Jonah 3 NRSV)

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." 16 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. 17 And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. (Mark 1 NRSV)


“READY OR NOT”


Years ago I did some computer programming. It was simple, very simple compared to nowadays. It usually did something with lab data. This was for mainframe computers that filled a room with printers the size of a piano. The personal computer was years away. I used BASIC, FORTRAN, PL/1. Those are antiques nowadays. My pride and joy was a program that computed Fibonacci Numbers. The Fibonacci series is the sum of the preceding two numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and so on. There was a mistake in the program:
Do i = 1 to 200
Put page edit
Next i
As the program started I realized the mistake. The commands were out of order and would send 200 sheets of blank paper flying out of the printer. Fortunately there was a cancel button. In the computer lab many such programs were written (on punch cards!) and some had mistakes and did not do what the programmer wanted. And so the consultants had some basic guidelines. One was K.I.S.S. “Keep it simple, stupid.” The more complicated a program was, the harder it was to find and fix mistakes. It is a valuable lesson in many other ways.
God comes into our world whether we are ready for it or not. Many times this is in the form of God wanting us to do something. The readings from Scripture for today have that theme. The word of the Lord comes to the prophet Jonah. It is to proclaim judgment to the people of the city of Nineveh. He is not ready for that and so runs away. But God stops him. That is where the great fish comes in. He ends up on a boat, then overboard, then saved by the fish and returned to land. And the word of the Lord comes to him a second time. The message is the same. This time, though, he is ready and goes to that land, the land which is Israel’s enemy and preaches. It works; the people hear it and turn to the Lord and they are saved from judgment. Sometimes God has to lead us into being ready to serve God.
The Gospel reading is of the time Jesus came to Galilee and proclaimed the good news of God. Simon and Andrew were by the sea and Jesus tells them this amazing thing: “Follow me and I will make you fish for human beings.” They responded, very much unlike Jonah, immediately. They were fishermen and Jesus used an image that would be unmistakable to them. It is pretty simple. Just as they used to go gather fish so now they would be gathering human beings into a community of faith, centered on Jesus. James and John do likewise and so the disciples come to follow Jesus with this simple idea. They saw in Jesus someone, not only worth following, but worth dropping all they had, giving up all they had, to do it. They will follow Jesus and bring others to follow Jesus. It was simple.
For two thousand years the church has followed Jesus. It has grown more complicated. The first Christians proclaimed the gospel to the world around them. They, men and women, were fishers of people who, in turn, became part of the people of God. With time, these lands became filled with believers. Then people became Christians as they were born into Christian families, brought into the church through Baptism. The emphasis was shifted to teaching people about their faith, not in proclaiming the good news to those who were unfamiliar with it. There was no unbelieving world around the church. The times have changed and the number of people who have no church or no faith has grown. The church is no longer the center of things. In fact, in some places it is a minority. Perhaps it is time to rediscover the way the gospel can be shared with the world. The church sometimes needs to remember K.I.S.S. It is simple. God has a message and entrusts it to the servants of God.
It is time to remember what Jesus calls us to. It is a way of life in which faith is not just knowledge or status but an approach to life. Brian McLaren was asked to introduce a famous speaker at a conference of pastors. He was prepared until he found out that there had been a mistake. He was supposed to interview Dr. Peter Senge from a remote site by satellite teleconferencing. He prepared for that and was delayed due to technical problems. At last it was on and he asked the speaker what he would like to say to five hundred Christian ministers. He said that he asked a manager of a bookstore on a college campus what books were selling and he said that after the business administration books they were ones on spirituality and in particular about Buddhism. Dr. Senge asked the assembled ministers why they thought that was. McLaren turned the question back on Senge who said this, “I think it’s because Buddhism presents itself as a way of life, and Christianity presents itself as a system of belief. So I would want to get Christian ministers thinking about how to rediscover their own faith as a way of life, because that’s what people are searching for today. That’s what they need most.”

What the speaker was getting at was that the Christian faith is more than a set of beliefs. It is a way we live following Jesus. It is a group of people, the church, and also people acting. It is an institution, but also a movement. Sometimes we forget that, especially when we only think about preserving the institution or our traditions.
All this talk about how the world is changing might frighten us. The future comes whether we are ready for it or not. Much has changed but there are some things that have not. God still loves the world and wants to be a part of it. God has called men and women to follow Jesus and serve others in his name. The plan that God has for the world is still the same as when Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom and the disciples left their nets to follow him. What does the world need? What are people searching for? What do we have to give it?
We begin by rediscovering outreach. The church does not exist for itself. It is like those first disciples, called to proclaim the good news, that they have found Jesus. It can reach the lives of others in amazing ways, as Elizabeth Sherrill found years ago when traveling with Brother Andrew who was noted for meeting with groups of Christians behind the Iron Curtain. Elizabeth and her husband John were planning on following the old advice to travel light when they found Brother Andrew packing a large suitcase. It turned out is was clothes to be left behind for those whose faith had cost them positions and employment in a Communist society. She discovered that thing don’t mean much until they’re shared.

God called Jonah and the first disciples to serve God. The disciples responded immediately to that call but Jonah came to it late. But behind it all was God, wanting a message to go forth into the world. It is simple. What we have, even our faith, is to be shared with others. Let us seek to give what the world needs. The times are changing but God’s love for the world does not. God wants to bring the world to God’s own self. We can bring the message to those who need it. We can catch them. It is as simple as that.