A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons (January 25, 2009)

Most weeks, I present a bit of something about one or more of the Bible lessons that we'll be using in worship on the following Sunday at the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. I do it to help both the people of the congregation and me to prepare for worship. But because we use the Biblical texts appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), used by most Christians in North America and elsehwere, I hope that these little jottings help others too.

Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 25, 2009

The Bible Lessons:
Jonah 3:1-5
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The Prayer of the Day
Almighty God, by grace alone You call us and accept us in Your service. Strengthen us by Your Spirit, and make us worthy of Your call, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

General Comments
The Epiphany Season theme of the presence of God among us is continued in the lessons for this Sunday, but with a variation. The focus of the first reading and of the Gospel lesson is on God calling people into service to God and neighbor, the call of all Christians, no matter what their profession.

In the Old Testament lesson, we read of God's second call to Jonah. (More on that below.)

The Gospel lesson tells the familiar story of Jesus' calling the first four apostles to follow Him. Don't let the familiarity prevent you from seeing the unique ways in which Mark recounts this incident.

I'm only going to write comments here on the Jonah text. It may or may not be the primary text on which I preach. But even if it isn't, it will still play a prominent role in my sermon on Sunday.

Jonah 3:1-5
The book of Jonah, recounting an incident from earlier in Israel's history, was probably composed in the period after the nation's exile. It was a time of retrenchment when Israel, drawing on its status as God's chosen ones, wanted to isolate itself from the dirty world around it.

This tale of a reluctant prophet who hated the foreign people to whom God wanted him to go, told with comic overtones designed to change people's minds by making them laugh, was a challenge to Israel's penchant toward being isolated and condemnatory of others. Israel was to be a light to the nations, after all, and it couldn't be a light if it kept that light hidden under a basket in the Judean countryside. (The book of Jonah, then, is the perfect companion to the Old Testament book of Ruth. Like Jonah, Ruth only runs to four chapters and through its tale of how a foreigner became ancestor to Israel's greatest king, David, also challenges Israel's insularity and prejudice against foreigners.)

In the first chapter of Jonah, God issued a first call to Jonah. Go to Nineveh, God said, and warn them that their evil has grown so great, I intend to destroy the place.

Nineveh was situated on the site of modern day Mosul, Iraq and was the capital of the Assyrian Empire which had always been hostile to Israel. (Just last week, by the way, a Christian from Mosul was murdered. It's a place from which Christians have fled because of intimidation and killings to which their community has been subjected. Last week's murder came after many Christians had begun to return to the city and their property.)

Understandably, Jonah didn't want to go there. Not only could he be reasonably certain of not receiving a welcome in Nineveh, he was even more certain that he personally hated the Ninevites and wanted to have nothing to do with them.

You can find our what happened next, by reading the book of Jonah yourself. Suffice it to say, Jonah went through an experience he likely wouldn't have wanted to repeat. So, when God calls him this second time, instead of running in the opposite direction as he did in chapter 1, he goes to Nineveh.

The book of Jonah says that Nineveh was so huge it took three days to walk its length. According to Wendy Baumgardner, a certified marathon coach and running enthusiast who runs About.com's page on walking, the average person without any complicating medical conditions can walk about eight miles in an eight-hour stretch, probably the maximum advisable distance. (See here and here.) So, a three day walk across Nineveh, as Jonah tells it, would entail traveling about 24 miles. Assuming that the city was as wide as it was long, that would make the place just a few miles smaller in area than metropolitan Houston today.

Now, my liberal friends will criticize me if I don't add that none of the archeological digs on the site of Nineveh indicate the city was ever that large. And at 576 square miles, Jonah's Nineveh would have dwarfed any other known ancient city.

But, along with my conservative friends, I would say, "Don't discount the information given in Jonah about the city."

The bottom line, of course, is that the book of Jonah, along with the rest of Bible, isn't a book of science. It's a book of faith with, if you'll excuse a poor turn of phrase in light both of Jonah's earlier chapters and of the Gospel lesson, bigger fish to fry.

The important thing to remember is that the place to which God is calling Jonah to go is not only hostile, it's also big. Big and hostile. Would you want to go there? I wouldn't!

Jonah complies with God's call. But just barely.

He spemds just one day walking toward the center of the city and then bellows out what is a five-word sermon in the original text (v.4): "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed."

The strange thing is that on the strength of those few words, with no indication that the foreign Deity represented by Nineveh would forgive them, the whole city repented. They turned away from sin and turned to God.

The question for you to ponder until we worship together on Sunday is simple:

Why?

Why did the Ninevites repent?

I'll see you on Sunday.