January 24, 2021
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Mark 1:14-20
Fishing Expeditions
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today we hear two fish stories. They’re not so much about the men who caught fish as they are about fishing expeditions that caught men.
Both accounts are call stories. God is calling these individuals to follow God’s lead. In one of the stories, the men gladly follow. The man in the other story wants nothing to do with it. But he’s pursued by God’s grace, and God makes him an offer he can’t refuse.
Jonah. God called Jonah to deliver a message to the people of Nineveh. Jonah was to bid them to repent and turn to the Lord. But Jonah wanted nothing to do with God asked of him.
Jonah loathed the Ninevites. He hated them with a perfect hate. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire. Yes, that same Assyrian empire that had overthrown the northern kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians had stormed the land promised to the descendants of Abraham. They had toppled their cities and hauled off its people, Jonah’s neighbors and kinfolk, into slavery.
And these are the people that God wants Jonah to preach to! Jonah wants no part of it. He hates the Assyrians. He hates Nineveh. The last thing he wants to do is preach to them. He wants God to smite them, not save them!
So Jonah heads in the opposite direction from Nineveh. Instead of going east, he heads west. And when he reaches the seashore, he hops on a ship headed even further west.
But God won’t take no for an answer. Jonah is God’s man! So God calls up a great wind. The ship Jonah is aboard is in peril of breaking up. When the crew casts lots to see who has offended a god, the lots fall on Jonah. He confesses that he’s running away from Israel’s God.
So they toss him over the side of the boat. And God appoints a fish. It’s a big fish, a really, really big fish. This fish is God’s grace in action. It’s going to save Jonah from drowning. The fish swallows him up. And there Jonah lives, in the belly of the beast.*
The fish carries Jonah for three days and then spits him up on dry land. Then God repeats the call to Jonah. “Go!” Jonah realizes there’s no avoiding it. Reluctantly, he heads to Nineveh. He utters the call to repentance one lousy time. And unbelievably, the entire city repents! They turn from their evil ways.
After he begrudgingly voiced this message from God, Jonah heads to a spot outside of the city. He wants to see God’s destruction rain down on the people he hates so much. But the destruction never comes. Jonah realizes what must have happened: the Ninevites repented and God had mercy on them.
Now he’s hopping mad. “I knew it, God!” he cries. “That’s why I didn’t want to come here. I knew you are a gracious God – you’re slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
Jonah didn’t want his enemies spared; he wanted them destroyed. That’s why he ran away in the first place. He didn’t want to give the Ninevites a chance at redemption.
But Jonah was God’s man. He couldn’t run from it. God kept on pursuing Jonah to turn him around. God is adamant that Jonah will be God’s mouthpiece.
Could it be that Jonah needed saving every bit as much as the Assyrians? The fish wasn’t the only thing consuming Jonah. The fish was eating him from the outside, but his hatred was consuming him from the inside.
Sometimes anger is all you’ve got. Anger can feel pretty righteous. If you feel wronged, if you feel like you’ve been used and abused, that righteous anger can feel awfully good! And letting it go means you’re left with nothing at all.
Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you’re the one who gets burned.” Righteous anger is not our friend. It’s a poison. It destroys us, just like it was eating up Jonah.
We can learn a lesson from Jonah. Our nation has been eaten up by polarization. We’ve divided ourselves into camps. Red and blue. Rural and urban. Mask wearers and anti-maskers. We’ve circled the wagons and declared sides. And in doing so, we’ve overlooked the most important thing. We’ve ceased to see the humanity of our neighbor.
Jonah is a story of repentance. Jonah needs to repent as much as the Ninevites. He needs to soften his heart. He needs to free himself from the inner rage destroying him.
The book ends with God calling Jonah one last time. “Shouldn’t I care about these Ninevites, Jonah? Shouldn’t I be concerned for over 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left?”
The story ends there. It leaves us dangling with that question. What will Jonah do? Will he relent from his anger? Will he let go of his animosity? Will we?
God’s grace kept pursuing Jonah. That same grace pursues us. Let it take you in.
That’s the first fishing expedition. The second one takes place on the shores of Lake Galilee. We meet the four famous fishermen: Simon and Andrew, James and John.
Jonah was wholly unwilling to heed God’s call. But the four Galilean fishermen are quite the opposite. Their response is uncannily quick; no sooner does Jesus issue the invitation than they take after him. They leave everything behind: fish and family, nets and neighbors.
Their receptivity to being caught by the divine call is eye popping. Everything, they leave everything behind! Their boats, their means of making a living, family. They are all in for following Jesus.
It’s hard to understand. Was there something about Jesus, something so completely charismatic that it drew them in? The call stories of the disciples are strikingly similar in all four gospels. They are hooked and pulled in! There’s no hesitancy, no real resistance. If they were a fish, it’s liked they jumped into the boat.
Sometimes God places an opportunity in your pathway at just the right time. Like Jesus announced, the time was fulfilled; the kingdom of God had drawn near. The four fishermen were all in.
Their call – and our call – is into a life following Jesus. Where he might lead, we do not know.
Two fishing expeditions. Jonah and the four Galilean fishermen were all pursued by God’s grace. Jonah resisted. The disciples were all in. The path before the disciples wouldn’t always be simple and good. It would demand their all. But they knew the peace that passes all understanding. Friends, let the Nazarene fisherman catch you!
*From Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”
