Epiphany week 3

Psalm: Psalm 62:5-12
Old Testament: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Gospel: Mark 1:14-20
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Welcome to week 3 of Epiphany.  This week’s readings present some interesting problems and connections to be made.  Sometimes I have to question the lectionary choices.  But, I also think of the beauty and gift we have to read the whole Scripture and to see how the Bible speaks to us as well to itself.

Our Psalm this week praises God as the God of Salvation.  God is the only one in whom we can place our trust.  Our reading is verses 5-12, but the second half of the Psalm repeats itself often word for word from the first half, emphasizing the importance of what was just said.  In this case, God is the God of Salvation.

It is not difficult to find the theme of salvation in the Bible and Jonah is just such an example.  In Jonah 3 God saves Nineveh from the Judgment they deserved.  Everyone knows the story, so let me just point out two things.  First, Nineveh is so big it takes three days to walk it, but it only takes Jonah one day of walking to reach the people with his message and even the kings repents and goes into mourning.  You have to imagine the whole city spreading the message.  Jonah only reaches 1/3 of the city so that means Jonah’s message is repeated and spread by the Ninevites.  They become evangelists and prophets of God’s message in the same way as Jonah.  Nineveh, a city defined by its evil was ripe for the coming of message of grace and repentance of God.

My second point is that God uses Jonah, a Jew, to bring his message of salvation.  This is a fulfillment of the covenant made to Abraham and repeated throughout Genesis that God would use Abraham’s descendants to bless all people.  Nineveh is saved by God using God’s chosen people.  But Jonah plays the part of wayward Israel perfectly.  He rebels, ignores, and ultimately requires punishment before he obeys God.  When God saves Nineveh, Jonah is mad and jealous that the God of Israel shows to mercy to non-Israelites.  Jonah reenacts the history of Israel in this story at every point.  Israel was supposed to be a blessing, but it so often failed.

I must admit that our New Testament readings seem to have little to do with the Old Testament.  But Mark’s calling of the first disciples points to one connection, that God will call and save who God wants.  It made no sense to call Abraham and his descendants in light of how unfaithful they were.  It made no sense to save wicked undeserving Nineveh.  It also made no sense to call Simon Peter or Andrew to be Jesus’ disciples.  Like we saw last week with Nathaniel in John, Jesus’ disciples weren’t the smartest guys.  They weren’t well educated or powerful, yet God calls them.  The arc of scripture tells the story of a God who saves based not on who deserves it, but on who God has chosen.

Finally 1 Cor. 7 is a difficult chapter to understand in general.  I challenge you to read it this week and see if you can figure out what Paul is trying to say.  If there is anything in the Bible that needs to be taken in context, it’s chapter I Cor. 7.  So don’t take these three verses out of context.  Paul is trying to hold in tension the ideas that time is short and that Jesus will return soon against the understanding that we must still be in the world and serve God.  Paul tells us that we still have a duty to our families just before verse 29.  So when he says that those who are married should live as if they were not married, it is in contradiction with what he says earlier in chapter 7. I don’t know what to do with this except to challenge you to read the chapter this week. 

I have one more observation about reading and interpreting the scripture.  Notice that Paul says some of things are his opinions and some things he thinks are from God.  We might remember this as we read other passages and interpret Scripture.  The Bible was not dictated by the Holy Spirit as the inerrant Word of God.  1 Cor. 7 is just such an example of Paul contradicting himself and trying to make sense of complicated ideas and issues.  It’s better to live in the tension knowing that the Bible sometimes contradicts itself then to try to do exegetical backflips to support the idea the Bible never contradicts itself.  The Bible is true and reveals who God is, (for example a God who saves) but we need to be on guard against bibliolatry and not reading the Bible in the way it was intended.