Third Epiphany
Mark 1:14, Jonah
If the wildly popular musical Wicked can do it why can't we?
In the spellbinding musical Wicked two girls meet in the Land of Oz. One born with emerald green skin is smart, fiery and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very popular. How these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the good witch is the back story to the wizard of Oz. The untold tale. The story behind the story. It occurs to me that if this tale can make it so big on Broadway perhaps there's a market for the hidden tales behind the Bible.
Consider Frank, a shepherd in the hills surrounding Mount Horeb. One night he encounters a burning bush but the bush isn't consumed and there's a voice from this bush and it tells him to go and confront the Pharaoh in Egypt. He rubs his eyes. The bush returns to normal. His heart is pumping, his mind is spinning, he's never felt so alive It's all a little overwhelming so He needs to sit down and while he rests he falls asleep. When he wakes he has a vague disquiet. Perhaps he imagined the events of the night before. Perhaps it was a dream, an undigested bit of cheese. The bush, the voice, seemed so vivid but perhaps it was his imagination. Why after all would God be calling him, Imagine Frank leading his people out of Egypt so he got up shook his head clear and went back to tending his sheep for the next forty years and died an old man. Imagine.
Imagine.
In the fifth month the angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin in the town of Rumah. The virgin's name was Gladys. And he came to her and said "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. Gladys assumed it was just the sun playing tricks with her eyes or the sound of the breeze through the holes in the roof and she turned away. Gabriel moved to the other side of the room but Gladys was a smart cookie and she just went on with her sweeping and cooking. Finally Gabriel got tired of being ignored and disappeared to another encounter in Nazareth. The back story, The un story--What happens when the call of God comes and it is avoided or ignored. Surely God argues as he did with Moses and sometimes God insists as he did with Jonah but perhaps there are times when God just moves along when the call is ignored. That's the back story, the un-story.
C.S Lewis in his wonderful satire "The Screwtape Letters" in which an older devil Beelzubub is giving instructions to a novice devil Screwtape. He talks about how to divert humans from their deeper understandings of God.
Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument, I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control, and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line, for when I said, "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning," the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind," he was already halfway to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true
What Lewis alludes to in his satire is cute and funny but also somewhat true. The pull of the ordinary. Don't we all wish we could receive a call with the clarity of a James or John Simon or Andrew or Jonah. Who would ignore Jesus standing on the shore or who would evade the word of the Lord conveyed by a big fish? But unfortunately most calls do not have the clarity of those episodes. Most calls require a certain measure of discernment. Is this my imagination or God's voice? Is this what I want or what God wants? And how, after all, does this call come? Discernment.
I've been thinking a lot about call and discernment these past few weeks as the nominating committee has approached people to serve as members of our congregation council. The committee put a lot of thought and prayer into trying to discern the needs of the various committee positions and considering the gifts of those who would be asked to fill the positions. And I hope and believe that those who were asked took seriously the request and attempted to discern God's call. While the nominating committee did not believe it all the time I regularly told them we should be as grateful for a no as a yes. If they answered no it meant they were not discerning God's call. Perhaps the timing is wrong, or the gifts that they know they possess are not matched to the gifts needed or there are other competing calls and commitments at this time. It seems to me that we don't want people serving who are doing it begrudgingly or haphazardly. While God can get the Jonah's of the world to fulfill the divine purpose whether they want to or not it seems to me that coercion is not the preferred method. Indeed we do not know how many virgins Gabriel approached before Mary took to heart the angels message. Indeed we have no idea how many others God approached before he was convincingly able to address Moses' fears and enlist him. How many more fishermen saw Jesus on the shore and just kept fishing.
There is no story in not answering God's call. There's no story because it all ends just there. The back-story is rather sad for its just years of sweeping and drawing water or tending sheep. And the saddest part is that the people of the back story will never know what they missed.
The gospel of Mark is very sparse in it's telling. We don't know much about the lives that Andrew, Simon, James and John left but we do know the life they went to. We know that when they joined Jesus they became part of something that was bigger than them. They took on a task, a mission that was serving the Kingdom of God. Imagine being there when Jesus took two loaves and five fish and fed 5000 people. Imagine being with Jesus when he went to jairus' house and raised his daughter. Imagine watching as the deaf are made to hear and the blind to see. How does a day on the fishing boat compare to that. They were alive, part of Jesus mission to bring healing and wholeness, wonder and joy, new life.
Oh it wasn't all pleasant. There were some frightening times when I'm sure the disciples asked themselves what they were doing following Jesus. Times when cleaning fish seemed awfully appealing. As Jesus entered Jerusalem the opposition was getting nasty and I don't doubt that the temptation to run home was strong. But even then they were caught up in something amazing. They were hooked by a power that was stronger than apathy. They were held by love.
I believe that God's call comes to all of us. I believe that just as God challenged Jonah and just as Jesus called Andrew and Simon, God presents us with opportunities to be part of the amazing adventure that is the Kingdom of God. Sometimes we'll talk ourselves out of answering most often by sitting practicality, sensibility, and reasonableness. But sometimes hearing the call we will discern the voice of God, we will answer and embark. Each and every one of us has an important and unique place in the work of the kingdom. I believe that. The question is when God calls will we just pretend it's our imagination and go back to sweeping and fishing?
Amen