I wasn’t a very good student in high school. The teachers would give me assignments and I would put them off until the very last minute. I would then cobble something together and turn it in. More often than not, this got me a grade of C or lower. Sometimes, I wouldn’t do the assignment at all and would suffer the consequences of that; a low grade on a test, or the wrath of the teacher and my mother. It took me a long time to come to understand that doing what was assigned to me was a good path to take. I suppose that if I had learned it a bit earlier, I might have done better in school.
But I was a late maturing young man. I wound up spending nineteen years in school, but that was after my service in the army grew me up and after a career in broadcasting, I went back to college and then to seminary. I’m glad it turned out that way. I think I learned some things outside of my schooling that have helped me in my ministry. I have helped some immature young people because of my experience who identified with me and were willing to listen. I have thanked God more than once for things that I learned on the street.
Reluctance to do what we know we need to do is not limited to young people in school. We all put things off things that we know we need to do because we want to maintain our level of comfort, or because we simply don’t care enough to occupy ourselves with issues that we can more comfortably ignore. This is one of the reasons that our society is left with terrible problems that we are all capable of solving. We recede into a place of comfort rather than push hard for the resolution of issues that trouble us all. How many times have we walked by something that could easily be corrected, but for our own comfort kept silent or did nothing?
When we read about things like this in the paper, we get angry that “something” wasn’t done. I remember the Kitty Genovese case in New York where a whole neighborhood was aware that she was being raped and murdered, but did nothing at all about it. There, in that story are all of us when our need for comfort trumps our faith and we walk on and stay away from moments when our voice or our presence might have made a profound difference in the life of our community or its residents. We can all think of times when we sat back and didn’t act and were appalled at the consequences. I know in my own life that I have kept silent or stayed in the background a number of times when I might have made a great difference. We have all been given gifts by our God for the betterment of our lives and the lives of those around is. Not using those gifts is to keep God’s presence away from moments of consequence.
One of my favorite characters in the bible is Jonah. He was called by God to go to Nineveh to tell them to get into line, stop their evil ways and obey God. Jonah was very reluctant to do that. He escaped by boat and God created a great storm to derail his reluctance. The sailors threw him into the sea to escape the storm’s wrath and Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, and then when he cried out in great distress, God caused Jonah to be spit up by the whale on the shore. Again, God spoke to Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh. Jonah went, preached imminent destruction to the people of that city, and the people responded. They all repented.
God responded by himself repenting of the destruction that he had proposed. That wasn’t enough for Jonah. He became very self-righteous and wanted to see the light show that God had promised. He sat sulking under a bush that God created to give him shade, argued with God and waited, but God caused a worm to attack the bush and it died. Jonah cried out to God and said that he wanted to die because he had lost the plant and was baking in the sun. God confronted him about this and said to Jonah:
You pity the plant, for which you did not labor,
nor did you make it grow, which came into being
in a night and perished in a night. And should
I not pity Nineveh, that great city…?
Jonah was reluctant to do what God had asked him to do, but God was persistent in his requirement and Jonah ultimately had no choice. But God had a choice when it came to the people of Nineveh after they repented of their evil. There was no longer any need for destruction. The reason for Jonah’s anger was his selfish need for his own entertainment and a lack of empathy for the people of Nineveh.
Not long after his baptism by John, Jesus went along the Sea of Galilee and began to choose his disciples. He called Peter and Andrew, also James and John, the sons of Zebedee and they immediately left their nets and followed him. I know that there must have been a look in his eye that compelled them, but the operative word in this story is immediately. What we are told is that those four men went immediately with Jesus. A great start to their discipleship, which for most of them ended with their deaths, but also with the spreading of the Gospel that is with us to this day. What we all have in our lives is because of the willingness of those followers of Jesus to leave everything and to go with him. Can we follow them, and without reluctance give of ourselves to do what we can for those whom we meet who are in great need? This is the way that God’s Kingdom is made real in this world
No comments:
Post a Comment