A Lectionary Reflection for the people of Thankful Memorial Episcopal Church for worship from home, January 24, 2021, Year B, 3 Epiphany

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

You may already know that the Episcopal Church follows a three-year lectionary cycle such that we get the same readings from Scripture each Sunday every three years.  For a preacher, this can be limiting as one tries to draw connections between the events of our lives and the preassigned Bible passages for a specific Sunday.  And then, there are times when the connections are so obvious, one hardly feels a sermon is necessary.  Like this:

“And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.  When 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.”

And then there’s this:

“Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”

It seems to me that the fear and discord in our country has never felt so prominent than it has in these past weeks – at least not in my lifetime.  While some may wrongly imagine that the coronavirus pandemic is a plague sent from God to punish us for our sins and goad us to repentance, I believe the contentiousness of our communities is the real plague upon us.  And it is one of our own making. 

Let’s be honest.  We don’t need Jonah walking from coast to coast to tell us how far we’ve gone astray in this time and place.  All we have to do is look around and we will see the consequences of our “evil ways”: the racism, sexism, classism and homophobia built into our systems, the want of civility and dignity in our dealings with friends and strangers alike, the denial of our own sinfulness in order to cling to our pride or further our own ambitions, the idolatry of personalities or ideas over our loyalties to God and each other, the narrowmindedness, hubris, and utter lack of imagination that allow us to think, for even a moment, that my understanding of God’s will and God’s ways is complete and right. 

In the midst of such a mess of our own making, the texts for this Sunday both demand an honest assessment of our wrongdoing and offer hope of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

In one sentence, Jesus demands everything and holds nothing back from us.  “The time is fulfilled,” he says.  Our work is to begin right now.  There is no time to hesitate, no time to reconsider whether or not we will take this leap of faith.  Right now, Jesus invites us into the kingdom of God that “has come near.”  And right now, we must decide, do we want to be part of it?

If your answer to that invitation is no, if it sounds too hard or too scary, if it is just too sudden and too demanding, so be it.  The truth is, it’s your decision to make; God is not in the business of frightening or forcing us into faith.  But, if your answer to the invitation is no, then you can just stop reading the rest of Jesus’ sentence.  You’ll miss the hard part about repentance but you’ll also miss the good news of hope, joy and abundant life and love that are the building blocks of God’s kingdom. 

And if you answer yes?  If your answer to Jesus’ urgent invitation is yes, then come on!  Right now, let us leave behind our fishing nets, our pet projects and our narrow focus on the things that matter only to us and let us broaden our horizons to a world that desperately awaits the good news we have to share. 

Because there really is so much brokenness in this world of ours, in this world of God’s.  So much that is not right within ourselves and so much that is not right within our systems, our communities and our country.  And Jesus speaks into that brokenness: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

He doesn’t sugar coat it for us.  The first step of healing and reconciliation is the hard work of repentance.  It is the assessment of our wrong-doing, our acknowledgement of our sinfulness and our resolve to choose a better way, to be obedient to God’s law of love for others over our love of self. 

Repentance is what the Ninevites do when they “proclaimed a fast and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.”  When the Ninevites are finally confronted with their “evil ways,” they do not deny or defy it; they do not attempt excuses or ignore it.  Rather, they own up to the fact of their brokenness and seek restoration in the only ways they know how, with sackcloth and fasting.     

Now, I checked Amazon and it turns out sackcloth is pretty hard to get these days (burlap’s a lot easier to come by).  But, the truth is, we don’t need sackcloth to do the work of repentance.  All that is required of us is to articulate and acknowledge the roles we have played – each of us as individuals and all of us together – in the deterioration of our communities into places where the least among us can be left behind and forgotten.  And then to change our perspectives and behaviors. 

No, we have no need of sackcloth.  Better that we put on face masks as a sign of the care we take to protect others.  Or gird ourselves with grace when we encounter those with whom we disagree.  And if we are to proclaim a fast, let us fast from name-calling, judgement and derision of others; let us refrain from rhetoric that goes against God’s ways and abstain from partaking in the fearmongering that whips people into frenzies. 

The book of Jonah tells us that when the Ninevites repented, “God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them and he did not do it.”  And, maybe that’s one way to put it.  But Jesus puts it slightly differently: “Repent and believe in the good news,” he says.  If the book of Jonah presents God’s mercy as a response to our repentance, as though God’s compassion is only a consequence of human action, Jesus makes clear that God’s mercy, love and justice are always available to us, and our repentance is only the act of stepping in to these gifts we have already been given. 

Former youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman ended “The Hill We Climb,” her poem for the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris with these words: “When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” 

What Gorman describes is the process of repentance, reconciliation and redemption.  The goodness of God is already there; it always has been and always will be.  All we have to do is turn around and grasp hold of it.  All we have to do is “repent and believe in the good news.”  Amen.