Following The Call

January 21, 2024

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Mark 1:14-20

Following the Call

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Bob had been ice fishing all morning without any luck. He decided he’d had enough and started to pack up his gear. Just as he was gathering his things, this old guy trudges onto the ice.

The old guy doesn’t say a word, but he nods his head in greeting to Bob. Bob watches as the guy drills a hole not more than a few feet from Bob’s hole. He drops his line in the water, and just like that, he catches a fish!

He took the fish off his line, coughed a bit and then he baited his hook a second time. In goes the hook, and within just a few seconds, another fish grabs his line!

This sequence repeats several more times in as many minutes. Bob can’t believe it. He’s been there all morning and didn’t even get a nibble!

He asks the old guy, “Hey, the fish can’t wait to take your bait. What’s your secret?”

The old man answered, “Woohattakipowrmwm.”

“What?” Bob asked, “What did you say?”

The old man held out his hands, spit a mouthful of worms into them and said, “You have to keep your worms warm.”

Today we hear two fishing stories. In the gospel reading, Jesus invites four fishermen to follow him. “Follow me,” he says, “And I’ll have you fishing for people.”

The other story is from the book of Jonah. And in this story, a fish is the one who goes fishing for a man!

These two stories both involve fish and fishing. But they have something more important in common. Both of them involve God calling someone into action and service. And each story reveals some important dynamics for our own sense of calling in the world.

Let’s look at the Jonah story first. Our reading tunes in after all the dramatic events have occurred. Jonah has been to sea; he was thrown overboard; the fish swallowed him and it’s just spit him up on shore.

Our reading begins, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a SECOND time.” This isn’t the first time God called Jonah. That’s what started the whole crazy cycle. God called Jonah to go speak to the city of Nineveh. But Jonah refused to do it. He went in the opposite direction from that great city. He went as far as he could.

But for some reason, God wouldn’t take no for an answer.

You’d think there would be some other person – just one other individual within the whole kingdom of Judah – that God could have called besides Jonah!

Jonah hated the Ninevites, the capital of the great kingdom of Assyria. The Assyrians had crushed the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They’d completely destroyed them and marched the survivors into slavery and exile. Jonah hated them for what they’d done. That’s why he doesn’t want anything to do with God’s plan.

Nevertheless, God doesn’t give up on Jonah. God is insistent that Jonah be the one who delivers this message.

Why? Why Jonah? Why not somebody else? Was this mission, perhaps, just as much about Jonah as it was the Ninevites? Did Jonah stand to benefit as much as the people of Nineveh?

Jonah was consumed by hatred and raging anger. It’s not any way to live. The Buddha once said, “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who ends up getting burned.”

The book of Jonah ends with Jonah in a hot rage. He’s sitting on the outskirts of Nineveh waiting for God to smite the city. And when the destruction doesn’t come, Jonah rages against God. God plies Jonah with a question, “Why shouldn’t I have mercy on Nineveh, that great city, with 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left?”

The story ends right there, without a response from Jonah. It ends with the ball in Jonah’s court. And that’s how we know the story is really about Jonah. It ends with him, not the Ninevites. The story is about him and God.

Might God sometimes have a special assignment for you or for me? One that’s meant just as much for our sake as it is for the outward target of our calling?

When the unpleasant call comes our way, and it keeps circling back like an unwanted boomerang, even when we refuse it – could it be inviting us into a deeper calling? Does God have something in mind for us? It’s worth our consideration.

The four fishermen on the shores of Lake Galilee are quite different from Jonah. Without skipping a beat, they leave everything to follow Jesus. Fishing is their means of making a living. These four fellows leave everything. They leave their business equipment, they leave family. Their response to Jesus’ invitation is immediate. There’s no deliberation, no pondering, no mulling it over or discussion with family. They just get up and follow Jesus!