Sermon for the Third Sunday before Advent – 7th November 2021: Jonah 3, 1-5, 10; Hebrews 9, 24-end; Mark 1, 14-20
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
Sunday 14th Nov: Remembrance Sunday.
Sunday 5th Dec: Christmas Bazaar – 11.00-16.30
at the foyer of the War Museum Amphitheatre)
Few bible stories are more vivid than that of Jonah. Much loved by Sunday School teachers, and their children, the graphic details of Jonah and his encounter with the whale enables many drawing, cutting and sticking, and story – telling activities. There are elements of mythological story telling in the details of Jonah’s encounter with a huge sea-beast.
All well and good – but what is the story of Jonah actually about. There is more to it than just the memorable episode much loved of children – and equally loved by adults.
The story is really an exercise in refusing to respond to God’s call. Each of us is made in the image of God – hence God is a God of unity in diversity – and each of us is called by God to become who we truly are, by God’s grace. In baptism we are each commissioned into ministry as members of the Body of Christ, and some will go on to respond positively to that call, and others will obtusely stand against it, dispassionately ignorant of who God calls them to become, or even being defiant.
The lesson from Jonah is about defiance, conversion, and obedience. Initially Jonah is called to witness to divine truth in the great city of Nineveh. The remains of this ancient city are on the borders of Mosul in the modern state of Iraq. Jonah is having none of this. He turns his back on God and runs away. While sailing to Tarshish, one of the ancient trade sea routes to Spain, a great storm blows up and when the sailors realize why Jonah is a travelling companion they throw him overboard.
It is at this point that the Sunday School teachers chuckle with delight. Jonah is swallowed by a large fish. Get out your scissors, coloured pencils, and felt tips, and get creative!
The episode allows for rich allegory – especially for those of us who know the Christian narrative. Indeed some four hundred years after the writing of the Book of Jonah, when the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth ask for signs, Jesus himself cross-references them to the story of Jonah in the sea creatures belly – an allegorical reference to the three days that Christ would himself spend in the tomb after his death, and ‘out of the belly of Sheol [or hell] I cried, and you heard my voice.’ (Jonah 2, 1)
Jonah’s predicament was caused by him not responding to God’s calling; he was disobedient. Mercifully the sea creature was more obedient, for the Lord speaks to the fish and he is spewed out on to dry land. This whole alarming incident was the crucible in which Jonah’s faithlessness is turned into faithful obedience. His witness to the population of the huge city is successful – the people repent of their ways, and God spares their city.
The ending of this strange story, whose central activity prefigures so easily the days between cross and empty tomb, ends rather abruptly and obliquely. Is the story complete? Is a real ending missing? Who knows, but read the whole of this short book and you will see what I mean.
Jesus has rather more success on his mission of calling people into his service. The gospel tells us in just a matter of a couple of sentences how four key players respond to his call. Jesus is fishing among fishermen for ‘fishers of men’. From their nets he invites Simon (better known to us as Peter), and Andrew, and James, and John. In just one fishing trip Jesus hooks a third of his apostolic catch – 4 out of the twelve we call the apostles.
No running away for them. The response is immediate – ευθύς (efthis) – in the NT Greek. It is used twice in as many sentences. Immediacy is notable throughout Mark’s gospel. Immediacy is the character of these four fishermen’s response to follow Jesus.
It would not be so long until these men, and their 8 colleagues, would hear Jesus speak of Jonah, his own time of suffering, his own three days in the belly of death and Hell, and the joy of the resurrection – joy that brings to each of these fishermen in later days the bitter experience of true and final martyrdom.
Jonah enters the dark and claustrophobic experience of the whale, the disciples of Jesus enter the dark experience of the mystery surrounding the cross, and we are all of us invited to join the life of the Christ, the great High Priest.
The Letter to the Hebrews in its rich use of Jewish practice and theology, picks up and develops a theology of the temple. The temple was the very heart of the Jewish faith, and within the temple was the Holy of Holies, the very ‘belly’ of the temple compound. By tradition the Jewish high priest could enter this part of the temple only once a year to atone for the sins of the people. He entered after the ritual sacrifice of one sheep – the other he lets go to run into the desert, the ‘scapegoat’.
In the Letter to the Hebrews we read that Christ has replaced this high priest who enters annually into the Holy of Holies; the sacrifice is no longer needed for the atonement of sin; Christ himself is the High Priest, he is the new temple, and his death on the cross removes the need for any further sacrifice. All is complete – no annual ritual is needed any more. The way is opened for us to pass from disobedience, through the alchemy of reconciliation and divine grace, into the new light of the risen Christ.
No more is needed within the divine/human economy – except for us to be in a constant ‘alertness’ or ‘nepsis’ to the presence of God and responsive to his will.
I wonder where each of us finds ourselves in this paradigm of grace, this pattern of our redemption? Are we still stubborn refusers? Are we running away from God’s call? Do we have the immediacy of the fishermen?
I’ve missed out a bit of the story of Jonah. Having preached repentance to the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh, with their subsequent repentance, and forgiveness by God, Jonah still finds grounds to grumble. Jonah admits that he had fled from his task, not because God is a wrathful and vengeful God, but because Jonah knows he is a God who is merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. So Jonah is angry with God almost for having all these wonderful qualities and characteristics. Maybe for many of us the scariest thing about God is that he IS all these things, and we don’t know how to handle this, because if this is how God is, it is how we should become if we are all made one in the beautiful and colourful kaleidoscope of his divine image in Christ our great High Priest.
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