This is the sermon delivered remotely by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Monocacy Valley Church on Sunday, January 14, 2024, drawing from 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51.
Have you ever watched a toddler who's just started to figure out walking try and walk in a straight line on their own? I've got three kids, so I've done this a few times, and while I know it's adorable, and you're cheering for them and whatnot, we also kinda have to admit that it's a little bit absolutely hilarious to watch, isn't it? It really is! And it's not just because they haven't really gotten the whole "motor control" thing down yet; that much is to be expected, after all.
No, if we’re being honest it's more the lack of directional control that really makes it funny. If you take one of these adorable lil’ kiddos,, point them in one direction and tell them to go to one specific place - mom, dad, the couch, whatever - then you can be certain that this is the only place in the entire room where they will never, actually ever end up. They'll veer wildly to the left, careen off to the right, do a summersault, bounce off the front door, and somehow wind up in the bathtub. And as much as we love our children, as much as we know that this is part of the journey of growing and learning, it really is funny to watch!
We like to laugh, but the truth is that walking is actually really hard to figure out. There’s a reason it’s taken decades of hard work for the most advanced roboticists in the world to figure out how to make a robot to walk from point A to point B. Even though we think that walking is a simple, natural, even automatic process, even though going from one place to another is something so easy that we do it every day without ever even thinking about it, it’s actually insanely complicated. In order to do something as simple as walking from where we are to where we’ve been told to go, our brains need to calculate the precise dimensions of our bodies, map the topography of the world around us, determine the distance to any number of objects that might get in our way, plan a specific course that can take us to where we’re going, make adjustments for weight distribution and balance, account for the gentle sloping of the floor; all that and a million other calculations on top of it, all without getting distracted, losing focus, or forgetting where we meant to go in the first place. And as we move, our perspective on all of these things change; new obstacles become visible, our position in space changes, and all these calculations need to be redone. Input from the eyes, the ears, the nose; information from the brain, feelings from the heart, memory, experience; all these things flow in to the brain as we act and react to the world around us, compensating both for the changing terrain and our own missteps as we constantly recalculate our way to our destination.
Do any of you remember the show “Mythbusters?” This was one of my favorite shows when I was in high school and college, and for those of you who don’t know this was a show where they would take an idea and just…experiment, so they could see if it was true or not. One really fun episode saw them testing to see if is was possible to walk in a straight line when you couldn’t see. The theory was that even without visual cues, it would possible to use the combination of your other senses and you natural equilibrium to compensate so that you would still be able to move in a relatively, if not entirely, straight line.
Testing this idea was simple enough; all they had to do was find a reasonably level field, stick a bucket on their head, and see what happened! Now I don’t know about you, but I thought it’d be pretty easy. Like a lot of us, I’ve got a pretty hefty amount of faith in my own skills at walking; I’ve been doing it since I was a toddler, after all. I figured it had to be easy; as long as you know where you’re going, you should be able to trust in your own ability to walk without relying on outside influences to help guide you.
Boy was I wrong!
In retrospect it seems obvious, but of course it didn’t work out. Every time they tried, these guys found themselves taking about three steps forward before going wildly off course and not once, not once, did they get anywhere near where they had meant to go. But even still, even as I was watching them prove that it was impossible…I still kinda thought I could do it.
We all have that feeling, don’t we? That sense that we can set a clear course, that we just know how to get where we’re going. We have this intrinsic faith in our own skills, our own abilities, our own decision making, and it often leaves us thinking that we don’t need outside influences, don’t need to make changes or course corrections, we just need to point ourselves towards where we think the destination is, and start walking.
Jonah thought exactly like that, and look where it got him. From Jonah 3:1-5, 10;
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Now we all know the story of Jonah, right? The attention of God had turned to Nineveh, because God wanted them to receive a message of repentance, hand-delivered by Jonah, so they might change their collective course and set out on the path of righteousness. God knew that this group of people had started stumbling off course towards the kitchen - just like our example toddler from earlier who totally wasn't one of my kids - so God did what any good parent does, and made ready to redirect them, to show them how to change course because their own, human sense of direction just wasn’t cutting it.
So God called out to Jonah, and asked him to speak up, and show the people of Nineveh the right way to go so that rather than relying on their own, broken sense of direction, they might learn to rely on outside input and thus become aware the danger before them, and repent.
Oh we hate that word, don’t we? Repentance? Especially when it’s pointed at us! It’s a word that feels like judgement, condemnation, even rejection. When we hear the word “repent” we have in our mind the image of the angry evangelical street preacher, like a twisted John Edwards, painting the image of our lives in brush strokes of fire and brimstone.
But the words used in the Bible for repentance - metanoia in Greek and shoov in the Hebrew - don’t mean anything like that. They come from the root meaning “to turn,” meaning to adjust one’s path, to alter one’s direction so as to steer away from danger.
Simply put, to change course. To turn away.
And in the end of course, that’s exactly what the people of Nineveh did; they turned away. But Jonah on the other hand, Jonah…well…he was like a lot of us, really. He was absolutely certain that he knew how to follow God. While the book of Jonah doesn’t give us a lot of information about the history and backstory of Jonah bar Amittai, at the very least we can tell that this is a person who has a close enough relationship with God that when the Almighty starts giving him direct, verbal instructions this is not treated as a surprise!
Can you imagine how firm you have to be in your faith, how certain you must be in your relationship with God for that to go so utterly without comment? And we can see this certainty in how Jonah reacts to God’s calling to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh.
Think about that for a second. In the book of Jonah, in that time and place, it was known that Nineveh was a hated people very much in need of repentance. Nobody would want to go to there, let alone to preach them a message from God about repentance. They'd just as soon kill a prophet for that rather than listen! Jonah on the other hand, was an upright and upstanding man; he had a personal relationship with God, he knew right from wrong. He knew - with the absolute certainty and confidence of a man standing in an open field with a bucket on his head - that the city of Nineveh was utterly beyond redemption.
So…when God called Jonah, he didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to change his course because he felt so strongly that the path of righteousness wasn’t that way at all.
Of course, we all know how the story goes. From angry storms to giant fish, God keeps doing what any good parent does and keeps redirecting Jonah back toward where he was always going to have to go in the first place, and that’s what gets us to today’s passage. At this point Jonah has given in to the inevitable, but he is in no way happy about it. Because no matter how much God insists that Jonah isn’t in the right place, no matter how many different ways God gently - or not so gently - changes course for him, Jonah remains firm in the belief that he knows the right way, that it is his course that is good and straight and true. He doesn’t need a course correction. Not like these outsiders. These nonbelievers. Not like these others who definitely, certainly, absolutely needed repentance.
If God wanted him to preach repentance he would, under protest of course, but that doesn’t mean he has to change his heart or his mind, or open himself up to a world where righteousness might be found in the halls of those who offend and disgust him.
But at the end of the story, we never see Jonah reconcile himself to God, never see him find his way back to righteousness. The Ninevites repent, the Ninevites turn to God, change their course, and reorient themselves towards righteousness.
But Jonah never once truly turns his path towards God. Jonah refuses to course correct his heart. Jonah, who did not come to Nineveh by choice, who performed God's calling under protest, who even after God reached down, chucked him into the belly of a big fish and had him vomited out directly onto the beaches of Nineveh, still couldn't bring himself to change his mind about whether these people deserved God’s love and forgiveness.
It was Jonah, not Nineveh, who failed to repent. Jonah who failed turn away, and allow the path his heart took through the world to change.
Jonah was so certain in his own ability to walk the path alone that he never once course corrected his heart, never let God’s word change his path, never reacted to new input and information from God showing him that the path of love went further than he realized. No…he just let his own sense of self-righteousness settle over his head like a bucket, and convinced himself that he alone was walking the right path, even has he was just out in the field walking in circles.
Now take that rigid, unchanging faith in the self, that complete unwillingness to change course and respond to new information, and contrast it with the immediate reaction of Simon, Andrew, James and John when Jesus arrived and called out to them. Listen to this, from Mark 1:14-20:
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
We love to downplay this in the church, but I want to ask you to just take a moment and let it sink in just how radical this kind of calling is, how dramatic a life change Jesus is asking of these guys. These four have a solid life, working as fishermen. Sure, Galilee isn’t exactly the most exciting place to live, but in those times a good job - not to mention all the fish you can eat - was nothing to sneer at.
Simon and Andrew get the call, and they immediately change the course of their lives, without a moment’s hesitation or second thought. And not only that, but a little further down the shore Jesus calls again, this time to James and John who not only ditch their boats and nets immediately, but leave behind their father Zebedee who, for some reason, was not invited.
Even if we assume, fairly, that the biblical narrative is omitting some of the details, it’s still a very dramatic change of course, isn’t it? These guys just upend their entire lives in an instant, the second they hear the voice of God calling out to them. That’s nuts!
When we talk about this passage in church, we love to talk about it in terms of sacrifice, dedication, and faith, but we rarely consider that what we’re seeing here is actually just a form of repentance. When Jesus arrives, these men have the unique privilege of seeing something in person that the rest of us only ever get to think about abstractly; I am here, but Jesus is over there, and I’d better get moving if I’m gonna catch up!
Think about that for a second. How lucky are these guys? Not for all the stuff that came after, where they became disciples, followed Jesus until the end, and were the founders of the entire Christian church; all those things are fine enough, I suppose. But if you were to ask me whether I’d rather have the honor of a lifetime spent building the foundations of the Christian faith for the next two thousand years, or one perfect moment where I could clearly see exactly where God was, where God told me exactly what I had to do to get there, and it was as simple as taking a walk…well…
Honestly, I might jump out of the boat too.
Last week we spoke about the importance of listening, and how our hearing the call of Christ in our lives asks more of us than to simply open our ears; it requires us to stand up from our places of comfort, confront our brokenness, our judgmental natures, our hatreds, our fears, and our insecurities, and turn to follow Jesus instead.
But it doesn’t end there.
Once we’ve stood up, we have to start walking with Christ, and we can’t do that without repentance. And again, I know how fearful that word sounds to us, but all it is, all it ever has been, is simply fixing our eyes on Jesus and allowing ourselves to respond to the changing terrain, turning our path towards Christ again and again, one step at a time.
Because a life spent following Jesus is a lot like simply walking; it sounds simple, but it isn’t something we can do with closed eyes and good intentions. Our own sense of moral direction, our own ideas, thoughts, and plans for what is good and righteous, isn’t enough to get us from point A to point B. We have to do the hard work of reacting to our environment, making changes that allow us to step just right to avoid the furniture in our path so we don’t stumble and fall, to adjust our path so we can walk beside others rather than knock them over, to control our speed and our balance so that we don’t lurch destructively into the walls, and to allow the path to unfold before us in new and beautiful ways.
Following Jesus is a journey of exploration, each step showing us perspectives on love and compassion that we never could have imagined, never could have dreamed. And yes, sometimes God will walk us straight into Nineveh, straight into the heart of people and places that make us feel weird, uncomfortable, or even afraid, and that can make us want to start hiking angrily in whatever direction we think is right, rather than continuing to follow Jesus down that road.
But our sense of direction is always going to be just as misguided as Jonah’s, and if we try to answer Christ’s calling by setting our own course, we’re gonna to wind up smelling like the inside of a great big fish. We’ll be like Mythbusters in the field, wandering around in circles with a bucket on our head utterly certain that we’re going the right way when in truth we’re just a hairsbreadth away from stumbling into traffic.
Instead, let us dive out of our boats into oceans of love. Let us swim after God with intention, with eyes open and fears surrendered, ready to see just where this winding path of God’s justice, mercy, and unending love is going to take us.
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