Sermons

“The Choices of Obedience”

Jonah 3:1-10; Mark 1:14-20 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – January 25, 2015

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might seek your presence in all moments and find it a real guide and stay. We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

How many decisions have you made already today?  When to get up, what to eat for breakfast, if you should eat breakfast, what to watch or read while you get ready, what to wear, whether to come to church…  How many decisions have you followed through on already this morning that you made previously?  What to drive to church, whether to commit to being a Deacon, or an Elder, or to volunteering in some other capacity, how much to write your check for, who you picked up on the way to church…

There are a lot of contrasting examples of decision-making in our texts today.  The gospel of Mark, of course, is famous for its use of the word “immediately.”  In the seven short verses we heard today, it’s used twice.  Simon Peter and Andrew leave their nets and follow Jesus immediately upon being called to do so.  A couple sentences later, Jesus calls James and John immediately upon seeing them.  Amazingly, Mark doesn’t use the word again for their response, but it’s hardly necessary, since within the same sentence they’ve dropped what they’re doing and come along too.  There are a lot of split-second decisions being made here.  Preachers have often used this text as an exhortation to follow Jesus without any hesitation.  It’s also been seen as evidence of a certain charisma Jesus must have possessed that would have compelled men to leave behind everything they knew to take up with a stranger from another town.  There are very few of us who make major life decisions this way.  Then again, there might be situations in which we should be prepared to.

Jonah doesn’t actually use the word “immediately” but the reaction of the people of Nineveh definitely qualifies.  Jonah warns them of impending doom, and they immediately respond with sackcloth and fasting.  Within what seems like merely hours, the news reaches the king, and the response is made official:  Everyone is fasting, including all the animals, until further notice.  Apparently, the exceedingly large city of Nineveh had an unusually effective emergency response communications system.

But if you’re looking at the story of Jonah for examples of decision-making, it’s important to look beyond just chapter three.  If you’re only picking up the story here, there are three words in the very first sentence that it’s vital to notice.  The narrator tells us that “the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”  The reaction of Nineveh is not even close to being the point of the book of Jonah.  What is important is that Jonah was given a task by God and chose to do the opposite – to great dramatic effect, until he was given another chance to do the right thing.  Indeed, even after he meets God’s goal of getting the Ninevites to repent, he’s still mad, because he didn’t like the Ninevites and he wanted God to punish them.

So despite the example of the Ninevites’ speedy response, the book of Jonah actually offers us a very different approach to decision-making than the passage we heard from Mark.  Rather than speedy obedience, we are shown resistant and grudging obedience.  Jonah may feel more like a cartoon than Mark, but it also feels a little bit more human, I dare say.

Finally, I want to look at the approach suggested in the poem the choir sang a bit ago “Choose Something Like a Star,” by Robert Frost).  If you weren’t following along before, I invite you to peruse the words now, printed on the back of the bulletin.  It’s poetry, and thus not necessarily entirely obvious, so let’s take a moment to break it down.  The writer contemplates the star, respecting its air of mystery and yet feeling frustrated by it.  Demands for clarity, explanation, detail are made and ignored.  And then finally, the questioner gives up and seeks peace in the example of the star’s refusal to justify itself.  And perhaps the most important lines of the poem come at the end.  Some of our most important decisions are made at times when “the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far.”  Rather than being carried along by the tide of popular opinion, we are encouraged to follow the star’s example and be “staid.”  That last word has a double-meaning.  If we focus on the star’s steady nature, we can be both stayed – unmoved by the fickle waves of public sentiment – and staid, that is, settled rather than flighty or capricious.

The most important word in this poem – if it is ever sensible to try to name such a thing – is probably “steadfast.”  That is what the poem is calling us to strive for:  to be clear enough about who we are that we don’t feel the need to explain ourselves to everyone, to be strong enough in what we believe to stick to those values even when they set us apart from others, to be confident enough in our own judgment to avoid following every whim of culture that comes and goes.  Steadfast.  This is a much more long-term approach to decision-making.  And yet, it must work in combination with the other examples that scripture presented to us.

We are faced with thousands of choices in our lives, and the best thing to do is not always clear.  Occasionally, there is a clear right and a clear wrong, and it’s simply a matter of being willing to pay the price of doing what’s right.  More often, there are choices with undetermined consequences, or multiple not-very-good options, or a lesser-of-two-evils situation.

It might seem like it would be nice to be able to follow Jesus with the decisive, immediate “Yes!” of Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John.  But to pretend that it’s that easy is to ignore the rest of their stories.  Peter, of all people, was not nearly as good at immediate obedience as this story seems to foreshadow.  I’m sure they all had their moments – along the road, in the hot crowds of Jerusalem, in the face of danger – when they wondered what they were doing with this Jesus guy.  Sometimes an impulsive decision – though the right thing to do – can cause unexpected pain and difficulty.  But then, so can a well-thought-out one.

Jonah had a lot of time to reflect on what he was doing.  All the way in the opposite direction from Nineveh as far as the belly of the whale, and then all the way to Nineveh, and then a days’ walk through town – it gives you time to think.  He was finally doing the right thing, and he still wasn’t happy about it.  He was a little like the writer of the poem, demanding that God explain why this was a good idea, insisting that God justify this act of mercy on Jonah’s terms.  Jonah has to learn to let God be God, just as the questioner in the poem has to learn to let the star be a star.

I wonder if our best lesson from all this – what might be most helpful to us in our own decision-making in our lives – is to combine it all.  The way that we are able to make the right choices in the heat of a moment is by having spent a lifetime preparing to make those split-second decisions.  If we seek steadfastness – that is, if we give time to figuring out who we are and what we believe and humbly remembering on a regular basis that God is God and we are not – it becomes easier to respond appropriately in any given situation to the challenges that present themselves.  Such a posture in life helps us to respond to God’s invitation to join in ministry without hesitation.  It helps us recognize when we have run away and that we can always turn back around and follow God’s commands when we come to our senses.  It helps us resist assessing things from a market or a marketing perspective, and see the world through God’s eyes instead.

Impulsive decisions are more likely to be good decisions when they are rooted in steadfastness.  You might call it cultivating our gospel instincts.  How do we do this?  The same way disciples have done it throughout history.  We spend time with scripture, learning more about Jesus and God’s vision for our world.  We spend time in prayer, seeking Christ’s presence in the day-in and day-out of our lives.  We spend time in conversation with others, whether those around a Sunday school discussion table or Christians from the church universal whom we meet through their writings.

Seeking steadfastness does not mean that everything will always be clear.  There may be decisions that we make quickly, without fully understanding why we did so.  There may be choices we very obviously can’t predict the consequences of, but we make in faith anyway.  There may be times when our steadfastness convicts us of the wrong decisions we have made and points us in the direction of repentance.  The trick of seeking steadfastness is to recognize that it comes, not from us, not even from stars, but from God, the eternal, steadfast love at the center of the universe.  That is how we are able to live with the mystery, to accept the unexplained.  We have been promised that what is obscured is nevertheless Good.  We have been promised that following will lead to abundant life.  Let us join together in steadfastly seeking Jesus!  Alleluia and Amen!