3 Epiphany B

How lost do you have to be before you are ready to follow?

3 Epiphany B

Transcribed from a sermon given on

January 22, 2012

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

I’d like you to imagine that you have gone to Yosemite and you decide that one day you are going to take a day hike into the backcountry. You are hiking and having a great time. It is after lunch and getting into the afternoon so you start to head back, but nothing looks quite right. You begin to suspect, “I don’t think I’ve ever been on this path before. This doesn’t look like what’s on the map and where we should be.” Of course you are smart enough to never go hiking by yourself so the person you are hiking with is saying, “We should have turned left back there.” “No, no,” you respond. “We should turn right here.” You begin arguing about which way you are supposed to be going. Finally you are certain that you have found the right path, and you are following it, but it gets narrower, and narrower and stops at the edge of a cliff. It is at that point that the nagging little thing that is in the back of your mind burst upon your consciousness and you realize that you are lost. You are lost in bear country, and it is afternoon, and it is going to get dark soon.

All you know to do is to retrace that trail because that is not going anywhere and you turn around and you see coming down the trail this guy in a funny hat. Sure enough it is a park ranger. Well, what a relief. He comes and he greets you and he looks at you in a way that you know, disdain is not the right word for it, but he knows you are lost. And he has seen this before. So he just looks at you and he says, “Follow me.” Then he turns around and heads on down the path and you follow doing your best to keep up. But then he starts going through some hard territory. Some of those paths are kind of hard to climb up over and he seems to be going up hill, not down hill. You are certain that he has made some mistakes along the way. He is not going where you want to go. Finally decide that you just can’t follow this one any more because he is not taking you where you want to go. So you head off on another path. Of course you follow that for a while but sooner or later ends up at the edge of a cliff. So you take a deep breath and you turn around and you start heading back. And there he is just calmly looking at you and says’ “follow me.”

And you follow him again. This happens several times because if you are anything like me you think you know where you are supposed to be going. But ultimately you end up having to follow him because there is no other way. And the problem is that you don’t really know where he is going. You know where you want to go, you want to go back to your car so you can go back to your hotel so you can get out of these shoes and you can just relax. He may be going on a circle to check for all the other hikers that are lost and you are just part that journey. Or maybe he knows you don’t have enough time to get back down to your hotel and he is taking you to a shelter. You don’t know. You end up having to trust that somehow he knows better than you do.

That’s kind of how it is with God and with Christ, even for the disciples. When Jesus comes and says to Simon and Andrew, “Follow me,” they drop their nets and follow right away. But even they at one point question where he is going.  When Jesus tells them that now it is time to go to Jerusalem they look at him and say, “Jerusalem? They’ll kill you in Jerusalem.” Of course they were right but Jesus still had to go to Jerusalem. And they all did ultimately follow him there.

Probably the person most famous for disobeying God was Jonah in our first reading. We only read a little part of this wonderful little book. It is when he has gotten the second call from God. Many of you may only know Jonah as the one who got swallowed by the whale, so I am going to tell you this wonderful story.

It is a very short book of the Bible. You can read it in half an hour when you get home. Do take out your Bible and read it. It is wonderful.

The first thing to know is that it is not a historical document. It is a fable. And the way you know it is a fable is that it has all the aspects of a fable. There are amazing animals, there is exaggeration, there is irony and there is humor. Also historians have tried to identify who this person Jonah was, but he doesn’t occur anywhere else. So we will treat it as a fable, but it is a wonderful and profound story.

Jonah is a prophet; he has dedicated his life to God to be a prophet in Israel. Then God speaks to him. It is presented in the same format as the one used for all the prophets, “God said to Jonah.” He is told to go to Nineveh and that God will tell him what to say. That’s pretty simple and clear - go to Nineveh. The problem is, Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria and Assyria was Israel’s mortal enemy. It was an empire that had destroyed Israel several times. It was kind of like having God go up to someone in Israel right now and tell them, “I want you to go and preach in Tehran, the capital of Iran.” Right? Now you’d have lots of reasons to not do that. You might think that it is dangerous. You might think that they won’t listen. You might have all kinds of reasons not to go. But none of those were Jonah’s reason. You’ll learn at the end for Jonah’s reason for not wanting to go.

So Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. Jonah would have gone east to go to Nineveh instead he goes west. He goes to the coast and gets on the first ship going as far away as possible. Probably to what is today called Spain. Can you hear him saying, “I want to get as far away from here as possible. I want to get away from Nineveh, away from God, I’m going to run away.”

Have any of you felt like running away from God?

He gets out in the boat and a big storm comes up. Now remember Jonah is the religious person. Everybody else on the ship, all the sailors on the ship, would be considered gentiles or pagans, believing in all kinds of different gods. But on the ship when the storm comes up Jonah is sleeping in the bottom and all of the other guys are praying to their gods. Each one is praying to his own god trying to stop the storm. Finally they decide somebody on this ship must have done something to anger some god to have a storm like this. So they pull lots. It turns out that Jonah gets the lot and they all look at him and say, “What did you do?” cause they know that he is a follower of Yahweh. Well, he explains he is running away and he says it is my fault so throw me overboard. These gentile pagans say we can’t do that. We can’t throw you into the ocean. Well the storm just gets worse and finally the crew says, “Okay, it is not our fault, we are not responsible for this blood.” And they throw him into the ocean.

And the storm stops and Jonah sinks down into the ocean. Along comes a giant fish, sometimes translated as a whale. The giant fish comes and swallows him. Now he is inside the body of the whale or giant fish, and you know what he does? Now if I were thrown off of a boat and swallowed by a fish I would probably be pretty upset. Jonah however then sings a song of praise to God for God’s faithfulness. Go figure.

And then the fish takes Jonah to the shoreline and lets him out. And that’s when we hear the reading for today. God says for a second time, “Jonah, go to Nineveh and I will tell you what to say. Tell them that I am going to destroy them in 40 days unless they repent.” So this time Jonah realizes there is no way to escape God so he goes to Nineveh. He gets there and he has the most phenomenal ministry! He goes and he spends just one day in this huge city walking around telling people that Yahweh is going to destroy them. Even though this city is the center of worship for a goddess and they don’t have any belief in Yahweh. When he goes around and he tells them that they are going to be destroyed everyone goes, “Oh my goodness, we did… well yes” They all get their ashes and sackcloth. When the king hears about it they have a fast and nobody, including the animals, are suppose to eat or drink all day as a sign of their penance. What an amazing ministry. Now you have to remember that in the normal story of the prophets in the Bible they go and prophesy in Israel to people who are supposedly followers of Yahweh they are never listened to. But here in this gentile evil city they repent!

You’d think that would make Jonah happy. It’s the most amazing ministry anywhere. But he’s not. He goes up on the hillside and looks over Nineveh and God decides not to destroy Nineveh. And you know what? Jonah is ticked off. Jonah is really angry at God. He says, “That’s why I didn’t want to come here. I knew they would repent and I knew that if they repented that you are a God of mercy and then you wouldn’t destroy them.” He was angry at them. They are the enemy. He wants them destroyed. He doesn’t want God to save them. And then the whole little book, with all the humor in it ends with God talking about his love for all the people and how wouldn’t destroy them, and the animals.

So it is a story of how we as human beings sometimes have a different idea of what we want to have happen than God does. Sometimes our plans are not God’s plans. And sometimes we get really angry with God because God’s not doing it the way we think God should be doing it. Sometimes we feel really powerless. Sometimes things in our lives overwhelm us. We feel that we have no control, that we have no power. When we have those times where we feel powerless we need to remember the psalm today. It is one of my favorite psalms. There is a lot in it that I like, but the one line that stand out today says, “and power belongs to God.” God is the one with the power and when we find ourselves lost, and powerless there is only one thing to do, to acknowledge our powerlessness.

Now sometimes the thing that we have the least power over is our own habits. To acknowledge that and realize that it is only God, it is only Christ, that can lead us to sanity, to health, to wholeness and to deal with whatever situation we are in. It is then that we need to give our lives over to God and to follow wherever God is taking us. No matter what the path looks like and even if it is not what we think it is supposed to be. We follow and have faith and trust.

Proper 8 C

What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to say yes to God?

Proper 8 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

On June 27, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Arroyo Grande, CA

Luke 9:51-62

(The following is spoken while walking around the sanctuary.)

Chris, follow me. 

Ted, follow me. 

Maryanne, follow me. 

Nate, follow me. 

You can sit there. 

Fred, follow me. 

All right, all you brave souls, thank you for following.  You can go back and sit down again. What I want you all to think about is what was going through your mind as I was doing that?  Was it, “What am I supposed to do?”  “Am I supposed to follow her?” “Are we both supposed to follow her, or is just she supposed to follow her?” or “What’s going on?” 

Did you think, “Gee, I hope she asks me.” Or were you thinking, “Oh my gosh, I hope she doesn’t ask me because I don’t want to get up.” Or were you thinking, “What are we going to have to do after we follow her because I know she’s got something planned that’s going to be really difficult and humiliating, and I don’t want to have to do that,” or were you thinking, “Ah, gee, I didn’t get a chance to do anything great”?  All those thoughts in your mind as I walked around, maybe other ones, I don’t know.

Jesus was a rabbi, walking down a Roman road, telling people, “Follow me.”  I wonder how they felt?  I wonder what went through their minds?  We have the story in the gospel today of three of them.  We have one who approaches Jesus and says, “I’ll follow you anywhere.”  Now, you have to realize that Jesus is on his way to the cross at this point. So what Jesus is telling him when he says, “Foxes have holes, birds have nests,” is basically, “You don’t know what you’re asking.  Do your really want to follow me?  There’s nothing in it for you to follow me.”  Sometimes it seems that people might say, “I want to follow Christ because it will satisfy them in some way, that they’ll get something out of it. Maybe that person thought he would get publicity, or maybe he thought, “Here is the new messiah, and he’s gonna become king, and I want to be on the ins with this one.”  Maybe he wanted to have some authority.  We don’t know, but we do know that Jesus warned him, “If you follow me, it’s not about you.  It’s not about what you want to do.”

Then he says to another one, “Follow me.” And he says, “Well, let me bury my father first.”  Now, in a Jewish tradition, for a son to bury his father was probably the most important responsibility a man could have, and this sounds incredibly cruel when Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead.”  But Jesus is making the point that if you’re going to follow him, everything else is less important, including the traditions of the culture.  He was also saying to them, “If you follow me, if you follow me today, right now at this moment you will be fully alive.  You will have life that you have never known before.  You won’t be like most people who are walking around half dead.” 

Now, we don’t know what the story was.  We don’t know whether this man’s father had just died and he was getting ready for the burial, or he might have been saying, “You know, my father’s getting up there, and sometime in the next five to ten years he is going to die, and I need to be here to bury him.”  We don’t know, but we do know that Jesus was offering this man life, and suggesting that following all the old rules of the culture was part of being half dead. 

Then the next one said something simple, “Sure, I’ll follow you.  I just want to say goodbye to my family.”  Jesus responds, “Nope, you’ve got to come now.  It’s now or never.”  Then he uses the images of when you’re plowing. If you are plowing and you have an animal in front of you, which is what they would have done, you really have to focus and work very hard to keep the plow going straight ahead because there are rocks and chunks of dirt that it runs into.  If you let go with one hand and look around behind you, it’s just going to go off in who knows what direction. That’s the image he’s using.  You can't say, “I’m going to follow Christ,” and then look back and go, “Well, gee, it was really nice back there.”  It is like the Israelites having left Egypt and saying, “Gee, the leaks were so good when we were in Egypt.  I’m tired of this manna.”  Once you make the choice, you make the choice, and when Jesus calls, Jesus calls.

When I was in the holy land, I was reflecting a lot on what I call the theology of yes. One of the places we went to early on was the Church of the Annunciation, which is built over the place that is supposedly where Mary received the greeting from the angel.  Now, if you ever go to Israel, to the holy land, you will discover that there is a church built over the place where such and such supposedly happened, for everything that ever happened in the bible.  In fact, for some things that happened, there are two or three churches built in different places that are supposedly where this happened. That’s the way they do it because you don’t know for sure whether that was the actual location, but it’s the place where it has been remembered.

When I was there I was thinking about Mary and how she said, “Yes,” to God.  The angel came to her and asked of her something that was not only outrageous but that she knew was not going to be easy. And she said, “I’m the handmade of the Lord.”  She said, “Yes.”  She didn’t say, “Well, sure, I’ll be happy to do that, but can we wait until after the marriage so it doesn’t look so odd.”  She didn’t say, “Well, let me talk to my mother about it first to make sure she’s on board.” And she didn’t say, “Let me talk to Joseph.  I think this is something he should know about. I don’t want to shock him.”  She just said, “Yes.” And the fact that she said yes has made all the difference in the world.  If she had not said yes, all of history would be different, but she said “yes.”

The next place we visited, which is just down the street, was the church where, supposedly, Joseph’s house was. As I was reflecting there, I was thinking about Joseph’s yes.  Joseph didn’t get a direct call from God, but what he said yes to was Mary’s call.  He said yes to supporting the one whom he loved.  He said yes to trusting her in her discernment.  He said yes to being supportive of what she chose. 

Then we went to Jerusalem, and the spot in Jerusalem that is the most powerful place for me is in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the rock where Jesus is supposed to have asked the Father to take this cup from him.  It’s the place where Jesus said “yes,” “not my will but thy will.”  To me, that is the most important spot because that’s where I think I was saved.  Jesus had a choice there.  He could have run away.  He could have left.  He knew that what was ahead was going to be suffering, and pain, and death, and humiliation, and yet, in the midst of knowing that he said yes to God.  And his yes, at that moment, led to our salvation.  From that moment on, it all unfolded the way it unfolded.  The choice point was there, and Jesus said yes, and that’s made all the difference in the world.

We all experience a call from God in some way or another.  You all have been called by God because you would not be sitting here right now if there hadn’t been something in your life that had nudged you to come to church today.  You might think you came for other reasons, but you are here.  God touched you.  God calls to you.  The question is whether you say “yes”. There are lots of ways to say yes. 

Often when we think of people being called by God we assume that it has to do with ordination. I was at an ordination Friday evening, and it was wonderful.  And I saw this person who was on the trip with me, being ordained to the priesthood. This is something that she was called to, and her spouse had supported her, and her community had supported her, and she had worked very hard to get to that moment.  But usually God doesn’t call us to such dramatic commitments.  There are lots of other ways that we can say “yes” to God.

I was talking to another friend this week, and she was telling me the story of something that happened a number of years ago.  She is a tax account.  She prepares people’s taxes and does financial support for businesses so she knows a lot of people in the community.  There was a tragedy a while back where a young man stepped in front of a train and was killed.  She found, in the process of her work, that she was interacting with the engineer of the train, who was devastated. That’s the thing that engineers of trains fear the most – having something like that happen.  Then not too long afterwards she felt she was getting a call from God because she had an appointment with the woman who was the mother of the young man who had died. She finds that her tax work is also a ministry because she does a lot of listening to people.

This woman of course also was very devastated.  She knew that her son had been disturbed and that it was suicide.  Something in my friend put together the idea of the engineer and this woman, and she said to the woman, “Would you like to speak to the engineer of the train?”  And she said, “Oh, yes, that would be very helpful.”  So she called the engineer and said, “Would you like to meet with the mother?”  And he said, “Oh, that would be wonderful.”  And she brought them together. They talked with one another, and they grieved with one another, and it was healing for both of them.  That to my friend was a call from God.  That was as clearly a call from God as anything else in the church because God was nudging her, “Here you are in a unique situation, a unique opportunity to bring healing to several lives.”

I know people in this congregation who have responded to a call.  Not too long ago I had somebody come up to me and say, “I feel called to help with stewardship,” and I went, “Yes!”  And I had somebody else come to me and say, “I want to do something with marketing in the church.” I had someone else come and say, “I want to do something with the kids this summer.”  God nudges us.  Sometimes the calls are big and dramatic, but most of the time it’s that still small voice that we talked about last week, that kind of nudging by God, that thought that won’t go away. And sometimes the call is clearer to other people than it is to ourselves.  Maybe you’ve met someone who’s new to the church, and when you see them, you see them at the thrift shop, so you say, “Hey, I want to show you our thrift shop.  I think you would really enjoy volunteering there.”  It’s about discernment of what God’s calling us to and of saying yes.

So I ask you today, are you ready to say “yes”?  Are you ready to say yes to God, to open your heart and mind to hear His call?  Are you ready to say yes to that?  Are you ready to say yes to discerning where other people might be being called by God?  Are you ready to tell other people what you see and to listen to what other people say to you as a community?  And so today I ask you, are you ready to say yes to God?  Amen.