Last week, I was discussing the way that the Bible came to be divided into chapters and verses. I re-told the story that I once heard, that a monk was traveling from one monastery to another with a copy of the scrolls, and wanted to have a consistent way for copies to be compared to one another. Therefore he began making notations in the text to break the scrolls into smaller sections. Not knowing how to go about such a large task, he decided to mark a new verse every time his carriage hit a bump in the road, and that is how we ended up with the system that we have in place today.
Now I admit that I am not sure that is the true story, but if you have ever taken a close look at the places where verses and chapters are divided, you might think that this is as good of a theory as any other.
The next mystery we will have to tackle together is the lectionary. How did the lectionary come together? How was it decided which stories would fit well together?
“Who decided to put Jonah and Peter together?”
How did they decide, for example, to put together the story of Jonah and the calling of the first disciples?
Remember the words that we read from Jonah:
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.”
This is actually a repetition of the first verse and the first chapter of Jonah, except that after Jonah heard it the first time he spent the next 2 chapters trying to run away from God’s command. Now we start over again — the same command with a different response:
So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD.
Jump ahead to the Gospel reading, and you have the story of two sets of brothers who hear the call of Jesus and respond immediately.
I had always assumed that Jesus passed by the boat-yard, saw the brothers for the first time, calling to them, and they stopped what they were doing to follow him.
Part of me likes that spontaneity. These men realized something so compelling in the call of Jesus that they — sight unseen — dropped what they were doing and immediately followed Jesus.
Part of me realizes that spontaneity doesn’t make much sense. If a total stranger came into your home or office and said “Come, follow me” of course you wouldn’t. It wouldn’t make any sense.
The text itself does not say whether Jesus had met them before or not. Mark’s Gospel is sparse. Everything in his Gospel happens quickly, and he does not attempt to tell us everything there is to tell. Jesus could have met them before, and they certainly could have heard about him. Word seemed to spread quickly about Jesus. Just as many went out to the desert to hear John, who many thought was the messiah; so it is likely that they heard about Jesus as well.
I tried to think about what connected these two stories. In the first, Jonah gets swallowed by a “big fish.” In the second, Jesus calls 4 men who are fishermen. I wondered if there was something to be made of that connection, but nothing came to mind that made much sense.
So then I tried to think about the characters involved. Simon — who later becomes Peter — and his brother Andrew, and James and John. Peter, James and John become 3 of Jesus’ closest friends, often going with him when he goes off alone, and witnessing things that not all of the other disciples saw.
What did they all have to do with Jonah?
As a group, I could not think of a connection. But then I narrowed my thinking even further. What about Jonah and Peter? Did they have anything in common?
“Well they were both plenty stubborn...”
Well I think we can say that they were both stubborn characters, that’s for sure. After all, Jonah went clear against God’s command because he didn’t want to follow it. Remember the time when Peter tried to stop Jesus from following the path set before him — and Jesus said “Get behind me, Satan”? Yikes! Sounds like two powerful personalities. I thought about what it might be like if Jonah and Peter had lived in the same time period. Would they have been friends? Probably. They seemed to think alike, at the very least.
Then it struck me. It had been there all along, but it took awhile for me to see it.
Jonah heard God’s call, and ran from it.
Peter heard Jesus’ call, and dropped his nets.
Jonah was a bit rash, wanting to be thrown overboard when things got tough.
Peter was a bit rash. After the resurrection when he saw Jesus on the shore, he jumped overboard to swim to shore.
Jonah didn’t really want to do what God wanted, because he thought he knew better.
Peter really did want to do what Jesus commanded, until Jesus started saying things that Peter didn’t understand.
Jonah started out by turning away from God, then he turned back to God, then at the end of the book of Jonah he is alone in the desert feeling sorry for himself.
Peter started out by dropping his nets to follow Jesus, then turned away from him after Jesus was arrested, but in the end he was reconciled to Jesus and went on to be a great leader for the church. ...
“The end of Jonah’s story is, like our own, incomplete...”
I have always liked the fact that the story of Jonah ends the way that it does. There is a sense of it not being complete. We don’t know how Jonah reacted. Did he sit in the sun until death overtook him? Did he eventually get up and walk off, kicking sand and muttering under his breath? Or did he realize God’s point and turn his life around? The fact is that we just don’t know. We are left before the end of the story.
Perhaps there is something to be said for the fact that we don’t know much about Peter before the opening verses in Mark’s Gospel. Maybe we are not meant to know how his life started, where he came from specifically. Was he sick and tired of being a fisherman, and was eager to leave to follow Jesus? Or was it a challenge for him to leave behind a successful business? We just don’t know.
So by now you might be asking why you should care about either Jonah or Peter. What difference does it all make, anyway?
We can learn important lessons from both of these men, if we pay close attention.
Consider writing yourself into the story of Jonah. Have there been times when you knew there was a “right thing to do” and still didn’t do it? Did you regret it later? Maybe not. If Jonah could have had his way, he would have let Nineveh go down in flames. Jonah did the right thing, but if you read carefully you may sense that he might not have had the right spirit. His heart may not have been in it, but he did it because it was better than smelling the inside of a fish. Jonah had a difficult thing to do, a time to face something that he did not want to face, and he did whatever he could to let God know how unhappy he was about it. In the end he sits alone, needing to decide how he will continue his life.
Consider yourself as part of the story of Peter and the other disciples. You heard the call and responded, dropping whatever was behind to follow Jesus, and tried to understand what that meant for you. There have been times in your life when you haven’t agreed with the way things are.
You have had times like that, right? I mean, it’s easy to put Peter down for trying to get in Jesus’ way and prevent him from doing what he had to do. Would we ever get angry with God for causing (or allowing!) something to happen that we didn’t understand? For a few thousand years we have tried to understand how evil can exist in a world created and ruled by a loving, all-powerful God. Some have said that God allows evil because he is not all-powerful and cannot prevent evil. Others have said that God allows evil because he is not all-loving. Still others — myself included — say that perhaps there is a third explanation that we cannot understand.
I could stand here and say that whatever group we put ourselves in we would never get angry at God for allowing evil to exist. I could say that, but I certainly won’t. Of course we feel anger, and of course we would want to step in and stop it, as Peter did. Sometimes we can, and sometimes we can’t.
Last weekend at Pioneer Plunge, I told our Senior High Youth that Christianity was not complex. Christianity is, in fact, very simple. Jesus summarized it when he said: “come.... follow me...... the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” That is basically all that we need to know. There is a call to repent, to believe, and to follow. Three nice neat requirements that could fit on a postcard.
“Don’t confuse Christianity being simple and being easy...”
I then told them not to confuse Christianity being simple and Christianity being easy. To say that Christianity is simple because it can be easily summarized is like saying that marriage is easy because there are just a few short vows to live by. Didn’t the Apostle Paul summarize it by saying “faith, hope, and love, abide these three” ? What could be easier.
There is a wonderful element in that passage from 1st Corinthians: “for now we see in a mirror darkly, but then [in heaven] we shall see face to face.”
Life is all about getting a clearer image, a fuller understanding. It is a life-long journey not just for its own sake, but leading us to that eventual goal of eternal life with God. As we grow in our faith, we gain more knowledge and understanding. But that knowledge comes slowly, day by day, week by week, year by year. With the passing of time, our vision grows. We have seen more, heard more, experienced more, and our understanding is richer for all that we have gained.
As our eyes open, we come to a new appreciation and realization of God’s love for us, and our lives are encouraged to live faithfully each day that God gives us.
Remember the story of Jonah, where he clearly did not see or understand God much at all. We will have times like that ourselves. At the end of that book, Jonah sits, thinking about what he will do next. Close your eyes and imagine yourself with Jonah in that place. You are by yourself now. The question before you is where you will go in the next chapter. It is up to you to write the next part of this story. Will you stay where you are, and let yourself be covered up with the wind-blown sand — or will you open your eyes and go out to live the life of faith to which you were called?
Preached January 27, 2002
First Presbyterian Church
Gainesville, Florida
(Download this sermon as a zipped PDF file.)