Third Sunday after Epiphany; 21 January 2024; Epiphany 3B (RCL); Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Psalm 62:6-14; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20.
The first thing I noticed about the readings for this week is that they are all short. And abrupt. Jonah’s sermon in Nineveh has to be the shortest, most successful sermon in historical record — eight words long, and the whole city repents and sits in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus calls Andrew and Simon, James and John, and without question, they leave their nets and fishing, and follow — abruptly. Paul tells us the time is short, and certainly the people in the other readings seem to have heard that message. Act now.
All of this seems unrealistic, and as moderns, we try to psychologize what we read. Surely, this wasn’t the first time Jesus met Andrew and Simon, James and John, and there was something compelling in his person and that relationship that compelled them to follow. Maybe, but Mark doesn’t give us any background. Surely the people of Nineveh had some reason to suspect God was up to something, and Jonah was just the catalyst. Maybe, but the book gives us no hint.
What are the authors trying to communicate? In the passage in Mark, we know that Jesus calls fishermen. Fishermen were pretty far down the socio-economic scale, particularly Simon and Andrew. The own a net (the Greek word implies a round net throw with two hands — the word translates, literally, “two-hands-thrown). In Roman law, the seashore could not be owned, and fish could not be taxed. For anyone with no other way to make a living, fishing was an open opportunity, and the Roman army marched on a kind of preserved, potted fish jelly, so there was always a market.
So, someone shows up announcing a new empire, in which we might fish for people (whatever that might mean), and we own a bunch of string, perhaps we might be inclined to jump at the chance. When Jesus calls James and John, they are mending their nets. It’s a reach, but there might be a hint here. In 1 Corinthians Paul uses that same word, applied to his community. 1 Cor 1:10 reads, “Now I appeal to you brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you speak the same thing, and that there should be no rips among you, but that you be mended into the same mind and purpose.”
In early Christian iconography, both the boat and the net were images used for the Christian community itself. By inviting Simon and Andrew to fish for people, is Jesus perhaps inviting them to gather a new community, and in mending nets, are James and John restoring relationships within that community? That might be compelling, particularly for those pushed to the margins by the current empire.
And notable about the Ninevites’ response is that they responded as one. The whole city put on sack cloth and ashes, a response the Hebrew prophets were never able to achieve in Jerusalem, Judah, or Israel. Nineveh, as the capital of Assyria, would have held a place in the collective memory of the dispersed people of the Northern Kingdom as the cause of their catastrophe. That they should respond to God as we couldn’t, would be a terrible indictment of us. With some wonderfully wry humor, the author of the Book of Jonah not only suggests that we need to look at our own shortcomings (rather than just pointing the finger at Nineveh), but also that God is the God of Nineveh, that great city in which there are one hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle (Jonah 4:11).
All of the readings present their characters (in the case of Jonah and Mark) or their readers (in the case of 1 Corinthians) suggest that we are faced with urgent decisions, and that the choices we make have important consequences. We are urged to consider others in those decisions (the people we will fish for, and the hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle), rather than just ourselves.