January 21, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
Fall In or Let Go of the Nets
Jonah 3:10; Mark 1:14-20
Holmdel Community United Church of Christ
Rev. Loren McGrail
January 21,2024
“If you become a fish in a trout stream, said his mother,
I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
The story of Jonah trying to escape God is my call story plain and simple. My other one is the story in Margaret Wise Brown’s children’s book, The Runaway Bunny which I read to my daughter Colette, religiously alternating with Brown’s other book, Good Night Moon. Both books allowed for imaginative add- ons like “Good night dust under my bed”, and “If you become a mouse, I will become a piece of cheese so I can live inside you.”
These are the ones I can remember. I love the story of the Runaway Bunny because I think we are all a little afraid of God’s call. And I think we are also strangely comforted that no matter what happens to us including drowning, God will shape shift to find us.
God’s call is like this, both inescapable and strangely comforting. Our lectionary readings this morning are good illustrations of God’s insistent and persistent call for us. After all we have already been named as God’s Beloveds.
However, I am not sure comforting is the word either Jonah or the fishermen would use to describe this call to become part of God’s redemptive plans.
This is especially true for that reluctant prophet Jonah. In the Book of Jonah, the shortest book in the Bible, Jonah’s choice is to redeem a reviled people or drown. Jonah is remarkable among the prophets because his resistance to proclaiming the word of Lord comes from not wanting to let go of his righteous anger at the people of Nineveh because they were his enemies; they had destroyed his people. He was worried that if he went to preach repentance that God might indeed forgive them. He feared he would succeed, and his enemies would be saved.
So, because he thought he could escape God (like the runaway bunny) he ran to Joppa (Jaffa) and bought a ticket on a boat to Tarshish--- a city in Spain, as far away as possible from Nineveh (modern day Mosul in Iraq). Jonah thought God was limited to his tribe, his land only, and wouldn’t find him.
Once on board the ship, a big storm blew up frightening all the passengers. They believed that it came because the gods were punishing them for someone’s sin. Jonah confessed he was the one running from his God, so he told them to dump him into the violent sea.
Once in the sea God swallowed him in the guise of a big fish which now most think of as a whale. Jonah was inside the whale for three days until he finally faced the fact there was no escape from God; then he began to sing to God. Three days in the belly of the beast makes Jonah an archetype for Jesus which is one of the reasons Christians love the story of Jonah; this plus the fact that he willingly sacrificed himself by throwing himself overboard.
Once Jonah repented for running away, the great fish (God) spit him out. Then God called him a second time to go and preach repentance---our scripture this morning.
This time Jonah obeyed God’s orders and wandered around the evil city of Nineveh repeating, “In 40 days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
And to Jonah’s surprise and dismay, the people listened and turned toward God. They put on sackcloth and fasted, and most importantly had a change of heart.
Instead of rejoicing, Jonah clung to his fear, to his anger and bitterness, to his prophetic indignity, to his hatred of his enemies. From the beginning to the end, he still couldn’t let go. He didn’t seem to have learned anything from his drowning in the sea nor his three days in the tomb of the whale’s belly.
Thus far in our story, it is Nineveh, the imperial capital of Assyria, who exercises the freedom of repentance. As theologian Bill Wylie-Kellermann says, “They match the solidarity of sin in violence with the solidarity of freedom in repentance. Here is an ironic tale bigger than the whale. Of course, the final freedom is God’s---who also repents of anger in judgment.” Dear Ones, we have a God who can repent.
Jonah struggled with his call to participate in God’s redemptive plan for mercy and forgiveness. He struggled to accept a God that lives beyond borders and the land of his tribe; one who chooses to forgive and love even the enemies of his chosen people. Jonah is dumped in the sea to learn a lesson about the nature of God’s universal love and the eternal back and forth relationship between repentance, forgiveness, and love.
It’s easy to make fun of this reluctant prophet who holds onto his anger like a lifejacket. But are we any different? Are we ready to let go of our indignation and allow repentance and change to really happen in our personal or collective lives?
I love the story of the Runaway Bunny and Jonah because I think we are also a little afraid of God’s call. And I think we are also strangely comforted that no matter what happens to us including drowning, God will shape shift to find us and hold us even in the belly of a whale. And most importantly, God will give us a second chance if we can let go of our righteous anger.
This story of Call is so different on the surface from the call of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee. In Mark’s Gospel story, the fishermen immediately drop their nets and follow Jesus without a moment’s hesitation. Unlike Jonah holding onto his righteous anger, these exploited fishermen from Capernaum have nothing to lose and everything to gain by joining a movement of resistance. Yes, resistance. This is what Jesus was calling them to do when he says I will make you fish for people. It doesn’t mean to save souls.
Jesus knew the prophetic literature of his day and sought to employ it anew. He was summoning these marginalized workers to join him in “Catching some big fish” to restore God’s kin-dom. The fishermen had to drop all their nets---business as usual and the debt systems that enslaved them. They had to cut off everything that tied them to life under Roman Occupation. Theologian Ched Myers says, “There is perhaps no expression more traditionally misunderstood than Jesus' invitation to these workers to become "fishers of men" (1:17). This metaphor, despite the grand old tradition of missionary interpretation, does not refer to the "saving of souls," as if Jesus were conferring upon these men instant evangelist status. Rather, the image is carefully chosen from Jeremiah 16:16, where it is used as a symbol of Yahweh's censure of Israel. Elsewhere the "hooking of fish" is a euphemism for judgment upon the rich (Amos 4:2) and powerful (Ezekiel 29:4). Taking this mandate for his own, Jesus is inviting common folk to join him in his struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege.”
Dear Ones, the call to discipleship, like the prophetic call, demands immediacy. It demands we stop and turn around, lose everything and risk going in a new direction. This is the scandalous freedom of answering the call.
Following Jesus is about allowing oneself to move in the same direction as God’s. Dear Ones, I hope you have had glimmers of this experience. If this feels too difficult, I invite you to sit with your nets, the things that tie you to your current life, and think of ways---small and concrete that you can either untangle some of the things that are literally tying you up or down or what you can even let go of all together.
Remember that following may mean casting the same old net but in a new way or for new reasons. Explore your relationship to nets. Or explore what righteous attitudes you need to let go of in order to participate in God’s economy off grace.
Just like your baptism, I invite you to fall into the waters of life whether you know how to swim or not. I invite you to allow yourself to drown in God’s all- encompassing turbulent love, to even allow yourself to be swallowed up. I invite you to let go of all those tangled nets and say yes to God’s redemptive plan. Answering this call will cost you everything.