L. Gregory Jones - "You've Got to Be Kidding" (January 23, 2000)

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-	Gospel according to St. Mark the first chapter.	0:03
	"Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee	0:08
	"proclaiming the good news of God	0:12
	"and saying the time is fulfilled	0:14
	"and the Kingdom of God has come near,	0:16
	"repent and believe in the good news.	0:19
	"As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee,	0:22
	"he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net	0:25
	"into the sea, for they were fishermen.	0:28
	"And Jesus said to them, follow me	0:32
	and I will make you fish for people.	0:34
	"And immediately they left their nets and followed him.	0:38
	"As he went a little further, he saw James son of Zebedee	0:42
	"and his brother John, who were in their boat	0:46
	"mending the nets.	0:49
	"Immediately he called them	0:50
	"and they left their father Zebedee	0:52
	"in the boat with a hired man and followed him.	0:54
	"This is the word of the Lord.	0:58
Congregation	Praise be to the Lord.	1:00
-	Let us pray.	1:13
	Gracious God may the words of my mouth	1:16
	and the meditations of all of our hearts	1:19
	be acceptable in thy sight,	1:21
	oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer.	1:24
	Amen.	1:27
	Talk about your bad days	1:31
	I know that we've had struggles with weather this week,	1:35
	but I suspect Jonah would have changed positions	1:38
	with any one of us	1:41
	even though his weather was probably just fine.	1:43
	There he was minding his own business	1:47
	when he gets a message from the Lord	1:52
	with such crystal clarity that he knew exactly	1:56
	what God was calling him to do.	1:59
	There was no struggle over discernment,	2:02
	no needing to check the signals with friends,	2:04
	no kind of growing sense of the presence of God,	2:07
	this was a message that came over a loudspeaker	2:10
	with such clarity,	2:14
	Jonah knew exactly what God was calling him to do.	2:15
	And his immediate response was probably something like,	2:20
	you gotta be kidding.	2:24
	For what God was calling him to do,	2:27
	was to go and preach repentance	2:31
	to his most hated enemies.	2:36
	You gotta be kidding, I got other things to do.	2:39
	I wouldn't even wanna go and have to do it to people	2:44
	that I feel somewhat ambivalent about	2:47
	but the Ninevites, you gotta be kidding.	2:51
	And so when the going has gotten tough,	2:58
	Jonah gets going in the opposite direction.	3:01
	If Nineveh is one direction,	3:07
	he goes in exactly the opposite direction	3:10
	headed to Tarshish.	3:12
	There's no problem with having heard the message,	3:16
	the problem is he doesn't want to follow it.	3:18
	And so he gets on the ship,	3:23
	feeling pretty smug and self satisfied.	3:25
	Found a way to escape the word of the Lord	3:29
	till the storms start up	3:33
	and the ship is being tossed to and fro.	3:36
	The people on the ship are trying everything	3:41
	they can to try to figure out what is happening	3:43
	finally they come to Jonah and said,	3:45
	could it be you?	3:48
	And Jonah says go ahead and throw me overboard	3:52
	and so they do	3:57
	and pretty soon, Jonah ends up in the belly of a large fish	4:00
	where he sat for three days and three nights.	4:08
	Now, can you imagine what must have been going through	4:14
	Jonah's mind as he was sitting in that belly?	4:16
	It wasn't that long ago	4:20
	that my life seemed just fine,	4:23
	I'd made some plans I was observe,	4:25
	I was doing pretty well	4:27
	and then that message came from God	4:30
	and look where I am now	4:35
	you gotta be kidding.	4:38
	After the three days and the three nights had passed,	4:42
	Jonah had a change of heart.	4:47
	They say there are no atheists in foxholes,	4:51
	I suspect there are no atheists in the bellies	4:53
	of large fishes either.	4:55
	And so Jonah has a change of heart	4:58
	and he cries out to God for forgiveness	5:00
	and he promises God, that he will indeed	5:03
	do what God has called him to do.	5:06
	Jonah repents of his unwillingness to accept the message.	5:10
	And so the Lord speaks to him a second time	5:16
	after he's been spewed out onto the dry land	5:19
	and in the passage, that was read just a few moments ago,	5:22
	Jonah goes and he proclaims the message	5:25
	God had entrusted to him,	5:28
	calling the Ninevites to repent.	5:31
	And much as Jonah suspected, or perhaps feared,	5:35
	the Ninevites do repent.	5:41
	Now you'd think that in an ideal world,	5:45
	the story would end there	5:47
	and we'd all live happily ever after.	5:48
	People known for their wicked ways had turned back to God,	5:51
	there was the opportunity for reconciliation	5:55
	for a healing of the divisions	5:58
	between the Israelites and the Ninevites,	6:00
	all is well they lived happily ever after end of the story.	6:02
	But not with Jonah.	6:08
	For Jonah is not happy	6:11
	that the Ninevites repent,	6:14
	nor is he happy about the character of the God	6:18
	whom he has been worshiping.	6:23
	The God of heaven and earth, who made the earth	6:27
	and the skies and the seas that he had been traveling on.	6:30
	And so rather than being filled with joy	6:37
	and thanksgiving at this reconciliation,	6:39
	Jonah goes off and sulks.	6:41
	He goes to pout outside the city.	6:45
	He's angry, he's bitter,	6:49
	and he cries out to God	6:53
	God, I knew you were like this.	6:54
	See one of Jonah's problems is he knows God is gracious	6:58
	and merciful, abounding in steadfast love,	7:02
	ready to relent from punishing.	7:06
	He just doesn't like that,	7:11
	if it means that he might be reconciled with his enemies	7:13
	if his enemies might be forgiven.	7:17
	Oh how like so many of us,	7:19
	we want forgiveness as long as it's for me	7:21
	and perhaps my friends and my house.	7:23
	But what if it involves our most hated rival,	7:27
	our most bitter enemy?	7:31
	So Jonah's out sulking and	7:34
	God then gives him a bush to offer some shade	7:38
	and then takes away the bush	7:40
	and Jonah gets even angrier.	7:42
	Throughout the entire story,	7:45
	it is clear that it's not what Jonah does that matters,	7:46
	it's who God is and what God does	7:51
	that really matters	7:54
	and Jonah is just mad because he isn't in control, God is.	7:56
	So God says to him, hey Jonah, are you angry?	8:02
	And Jonah, like a two year old child	8:09
	in their best fit pitching mood,	8:11
	says angry enough to die.	8:14
	Little does he know just how deep his comment goes.	8:20
	Anger is not always a bad thing.	8:27
	Anger can be an appropriate response	8:30
	to injustice and betrayal.	8:32
	A sign of life that there is still passion	8:35
	to be welled up within us,	8:37
	giving us a commitment to resisting injustice	8:39
	and oppression and betrayal.	8:42
	The book of Ephesians says, "Be angry but do not sin."	8:45
	Because how easy it is for us to collapse that fine line	8:51
	and for our anger to become the seat of so much sin.	8:56
	That's Jonah's problem.	9:02
	He's angry enough to die, he's closed in on himself	9:03
	where he can't see anything else in the world	9:06
	much less God because he's so consumed by his anger.	9:09
	The writer Frederick Buechner has said	9:15
	that anger is perhaps the most wonderful	9:17
	of all the seven deadly sins.	9:21
	To lick your wounds, to smack your lips	9:24
	over grievances long past,	9:29
	to roll over your tongue,	9:32
	the prospect of bitter confrontations yet to come,	9:34
	to savor to the last toothsome morsel,	9:40
	the pain you are giving and the pain you are receiving back	9:43
	in many ways, it is a feast fit for a king.	9:48
	The only drawback is that	9:54
	what you are wolfing down is yourself.	9:57
	The skeleton at the feast is you.	10:01
	The skeleton at the feast is you.	10:08
	Jonah's clear recognition of who God is	10:13
	and the character of God's grace	10:16
	coupled with his own anger and bitterness	10:20
	and unwillingness to let go of hatred of others,	10:24
	ultimately leads him to be angry enough to die.	10:30
	The skeleton at his feast	10:35
	is himself.	10:38
	And yet there is another feast	10:42
	to which we are all invited.	10:47
	A feast marked not by anger and bitterness,	10:51
	but by God's grace.	10:55
	A feast marked not by hatred,	10:58
	but by love.	11:02
	A feast marked not by resentment and desires for vengeance,	11:05
	but forgiveness, reconciliation,	11:11
	God's shalom.	11:15
	It is a feast that Jesus announces	11:19
	at the beginning of his ministry,	11:22
	the kingdom of God has drawn near the time is fulfilled.	11:24
	Consistently through the gospels	11:29
	as Jesus describes this kingdom,	11:31
	which has drawn near	11:34
	he uses images of a banquet, of a feast, of a party,	11:36
	of a celebration, of people gathering together.	11:39
	It is a feast	11:45
	fit for a different kind of royalty	11:48
	where all are nourished and made whole,	11:52
	where all are enabled to find life	11:56
	and to find it abundantly.	12:00
	Where people are living their best	12:03
	because of the celebration that has begun,	12:05
	where time seems to no longer be a factor	12:07
	as our joy is complete.	12:11
	Oh, the kingdom of God has drawn near what wonderful news	12:14
	and yet, Jesus say's that second clause,	12:20
	"repent and believe in the good news."	12:26
	Jesus isn't calling us to repent in the way Jonah does,	12:31
	in the depths of a dark hour,	12:35
	from the belly of a large fish,	12:39
	in the hours before a final exam,	12:42
	in the midst of anxieties about a new job,	12:46
	one time repentance in the midst of a difficult struggle	12:50
	isn't all that difficult	12:53
	because we can easily lapse back into bad habits.	12:59
	The repentance that Jesus calls us to here	13:04
	is even clearer in the original Greek	13:08
	that it's not so much a one time event	13:10
	as keep on repenting, keep on believing.	13:12
	It is an activity that is to mark our lives	13:14
	if we want to live in God's kingdom,	13:17
	if we wanna be at that feast, that celebration,	13:20
	that party, then we need to keep on repenting	13:22
	and keep on believing.	13:26
	But you notice the call to repentance	13:30
	is shaped on both sides by the proclamation	13:32
	that this is good news.	13:36
	How can this be good news?	13:39
	We think of love and forgiveness and mercy	13:43
	as the good news and repentance as part of the burden.	13:46
	It's no wonder they're 10 times as people	13:50
	as many people in churches on Christmas	13:53
	as they are on Ash Wednesday,	13:56
	far more on Easter Sunday than on Good Friday.	14:01
	We like the love part	14:05
	but repentance?	14:08
	How is that part of the good news?	14:09
	Especially if it's to be seen as a daily obligation.	14:12
	Repentance is a gift that comes from God	14:18
	because when we see the real possibilities of life,	14:24
	we discover that we want to cast off the hatred,	14:28
	the bitterness, the anger, the sin	14:32
	that divides us, that separates us from God	14:36
	and from one another.	14:39
	Karl Barth, the noted, Swiss theologian once said,	14:42
	"repent not because you must, but because you may."	14:45
	We're invited to repent	14:51
	as the way we prepare ourselves for the feast,	14:54
	the party.	14:59
	Well I have a confession	15:02
	my confession is that I like to do something somewhat	15:05
	mischievous during the month of May,	15:08
	I like to go out to nice restaurants on Friday	15:11
	and Saturday nights when junior	15:14
	and senior prom's are being held,	15:16
	to sit off in the corner of one of those nice restaurants	15:19
	and just watch as the high school juniors	15:22
	and seniors come in, dressed in their finest	15:25
	to eat a wonderful dinner before they go to the prom.	15:29
	I like to do it because these are kids	15:33
	I've seen all through the rest of the year	15:35
	with baseball hats on backwards and shorts and T-shirts	15:38
	and giving each other grief and dissing one another	15:41
	and lo and behold, on that Saturday night there they are	15:46
	eating with the right fork,	15:51
	offering each other the food before they eat it themselves,	15:55
	pulling out chairs for one another,	16:01
	it's a marvel, close to a miracle.	16:05
	And then you begin to think	16:11
	how long these kids have spent preparing for that night,	16:13
	the tuxes and the dresses,	16:18
	the excitement that they've had	16:20
	about preparing for that night to impress one another,	16:22
	it's a celebration.	16:26
	Well if people would devote that much preparation,	16:31
	to getting ready for a dance,	16:35
	a party,	16:39
	imagine how much more we need to prepare	16:44
	to live in God's kingdom.	16:47
	If we really want to be in the presence of God	16:50
	then we need to be putting on our finest,	16:56
	to casting off all that which ordinarily divides us,	16:59
	the hatred, the hostility, the anger, the bitterness,	17:04
	but not just for one night of a dance,	17:11
	but to changing the habits of our lives	17:16
	so that habits of hatred, become the gift of love,	17:20
	habits of bitterness, become a gift of gentleness	17:25
	and kindness and forgiveness,	17:29
	habits of injustice become gifts of justice	17:33
	as we bear witness to the God whom Jonah saw so clearly	17:37
	a God of steadfast love,	17:43
	grace and mercy.	17:46
	Immediately after Jesus' announcement,	17:51
	that the kingdom of God is drawn near	17:55
	he calls disciples,	17:57
	and as Mark tells it,	18:01
	immediately they leave their nets to follow him.	18:03
	Not because of who they are,	18:08
	but because of who Jesus is.	18:12
	They embark on a new life, of learning what it means	18:16
	to live in God's kingdom.	18:20
	It takes time.	18:24
	It requires the support of others	18:26
	but immediately they followed him.	18:30
	We are invited this morning	18:35
	to celebrate Holy Communion	18:39
	a sign of the feast of God's kingdom.	18:42
	Come, not because you must,	18:48
	but because you may.	18:53
	Come, not because of who you are	18:55
	or what you have done,	19:01
	but because Christ has invited you, to follow him.	19:03
	Come, not because you are full and satisfied,	19:08
	but because you are hungry and thirsty.	19:14
	Come because the feast that God has prepared for us	19:19
	will give us life and nourishment	19:26
	and expand the horizons of grace,	19:30
	to touch those whom we love	19:34
	and those whom we used to hate.	19:38
	Come to the feast of our Lord.	19:42

Item Info

Title:

L. Gregory Jones - "You've Got to Be Kidding" (January 23, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: 01:13. Sermon end time: 19:46.
Jonah's anger at the repentance and reconciliation offered his enemies consumed him; it was a feast prepared of his own body. But God offers us a different feast, one prepared of the body of Jesus. In order to prepare ourselves for this feast in the Kingdom of God, however, we must change the habits of ourlives, casting aside hatred and bitterness and clothing ourselves in love through repentance. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “Repentance is a gift that comes from God. Because, when we see the real possibilities of life, we discover that we want to cast off the hatred, the bitterness, the anger, the sin that divides us, that separates us from God and from one another.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4j38kz34

Date:

January 23, 2000

Speaker:

Jones, L. Gregory

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 CS-0995
ref10147_gu1
uachapelsermaud
duke:321137
dcrau001639
ark:/87924/r4j38kz34
63f9904d-05f4-4ef1-b637-47127373241f

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L. Gregory Jones - "You've Got to Be Kidding" (January 23, 2000)

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