Jonah and the 4 fishermen
Is it me or is it Ironic that the lection should pair a man swallowed by a fish (read the fish fishing for man) with the call of four men who were fishermen with the promise: I will make you fishers of men.
Jonah like most of the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures resisted the call to go to Nineveh, indeed, Jonah deliberately set out for another city. Jonah knew Nineveh to be a large city and his “preaching” and “testimony” to the people was at best halfhearted. He had no confidence that they would repent and return. He had prejudged them to be evil, hard hearted, stubborn, resistant to change. God had other plans and the effect of God’s spirit was effective. Not only did the king repent and put on sackcloth, but the people repented too. God seeing their repentance changed God’s mind too.
What are we to learn from this story?
There is the human response to the call of God. Resistant and more prone to follow his own good ideas than those of God, Jonah eventually with some pretty strong persuasion, like being swallowed by a big fish and vomited onto land near where he was sent, Jonah does as commanded: he delivers the message. God’s will persists and prevails over the prophets protest. There is an obvious distinction between human desire and God’s will, between human sin and God’s mercy.
God is persistent! Rebuffed by Jonah, God watched Jonah get on the ship heading to a different city. Maybe the story is written in a humorous tone to keep our attention: the ship runs into a storm, the people on board are desperate to survive, to the point that Jonah volunteers to be thrown overboard. Swallowed by the fish, Jonah resorts to prayer: HELP. It seems to work for the fish very effectively delivers him to land. Now sitting on the sandy beach with stomach contents all over him, Jonah essentially gives in to God and goes into Nineveh. Once there, he spends 40 days talking about repentance. Jonah does not expect any results. He has prejudged these people unworthy of the message and secretly hopes they will be destroyed. I don’t know why Jonah has such strong feelings about these people, but they repent and when they do God responds with mercy.
God’s responsiveness shows up over and over in this story. God calls Jonah, who disobeys, but when in trouble God rescues him. Then when the people of Nineveh repent, God forgives them and spares them. God saved the men on the board. God saved Jonah from the big fish. God saved the people of Nineveh. This is a universal scope of God’s mercy: it is not reserved only for the Israelites but extends to the Gentile Ninevites.
The story of Jonah reminds us that whatever goals we have set, whatever core values we hold dear, wherever we think we are headed, we should remember not to be surprised by a sudden change of direction. Jonah headed for Tarshish, but ended up in Nineveh. The powerful king takes off his royal robe and puts on sackcloth. Jonah obeys God (albeit slowly and begrudgingly). The people respond and God shows mercy. There is a Jewish proverb that says, “Whenever someone says, I have a plan, God laughs.”
When Jesus called Simon, Andrew, James and John to follow him, they got up from what they were doing and did as he asked, IMMEDIATELY, according to Mark’s Gospel. Two of them even left their father sitting in the boat. All four were fishermen by profession, not by hobby. Could they have possibly known what following Jesus would mean? Did they even know who he was?
Jesus told them he would make them fishers of people. What did that mean? Fishing in the Sea of Galilee was done using nets, weighted to sink deep in the water, waiting for the fish to enter the area of the net and then hauled up catching the fish. Becoming fishers of people would take different skills but a wide net might be a good metaphor. I suggest today that the solidarity we have as a faith community, the love we show one another, the way we worship together and serve together is the net we cast into which people are attracted or distracted. Do we need to do some mending of our nets?
Fishing on the Sea of Galilee could also be dangerous as storms would come up suddenly, causing great waves, and threaten the safety of those on board. Following Jesus would take these men into dangerous territory too, places where the leaders of the church and state wanted things to be as they were: no changes please – to the Pax Romana or to the Temple traditions. What customs, traditions, do we hold so dear and important that we resist change?
There are many ministries within the community and reaching out from this parish to the larger community. Are they all fishing for people under the direction of God? Growing in faith, in trust of God and one another we can risk something big for something good. We can take righteous risks when we all follow the one who knows the way, who is the way, truth and life.
When I take my fishing trip to Montana, my guide knows where the fish are, what flies will likely work, whether the trout are rising or running deep. He knows me, my weaknesses born of too many years of spin casting, so that as the day wears on and I become tired, my cast is compromised by not keeping a straight wrist and forearm. He knows that I don’t set the hook fast enough to the tick tick nudge of the really big fish and so I miss chances. He knows that any fish under five pounds is well within my ability to boat, but for the really big fish, its hit and miss. He takes my limitations in good humor. He pushes me to develop more consistent skills. He encourages me to try new casts, alerts me to signs I miss like the boiling water under a big overhanging rock. He shows me, lets me make mistakes, and encourages me to try again. He teaches me. I trust him and so I try really hard to improve my skills.
If Andrew, Simon, James and John knew Jesus as their guide into uncharted waters, they listened, watched, and learned from him. Do you imagine that they had more success because Jesus was there in person? They saw him heal the blind, the deaf, the lame, the leper. They saw him forgive sins, challenge authority figures, help strangers and foreigners. They watched as the tension among the powerful grew and while they hoped otherwise, he was arrested, tried, convicted, and killed. They must have been so disappointed. Certainly they were afraid for they had been his friends, so they hid in closed locked rooms. But what seemed to be the end was only the beginning of something dramatic, a 360 degree change of direction in their understanding: he rose from the grave, visited them, ate bread and fish with them and commissioned them to continue doing what they had done with him, to keep on forming relationships grounded in God’s mercy, forgiveness and love. As they had when they were fish called, they responded, told the story, shared the love they received, continued to fish for people and down through the 2000 years since others have done likewise and so here we are in our turn…called to follow Jesus as faithful disciples wherever he leads, creating community where all are welcome.
It is our turn to live so as to attract others to the hope that is in us; to love one another with such sincerity and equality that others want to be with us, and to so focus our attention on Jesus as our mentor and guide that all we do and say reflect his presence in us, through us, and among us. Jesus still calls. How do we answer?