Epiphany 3, 2024
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
First off, I want to acknowledge that—taken out of context—the Epistle readings from 1 Corinthians the past two weeks have been really bizarre. I just want you to know that I also notice that, and maybe some day we’ll have some conversations about those readings. But as my Greek professor used to say, “Sometimes the problem isn’t you; sometimes the problem is Paul.” For today though, we’ve only got so much time, so let’s talk sports . . .
It was a very big deal for the city of Massillon when the Tigers won the state championship in November. Massillon has had very good teams for a long time, and in 2023 they finally won the state championship. It was a real boost for the city and the school. Every sports fan loves when their team wins the big championship game. As a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan, I am unfamiliar with this feeling.
But how do you get to the championship game? By having a good record, right? And you get a good record by winning individual games. And you win individual games by being the better team, because you have better players. And the way you get better players is through daily practices and workouts and conditioning and all of that. So, what really gets you to a championship win is the day-in, day-out drudgery of workouts and practices. It’s that way for most things. Like when someone asks, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" And the answer is “practice practice practice.”
And, you know, deep down, we don’t want for that to be true. We want Cinderella stories, and underdogs, and surprise upsets. We want to see the drama, the heart-stopping come-from-behind unexpected victory. Like when backup quarterback Frank Reich led my Buffalo Bills to the largest comeback in NFL history. That’s what we remember, rather than the long slow steady drip of days spent working out and running drills.
We have this tendency in everything, when you think about it. We want our political candidate to win by a landslide, rather than simply getting enough votes. We remember the story of the firefighters who dramatically rescue the family from their burning house, but having a fire extinguisher near your stove isn’t exactly front-page news. We remember the big splashy meals at Thanksgiving or Anniversaries out, but it is the daily meals of pasta or grilled cheese that actually sustain us over the course of the year. What we remember is not the steady drip of sustenance; what we remember is the giant supposedly life-changing moments that are a flash in the pan.
So, in today’s first reading, from the book of Jonah, God sends Jonah to the city of Ninevah, “an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across.” Jonah walks the streets proclaiming utter destruction in forty days. Jonah, one man, walking through an exceedingly large city, telling people to repent. Imagine the insurmountable task here. With no bullhorn, no twitter account, no conceivable way to tell all these people to change their ways.
But then we hear, “the people of Ninevah 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.” Hooray!!!! Just in the nick of time! And their story gets passed down to us because it is so dramatic, like a hail Mary pass in the closing seconds. We love this kind of story, don’t we? A huge city saved from the brink of disaster. People slapping each other on the back, saying “Well THAT was a close one,” and heading off to the pub to celebrate.
We. Love. Drama. I know, we all say we prefer a steady stable world where things happen in small predictable ways, but come on. Nobody really enjoys life-insurance actuary tables. Not even people who work with actuary tables. We need stability and predictability in order to have peace in our lives, it’s true. But we also need a little splashy drama to keep life interesting. All of which leads me to today’s Gospel reading, from the book of Mark.
As you may recall from a couple weeks ago, Mark’s Gospel jumps right in with Jesus’ being baptized. No shepherds, no angels, no wisemen. Jesus gets baptized, is pushed off into the desert, and then suddenly is walking by the Sea of Galilee calling his first disciples, as we heard in today’s reading. We’re not even out of the first chapter yet, and Jesus has already been baptized, tempted by Satan, and called four out of 12 disciples. In Mark’s gospel, things happen fast. And that makes for a good story. A dramatic story. A story you remember.
But let’s stop for a moment to consider things from the disciples’ perspective here. Simon, Andrew, James, and John are all fishermen. Though we like to imagine them as entrepreneurs, out there catching fish and selling them for what the market will bear, it didn’t work that way at all. First off, the Emperor owned the lake, and if you wanted to get fish out of it, you had to sign a lease, which meant agreeing to give the majority of what you caught to the syndicate, who would then pass it up the chain in the form of taxes. A fisherman in Jesus’ time was more like a peasant farmer than like a tuna-boat operator. So, the first thing to remember is, these guys were not businessmen.
Secondly, these four have no idea who Jesus is. You and I know the story, and we read back into it wearing our Resurrection Goggles. But these fishermen are working along, catching fish and mending nets, and this guy walks by and says “follow me,” and they follow him. I hate to sound cynical, but this is ridiculous! Again, we tend to imagine the disciples carefully considering the offer, and then reasonably concluding that they should give up their business and follow the Savior of the world. But, we need to remember, they have no idea how the story ends. They have not seen one miracle, one healing, one anything. And yet they drop their nets and follow him. They walk away from the predictable drudgery of their lives to follow someone they just met. They leave their families behind and start following a stranger passing along the shore.
And. We. Love. This! We love it so much that we want to have a story like this for ourselves, and some of us do. We love hearing the testimony of friends who have big dramatic conversions. We want to hear stories from people who once were lost, but now are found, were blind but now they see.
Lots of preachers use this text to make people uncertain whether their conversion to Jesus was dramatic enough. I’ve heard them do it! How can you know you are saved if you haven’t given up everything to follow Jesus? How can you know you’re truly following Jesus if you haven’t dropped your net, forsaking your friends and family to begin a new life following Jesus? If you don’t have a detailed story called The Exact Day I Got Saved, how can you be sure? . . . Which leads us back to sports talk.
We remember the big dramatic championship game. But what wins the season is the slow steady drip of ten yards at a time, one quarter at a time. We remember the big splashy once-a-year meals by candlelight or in fancy restaurants, but what sustains us is the regular, predictable nightly meals of home-made soups and boring casseroles. We remember the exciting stories of firefighters saving families from near-death disasters, but what keeps us safe is changing the batteries in our smoke detectors. And, though we love to hear a story about some former drug-addict criminal who is now a missionary overseas, what keeps the gospel alive is the steady day-to-day conviction of people who believe just a little bit more than they don’t believe.
The mark of faith is not how dramatic your conversion was. The mark of faith is the slow steady drip of one day at a time, one decision at a time, one daily choice to remember your baptism, and to know that Jesus has called you to follow him on the path that leads to life. We are suckers for a big conversion story, sure. But you do not need to have a big conversion of faith in order to know that you are loved. You simply need to reach out your hands and receive the one who gives us his body and blood: the slow steady drip of bread and wine, week by week, year by year, which sustains us over the course of our lives. The reassurance that you are already forgiven and already loved, in the most dramatic way imaginable.
Amen. (Go Bills.)
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