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Click here for PDF: January 24, 2021 – “WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THE TIME YOU HAVE LEFT?”
“WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THE TIME YOU HAVE LEFT?”
The Rev. Victor Kim
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Mark 1:14-20
(01-24-21)
You’ve heard me say before that one of the challenges of being a minister is that sometimes people you don’t know ask you what you do and as a minister you never know how your answer will be received. Today is the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which takes place in January of every year. Some of you will have heard me share this story before but it bears repeating. During one of the services for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity a few years back when I was still in Calgary, then Roman Catholic Bishop of Calgary Fred Henry told a story about a flight he took to Toronto. The Bishop always wore his clerical collar when he traveled, in part because he knew that there were people who have issues with the church and he felt that by identifying himself as a priest, he could serve as someone to whom people could vent their anger and frustrations with the church.
As he sat there in his seat wearing his clerical collar, he saw a woman walking down the aisle of the plane. As she grew nearer, the Bishop noticed that she was carrying a Bible in her arms. He silently prayed, ‘Please Lord, no!’ But as she came closer, he saw her eyes look at the row number above his seat, look at the open seat beside him, and break into a huge smile. As she moved into the seat, she looked at the Bishop and said, ‘Are you a priest?’ ‘Yes,’ said Bishop Henry, ‘I am the Bishop of Calgary.’ ‘Well, may I ask you a question,’ said the woman. ‘Sure,’ said the Bishop. ‘Have you been born again,’ asked the woman to the Bishop.‘Well, I believe that I have been,’ relied Bishop Henry.But the woman wasn’t quite satisfied and she was persistent. ‘But have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?’ The Bishop replied, ‘Yes I have, and you would be pleased to know that this very morning, when I woke up and sat on the side of my bed with my feet touching the ground, I accepted Christ as my Lord and Saviour again.’ He said, ‘I don’t think it’s something you should only do once, in fact, every morning when I wake up, I do the same thing so that I am reminded that its not about some formula that I may recite once, but that my faith is about what I will do as someone who has accepted Jesus as Lord.’ I thought it was a good response. He never did tell us how the rest of the flight went.
Martin E. Marty, a Lutheran minister tells the story of his friend, a fellow Lutheran minister, who was travelling on a flight to Taiwan. Inevitably the minister’s seatmate on the flight asked the question, “So, what do you do?” Marty’s friend was tired of answering that question and knew far too well the response his answer might bring, so he decided that he would shut the conversation down before it even got a chance to get going. “I’m a neurosurgeon,” said the minister. “How interesting,” his seatmate replied. “So am I!”
What people do does interest us, and it’s always better to tell the truth. People are curious about our motivation and how we have come to do what we do, whether it be a neurosurgeon or a minister or anything in between. Bishop Henry’s response to the woman on the airplane emphasised that faith is about what we will do as someone who has accepted Jesus as Lord. For those of us who would call ourselves as disciples of Jesus, as those born anew, born of the Spirit, we know who we are. And if we know who we are, then the question becomes what then will we do with our lives, with the time we have left? Our scriptures this morning tell us of two stories, both call stories, both stories of God’s invitation, one to the prophet Jonah, the other to four fishermen by the Sea of Galilee. As we know, when the call of God came to Jonah, he ran from that call as fast and as far as he could. The call, you see, was to go to Nineveh, The capital city of Israel’s most feared and brutal enemy. The call was to go and proclaim to them that God was angry with them. Jonah didn’t want to go, he didn’t because he knew what would happen. He knew that if he did go and proclaim God’s anger, the people might repent, and Jonah knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing. And Jonah did not want God to relent from punishing the Ninevites. They were his enemy, not just any enemy, but the enemy that would eventually invade and conquer Israel, killing his people, his family, and brutally putting an end to the kingdom. So Jonah doesn’t follow God’s call, he runs away, he stows away in a ship, until the storms force his shipmates, on Jonah’s own advice, to throw him overboard to save themselves from destruction. After three days in the belly of a fish, Jonah repents and is spewed up on to the land. There the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, and this time Jonah listened.
Jesus walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and there he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing their nets into the sea, for they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you fish for people. And immediately, it says, they left their nets and followed Jesus. A little later, Jesus saw James and John, two brothers, the sons of Zebedee. They too were fishermen and Jesus called to them as well. Immediately, they left their father in the boat with the hired men and followed Jesus.
Two call stories. In one, Jonah tries to run away, in the other, the fishermen follow immediately. Where do you fall? What’s been your call story? Do you have one? We all do, you know. Maybe you think, I’ve never been called by God. But maybe you’re like Jonah and you’re running away as fast as you can, even as you come to church or watch a worship service online. Or maybe you’re watching because it’s taken you a couple of times or more before you heard God’s call, or before you responded to it. Or maybe you’re like the disciples in this morning’s text, who only needed to be called once because they knew what the call from Jesus meant.
The call of Jesus to the fishermen to follow him was a call to a life as a disciple. In those days, only the best and the brightest were called to be disciples of a rabbi, to follow him, to be covered in the dust of their rabbi. To be a fisherman was to have been rejected as a possible disciple, because you weren’t smart enough, you weren’t talented enough, you weren’t good enough. But here came Jesus, a rabbi, inviting the not good enough, not talented enough, not smart enough, to follow him, to be covered in his dust. It doesn’t take a second call, you follow immediately. So maybe that’s your story. Jesus called you and redeemed you from whatever it was and whoever it was that told you that you weren’t good enough, good enough to be loved, good enough to be cared for, good enough to matter. Or maybe your call story is different still. I don’t know, but I know you’ve got one, we all do.
But as important as our response to God’s call is, the more important truth is the nature of the One who calls, the One who initiates the conversation with us. God calls us because God loves people and desires to use us, by calling us, to share the good news of that love with as many people as possible. I don’t know why God chooses to use people to get that good news across, I just know that God does, and that the call to us is to be part of God’s plan of salvation. Follow me, said Jesus, and I will make you fish for people. Did you get that? Follow me, not so that you can be saved, but so that you can fish for people. Follow me so that others will get to hear about me, so that others can follow me as well. Every call story is a story to go to others, not just so that we who follow can be saved.
Jonah was called to go to Nineveh. Why does God care so much about Nineveh? They were pagans, idol worshippers, a people of unspeakable cruelty and viciousness. A lot of us, when we try to put ourselves in Jonah’s shoes, would find it almost impossible to understand God’s care for the people of Nineveh. And a lot of us in our own situations today find it hard to understand why God would care about some group or another, or some person that we find objectionable, that we despise, that we think is not deserving of God’s grace, mercy and steadfast love. But if God only did what we could understand and agree with, would God still be God? Would such a God, who only did what we could imagine, be worthy of our worship? If God wouldn’t love the unlovable, the Ninevites and the Ninevites of our lives, what would be different about God from us? But God does love and care for every human being, every person who has been created in God’s image and made in God’s own likeness. God’s ways are not our ways and that’s both the greatest hurdle to our faith and also its greatest hope.
We may refuse God’s call, we may run and hide because it’s just too difficult and we just don’t understand. Or we may follow immediately because we know just how unwarranted the invitation is, but whatever our decision is, the fact is that God won’t stop calling because God never stops loving us. There will be unwelcomed consequences, at least unwelcomed from our point of view. Those we consider undeserving, immoral, unworthy, might hear the good news of God’s love and like the Ninevites, they just might repent. It may not be good news to our ears, we may prefer that those who deserve wrath would receive it, but I get the sense that it would be good news to God.
So this is the God in whose image we are created, whose likeness is in us, whose nature calls us to seek to be like our Creator. This is who we are. So, what will you do? What will you do with the time you have left? It doesn’t matter how young or old you are. I have fewer years left ahead of me than have already past. For some of you that number is really lopsided on the side of the already past. For others, you’ve barely begun the journey. But in the time you have left, as much or as little as it may be, and really who of us really knows, what will you do? Will we admit that God does care about what we do and has a desire for us, a desire to use us to be conduits of his good news, of his saving love, for others, for those around us, no matter how few or how many? Or will we pretend to not hear or run from God? We can’t change our past, but we can follow a different path for our future. The old quote goes like this, sorrow looks back, worry looks around, but faith looks up. I would suggest a slight correction. Faith in a God whose call to follow is always focused on others, doesn’t just look up, it looks ahead, it looks for others.
We are called, all of us, we all have a story of God’s calling. Some are called to be neurosurgeons, some are called to be ministers or priests, thankfully most are not, but we are all called. We are called, not just so that we might know God’s love and grace, but especially so that others will know the love of God and God’s saving grace. The call is to follow Jesus, to follow Jesus in fishing for people. It doesn’t mean just getting people to recite a phrase or a formula. It means to get up each morning, put our feet on the floor and pray that somehow that day, God might use us to impact a life. Maybe it might mean that God uses us to bring a bit of joy to someone who needs to be told that they matter, that they have value, that they’re worthy of love. It might be to bring companionship and company to someone who is isolated because of the pandemic, someone who you’ve been thinking of, maybe even praying for, someone you might just choose to call or even write a letter to. It might be sticking up for someone who needs an ally, a friend. It might mean sharing your story, your sense of call, with someone who is hungry for meaning and purpose and direction in life. It might mean just loving someone who isn’t easy to love. To fish for people means that we allow God to work through us in ways of love and service, justice and compassion, so that someone who doesn’t yet know the love of God for them might come to know that joy and be transformed by the Spirit at work through us.
We all have a call story, Jesus calls each and every one of us. It’s a beautiful and joyous invitation. God’s love and mercy is as wide and as diverse as the creation God has made. As those who know who we are and in whose image we are made, whose likeness we bear, may our love and our nature aspire to be like God’s and may we be willing follow when God comes calling. I can’t think of a better way for any of us to spend the time we have left!
And to God be the glory, now and forevermore, Amen.
Preached by the Rev. Victor Kim on January 24, 2021
at Richmond Presbyterian Church without members
in attendance due to Covid-19 crisis then posted online.