Third Sunday After the Epiphany, January 21, 2024: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20; Psalm 62:6-14
Today we are asked how well we listen. What do we hear, and what do we do with what we hear? We are not, as a society, very good at listening, especially to things we do not want to hear. So today’s readings speak in a very real way to the world we live in.
We start with Jonah. Having rescued Jonah from the whale, the Lord sends him to the city of Nineveh to warn of impending doom: in forty days, the city would be destroyed. In case you’d forgotten, the reason Jonah ends up in the whale is that the Lord wanted to send him to Nineveh, and he ran away. This time, Jonah does as he is told. He listens to the Lord.
Much to Jonah’s surprise (and probably to the Lord’s) the people of Nineveh listen the first time. They put on sackcloth, and they repented. In the section our lectionary leaves out, we hear that the King puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes, and calls for everyone to fast. And the Lord changed his mind: Nineveh is not destroyed. The people of Nineveh had listened and acted.
In our gospel reading, we also know people are listening. Mark tells us of the process by which Jesus gathered those we know as his disciples. He sees Simon and Andrew, and calls them, offering to make them fishers of people. And apparently without pausing, they joined him. Soon he sees James and John, and calls to them, and they too leave, abandoning their father to finish mending the nets.
It’s a bit shocking in our modern world to read of those who took what turned out to be momentous decisions wihtout apparently hesitating. Most of us would think of all our obligations and sort out those before throwing it all up and following some rando who offers to change our lives.
In our lives, the calls we receive are less dramatic. We don’t normally have to go sit in sackcloth on ashes to get through troubles. We are not usually called to abandon work and family to serve God. But we may hear other, less dramatic calls. What does it take to hear them? Do we listen? Do we act?