Bible Tuesday for Epiphany 3, 2018

Jonah 3:1-10

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” 10When 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.

Nineveh was the capital of ancient Assyria. The Assyrians attacks the Israelites/Northern Kingdom regularly, and finally defeated them in 722 BCE. Yet, God sends an Israelite prophet, Jonah, to the Ninevites to get them to repent.

When God calls Jonah the first time, Jonah refuses to go to Nineveh and prophesy. (Jonah feels like a Jew who survived Buchenwald being sent to Hitler and henchmen to prophesy God’s mercy!) Jonah tells God that he wants God to punish Nineveh for all they have done to Israel, but Jonah knows that God will relent and not punish Nineveh whether they repent or not. So, Jonah runs from God. He gets on a merchant vessel, not caring where it is headed. The vessel is swamped by a storm and Jonah confesses the storm is God forcing Jonah to prophesy. Jonah gets thrown overboard and a whale swallows him. He is “in the belly of the whale three days.” (Three, the Biblical Three, God’s number symbolizing God’s activity. Jonah is in the dark, with the dead, for three days, all caused by God.) At the end of the third day, the whale barfs Jonah up onto the land and Jonah screams at God. God responds with the above text, a second invitation to Jonah to “do what I tell you! If you just did it the first time, it wouldn’t be so bad!”

So, what happened?! The Ninevites repented heartily with sack cloth and ashes for all the people and the animals! (I can just imagine a chicken in a gunny sack rolling in ashes!) And, God relented from the punishment God had threatened, just as Jonah feared God would!

Jonah’s proclamation: “What Jonah means and what he is saying are not exactly the same. Jonah means to say, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh is undone,’ but the readers notice that he is actually saying, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh is overturned.’ Jonah chooses language that is reminiscent of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. But the careful readers of the book notice the irony of the situation. Jonah’s words potentially carry two, opposite meanings. (a) ‘Nineveh is undone,’ and (b) ‘Nineveh turns over (reforms itself)’. “ The Jewish Study Bible

Psalm 62:5-12

For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.

6He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

7On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

8Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Selah

9Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath.

10Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.

11Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God,

12and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord. For you repay to all according to their work.

This is a psalm of exhortation, the psalmist to himself and the psalmist to the whole people of God.

“Once God has spoken, twice I have heard this…” Ancient Israelite scholars believe this to mean that while God speaks only once, humans over time interpret God’s word in many ways. This is used to account for the differences in God’s word, for example in the Ten Commandments given in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. While God gave the Ten Commandments only once (and then reiterated them to Moses when Moses threw down the commandments at the people during the golden calf episode), they are written down in two slightly different ways.

“Lighter than a breath” – the idea of weighing souls appears to have been introduced into Israelite thought by the Egyptians, who weighed souls to determine the meaning of one’s life and the reward of one’s afterlife. The Israelite psalmist is stating that no Israelite weighs anything on their own merit.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

9I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none,30and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, 31and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

“The appointed time has grown short” – Here is one of many statements Paul made to let the reader/hearer know that he believed Jesus would “come back to judge the living and the dead” any second. Paul, being single, owning no house or any possessions to speak of, under house arrest while awaiting trail in Rome, can completely devote his life to God. Paul does not here teach that service to God can be faithful parenting, faithful marriage, faithful work for an employer.

Paul is trying to describe life “in the world but not of the world”.

“For the present form of this world is passing away” – The word “form” is a translation of the Greek “schema” which could also be translated “structure”, “bureaucracy”, “world order”. God breaking into the world and living on it as the person of Jesus, is a complete game changer which is the initiator of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Mark 1:14-20

4Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 16As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

In the gospel of Mark, these verses occur immediately after the temptation in the wilderness. John the Baptist’s arrest is illustrative of danger for Jesus, himself, danger from both the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem. Galilee is the hill country north of Jerusalem, by and large rural land of fishermen, farmers, and tradesmen, land left to the Jews by the Romans. Jesus will be safe from the Jewish Temple authorities and the Romans there.

Jesus is proclaiming the good news of God in Galilee. What is the good news Jesus proclaims? “Your long anticipation is now fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is within your grasp. Turn away from what distracts and blinds you to the Kingdom’s presence, and believe this marvelous news!” What does the Kingdom of God look like? Those ostracized because of disease, like the blind, the leprous, the hemorrhaging, the barren, will be healed and restored to their places in society. The poor and the sick will be treated just as the same by God as the rich and powerful. The last will be next and the first will be next. The reward from God will be the same for all. And the king, the KING will rule from a wooden thrown with spikes pounded through his wrists and his feet, and his court will consist of criminals hanging with him.

What is the deal with all these fishermen? Why is Jesus “calling” them and why do they drop what they are doing and follow him? Last week I wrote about the tradition of the rabbis who gathered students unto themselves, and that Jesus was acting within that culturally accepted, even expected, tradition. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus lives in Capernaum, where he is in this text walking and calling disciples to himself. Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John answer Jesus’ call so abruptly in part, because the guy lives in town. It is not as if they just walk away from their wives, children, in-laws, and all responsibilities to follow Jesus. Would it not be sinful to so capriciously leave wives and children with no means of feeding themselves in order to be the disciple of a rabbi? In fact, when the disciples traveled for longer than day trips, their families likely traveled with them!

The irony of calling fishermen – In Jeremiah 16:16, Ezekiel 29:4-5, and Amos 4:2, Israelites are described as evil or stupid, with fishermen using nets and grappling hooks to catch the evil ones and pull them from the schools of Israelites. In Habakkuk 1:14-17, the evil one is ravaging the schools of fish, the Israelites, and worships the nets and hooks he uses to feed upon the Israelites. When Jesus calls these fishermen, and future disciples, he is calling them to fish for people in a new way, luring them with shalom: love, peace, contentment, compassion, wholeness, life in the presence and light of God.