<html><body><div>It's going to be a busy week, so I'm glad I got a head-start on this draft.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY b</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>JONAH 3:1-5, 10<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>20<sup>th</sup> JANUARY, 2018</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>I CORINTHIANS 7:29-31<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 62:6-14</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MARK 1:14-20</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Why did you do it?” may well be the first question I’d like to ask when I get to whatever heaven is, and perhaps it doesn’t really matter too much with whom I meet first.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You might pick just about anyone to engage in this conversation, but it might result in a very engrossing chat if you started with John the Baptist. Granted, he’s only been arrested when we heard Peggy read the story, but we know what’s ahead. The point is, so did John the Baptist. Preaching, group speaker meetings, baptizing, working out of desert-like terrain, John must have learned early on how his life an vocation from God was going to irritate the governmental and religious authorities no end. After all, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HE</u></b> put listening to God, responding to God, loving what God called him to do; John put all these ahead of absolutely everything else, including his own safety and comfort.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It doesn’t really matter in what era one lived or lives, governments don’t generally like being shown up or taken to task, and when the spear gathers a crowd who seem to find that person brings up some pretty good points, things can get pretty hot. So if John the Baptist was aware of all of this, why <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DID</u></b> he do it? Did he really <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WANT</u></b> to shorten his life?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You could say the same about Jonah. You know at least the main details of the story. God wanted to find a way to help the of Nineveh to come to their senses, so God contacted Jonah.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Jonah, however, was so caught up in his own way of thinking and his own prejudices, so self-sure, so isolationist, that he ran a mile – many miles, in fact – in the other direction. The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>LAST</u></b> thing he wanted for the Ninevites to get even the slightest chance to change their attitudes and behavior. “Why on earth should I bother with talking to them, far less pray for those whom I despise,” he must have thought.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Well, Jonah not only ran in trouble himself, he endangered also all those around him because of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HIS</u></b> attitude and behaviour, his blindness to compassion and understanding about the way that God operated. Fortunately, in the midst of all sorts of storms, he told everyone to jettison him in order to save themselves, and that was the start of Jonah’s own redemption.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Why did he do that? Who knows for sure, but, shortly afterwards, Jonah discovered that God is a God of multiple chances. So Jonah would up preaching to the entire citizenry of Nineveh, finding out that he wasn’t the only one to whom God showed love and offered help.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Or go back to the Gospel story. Surely Jesus was aware that what was happening to John the Baptist was certain to happen to Him. Sure Jesus knew what happens when you speak out. Surely Jesus knew what happens when you spend the bulk of your time being present for and encouraging to exactly the people that the government and the religious authorities wanted to suppress, if not remove entirely. Yet <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HIS</u></b> action was packed picked up from the example of John, no matter what the risks, no matter what the cost to Jesus. Why did He do it?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And the disciples – last week we heard about Philip and Nathanael, this week we hear about Simon and Andrew, and James and John. There are some who suggest that at least a few of those to whom Jesus extended an invitation to ministry had been associated first with John the Baptist. They would have had to have been pretty dense NOT to have known what happened to John and how similar the beginning of Jesus’ ministry looked. Yet each of these four, along with the other two from last week; each of them, for whatever reason, threw caution to the wind and dropped everything to follow Jesus – Jesus Himself, as I said, walking down exactly the same road that His cousin Joh had taken.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Why did Jonah; why did John the Baptist; why did Jesus; why did Sin and Andrew, James and John – why did they all do what they did?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It just doesn’t seem to make any sense, especially when you consider that their times were just as anxious as are ours today.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If I could get all of these people together for a short meeting, I’d <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>LOVE</u></b> to hear how they’d explain what they were thinking and why they acted as they did. I’d guess that there would be differences in their stories, as well as similarities. All of them came from different places. They all had to overcome fears and prejudices. They all had to, at the least, run through in their minds what might happen to them as a result of what they did. And, apart from Joh=nah, they didn’t have the luxury or benefit of some sort of experience of relief and a rest of their lives before each set out. It’s just possible that some of those of whom we heard in the Gospel reading, as well as others described elsewhere in the New Testament, were aware of the story of Jonah. There are two references in Matthew’s and one in Luke’s Gospels to this parable.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Why <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DID</u></b> they all behave like that? Did they lack some instinct of self-preservation? Were they simple folk who didn’t think through the consequences of what they said and did, and with whom they went to dinner? It’s not just risky. It seems downright foolhardy and, if you consider that each of them were well-versed in the understanding that life came from God, and the resources and talents with which one was endowed were a Divine gift, then some might even have accused them of blasphemy.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet they <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DID</u></b> do what they did, to the intense anger of those who liked to think that they held the reins of power, and could belittle, or abuse, or even kill those who crossed them. Just think of Herod who arrested John the Baptist, for instance. And think of those who’ve engaged God’s children down through the ages, from before Moses’ time to our own. Earlier this week, we remembered with intense gratitude the willingness of Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak out, to walk, to march, to preach, to confront with the word of the Gospel, all who’d try to belittle any group of Jesus’ sisters and brothers. He pointed a finger directly at those who abused power, who tried to control minds and make them conform to their own warped way of thinking.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><br></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><br></span></span></p></div></body></html>