SERMON RSVP's

Epiphany 3 (B) (2009):

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

Promptly responding to invitations is something that I am always aware that I should do. And now and then fail to do. I remember a particularly glaring failure a few years ago when an out-of-state friend wrote to ask us if we could join them for dinner when they came to Chicago. "Rsvp," the letter said. My first thought when we received the letter was that we might be on vacation. So I mentally shelved our friend's invitation until we knew what our plans would be. Then I completely forgot that she had written. I did not rsvp.

Several weeks later, I received an e-mail message from our friend, one I have saved. "Either my letter to you went astray," she wrote, or, she continued, "you are derelict!" What could I say? The letter did not go astray. I e-mailed her back that I was guilty as charged. But I was left wondering why I had not responded. And feeling guilty that I hadn't. (The relationship has not been the same since.)

This morning we hear about such responses -- the rsvp's -- rsvp's to messages conveyed and invitations extended. At first glance, both Jonah's prompt response to God's command to go Nineveh and, especially, the immediate responses of Simon and Andrew and James and John to Jesus' command to "follow me" are not only etiquette perfect in terms of timing, but the right responses as well. They are exemplary. Right?

Well, actually, what we just heard about Jonah this morning is a little misleading. What we hear is Jonah's response to the Lord God's second request that he go Nineveh.

Before that request Jonah, was asked a first time to go to Nineveh. He was like me and our friend. He did not rsvp. He may have had qualms about telling the 120,000 inhabitants of a great foreign city that they would be destroyed. Whatever the reason, he ducked out of responding and headed for Joppa where he got a boat for Tarshish. Which would have been fine except his failure to rsvp to the Nineveh invitation had not gone unnoticed.

What happens because of his failure to rsvp is that the Lord God causes a terrible storm to come up. It dawns on all the non-Jewish sailors on the boat that Jonah's God might have something to do with the storm. At Jonah's invitation, they finally throw him overboard. Which stops the storm but lands Jonah in the belly of a great fish -- saved because the non-Jewish sailors who had thrown him overboard pray to the God whom they now recognized is the God and ask that Jonah's life be spared.

From the fish's belly, Jonah prays a psalm of deliverance. Three days later, the Lord speaks to the fish and we are told, "it spew[s] Jonah out upon the dry land." And this is where we pick up today. Is it any wonder then that Jonah promptly rsvp's to the second invitation to go to Nineveh? That he begins preaching to the inhabitants even before he reaches the center of the city? Or that the people listen to this survivor of three days in a fish's belly? (His appearance must have been rather frightening to say the least.)

Jonah's rsvp may be tardy in terms of when he was first asked, but it is correct and perfectly understandable. Not completely unlike my e-mail telling our friend that, of course, we would love to have dinner when they're in Chicago.

But what about the responses of Andrew and Simon and James and John in Mark's gospel? There they are fisherman, and Jesus, a perfect stranger, comes along and says, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people," and off they go. No running off, like Jonah, to avoid responding. No second thoughts. No ulterior motives. Pure selflessness. They are asked; they drop their nets, off they go. All very straightforward.

Well, maybe not so straightforward.

John's gospel suggests Jesus was no a stranger. According to John's gospel, Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist. Andrew is steered to Jesus by the Baptist himself. Andrew does not follow Jesus or tell his brother Simon (who became Peter) about Jesus until he and another Baptist disciple have spent time with Jesus. Chances are that Andrew knew Jesus before the call.

And Peter and Zebedee's sons would have known about him. John the Baptist had been a big and important figure in Palestine. He had baptized Jesus, and in all likelihood, Jesus had been John the Baptist's follower before John's arrest. Given a culture where news traveled quickly, there can be little doubt that not only Andrew but Peter and James and John would have heard of, if not met, Jesus before his invitation to join them.

Even so, what is really intriguing is why the positive rsvp. Why the dropping of real nets to become fishers of people -- whatever that might mean. The reasons are not so straightforward or obvious either.

They are not obvious or straightforward because family was a big deal in first century Palestine. One was defined by family. One did not willy-nilly leave one's family. Ever. Yet that is exactly what Jesus asks of Andrew and Peter and James and John. And that's exactly what they do.

But it's not only the abandoning of family that makes their rsvp intriguing. Fishing was a big business on the Sea of Galilee. Mark, who is sparing and deliberate in the details he provides, tells us that James and John leave their father in the fishing boat with the hired help. Hired help? Yes, hired help.

This is no one-man or ma and pop operation. This is the blue-chip enterprise of Zebedee & Sons, purveyors of fish. And on that day, "Zebedee & Sons" lost the "Sons" part of the business. But -- and this could be the most intriguing part of the whole thing -- Zebedee is not out there trying to stop his sons from rsvp-ing "yes" to Jesus' invitation. He is willing to give up the economic edge of having his sons staying to haul in nets and help run the business.

In all probability, Andrew and Peter left a similar family business (Matthew tells us that their father's name was Jonah). And it's here that we realize that Andrew and Peter and James and John, apparently with their families' blessings, rsvp to Jesus' invitation for reasons very different than those for which they thought they were asked.

As we just heard, Jesus was preaching that the kingdom of God was near. The "kingdom of God" -- God's reign -- meant a lot of different things to different people living in occupied Palestine in the first century. But to most it meant God's liberation from those who held Palestine and God's people in political and economic bondage.

This was a particularly acute issue for Zebedee & Sons and the other fishing businesses like Jonah & Sons on the Sea of Galilee. These businesses contracted with foreign investors to provide fish for payment in cash or processed fished. First century records show that payment was frequently irregular and inadequate. What's more fishing was part of the tax network. The despised toll collectors like Matthew leased fishing rights to these businesses in return for a percentage of the catch, sometimes as high 40 percent.

Small wonder that Andrew and Peter and James and John immediately rsvp yes to the charismatic artisan from Nazareth who had been John the Baptist's disciple. Jesus had all the earmarks of a social revolutionary. Small wonder that their fathers do not object. Their livelihood was at stake.

But then, of course, it turned out that Jesus was about something bigger. About more than just economic and political reform (although what he was about touched on both). And, despite themselves and despite their probably having rsvp'd to Jesus' invitation for all the wrong reasons, Andrew and Peter, and James and John, fishermen all, are themselves hooked.

And what they are hooked on is a kingdom of God that will be for all people. For the poor and the outcasts. Outcasts like Matthew and the other tax collectors. For Jonah's foreign sailors and the inhabitants of Nineveh as well as for Palestinian Jews like themselves. It is about the revelation of the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the man Jesus. The revelation of a God of compassion and love who spares the city of Nineveh when its inhabitants repent. It is about the reign of a God initiated with the death and resurrection of Jesus -- a reign that is both now -- here in this place, here in this community -- and that is to come.

How could Andrew and Peter and James and John have known what they were rsvp-ing to when they left their fathers and their businesses to follow Jesus? The answer is that there is no way that could have known. Just as Jonah could not have known (and did not believe) that the people of Nineveh would be saved.

And that's true of us as well, isn't it? By our very presence here this morning, we are rsvp-ing "yes" to an invitation and call that we will never fully understand. Like Andrew and Peter and James and John, we may be responding by being here for all the wrong reasons theologically. No matter. The call is real. God's grace is real. And because of that call and grace, we share a fellowship and a meal that are a foretaste of the feast to come -- a fellowship and a meal that equip us to be the disciples of the living God whom we are called to be. Here. In the world. For one another. For others. Now. Amen

January 25, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago, Illinois