Urgency

3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Jonah 3; Mark 1:14-20; 1st Corinthians 7:29-31

I’ve been watching a lot of basketball lately. You can tell by my voice – you sit too close to Dr. Pontious, and you’re likely to get caught up in the vocal frenzy coming from the stands at every errant call the officials in High School basketball make. And believe me; they make a lot of errant calls.

Anyway, the Plainsmen are exciting to watch this year, and I’ve tried to make as many games as possible. Last Tuesday, they played Edmond Memorial in a great game. Our boys led throughout the entire game, but late in the 4th quarter, the Bulldogs started catching up. They cut down the lead to virtually nothing. Then our boys jumped back ahead, and it was then that I noticed Edmond’s urgency. We scored, and their team hustled – and I mean hustled down the court. They had to – time was running out.

All of our scriptures this morning let us in on one of the great “epiphanies” of the new year – time is running out. And everybody knows it.

In the little book of Jonah, we get an inkling of the urgency God feels in sharing His message with the world. Jonah’s sitting on the beach in a pile of whale – how shall we say it – “spit up?” When you’re talking about a whale, I hardly think you can call it “spit up!!” I think the scriptures actually say that the whale “vomited” Jonah up on the beach. I’m spending a few moments commenting on this because this subject always gets the attention of older children and Junior High boys, and I certainly want their attention this morning. Anyway, Jonah’s sitting in a mess, and the scripture tells us “the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying . . .”

I don’t know the last time God spoke to you about something important. But the question is – did He have to come back and speak to you a second time about the matter? Did God have to get your attention the way He got Jonah’s attention?

Jonah got up. God got his attention, and Jonah got up, and went to Nineveh. It took him three days to walk all the way across the city – I suspect Nineveh was about the size of Houston today – roughly 60 miles across. Jonah walked all the way across the city with a message of doom – “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Not what you’d call a “winsome” sermon – Jonah was in a pout, and he wasn’t going to do one thing more than God had instructed him to do. So he told them God was going to zap them, and that’s all he had to say. To remind us of the end of the story, his preaching worked, the people repented, God relented, and Jonah pouted some more. Chapter 4 tells us how God had to teach Jonah a lesson about pouting and obedience – something about a worm and a gourd vine. Yeah, Jonah was quite a character. But he picked up on the urgency God felt to get His message to the Ninevites.

You can sense the urgency in Jesus’ voice when he calls Simon, Andrew, James and John – all four fishermen. The first part of our chapter from Mark reminds us that “after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time if fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” Then twice in the rest of the passage, Marks reminds us that “immediately” they left their nets and followed Jesus. Jesus sensed an urgency about his mission, and the disciples picked up on that same urgency. They dropped everything – and they followed.

When’s the last time you felt that kind of urgency about following Jesus. Jesus still calls us – I suspect Jesus issues some kind of call on our lives with some regularity. I know He calls to me regularly. God calls to all of us. Sometimes we are hard of hearing when God calls. Sometimes our ears are otherwise occupied – we’re listening to other noises and other calls. Sometimes our ears are disinterested in the call of God – we’ve heard this call before, and we know that it will cost us something to listen and heed the call of God. Sometimes we’re flat disobedient to the call of God – we have other priorities – we have other interests – we have other missions – we have other relationships – and we’re flat disobedient. God keeps calling – ever calling.

Paul understood this urgency when he wrote to the Corinthians. He was writing about other interests – marriage, to be specific. And then he used that opportunity to remind us that the time is short. “Brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short,” he says. And then he says, “for the present form of this world is passing away.” Paul understood that there was urgency to the call of God – to the amount of time that was left to spread the message of God. He said that the time had “grown short” – that the world “is” – present tense – passing away.

You and I have a problem with this kind of urgency. We don’t seem to possess the kind of urgency about spreading the gospel that the scriptures suggest. I think there are a couple of reasons. Christ’s ministry on earth didn’t occur in front of us – we didn’t watch his ministry. We read about it. We listen to others tell about it. But we didn’t see it, and we didn’t hear Him speak to us, and so, for whatever reason, we don’t sense the same urgency. The second reason may be this - we don’t have any experience that proves it to be true. Not really. We were a part of the seventies when Hal Lindsey came out with his book, “The Late, Great, Planet Earth.” Hal tried to scare the begeebers out of us by setting forth an interpretation of how the end of the world would come about. He was just sure that it was going to happen soon, and thousands upon thousands of people came to Christ “because the end was near, and they wouldn’t have a second chance.” But Jesus didn’t come back in the seventies, and He didn’t come back in the eighties when Jim Jones dragged a bunch of folks off to Guyana to drink the Kool-aid, and Jesus didn’t come back in the nineties when the stock market took a dive and the end of the millennium was rolling around. And now, Jesus hasn’t come back in the first years of the 21st century. No, we don’t have any experience with anything that would make us feel the urgency that God and Jonah and Jesus and Paul felt in our scriptures for today. In fact, if we have any experience at all, we have 2000 years of experience with the patience of God in holding off on the return of Christ. We have more experience with God’s patience, and urgency takes a back seat to patience just any old time – every time.

I spent some time this week reading back over some of the correspondence I sent and received last year. I was looking for a particular piece of correspondence, and I spent some time looking at some other things I wrote and received last year. Much of last year was consumed with my Dad’s illness, his last days, and his death. I remember the urgency I felt in getting down to Granbury during those last months. I remember needing to get down there and spend some time with him, to check and see how things were going for him and my mother, and to spend some time with him. But that last week, I put him in the hospital on Tuesday, and didn’t sense urgency to get back. I thought I would be able to go back the next week and help make decisions about where Dad would go after he checked out of the hospital. But Dad didn’t check out of the hospital – he died on Friday night. My sense of urgency lapsed, and I missed my chance at one last visit – one last opportunity.

In the same way I would trade almost anything for a chance to talk to Dad again – it’s that same way with the urgency we must feel to share the good news of Jesus. I invoke my grandmother’s word – “must.” We can use less imperative words. We can say “ought to” or “should.” “We ‘ought to’ share the gospel.” “We ‘should’ share the good news.” But my grandmother liked to use the word “must.” It carried more imperative with it. It carries more urgency. “We ‘must’ get busy and tell this lost world that Jesus loves them.” We simply “must.”

I have three other thoughts for us this morning about these scriptures. You’ll notice from all of our scriptures that this is our business. Salvation and redemption are God’s business – that’s for sure. But God has chosen to involve us in His business, and so we are in the gospel sharing business. This calling is not just for some of us. God’s calling to share the gospel is for all Christians. Every man, woman and child who calls upon the name of Christ is also called to share this gospel message. We are certainly called to support missionaries with our finances. Cooperative ministries that take the gospel to difficult places are a good idea. But we are called to share this story personally. Each one of us has a circle of influence that is unique to us. We each have friends – personal friends – who are waiting to hear the gospel from us, whether they know it or not.

There is another thought. In the case of Jonah, and I think a little in the case of the four disciples Jesus called, we are to be obedient – urgently obedient – even when we don’t know exactly why, and even when we don’t agree with God on the matter. We use the twin excuses of not knowing everything and not agreeing on a subject in a variety of applications in our lives. They make pretty convenient excuses. But when it comes to the gospel, and when it comes to obedience in sharing the gospel, they just don’t hold water.

One last thought. Most of us aren’t sure what to tell others about the gospel. Well, I have good news for us. We aren’t responsible for anything except what we know to be true – personally. Mark tells us that Jesus was preaching that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” That’s a pretty good start – when it comes to the gospel. We might say it this way. “I didn’t know about what Jesus did for me. But then someone told me about Jesus, and his life, and his death, and his resurrection - and I trusted Him. My life hasn’t been the same.”

We could tell them that.

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.