St. Andrew’s Pictou, January 22^nd 2006

 

A New Name for Change

 

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Mark 1:14-20

 

Every small place you go local people will say to you things like, “They don’t like change in Pictou County.” They say this as if it would be totally different in the Miramachi, Cape Breton, Owen Sound, or in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

 

Every single one of us has to get used to the idea that nobody likes change, whether they are in Pictou County, whether they are young or old, rich or poor: nobody likes change.

 

I remember as a child in grade four that when my mother started selling cosmetics, she would not be there when I came home from school. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all!

 

Alcoholics don’t like to stop drinking. That’s why AA has such a big job to do.

 

People going to church like to sit in the same pew every Sunday. Churches all over the place are renowned for giving visitors bad looks when they sit in one of those sacred pews. Some of them have been known for even telling the visitor off: “You are sitting in my pew!”

 

Some of us get aggravated when they re-arrange the goods at the store and put them in different places.

 

It therefore goes that we don’t like it when something we use “breaks.” We don’t like it when the car breaks down or the vacuum cleaner breaks down.

 

But… there are some kinds of changes that we do seem to like:

-if we came home from work and found the house cleaned, we would like that unless we have an affinity for complaining and feel that we have been robbed of our opportunity to whine,

-if we came home tired and hungry, we wouldn’t mind if a meal was put in front of us,

-we wouldn’t mind it if we bought an article and found that when scanned, the price had changed downward,

-we don’t mind it if someone does something kind for us when we had expected that they wouldn’t.

 

So it seems that we like changes that we find comforting, but we don’t like changes that make us uncomfortable.

 

What we find in the Bible is that God often calls us out of our comfort zones, into places that we find uncomfortable. That may seem unfair, but we have to state that when God does this, it is for a purpose, and that purpose is always for self-improvement.

 

God calls us into places for our self improvement both individually and as a people; as a community.

 

In the reading from the book of Jonah, God has instructed Jonah to go to a great city by the name of Nineveh and tell the people that they had to get rid of their evil ways or else! This city was so big that it would take you three days to walk across it. He told them that God said that had to shape up or else: if they didn’t improve in 40 days, then the city was would be overthrown.

 

The text says, that “…the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone great and small, put on sackcloth.”

 

Everyone did this, even the king. They all put on sackcloth and fasted for 40 days.

 

“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said that he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.”

 

The people of Nineveh embraced change; they changed their ways. God called them to a more caring and just society. They gave up their evil living an opted to follow God, rather than to be destroyed.

 

There are several lessons we could learn here: people followed God, they followed God under threat of destruction, people chose good over evil, you need to get a big club if you want to get people’s attention, or humble, unwilling Jonah got a lot of power by listening to God. (You can choose whichever message you want.)

 

In the Gospel reading we have individuals making changes:

-John the Baptist had been arrested and put in jail,

-Jesus took up the cause preaching about change,

-Four Fishermen, two sets of brothers: Simon and Andrew and brothers James and John, on hearing Jesus’ invitation to follow him left their nets, (that is: they left their full time jobs) and followed Jesus.

 

We have Jesus, John the Baptist, Simon, Andrew, James and John all making radical changes in their lives.

 

What did they change “to” and what did they change “from?”

 

In the story about Nineveh we were clearly told that the people of the city changed from evil to good, from following evil to following God.

 

In the text from the book of Mark we are told that the changes were about leaving the way that they lived… to following Jesus. The text says, “And immediately…. they followed him.”

 

One could say that these two texts had people change their lives from following a personal agenda to one of following God’s or Jesus’ agenda; from catching fish to fishing for people.

 

Jesus Christ gave us a new word for that kind of change: that word is “Kingdom.” Jesus’ calling to those fishermen and to us is to a kind of thinking and understanding called, “The Kingdom of God.”

 

For Jesus, “the Kingdom of God” was a kind of thinking, a kind of understanding, a kind of Spirituality that emulates, connects, expresses the will, and draws power from God.

 

“The Kingdom of God” is the way God does things: God’s set of rules if you want, although I hate to limit “the kingdom” to a set of rules because it is much more like an attitude, then a set of rules.

 

There are different kinds of changes that you can I can make: changes that give life and changes that destroy life. (One of the children last week said that “Taking drugs will kill you.” obviously a change that destroys life)

 

In considering changes in our lives, consider Jesus’ invitation to enter the kingdom of God: tailor made to enhance, heal, enrich, and improve our lives for the better.

 

In fact he said, “I Came that you might have life and have it to the full.”

 

Entering the Kingdom has a lot to do with “desire,” not what you and I want, but in the deepest depths of who we are to achieve and experience our deepest “desires.”

 

He talked about the Kingdom of God being like a man who sold all that he had to buy a field where treasure had been buried, or a pearl merchant who sold all that he had to buy a pearl of great value. In other words, Jesus was talking about you and I finding something so wonderful in his kingdom that we would sell all that we had to posses it.

 

This man who washed his disciples’ feet offers us something that is worth our whole life:

-a kind of love that serves each other,

-a kind of love that goes on after death,

-a kind of love that is too large to measure, too wonderful to even comprehend,

-a kind of passionate, transformative love that gives eternal life.

 

To follow Christ is to change society, to fish for people, to change people, for their personal glory… and for God’s.

 

There are a lot of scary changes happening in our world; God is our rock solid constant amidst that change.

AMEN       Rev. Alan Stewart