Sermon January 22, 2012
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

“Moving Forward”

Wave your hands up high when you can answer yes to any of the following questions:

• Who here has moved to a new house this year?
• Who here has chosen or found someone to be a special friend?
• Who here has fished or watched someone fish?
• Who here has heard somebody teaching in a way that really made them feel excited?
• Who here has jumped at the chance of doing something different?
• Who here has put down whatever they were doing in order to go with someone who was calling?
• Who here has wondered what it would be like to leave everything and start again?

The scriptures today say that it's time. It's time to get up and move. It's time to preach God's good news of repentance and forgiveness. It's time to realize that God surrounds us with life—the difficult and the easy. And that God surrounds us with people who are also difficult to deal with and easy to to get along with.

God gives us homes, families, parents, sometimes children, friends, people we call enemy or who call us enemy, competitors, cooperators and all kinds of other folk. God gives us people to love and sometimes those we love hurt us more that those we call enemy. They can do things that hurt us so badly that we can't or don't forgive them.

And in the midst of the world that we live in the world that God gives us daily, God calls us to share the good news we have been given and live the message of good news through all that we do and for all the people we meet.

But in the midst of the messiness, and even though the time is ripe—and though the opportunities are there, there are lots of obstacles in the way of the life God calls us to live. At least that's how we see it.

Jonah was called to preach God's good news of repentance and forgiveness to people who had oppressed his people. They were known to be badly behaved toward one another, too. They cheated and lied in their business dealings because it made them rich. And he was supposed to preach God's message to them?

In the letter to the church at Corinth, Paul writes that life cannot continue as they expect, because life as they know it is ending. He encouraged them to end family relationships and suspend even their mourning because times were different. He, in the same vein as Jesus, was calling them away from the status quo to a new world. They were supposed to turn away from their normal ways of living and be citizens of heaven, even here on earth.

And then there is Jesus. As Jesus walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he saw fishermen working. The town of Capernaum was dependent upon that industry for income. People fished, wove nets, sold dried fish, built boats, and other related work. When Jesus saw a few of these fishermen, he called to them, “Come follow me into God's kingdom and you will catch people for God.” And they walked away from their jobs, their families and many of their day-to-day responsibilities. Though we might admire their commitment and faith in Jesus Christ, what if we saw a friend or family member do the same thing, leave behind a job, a family, an aging parent to follow Jesus into mission?

And all of these happen because, guess what? It's time!

And it's not time because the calendar says it, or the alarm clock has rung, it's time because the values of the realm of God have been revealed. (Again and again.) We are called to move forward, living in such a way that says that God's word and way of life is imprinted indelibly in your heart—forgiving others, seeing injustice and naming it, feeling injury and healing it, repenting of our falling short and celebrating joyfully when we feel the harmony of the kingdom of God in our lives. We are called to live that way because we have been shown what that looks like. And doing all of those things in the seasons and times when they are appropriate—and the time that God has ordained with the coming of Jesus is a time of joy, righteousness, forgiveness, grace, and gratitude. This time that we live in—though it falls short of God's glory in each moment—is a time that has been redeemed from damnation.

The complication with living in this time of redemption—is that we notice the imperfections so clearly and pointedly. We often only see what seems like evidence of God's absence, instead of noticing the presence of God in people and situations, And we notice God's kingdom by living our part within that kingdom as it exist today—in this time, in this place—or to whichever place God calls us to live it.

But whenever we begin to experience this new world—this new way of living, there are risks and there are dangers that we need to watch for. In the midst of our life in God's kingdom here and now, we aren't called to ignore injustice, but to voice the truth as we see it.

When Nineva was full of sin and evil, God didn't send Jonah to tell them that they had no need to repent, but God sent Jonah to tell them that they would be destroyed by their own evil if they didn't turn their lives around. God told them how to get there—and they took the choice. (Jonah later gets very angry that God's love overcame God's anger, so God gets angry at Jonah . . . being whiny is different than a call for justice and equitable treatment of all human beings.)

In Mark's gospel, Jesus calls his new disciples to leave one way of life behind to live another—a life characterized by his revelation of God's kingdom in the world. He called people to repent from one way of living into living another. The disciples themselves seemed to be living normal lives there on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, in the town of Capernaum. But, I would guess, that these ones who answered Jesus' call were looking, seeking, paying attention so that they saw when they were being offered a different kind of life. Though they didn't live evil lives as fishermen—this life they were offered had a new and exciting purpose; by following Jesus and participating in God's kingdom, their lives would have a direction beyond what they had had before.

But it's scary to pick up and leave one life for another—most of us don't do it unless and until we are forced. How do you feel when you think of moving? I get anxious and nervous and maybe scared. I also feel excited and curious—depending on the next step I think I am taking.

But the truth is that our lives do change even when we don't plan on those changes; the truth is that we have to move forward into the opportunities and options that we are given, unless we choose to give up.

The time was ripe for Jesus to walk into the lives of those fishermen and make them seekers of residents for God's own kingdom—and the time is also ripe for us, to seek out people who want to live lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. You may not meet them every day and you may not even know who they are when you do, but you do carry a message with you as you move forward into the life that God has given you.

And though life changes and the way that you present the message may change, the message itself is consistent. God wants people to turn their lives around, to choose to take God's help in doing it and to do good things for people who need good things done in their lives. And those good things can be risky to us, we may have to give up time spent with the activities we like most and look at the world with new eyes, seeking how our time and talents can be used to move farther into God's kingdom.

• Make a phone call that lets someone know that you care enough to ask. Pick someone that seems unpopular or just a little outside your comfort zone
• Write a note, send an email, post a message, communicate your love to another person—and God's love through your own.
• Decide to help one person this week in a way that feels new and risky.
• Think of ways to take a risk in reaching out to some group that feels as distant and as risky as the city of Nineveh.

We can do the ministry that Jesus is calling us to do, even in tough times and times that threaten to overwhelm us. In those times, however long they last, we can remember that God loves us in our struggles and through them. God constantly calls us to live that love and reveal that love throughout the stages and ages of our lives, when times change more than we could ever have imagined and when we need a push to move forward into the places where God's purpose can be fully lived.

To the glory of God's everlasting and loving glory. Amen.