Jonah 3:1-10
Mark 1:14-20
“The Adventure Of Discipleship”
By: Rev. Kenneth Emerson Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
A teenager once asked a lonely old man, “What’s life’s heaviest burden?”
The old fellow answered sadly, “To have nothing to carry.”
And as Christians, God has graciously given all of us something to carry.
Are we carrying it?
In the Book of Jonah we see a person who was called by God to proclaim God’s message a great city
named Nineveh.
“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against
it, because its wickedness has come before me.”...
...but instead of doing what the Lord asked him to do, Jonah hopped into a boat and headed in the opposite
direction.
Jonah was running away from the Lord. He was trying to get as far away as possible. He didn’t want to
carry what the Lord had given him.
How often do we, as Christians, decide to head in the opposite direction of where God has called us to go?
How often do we do the opposite of what God has called us to do?
And where does this disobedience lead us?
Well, we usually end up like Jonah.
A storm came up.
And eventually Jonah confessed that he was the cause of the problem.
Jonah instructed the ship’s crew to throw him overboard...
...so they did and Jonah was immediately swallowed up by a great fish.
Jonah was inside the darkness of that fish for three days and three nights...
...until he cried out to God: “And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”
Now, Jonah had been running away from the Lord, but the Lord had not been running from him.
So at the beginning of chapter 3 Jonah is sitting on a Mediterranean beach, probably all shook up by his
recent fish encounter.
Then suddenly the same word from God came to him a second time saying: “Go to the great city Ninevah
and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
This time, Jonah obeyed the Word of the Lord, but with very little enthusiasm.
Why was Jonah such a reluctant disciple?
Well, Jonah is a good example of the disobedience to God that Israel often displayed.
Good Jewish prophets didn’t preach to other nations!
Jonah didn’t want the city of Nineveh to be saved!
He believed that there should be a strict separation between Israel and other peoples...
...but obviously God felt otherwise....
...Jonah knew this in his heart...
...and thus he was trying to thwart God’s will.
Do we ever try to thwart God’s will due to any kind of prejudice we might have?
Do we ever pick and choose who we decide to invite to church?
Is there anyone...or any kind of person who we are trying to keep out of the kingdom of God?
Are we unenthusiastic about bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to them?
Do we think that they should be saved?
Would we rather that they weren’t saved?
I have a good friend in Macon, Georgia who finally gave up and left the church he was a member of
because he was unable to persuade them...after years of trying...to open their doors and allow a group of people
who were different from them to come and worship God.
Well, The Book of Jonah makes it clear that God is concerned for the salvation of all people!...
...and as His disciples we are called to take God’s message to some places where we might not want to go.
Another reason that Jonah didn’t want to carry out God’s call was because he was afraid of the
Ninevites.
Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, a nation which-- in its day-- had set the standard for dread and terror!
For Jonah, preaching to Nineveh would be like one of us going to Baghdad in Iraq and preaching to
Saddam Hussein.
There was no way Jonah was going to preach to that gang of cutthroats!
It’s a good bet that Jonah didn’t sing the old gospel song which states:
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey,” as he sat on that beach
and heard the call of God.
So, Jonah walked toward the city of Nineveh...
...and he was not a happy disciple....
...he didn’t even do what God had told him to do...
Jonah stopped short of going across the city, and his sermon was not exactly a homiletical
masterpiece....
...in Hebrew, it only consisted of 8 words!
But amazingly, Jonah’s sermon was a huge success!
The people of Nineveh accepted his message, they believed it, they repented....they were saved!!!
Through this story of conversion, God reveals again, that God is a God Who cares...
...even if we don’t.
Jonah certainly didn’t care about Nineveh...
...he was even angry that God saved them!
Jonah cried out:
“O Lord....That is why I was so quick to flee...
...I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love...”
And what was God’s response?
“But Nineveh has more than a hundered and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from
their left....
Should I not be concerned for that great city?”
The New Testament reveals the extent of God’s caring love in a single verse: “For God so loved the
world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal
life.”
Rev. Paul Cho is a Korean pastor to what many believe is the largest church in the world.
When his minstry began to recieve international acclaim, Cho informed God that he would go anywhere
to preach the gospel except for Japan.
Cho could not forget what the Japanese had done to Korea and her people, as well as members of his own
family.
Eventually, though, an invitation came for Cho to preach in Japan.
He accepted the invitation, but without enthusiasm.
His first speaking assignment was to address a pastor’s conference with a thousand Japanese pastors.
When he stood up to speak, these words came out of his mouth:
“I hate you, I hate you.”
Cho then broke down and wept.
His hatred had gotten the best of him.
One Japanese pastor got out of his seat, then another, then another, until all one thousand of them stood
up.
One by one these Japanese pastors walked up to Rev. Cho, knelt in front of him, and asked forgiveness
for what their people had done to Korea.
As these pastors humbly sought Cho’s forgiveness, Cho found himself saying to each one of them...not... “I
hate you,” but “I love you.”
The Japanese people were Rev. Cho’s Ninevites.
Who are our Ninevites?
Jesus ends His ministry, not with a question, but with a command: “Go therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to
obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
This is the Great Commission of the Church of Jesus Christ!
This is why we exist!
This is our mission....
...and yet how many of us are often just like Jonah?...
...We want to escape from being the ones who bring the message...
...perhaps not so much physically, but many of us certainly do mentally as we rationalize all the excuses for not
being the ones through whom God speaks His message of salvation.
As we look at our Gospel Lesson for this morning we see that Jesus is calling His first four disciples...and
they didn’t use one excuse in order to get out of following Jesus.
Now their is a certain note of adventure as the four men leave their fishing business to go with
Jesus...but what our passage doesn’t tell us is what these men were getting themselves into by becoming followers
of Jesus.
In order to find out what was really in store for them, we have to keep on reading.
And as we keep on reading, we discover that being a disciple is not a glamorous job.
In fact, it can be downright dangerous!
Later in Mark Jesus says:
“Whoever loses their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will find it.”
We know what happened to Jesus, and...
... of these first four men He called three of them were executed for the faith.
As disciples, it’s important for us to realize that the truth of the gospel is like a two-edged sword: It is
both comforting and disturbing....
...and as messengers of this gospel we might very well find ourselves in the presence of those who are being
disturbed by what we are telling them.
Jesus’s call to discipleship can be a call that provokes controversy and difficulty.
Someone once told me: “I would like to become a Christian, but I have to live with my wife, and she’ll
have none of that.”
The reality of being a disciple can be disturbing....
...both on a world-wide basis and as close as home and family.
Why?
The answer lies in the power of the gospel to change people’s lives!
Once we meet Jesus Christ on the road of our individual lives--we will be changed!!!
We will be different people!...
...and as people...we often tend to resist change.
Many people like to see the gospel through rose colored glasses--wanting only the joy, comfort, and
light--not wanting to see the difficult or the disruptive.
“Behold, I will make all things new,” says Jesus....
...and that is exactly what He does!
There are two very important words in this mornings gospel lesson. One of these words is the word
“repent”!
Too many people think that “repent” means to feel sorry for what you’ve done--and then do it again.
But that’s not it at all.
“Repent” means to change direction.
It means a change in priorities.
It means living with a whole new approach to life!
The second key word is “believe”!
“Believe” doesn’t mean listing our denomination as United Methodist on some application blank.
It means trust and reliance.
It means placing our whole lives in God’s hands...
...regardless of what happens in life.
It’s called “the leap of faith.”
That’s the kind of change that the gospel produces.
That’s what makes us different.
And there’s no turning back, because it’s a difference that won’t go away...
...no matter how hard we might, like Jonah, try to run away from it.
To be sure, we will always experience the power of sin in our daily lives.
We may even go as far as renouncing the God Who saved us by getting on a boat and going in the
opposite direction.
Peter knew about that.
Peter denied that he ever knew Jesus, but later he went and wept bitterly.
The change was there.
He couldn’t turn back.
He was changed by the power of a gospel that left an indelible mark upon his soul.
Being a disciple is a real blessing, despite the gospel’s two edges.
We know that God has promised to be with us always.
That means that we will never be alone in life, no matter how we may feel at a given moment.
Being a disciple means that God is not just a “Sunday friend,” but a “daily companion” in our lives.
It means that all things “do indeed work together for good.”
Oh--it doesn’t guarantee that we won’t get the flu or have to face unpleasant experiences.
It does mean that as God’s people,
God will take the events of our lives and turn them toward the good, even though we may not be able to see that
good at the moment.
Being disciples of Jesus Christ means that we will be part of the greatest change of all...
...the time when God will change this age into the age of eternity.
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ stands at the center of our faith, because we know that our
mortal natures will be changed into an immortal nature....
...And we shall be changed--one final time!
The gospel is a great power!
It does shake nations!
It does disturb lives!
But above all it gives new life to people who “cannot tell their right hand from their left.”
For our God is a God of compassion.
We, those of us who have heeded the call to follow Jesus, are today’s disciples...and it’s not an easy task.
We have a message to carry, and sometimes that message can seem like a burden....
...it certainly was a burden for Jonah...
...but like the lonely old man told the teenager...
“Life’s heaviest burden is to have nothing to carry.”
Let us Pray: On this day, when You come especially close and call us to following and serving, help
us to avoid giving excuses but, rather, to report for duty. Forgive us, Holy Father, for the many times You
were counting on us and we let you down. We pray to You today for new resolve to follow Your lead and
serve You faithfully. In Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
