The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Third Sunday after Epiphany

JONAH 3:1-10: The Book of Jonah is both an invitation and a satire. As satire, it pictures the false understanding of God that had permeated Israel. As invitation, it invites Israel to end its ways and turn again to their God, Yahweh, who cares for them as in this story Yahweh cared for Ninevah.

The story of Jonah is known to almost every Sunday school child. God had called this prophet to go to Ninevah and pronounce God's judgment upon the Ninevites. Jonah did not want the commission, so he jumped on a boat and set sail for the other side of the world. A great storm came up over the sea, and the boat was about to capsize. The sailors prayed to their gods, but the storm did not abate. Searching the ship for reasons for the storm (they believed that every storm was caused by the anger of the gods for the failure of the people to do the proper things to placate the gods), they found Jonah asleep in the hold. Jonah told them that his God was Yahweh, and they prayed to Yahweh. But the storm did not subside. Jonah suggested that they throw him overboard, which they did. But God caused a great fish to swallow Jonah, carry him safely to the shore, and vomit him up. The fish did that, and our story opens with Jonah on the shore and God about to speak to him again.

Before we get into the text for the morning, it is helpful to look at some of the nuances of the story that help us understand what the author had in mind in writing it.

1. The name "Jonah" comes from a prophet who is briefly referred to in 2 Kings 14:25. He was a native of Gath-hepher who prophesied about extending the borders of Israel in the time of Jereboam II, in the 8th century BC. Why the author picked this obscure figure for his prophet is unknown, except that it is said in 2 Kings that Jonah is the "son of Amittai." The word name Amittai is related to the ideas of truth and faithfulness. Jonah is the "son of faithfulness and truth," but, as Robert Good says in his book Irony in the Old Testament, (to which I am indebted for some of these comments) Jonah "abandons his faithfulness at the first opportunity and speaks truth only under duress, even then not understanding it."

2. God commands Jonah to go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it. Its injustice is so great that God is about to destroy it. "Ninevah" was a name that raised great fear in the heart of Israel. It was the capital of Assyria, and the Assyrians had destroyed the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. Go to Ninevah? What Israelite would want to do that? So Jonah does the next best thing. He departs on a boat in the other direction, heading to Tarshish and not to Ninevah. He "gets up," as Gd commands him to do, but he flees for Tarshish in order to abandon his prophetic task.

3. It is worth noting that Israelites feared the sea and avoided it at all times. The sea was the place of storms and the habitat of great beasts like the Leviathan. Only one other sea voyage is spoken of in the Old Testament, and that was the chaotic and turbulent voyage taken by Noah. Jonah on his voyage falls prey to both the storms and the sea monsters. But, much to Jonah's surprise, God controls the sea as he does the land and sky, and Jonah is thwarted in his attempt to flee from God.

So Jonah cries out against the great city: "Forty days more," he proclaims, "and Ninevah shall be overthrown." The word "overthrown" was used once before, when God destroyed the evil city of Sodom with an earthquake. In Jonah's succinct message, the city is doomed. Ninevah will be destroyed as surely as was the city of Sodom. Then, much to Jonah's chagrin, the people of Ninevah hear the word and accept its message. They too "cry out," except that their cry is one not of proclamation but of repentance. They proclaim a fast. Both great and small put on sack cloth, the accepted sign of mourning. Word even comes to the king of Ninevah, and "he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sack cloth and sat in ashes." He proclaimed that all Ninevah -- human and beast alike -- should observe this fast. His change of heart is found in his turning from the evil ways of the past and the violence that has marked the actions of the Assyrians. The violence of Assyria consisted of its systematic abusive exploitation of the strong against the weak, and Assyria was noted for this. They abused their own people and their enemies alike. But no more! If they cease from this violence, says the king, perhaps God will likewise relent and change his mind. He may turn from his fierce anger and not destroy us. The king of Ninevah is unwilling to accept the ominous message of Jonah but instead puts forth the idea that the God of Israel might indeed be a God who accepts heartfelt repentance and the change of behavior that has to go with it, and himself repents of the anger that he shows against those who sin violently.

We leave the story at this point this day. But this story points on to a greater day. Jesus of Nazareth will soon step forth and like Jonah proclaim his message of God. "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and be faithful to the gospel." Will we do it? On the answer to that question hangs the salvation of persons, nations, and the world beyond.

PSALM 62:5-12: The latter verses of this psalm begin where the lection from Jonah ended: with a declaration that psalmist and people, like the king of Ninevah, will no longer engage in systemic violence. "Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes upon robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them." (62:10) Set your heart instead on God, to whom belong all power and all loyal love.

Such a God this is, too, in the psalmist's description. This God is

my hope

my rock

my salvation

my fortress

my deliverance

my honor

my mighty rock

my refuge.

It has been said that to know another person, we need to know the many dimensions of their character. By such a standard, this psalmist knows God, for he sees God in the dimensions of God's depth.

The phrase that I have translated "loyal love" needs a bit more description. This was the last Hebrew phrase translated by the translators of the Revised Standard Version, because it was the most difficult to put into English. "Steadfast love" was the translation they finally decided upon, and that translation was the best that the translators of the New Revised Standard Version could come up with, as well. The Hebrew term was "hesed." "Hesed" was that quality in God which has to do with God's keeping covenant with God's people. Through Moses God made a covenant with Israel, and with us, that God will be our God, and we will be God's people. On our part, this means that we will do everything we can to continue and build upon the relationships that God has made with us. On God's part, this means that God continues to love us and care for us, even when we do not show much care and concern for God or for God's people. God is steadfast, and God is loving, hence the term. How do we know this? Jewish people looked to their exile in Babylon and their return to their own land as the great sign of God's steadfast love. Christian people see this, but they also look in another direction. They look at the cross of Jesus Christ and at Christ's resurrection from the dead. "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever is faithful to him shall not perish but shall have eternal life." Or, as the psalmist said, "My God in his steadfast love will meet me and lead me to triumph over the greatest enemies, even sin and death."

MARK 1:14-20: On the surface of it, these verses seem simple and straight-forward. But that is deceptive. This passage is tightly written, and nearly every phrase in it deserves full exploration. I will use my own translation of the passage as I work through it.

1:14 After the handing over of John (the Baptist), came Jesus into the Galilee, preaching the good news (the gospel) of God and saying,

The arrest and subsequent execution of the Baptist is the critical moment at which Jesus initiated his own ministry. Jesus had been a disciple of John in that early period following his baptism at the hand of John. Most likely, Simon and Andrew, James and John, and Philip of Bethsaida were also disciples of the Baptist. When he is arrested, what are they to do? They return to Galilee, from which they had come. Some return even to the vocation that they had followed before they became followers of John. Jesus, as we shall see, had other things in mind.

"Galilee" was the area north of Judea, and at the time of Jesus its governor was Herod Antipas who was the son of Herod the Great. According to the historian Josephus, Galilee consisted of 204 villages and a few cities. Richard Horsley, a biblical scholar who has studied the area intensively, says that most Galileans lived in these villages. Within the village each family lived in a "house" of a small room or two (3 x 4 m) opening off a courtyard shared with one or more other families. In the courtyard they shared use of oven, millstone, and cistern. In the village they shared use of a common wine-press and olive-press. Villages ranged from a dozen families to towns of a few thousand. The majority of the settlements, occupying from two to five acres with roughly 40 to 60 people per acre, would have included fewer than 300 people each. Capernaum had probably about 1700 people. (218)

At this point the scholarly consensus about "Galilee" divides.

The highly respected historian of Judaism, Jacob Neusner, says that for five centuries the Galileans had lived free of Jewish influences. This had begun when the Assyrians overran Galilee in the years around 722, when the capital city of Samaria had been destroyed and the leadership of the northern kingdom was scattered to the far reaches of the empire. "Galilee," according to Neusner, had taken on a hybrid faith, or even many hybrid faiths. These faiths consisted of the traditional beliefs of the Israelites coupled with whatever foreign accretions came into it when other tribes and nations were re-settled in Galilee by Assyrian policy. Galilee had only become "Jewish" again under the rule of the Hasmonians in the second century before Christ. This family had challenged the rule of the Greek empire following the conquests of Alexander the Great, and by 167 BCE they had succeeded in driving the Greeks out.

Neusner goes on to explain his understanding of the situation: "Judaism was a relatively new phenomenon. Herod was the grandson of pagans. Similarly, the entire Galilee had been converted to Judaism only one hundred and twenty years before the Common Era. . . . The Hasmoneans used Judaism imperially, as a means of winning the loyalty of the pagan Semites in the regions of Palestine they conquered. But in a brief period of three or four generations the deeply-rooted practices of the Semitic natives of Galilee, Idumea, and other areas could not have been wiped out. They were rather covered over with a veneer of monotheism. . . . The inhabitants could not have been greatly changed merely by receiving "Judaism," which meant in the beginning little more than submitting to the knife of the circumciser rather than to the sword of the slaughterer."

Horsley (89, 106)sees the situation in a different light. He believes that in the villages of Galilee the ancient covenant between God and people through Moses continued to be the most important religious influence in the area. "Judging from the use of Aramaic and Hebrew -- and the almost complete lack of Greek -- in inscriptions," he said, "the villages of Upper Galilee maintained a traditional Israelite culture. . . . Popular Israelite traditions continued to guide life in the village communities, without much interference from the imperial authorities, who were interested primarily in the taxes."

That much is true. Galilee was looked upon by its rulers as a fertile ground for taxation and tribute. The priests in Jerusalem and the Tetrarch Herod competed for the revenues of the Galilean peasants. . . . The revenues from Herod's realm came to around 900 talents. Since Herod left the temple and high priesthood intact, it meant the people of Galilee had gone from one layer of taxation (the Hasmonean) to three (government, priesthood, and temple) in 60 years. (Horsley AHS of Galilee 21-34)

The burden of taxation was so great that many Galilean families lost their lands to richer land-owners who paid the taxes for them and confiscated their lands in the transaction. The Galilean peasants fought back. Pockets of resistance to Herod and Rome existed in many of the villages of Galilee. Armed resistance broke out in a number of places. The death of King Herod the Great was one occasion for the uprising. Other occasions arose when the Romans tried to take a census of the population for the purpose of raising taxes. It is said that at the time of the boyhood of Jesus as many as 30,000 Galileans were crucified by Rome in these uprisings. Most of the bodies were hung to rot along the roadways of Galilee to remind the peasants of their fate should they too revolt against the government. It did not stop them. They fought back until 70 A.D., when Rome broke through their resistance and burned the city and people of Jerusalem, along with its temple. This land of Galilee, seemingly quiescent for a number of centuries, had by the time of Jesus become a hotbed of zealot resistance to Rome and to its puppet governments.

1:15a "Fulfilled the time and at hand the kingdom of God.

This is the frontispiece of the gospel, and these are Jesus' own words. They were spoken in Aramaic and while translated into Greek in the Gospel of Mark, they retain the word order of the original language. For that reason I have put the verbs first and the modifying words later in the sentence.

"Fulfilled the time": Ancient religions believed that the course of history had been determined beforehand, at least in terms of its crucial affairs and turning points. Such a turning point had now come upon the world. The preaching of John the Baptist and his call to repentance was the initiatory event. The coming of Jesus of Nazareth with his inner assurance of his relationship to the Divine One was its culmination. "At hand is the kingdom of God."

In Jewish thinking "the kingdom of God," or, rather, the kingship of God, centered around practice of the Jewish Law, the Torah. C. H. Dodd in his Parables of the Kingdom, a ground-breaking book on the subject, explains that "God is King of His people Israel, and His kingly rule is effective in so far as Israel is obedient to the divine will as revealed in the Torah. To submit oneself unquestioningly to the Law is 'to take upon oneself the malkuth, the kingly rule, of heaven.'"

Jesus changed that. In his understanding the kingly rule of God centered not around the Torah but around his person and the message that he brought. His good news came in four distinct ways. It began with the good news in words, "the kingship of God is at hand." Jesus' good news then came in deeds: exorcisms, healings, the forgiveness of sins. The good news also was incorporated in the lifestyle of Jesus, with his triumph over prejudice and the priority that he gave to humanity over social traditions and customs. The good news culminated in his cleansing the temple, his arrest in the garden, his trial and execution, his death and burial, his rising from the dead to be with his people forever. In his person, the kingly rule of God had come.

Perhaps we should say instead that it had drawn very near. A great deal of discussion centers around the Greek word that the New Revised Standard Version translates as "has come near." Is the kingly rule actually here in the person of Jesus, or is it still about to come at some indeterminate time when Christ is said to return on the clouds of glory? Dodd, and he is followed by many other scholars, sees "has come near" as meaning that the kingly rule of God and Christ is not here in its full glory but that it has come so close to our lives that we can experience the first effects of its coming. As Jesus healed those who came to him in these first few days of his active ministry, the kingly rule of God has come very real in its healing of diseases. As the demons recognize him and their power over human life is nullified, the kingly rule of God has come very near in these events. As Jesus goes on to suffer and to die; in his faithfulness to his father the kingly rule of God has come so near to us that we can apprehend the forgiveness of sins effected by his death and the hope for life eternal that grows out of his resurrection. If the kingly rule of God is not yet fully effective in our lives, we can experience the impact of that rule as day by day we are faithful to the God of Jesus Christ.

1:15b "Repent and be faithful to the gospel." The Greek words translated "to repent" or repentance," do not occur often in Greek literature. The Greeks did not take sin with the great seriousness with which it was taken in Judaism and later in the Christian faith. At best it meant to change one's mind or opinion, or to regret that some particular act was done or left undone. The Hebrews prophets saw it in a different light - they viewed the human situation as one of being utterly disloyal to the God who called and loved his people. Following them, these new prophets John the Baptist and Jesus called for a radical re-direction of the person, an acknowledgment that their old relationship to God had been wrong and that a new one must be established, old values have to be jettisoned and the new life in Christ must be initiated. H. Richard Niebuhr, in his book The Meaning of Revelation, insisted that repentance, which he called by the Greek word metanoeia, was the fundamental factor in receiving God.

So metanoiea is followed in Jesus' statement by a call to "be faithful to the gospel." Most of the time we read the word "believe" at this point: "believe the gospel." I have trouble with that word, because it is not strong enough to carry Jesus' call to us. "Believe" in our time has the sense of accepting one set of concepts rather than another, and it is a thing of the mind more than of the whole person. "Be faithful to" catches more of the sense of what Jesus had in mind. Organize your whole life so that you are faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Re-order your whole life - your family, your church, your business, your government, your leisure time, your use of your money - so that we are faithful to the person of Jesus Christ. When we do this, we will know the meaning of repenting and being faithful to our Lord and master.

1:16 And as Jesus passed along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting (nets) upon the sea, for (they were) fishermen.

The Sea of Galilee is the small fresh-water inland lake that dominates the north eastern edge of Galilee. It is formed by the waters of the Lebanon mountains pouring into its northern area, and it is drained by the Jordan river coming out of it on the south. For all its fame in Christian thinking, it is a small lake, perhaps 12 miles long and about 6 miles wide. But it carried a large amount of fish in its waters, and fishermen plied their trade in it for centuries.

Fish was the staple of the diet of the time. Eating meat was rare. Eating fish, especially salted fish, was the much more common thing to do. Not once in the gospels do we read that people ate meat, except at the time of Passover. Often we are told that fish was part of their meal.

So a great fishing industry had developed on and around this little Sea. Harbors had been built for the boats. Capernaum and Bethsaida were only two of thirteen cities which had harbors on the lake. Near one harbor in particular, Taricheae, "the Fish Factory," (its Hebrew name was Magdala, from which came Mary the Magdelene) facilities for cleaning and salting the fish had been

constructed. The fish were gutted, then rubbed with coarse salt. Alternate layers of salt and fish were covered by dry matting and left for three to five days. Then the pile was turned over and left to stand for a similar period. After this drying they are firm and hard, usable for food.

This industry was supported by the government, but it was also heavily taxed. One such taxing station was located at Capernaum. Capernaum was in the region governed by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Its neighboring city, Bethsaida, was in another area, this one governed by Antipas' half-brother, Herod Philip. Fish brought from Bethsaida to be processed at Terichaea would be taxed by both royal brothers.

This may have been the reason that Simon and Andrew had re-located to Capernaum from Bethsaida. Both men have Greek names, as did Philip of Bethsaida. But the taxing problem caused them to change their residence to Capernaum, where apparently they moved into the house of Simon Peter's mother-in-law. This is the most sumptuous house in Capernaum, with some 1750 square feet of living space, and it indicates that Simon and Andrew were quite prosperous fishermen. Another indication of their prosperity was that they had entered into a business partnership with two other brothers, James and John, sons of Zebedee. Their business was so large that they were able to employ other fishermen, hired hands, to help with the work. These four men were by no means peasants of Galilee. They were men of substance, of what we would call the upper middle class, and this gave them the freedom to leave their homes and businesses, if they wished to, to carry on other pursuits. Being men of substance, and being heavily taxed by the government for their labors, the sympathies of men like these four often were pointed to the reform movements constantly taking place in and around Galilee. Apparently Simon and Andrew, James and John found the need for reform so strong that they had left their homes and sought out John the Baptist, and they had been baptized by him.

1:17 And said to them Jesus, "Come, follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." 18 And immediately leaving their nets they followed him. 19 And going on a little he saw James of Zebedee and John his brother, and they were in the boat mending the nets. 20 And immediately he called them, and leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired hands they followed after him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought that the amazing thing about this account is that men who had never met Jesus before followed him when he walked into their lives and called them to follow. But I think the Gospel of John is correct in indicating that these men had known Jesus when all six of them (including Philip) had been followers of John the Baptist. The really amazing thing, therefore, is that they followed someone whom they had known before. John was in prison now. All these men needed to re-orient their lives around another cause and another master. When Jesus came by, they did it - "immediately," says the Gospel of Mark. They had found their cause, and they had found their master.

For Jesus to call these men was an unusual act. At this time disciples always sought out teachers. But Jesus broke with tradition and called disciples to himself. He called them not to teach but to fish, in his striking phrase, "I will make you fishers of men." In other words, they were to fish for the souls of others so that they too would follow Jesus. The effects of this call and response resound through the ages yet today. Jesus has begun to set up a group of disciples, the Twelve of Galilee. To these men Jesus entrusted his message and his mission. Because of them we are still called to be fishers of men and women yet today.

It implies that those to whom it is directed have been in the wrong. It also implies that they are willing to be radically readjusted -- not only to behave differently in this or that particular, but to redirect the affections and the will, where the springs of action lie. If such a readjustment is to be made, and made intelligently and therefore with effect, we must appreciate clearly just where things went wrong and what are the true values to which we have to re-orientate ourselves. I believe we shall get the ethical teaching of the Gospels into the right perspective if we think of it as providing the material for an intelligent act of "repentance" in this sense. It is not so much guidance for conduct in this or that situation, as a disclosure of the absolute standards which alone are present when the kingdom of God is upon us.

FIRST CORINTHIANS 7:29-31: In an unusual manner, this passage looks back to the calling of those first disciples to describe the manner of life that Christians should live in Paul's time. Simon Peter had a wife, but while he was following Jesus he lived as if he had none. Jesus' disciples mourned word of loss of family members and friends as they walked with Jesus from village to village in Galilee, and they rejoiced when children were born in their village and marriages were celebrated. But for them the present form of their world had passed away. They were living in a new age, the age of the kingship of God and the regency of Christ, and they were to accept new forms of life fit for the new age. The Christian lifestyle cannot be accommodated to the styles of the present age. In every age it has to find its own voice, its own values, its own manner. The time is short. The present form of the world is passing away. Keep your eye always on Jesus Christ and walk with him.