10:30 am, Sun, Jan 21, 2024 ~ FBCA

(Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Cor 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20) J G White

“Read the Bible - all our hope is there.” Yes, but you might get into alarming news, as in today’s readings. Jonah. You know Jonah, Jonah and the whale? Remember the whole story? Read it all lately? It is only about three pages long. Today John read for us some of the little saga - part two of the three acts, I could say. Jonah, who refused to go to the great enemy city and preach its destruction, has been swallowed by a great fish, and vomited back onto dry land. Now, for the second time, he gets his message to travel to that capital of a very nasty, cruel empire, and tell them off. I mean, tell them they are doomed. ‘Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ Very alarming news to be commissioned to share, wouldn’t you say? I mean, it is a dangerous mission.

Last Sunday Sharon and I wondered how dangerous it would be for us to wear our Halifax Mooseheads apparel when we entered the Avenir Centre for a hockey game with the Moncton Wildcats. But we did not suffer a scratch. Even when the Mooseheads won, in overtime! But how different it feels to be rooting for your team in enemy territory. They have the crowd on their side, their mascots parading around, snarling, their incredibly loud noise and music to celebrate every one of their goals.

What would Jonah the Jewish prophet’s experience be, entering ancient Nineveh, and telling them, simply, the Jewish Deity is gonna get them?!

We see that he survived. In fact, what happens in the city of Nineveh is incredible. They believe the cruel though reluctant preacher, Jonah. They were not even told they might escape destruction, but they repent and bow and mourn and pray. From the common people, up to the King himself, and down to the domestic animals, they all seek mercy.

And they get it. They get mercy. They do not get destroyed. That is the real news. God is merciful and relents. God repents. God reinvents - and changes God’s mind! That may be the simplest way for our human minds to explain it. Mainline Christianity is not used to seeing God this way, a God who changes, who alters the almighty plan. But when we read the scriptures closely, we find this on many occasions.

This is mercy. This is grace. Amazing grace. It is not karma; it is the opposite of karma. People do not always get what they deserve. This is people getting better than they deserve, more than they deserve, something bigger than they can provide for themselves.

I still remember so well a friend I had years ago. One of her coworkers got some good news – I forget what it was, but she ended up with some kind of great opportunity. But my friend scowled and spoke of this coworker and her gift, saying, “She doesn’t deserve that!” Ugh. That seems like such an ugly thing to say, to me. What did her getting a gift have to do being deserving? But my friend just could not be happy for her.

Maybe this is one of the most alarming kinds of news. And we have our moments like this, like Jonah did, in chapter four. He is furious, and depressed, because his most evil enemies are blessed instead of cursed and destroyed. Your own mission, as a disciple of Jesus, as a bearer of Good News, will sometimes be to warn people, but then to rejoice when someone is blessed, or heeds the warning, or simply lives well. As the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 (6), says, love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.

Here is another bit of Alarming News, in the early days of Christianity, glimpsed in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. The End is near, stop living! I don’t mean Paul said that Jesus was about to return, you will die; no. Paul seemed to understand that Jesus was about to return, so don’t be distracted by your relationships - as a slave of your master, or a lover of your spouse, as a mourner who lost a loved one, as a single person courting someone, or as prosperous person investing and shopping. ‘The present form of this world is passing away,’ wrote the apostle Paul. I thought today, I would not give this short reading to anyone else, but read it aloud myself, simply because it may sound so strange to our hearts. We have the challenge and privilege of reading the scriptures, and working out the power and influence of each chapter. In this case, when we pause and look around, it is clear the early Church in those days certainly was in a crisis time, and they felt ready for the return of Jesus at any moment. No wonder Paul told them they had to stay focussed on other things, not their very personal issues.

So we wonder what’s real in Paul’s proclamation, ‘For the present form of this world is passing away’? What was dying in their world back then, almost 2000 years ago? More important to us: what might be dying in our world today? I want to believe this is true: that evil and greed and nastiness are things that are always passing away, dying. But goodness and generosity (read grace) and kind actions are always growing.

I think that the great anxieties of our time and place are, partly, good signs. Our friends and neighbours around the world are fearful and stressed because we all see how terrible so many things are in this world. We are not immune to the cruelty and greed, we are not turning a blind eye. We see it everywhere, and feel surrounded by danger. At least we know there is danger!

The real news here? In 1 Cornithians 7? This kind of world is passing away. Not that evil and wrong things are less and less in the world, but they are always dying. My mind turns right away to what I call the theme verse of the book Revelation. 11:15. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” This verse is famously put into music, right at the heart of The Hallelujah Chorus, from Handel’s Messiah. No wonder. This world is passing away.

The reading from a Gospel today may seem the least alarming of our three Bible texts. What is the Alarming News? The time is now: God is taking charge here: come on in! But we Church people are used to this talk. Many of us have been hearing it all our lives; a few of us even giving speeches about it (sermons!). Jesus is King! Repent, and believe the Gospel.

What could be more alarming is how this can seem like old news. Somehow it can seem stale, not working anymore. As I prepare my annual report of 2023, I remember having the privilege of baptizing one person, last January. But now, this reminds me of the long jokes and short jokes about baptizing. (I know today is Squirrel Appreciation Day, but,) There was a church that had an infestation of bats in the belfry. Even the exterminator could not get rid of them. So the minister baptized the bats, the deacons brought them into the membership of the church - and pretty soon the bats were never seen again around that building!

What is the real news? Making a turnaround is truly possible! Despite what seem like failures in our midst. Despite how we ourselves falter. We must notice that making a turnaround (that is, repenting) usually takes time. Even trial and error. It certainly needs support. Making a person into a disciple of Jesus is a long-term process. Jesus spent what often seems to be three years with his core team of twelve men, not to mention all the other women and men who followed.

And that was back when Jesus was available in the flesh, and on foot. God in sandals, as public theologian Tripp Fuller always says. You could catch up with Christ, and physically follow along. In our lives, He is more available - here for any and all of us - but much more invisible and hidden. And we have so much religious stuff that has built up and piled up around Jesus and the Kindom of God.

Even so… I am still a believer. Still striving to be a disciple of the Master. I’ll walk with God from this day on. I see this as a real path: the path. The alarming, amazing news is that making a turnaround is still possible today - for me - for you - for others. I had a man come to me a week and a half ago to renew his journey with Christ.

The time to follow is now. This is also the mercy of God upon us. This is also the good news that wrong and evil are ending while grace and love are living on forever.

We believe in eternity, and that means we believe that goodness is eternal. So our short lives, at death, are worth celebrating. Long ago, abolitionist and women's rights activist, Sojourner Truth declared, “I’m not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” The world of problems is passing away, as always. The life of grace and love lives on and on and on and on.