Episode 1393: A Second Time

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1, 393 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Rob Riopel: I'm Robert Raymond Riopelle and I challenge you to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to improve consistently over time is key.

[00:00:27] And one of the ways to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:40] Scott Maderer: So that we learn to invite again and again. to lay out the rule of hospitality again and again. We don't give up on one another, we don't give up on the community, and we don't give up on ourselves. [00:01:00] Because we follow a God who hasn't given up on any of us. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:11] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:38] In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Jonah chapter 3 verses 1 through 5 and verse 10.

[00:01:48] I share how the question of call isn't one of how many, but one of when, and I also talk with you about how we have to recognize the need for second chances in everyone. [00:02:00] Jonah chapter 3 verses 1 through 5 and verse 10 says, The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.

[00:02:15] So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk, and he cried out, Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

[00:02:39] When God saw what they did, How they turn from their evil ways. God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it. Mark chapter 1 verses 14 through 20 says, Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of [00:03:00] God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

[00:03:04] Repent, and believe in the good news. As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fish for people. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little further, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John, who were in their boats mending the nets.

[00:03:29] Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

[00:03:39] So looking at these two verses in the lectionary and contrasting them, is it, they immediately left their nets and followed him? Or is it, the word of the Lord came a second time? They're both in there, right? But which is it for us? Which [00:04:00] is it for us today? How often Do we really get an immediate response?

[00:04:08] How often do we give an immediate response? It does happen. Sometimes someone's ready. Someone's leaning in already. Someone's itching to get going, just waiting for that one invitation, that one word, that one chance to go. Maybe Peter and Andrew were already thinking about leaving this fishing business behind.

[00:04:30] Maybe James and John were just looking for an excuse to get off their boat and leave their father behind and set off on an adventure. It could be a case of narrative foreshadowing, meaning there were details left out of the story, and we just don't see those other conversations and those other reasons.

[00:04:51] Maybe We should look at what Jesus says right before that, what many called the first sermon by [00:05:00] Jesus, at least in the story of Mark, it is. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven has come near. That's an announcement. Then he makes an invitation, repent and believe the good news. It seems to be, at least at a surface level, a pretty simple and straightforward statement.

[00:05:19] But. Think, then, what happens immediately after? Why does Peter and Andrew and James and John respond so quickly to this invitation? Maybe they did it because it was the right time. See, earlier Jesus says the time is fulfilled, and the word for time there, the word is different than just clock time.

[00:05:46] There's a word chronos, that's the time on the clock, what time of the day it is. And the word that's used here, kyros, is about having the right time or the appropriate time or what we would often call God's [00:06:00] time. It's includes ideas of preparation, of watching, and of waiting, of conversation, and questioning, of planting seeds, and then giving them time to grow.

[00:06:14] Maybe all of this happened, and it's just not included in the text. Or maybe Jesus was listening to the questions that they were asking, and the doubts that they had, the complaints that they were making, at the end of a rather long day of fishing. Maybe Jesus was paying attention to their physical body, their physical condition, but even more the condition of their spirit.

[00:06:39] And that's what made it the right time. The kingdom was near in part because they were open to it. They were ready for the spirit to come and set them on a new path. They were ready to respond. They had hope in their hearts that there would be change. [00:07:00] Maybe they responded because Jesus listened to them first, got to know them, saw them, heard them, and invited them.

[00:07:13] And then the question, the invitation, what did he ask them to do? Repent and believe the good news. It appears maybe they had done something wrong. And actually, though, we are the ones who have a problem with the word repent. We associate it with doing something wrong with sinful acts. And it might mean that in some cases it does mean that, but often it simply means reorient your life.

[00:07:42] Point your life at a new thing. You've been working on things going one direction, and it's time to strive for something else. You need to make a pivot, a change, a turn to a new destination. Have a new set of priorities. [00:08:00] Jesus was asking them to change. That's a pretty big transformation. It's bigger than simply stopping some behavior or habit or stop doing something wrong.

[00:08:12] It's really a massive change in their whole life, making them move towards believing the good news. taking him at his word that this is a call to a new way of living. It turns it into an intellectual mental assent, a proposition of ideas and then an agreement to that, a call to believe. But it's not really meant to just be a head thing.

[00:08:43] It's a whole life thing. It's a way of living. It's looking at a new possibility, putting all of your eggs in one basket. Spending your life on the truth of the gospel. It's all of that, and it's even more. [00:09:00] We often dabble with belief. We skirt around the edges. We nod our heads. We recite the creeds. We judge others.

[00:09:08] We say, look at what they're doing wrong, in a way of making ourselves look like we're better. But instead, Jesus is saying place all of your hopes and dreams in me. Stop worrying about everyone else. Stop worrying about your hopes and your dreams. Just look to me and follow. Of course, Peter, Andrew, James, and John probably didn't get all of this at first.

[00:09:34] In fact, if you keep reading in Mark, it becomes very clear that they didn't really get all of that at first. But they had a glimmer of it, an inkling of it. There was something about this man in Jesus, something about the passion and the invitation and the person that was attractive in a way that they couldn't even describe, and they [00:10:00] seized the moment and followed him, maybe even immediately.

[00:10:05] And we can always hope that's what happens too, that when we reach out to our community, that's their response. But I think often, that's not our response and it's not anyone else's. Instead of leaving the old life behind, we turn and we dive even deeper into what we're already doing. What we already understand.

[00:10:29] But then, maybe, the word from Jonah becomes important. The word of the Lord came. A second time. You're left out of the lectionary. Here is the first call to Jonah. In chapter 1, verse 2, it says, Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. And now, chapter 3, verse 2, Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.

[00:10:59] Kind of the [00:11:00] same message and kind of not there's a get up in the second call and in part if you know the story of Jonah, that's because Jonah at this point is lying on a beach. Being thrown up by a fish, probably implied in here is go take a shower first before you go to the city, but Nineveh is a still a great city.

[00:11:20] Jonah is still called to make a proclamation But the tone has changed and the first one it points out the wickingness and the second call there That's not even hinted at Just go and tell them what I want them to hear. Maybe that hard message in the first time that Jonah was called was more for Jonah than it was for Nineveh.

[00:11:48] Jonah, it's clear, doesn't want the job. He doesn't like Nineveh. He doesn't want to go there. And in this case, he does. He runs away. He hits the [00:12:00] waves. He gets on a ship. But after there's been A moment of chastisement, God ask him again, and Jonah goes at least partway into the city. When you think about passages like this, we often need to think, who are we in the story?

[00:12:23] And if we're honest, we usually identify with Jonah in this story. It's our story, at least it's my story. And it's good to be honest and admit that, but Jonah's book is also calling us to be not like Jonah, but more like the God who's sending Jonah, the God who believes in second chances, the one who doesn't give up on issuing the invitation, even when the response isn't what was hoped for, the God who asks again and again, so that we learn to invite [00:13:00] again, And again, to lay out the rule of hospitality again and again, we don't give up on one another.

[00:13:10] We don't give up on the community and we don't give up on ourselves because we follow a God who hasn't given up on any of us. Thanks for listening.

[00:13:28] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook. com slash inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and mark it.

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