"Arrogance and Repentance" January 22, 2012

Jonah 3:1-10
Mark 1:14-22
There is a mistake in this morning's bulletin. There was no fixing it, no avoiding it or covering it up. For the last many years our Session have been trying to find a way of opening up issues related to Christian Education and Spiritual Nurture. We have been cognizant that for this congregation this is heavily laden, with shadows of the failed co-pastorate, and Christian educators, and abuses that happened 50 years ago. We have known that any way we address it is going to cost money that was not in our projections of a Budget. At the same time recognizing that what we have done over the last many years, what every church and synagogue has done, has not been working. And that we had a staff member with unique gifts, who if given opportunity, could do very creative things. All of this came to a head this week, as our Session proposed a solution, which we will be able to announce next week at the Annual meeting, and then we learned our son was in danger. Knowing that the Prayer had a level of redundancy and repetition, and that it might pinch most of us a little too close, when the challenge came that there might be an error, I looked it over too quickly and missed what was right before my eyes. I had been arrogant. Only after the bulletins were printed and folded and stuffed and the staff had gone home, did I realize my own mistake, not only in repeating a line, but in arrogance.

The last many years, the problem of arrogance has come up again and again, and this underlies our morning's Scriptures. The Prophet Jonah was commanded by God to get up, and to go north to Israel's enemies at Ninevah, preaching their need to repent and follow God. But Jonah was arrogant. Where God told Jonah to get up and go up, Jonah instead went in his own direction, down to the harbor, down into the hold of the ship, going south, down into sleep, in depression, in avoidance of the world. When calamity struck, when the chaos of the sea erupted, Jonah had himself thrown down into the sea, where he was swallowed by a fish, and carried down, three days journey, to the place of the dead. When he could sink no lower, Jonah turned to God and prayed. There are times for us all, when we realize we have been caught and we confess. Tragically, what we confess is not arrogance, not our responsibility, what we ordinarily confess is that we got caught. Jonah's prayer is “Okay God, I can sink no lower. You caught me with this stinking fish and took me to a place without life, without hope. I beg of you to let me go, and I will do what you commanded.”

Grace is an amazing thing. Where Jonah had gone south instead of North, where it took three nights for the fish to reach the place of the dead, immediately when Jonah prays, God puts him on the shores of where God wants Jonah to be at Ninevah.

However, Jonah's prayer had not been a confession of arrogance. Jonah's prayer had not been an acceptance of responsibility, or a reversal of commitments. Jonah's prayer had been, “You win God. You are a God and I am a mortal, so who am I to compete with you, I lose.” There is no contrition here, no responsibility, only realization that I got caught, I did not win. The word of God again comes to Jonah, saying Get Up and Go and Call the people to faith in God. Jonah Got up, and Jonah Went, but Jonah preached the word he wanted to preach, rather than the word of God. There was no mention of God in Jonah's Word. What is striking is that Ninevah this foreign city, this place of Israel's enemies, is considered by God to be a Great City. There is a point of humility, even for God, to recognize the accomplishments of one who is different, who is totally other. Ninevah is described as being a three days' journey across, if a person walks at a steady pace, we could walk 20 miles in a day, so Ninevah was 60 miles across! With all the anger and venom and arrogance within him, in vindication that I got caught by God and forced to prophesy but I am still going to do it my own way, Jonah offered the shortest, most brief prophecy in the Bible... “In 40 days, you will all be destroyed.” No mention of “Because”, no allowance for “Unless”, not even acknowledgement of God being behind this. “In 40 days, destruction.”

A preacher's greatest fear is not that they will be like Jonah. A preacher's fear is that like Ninevah the people will hear what the people were ready to hear not what the preacher had intended. This Foreign people, this City Great in the eyes of God, this totally other enemy, had humility to hear not only the words of the prophet Jonah but the word of God underneath. Ninevah recognized their arrogance and not only confessed, but repented. Talk about a total and complete conversion! All the people of Ninevah from the King to the poor, everyone acknowledged their sin, they even rubbed ashes on their cows and donkeys and refused them food in this fast as well. And the text describes, that God witnessed the humility of Ninevah, and God was humble enough to let go God's arrogance and forgive. The difficulty of the Book of the Prophecy of Jonah is recognizing who is this message for? The prophet of God is sent to Ninevah. And all Ninevah responds and repents. Even God repents and reverses from what God was going to do. What will it take for the nation, for Israel, personally for Jonah, for us to repent, to reverse from what we had been doing, to confess arrogance and follow God?

The Call of the first Disciples in Mark, is like the Book of Jonah.
Mark does not include the Christmas stories of Matthew or Luke. Mark does not describe what the temptation in the wilderness was. Mark describes that John came preaching Repentance as Preparing the Way of God. Mark describes Jesus' Baptism as the separation between heaven and earth permanently and irreversibly ripped open. Mark describes Jesus was driven into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan, and when John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus immediately came preaching Repentance, declaring the Time is at Hand. Jesus goes into the Synagogue on the sabbath and preaches with authority, not like the scribes. There is a sarcasm about the beginning of Mark, challenging us to witness the arrogance of our lives.

But the challenge of Jesus' Call is not “Follow me and I will teach you how to Fish!” Andrew, Peter, John and James were commercial fishermen. Like us, they might have responded to lessons of learning a new way, a better way, as I could have time on Thursday... How about three times a week, can anybody do Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 2:30pm? Instead, of learning yet another responsibility, following Jesus was learning a new way of being. The text is explicit, that Andrew and Simon Peter left their nets; James and John left their father Zebedee. They left their careers, their livelihood, their families, all that they knew for a different way of life, a different way of being, instead of being fishermen, to be fishers of women and men.

What if Christian Education were not a curriculum that children go to learn, not a program that we master, but instead the nurturing of one another in every faith and circumstance? Challenging and being challenged “What are you looking for?” When we marry, are we committing to sharing our bed and checking account, children and finances, or is there a spiritual union? When we baptize our children, are we giving them a name and celebrating their presence, or questioning all our commitments of life and death as being in the hand of God? When we retire are we changing our routine, giving up our identity, or choosing to enter into a time of mentoring and volunteerism, or what?

A monumental shift has taken place in this church, a response to Christ's call like that of Peter and Andrew, James and John. There was a time, when the membership of the church and membership of the Country Club were virtually indistinguishable. We were a Pillar church, where membership meant something. In recent years, I cannot recall a circumstance in this community, that has not affected this congregation. Domestic Violence, Alcohol abuse, Embezzlement, Divorce, Cancer, our Schools, our Investments and Economy, War, Health care, Political unrest. Rather than trying to take on relevant issues, we have become relevant, and the faith and spirit of every person has become something vital. Personally, I struggle whenever I hear reference to our Village or Town because of property values or affluence, because every individual struggles with their faith, with their own arrogance. Human life would be better if instead of admitting getting caught, we could confess our arrogance and repent, but that might mean acceptance that the Kingdom of God really is at hand. It is far easier to deceive ourselves with our arrogance that we are in control.