Selected Sermons

January 12, 2003

by Glenn Edward Witmer

Jonah 1: 1-6

[Jonah has run away from God instead of going to preach against the enemy Assyrians. During the violent sea storm, it is decided to throw him overboard—one person must be sacrificed to save the others. For three days in the bowels of the sea, Jonah rethinks his decision, and in the following resurrection-like emergence again onto dry land, he obeys God's command, and goes to ‘the other.']

"Who Did They Say That He Was?"

Just east of the Lebanese border in northern Israel, by the disputed area between Israel and Syria, is a tall cliff of solid rock. Being so near the snow-topped Mount Hermon, melt-off water has emerged there as gushing springs throughout the ages—several fissures pouring out crystal-fresh water that creates the Jordan River and flows south into the Sea of Galilee.

Probably it was that imposing rock face, the constant flow of precious water, and the awe-inspiring Hermon soaring in the distance that drew the ancient cultures to honour their deities in this location. It's where Antiochus celebrated his independence war victory over the foreign and pagan oppressors of the Israelites in 150 BCE; the Romans set up statues and temples here, Herod constructed a shrine, and added more buildings, then named the site Caesaria Philippi after his Roman patron.

In the face of the political significance and extensive religious cultic practices centred there, it is curious that Jesus also visited the place, along with his student team. They surely sensed the political and religious symbolism that surrounded them. In just another 40 years, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Roman general, Titus, would come here to celebrate the defeat of the rebellious Jewish zealots.

Just what Jesus and his followers were doing up there we do not know. But as Jesus stared at those symbols of political power and foreign worship, he suddenly threw out a challenging question to his friends: "What are people saying about me? Who do they say that I am?" In Peter's reply, he gets the words right about an anointed messiah, but his concept of what it meant was clearly off. A few verses later Jesus angrily calls Peter a stumbling block to him. The significance of the political and religious symbols was somewhat overpowering in that place.
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Down river in Galilee the towns along the western shore of the lake became the teaching base for Jesus: the seven springs of Tabgha, the Jewish towns of Capernaum and Bethsaida near the top where the Jordan River feeds the lake. From this western side, people have a beautiful view across the water to the Golan on the other side. That was the area of the Decapolis, those pagan, non-Jewish towns that had a more modern Greek-based culture than the traditional orthodoxy of the Jewish side of the lake. They even raised swine, and practised other unclean rituals!

Our Bat Kol Study Group stood on the Golan lookout above the Sea of Galilee at the point where the herds of pigs foraged and later raced, demon-filled, to their death in the sea. On that spot we read the passages from Mark 4 & 5 about Jesus crossing the lake to heal the demoniac he encountered there. That was not just another healing miracle, but a critical lesson that Jesus wanted to teach to his students—and as was his custom, to teach by doing!

It had been a long and tiring day for Jesus—the crowds listening to his parable stories were so large along the lake that he stepped into a boat, pushed away from shore a bit, and taught the multitudes from there. (Mk. 4) He focussed on the nature of the kingdom of God, with stories that he had to explain later to the disciples, we are told. Then he did a strange thing, he made a request that his followers surely could not have comprehended. He said to Peter and the others: "Let's go over to the other side."

The ‘other side'—away from the familiar areas and traditional Jewish towns; the other side where the pagans lived, unclean people who did not respect the rabbinic laws, nor the Sabbath, nor the kosher rules for eating. They ate pork! Orthodox Jews could not go there for fear of becoming impure themselves; God could not dwell among such types... But Jesus asked them to get moving—he knew who was on that side. He was heading into Gentile territory, and was about to make contact with ‘the other.' It was what his mission was all about—stepping outside the boundaries, thinking and working in an inclusive way… Not avoiding, but encountering, ‘the other.' It was what he had announced as the very intent and purpose of his ministry.

A new synagogue has recently been built in the Nazareth Village project, constructed in the style and techniques of the first century. [MC has workers there, Mike and Ginny Hostetler.] It is about 500 metres from the original Nazareth synagogue of Jesus' youth, and calls to mind for visitors Jesus' growing up years in that location, and especially, just after his baptism, that vital speech he made that would launch and define his new ministry. His own orthodox family and friends—the whole neighbourhood—were present that Sabbath, and recognized him as a local boy who made good, who was now entering the public field of teaching. They were impressed: "Isn't this Joseph's son…?"

When Jesus stood to read a passage from the Torah scroll and commented on it during that Sabbath worship time, he focussed on the need to help the poor, the sick, the prisoners, and the oppressed…All good themes, the congregation agreed. We read that the audience approved and spoke well of him. But what followed was the measure of their understanding of the matter. (Mk. 4:24 ff.) As he began to speak of service to the communities outside of their own group, he mentioned the biblical precedent of two famous Hebrew prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who served a needy non-Jewish widow in Zarephat, and a foreign-born leper, Naaman, a Syrian. God did not care only for Jews, it seemed, but also Gentiles, sometimes even giving them priority. That did it! The worshippers rose up as one, and angrily expelled him.

It was the beginning for Jesus—later he would travel to Tyre, well outside of his traditional religious zone, and have that encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman. He dealt with some Romans, and now even crossed over into a pagan Greek area. Jesus was on a track of ministry that wasn't the norm, wasn't understood, and wasn't appreciated by the traditionalists. He clearly felt called to reach out beyond their comfort zone.

A ministry call to go to others—even to those who were ‘the enemy'—was not new in Scripture, and wasn't understood earlier either: Jonah could not imagine why God would want him to preach to the Ninevites, in the capital city of a neighbouring enemy state. The Assyrians were hated and feared, an evil part of the axis of enemies that surrounded the Israelites. If they were as wicked as God was saying to Jonah, why not just destroy them? It had been done before!

In chapter 4 Jonah admits that one of the reasons for not wanting to go and preach in Nineveh was that they might repent and be saved from God's threatened destruction. "I knew you are a gracious and compassionate God," he says, "slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." "God, I was afraid that if they repented, you would not destroy them. But they're not like us…We are the chosen ones!" Indeed, the Ninevites did repent, in sackcloth.
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The disciples set out for the far shore, and Jesus, tired from the day's teaching, went to the back of the boat and lay down to sleep. It would take a couple of hours to sail the 12 kms across. I cannot imagine those disciple sailors being too keen on arriving anyway. What would they do when they reached the far shore? Religious custom forbade their even getting out of the boat and mingling with the locals there. Again, as with Jonah's boat trip, God knew it would take something dramatic to shake them out of their old ways of thinking… He sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to sink. The sailors went to Jesus and said, "Wake up! Don't you care if we drown?" You know the rest of the story: he gets up, calms the waves, and rebukes them for their lack of faith. But, what faith? What were they to have known about him at this point that would be the basis for faith in him on the open raging sea? Little did they know when they called to wake him that they were crying out, as did the sailors on Jonah's boat, to ‘their own God!'

But at that point, they didn't really know who he was. They were terrified and asked one another: "Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him?" They were a reluctant team of religious Jews going to a pagan people. Why bother? WE are the chosen ones of God!

This visit to the other side was Jesus' first missionary journey, a demon-stration to his students that would turn out to be a powerful lesson for their own lives. It didn't matter that they weren't quite able yet to comprehend the full significance of it. You recall in the story that, as Jesus steps out of the boat alone, a demoniac approaches, screaming for help and release. The demons were later sent into a herd of pigs that raced over a cliff to their deaths in the sea. The man who was healed was a non-Jew who had acknowledged Jesus as the Son of the most High God. He wanted to return with Jesus in the boat—he begged to go with him! But here there is recorded the only instance where Jesus says to someone, "Don't come with me. Stay behind." Jesus knew only too well that the orthodox Jews on the west side—the tradition-bound side—would not accept ministry from a non-Jew, someone who was not one of them. They were not ready for that yet! Even the disciples needed more time.

"No," Jesus said to him as he re-entered the boat. "You stay here; go and tell others what the LORD has done for you." [The man must have done precisely that in the nearby city of Hippos—the pagan ‘city on a hill' across the lake from Capernaum. Ancient sources record that one of the delegates at the Council of Nicea centuries later was none other than the Bishop of Hippos.] But the greater message in this episode, I believe, was for the disciples—his students: their mission would also be to ‘the other side'. And in spite of their expectations—perhaps even their hopes—those pagan people would turn to God, and God would receive them.

A pattern was developing in Jesus' ministry:
1 – he had announced his ministry commitment—to ‘the other'—in the ===Nazareth synagogue;
2 – he made a deliberate crossing to the other side of Galilee with his ===disciples, away from their traditional and familiar region;
3 – he would have contact with a Syro-Phoenician woman.

The disciples were not getting it. A strong leader who would lead Israel out from under the oppressive foreign rule of pagan foreigners was what they were expecting. They watched for evidence of it in this man; they argued about getting key positions in his kingdom. They would have been happy to join in with our Christmas carol: "Born is the Ki–ng of Is–ra–el!" Yes, a king, a leader! But Luke writes in his nativity account about this same baby, at the time of his circumcision when Simeon prophesied at the Temple. What did the prophet say about him? That this baby boy would become "a light for revelation…to the Gentiles."
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The Assyrian armies were renowned for their cruelty. At times, they would slaughter their enemies and burn their towns to the ground. They also mutilated some of their victims and hung their corpses on stakes to scare the rest of the population into submission. We might forgive Jonah for being afraid to head out for Nineveh on his own to speak about their wickedness. That looked more like a recipe for a quick and brutal end than a pious act of obedience to God. Some also suggest that Jonah was upset and jealous that God's special love for Israel should be squandered on Israel's enemies. How could God love both Israel and Nineveh when they were mortal adversaries? Surely God could not have it both ways. God must take sides with his people. God in his justice was obligated to punish the wicked Assyrians. No one should have to go to a place like that to tell them about God; not a Jew!

When Mark wrote his account of the visit Jesus made with his students to the other side, to the Gentiles, he introduced it with the story of a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee. He knew his readers would immediately connect it with the well-known Jonah account. Mark was painting the same scene, and drawing the same parallels, about their traditional reluctance to deal with the other. "Our God is, well …ours!"—we want a God we can call on to destroy our enemies [anyone who is different from us and challenges our ways]. How could God include them?

When Peter blurted out at Caesaria Philippi, in front of the pagan shrines and power structures of the Romans rulers, that Jesus was the anointed one—[the kind of leader who would lead Israel out of its captivity]—we know he didn't have in mind what we now think of as ‘Messiah.' Later this ‘Son of the Living God' apparently lost some of his appeal and lustre in the house of High Priest Caiaphas when Jesus was under arrest there. Three times Peter added distance in his relationship with Jesus: "I'm not with him,"—"I'm not one of his followers"—"LOOK, MAN, I DON'T KNOW HIM!"

Peter's lessons were hard and long in the learning; but a short time later, on the Galilee shore after the resurrection, a dejected Peter had returned to his fishing boat when Jesus called to him from the shore, "Did you catch anything?" This long-experienced fisherman shook his head. I wonder if in that moment he recalled the first time he heard Jesus call out to him in the boat, and wondered what was meant by the phrase he heard Jesus use—fishers of men? He would go out and catch people!?

"No! We fished all night but caught nothing!"

"Try throwing your nets on the right side of the boat…"

This side…that side…what difference would it make.

But if Peter was looking toward Jesus on the shore at Tabgha, straight across from the city of Hippos on Golan, the ‘right-hand' side of the boat was ‘the other side'."

For a fisherman, there was no difference…

For a fisher of men, it made all the difference in the world. Once he fished on the other side, the catch would almost be greater than he could manage. Peter needed to break out of the traditional mould where he had felt so comfortable. It would take more lessons yet—like the vision of a sheet full of forbidden animals in Joppa, the place where Jonah set sail—before he would understand. But the lessons were beginning to sink in.

On the shore during breakfast with Jesus that morning, Peter heard Jesus state it more clearly still. This same Peter who had three times denied even knowing Jesus, was now facing his LORD across the little fire.

"Do you love me, Peter?" …"Yes, I love you."

Twice he was asked, and Peter winced at the very thought of the question. "Feed my sheep, Peter. Care for my loved ones."

The third time, though, was too much for Peter…he may not have got the symbolism of this third repetition, "Do you love me?" Peter was hurt to think that Jesus would need to ask him a third time. The commentarists don't make a big point of it, but I find it interesting that the Greek makes a change in the word translated as love in this passage. We know about eros/physical love, filia/brotherly love, and agape/God-breathed love in the Greek vocabulary. So for me there is something profound when in the Greek text Jesus twice asks Peter about the agape/love relationship they have, but the third time he asks, poignantly, "Peter, do you filia me?"

Our love for God is measured by our love and service to others. The vertical love-source is the ideal in concept, but the expression of it must be on the horizontal, reaching out for those around us… our enemies… those who are not part of our tradition, or beliefs. Jonah came to understand that. Peter and the apostles had to learn it.

Who do you say that he is…for you? When the Great Commission directive was given, it was to go into all the world and make talmidim/students!—that's what the word means in the original: students of the Master! We are called to be his ‘students', to follow his example as one who came to serve—serve all, including ‘the other'.

Today… he invites us to go and do likewise!