When we feel like running away

RCL Year B, 3 Epiphany Last week I talked about call, how God speaks to us in ways great and small and invites us to follow, sometimes into unknown and scary places. We learn to hear and recognize God’s voice over time, and we shape our lives into how God would have them be. God […]

RCL Year B, 3 Epiphany

Last week I talked about call, how God speaks to us in ways great and small and invites us to follow, sometimes into unknown and scary places. We learn to hear and recognize God’s voice over time, and we shape our lives into how God would have them be. God calls each of us – and as I’ve said before, the greatest quote about that is the one from Frederick Buechner, that our vocation, where God is calling us, is where our own deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.

Well, all of that is true. But today I want to talk about the opposite entirely – when what we really want to say to God is NO. Because more often than not, our response to God is to run the other way – at least for a while.

When I was going through the ordination discernment process as a young adult, I was simultaneously debating whether to return to Europe to live (I’d spent my junior year abroad in France and part of me wished I’d stayed there). When my parish discernment committee would press me too hard on questions I didn’t want to answer, our group code for ‘leave me alone’ was ‘Kate wants to go to Europe now.’ One of my mentors along the way, a successful rector of a large church, told me that his secret escape fantasy, what he would do if he left the priesthood, was to become a greenskeeper for a golf course. Another priest friend on the verge of retirement confided that he wanted to work in a baseball stadium – and indeed, once he retired, he did just that. My escapism shifted away from Europe some time ago, but now I sometimes longingly imagine life as a park ranger.

Now, tell me it’s not just clergy who have these kinds of escape fantasies. Are there some of you who know what I’m talking about? ‘If my life had turned out differently, I’d be a…’ or ‘I’d go live in…’ maybe I could still do it! Yes, ok, some of you know. When things aren’t quite how we want them to be, or in those idle hours when we wonder ‘what if?’ then it’s fun to indulge in these visions. It’s one thing to think about it; it’s another thing altogether when we act on them, of course.

The readings we have today are all about responding ‘yes’ to call. But they’re also about responding with a ‘no,’ or at least the possibility of that. I’m thinking especially of the first one from Jonah. We heard just a part of Jonah’s story today, but of course Jonah is the one who ends up in the belly of the whale, really the big fish, for three days. God has called him as a prophet to go to the city of Israel’s enemies, the Assyrian city of Nineveh, to tell them that Yahweh the God of Israel will destroy them if they don’t repent. Jonah hears this and immediately takes off in the opposite direction, to Tarshish, ‘away from the presence of the Lord.’ This results in God rousing a great storm, which gets Jonah thrown off his ship and swallowed by the fish, where he prays to God for help. The fish spits him out safe and sound. And then God shows up again and tells him again to go to Nineveh – same call, same message. This time Jonah goes, the people of Nineveh hear and repent, and God changes his mind. Jonah is upset at this, since he was really hoping to see the horrible Assyrians destroyed by God. He and God have another fight along these lines, and God rebukes him. God’s mercy is greater than Jonah can take, and Jonah doesn’t really seem to come to terms with this in the end.

So Jonah at first says no to God and tries to escape. When that doesn’t work, he grudgingly says yes, but for the wrong reasons – he goes to Nineveh to watch its downfall, not to help God save its people.  As a prophet of Israel, Jonah behaves pretty poorly. It’s the people of Nineveh who are the ones who respond to God, not him – one of those surprise twists the Old Testament throws at us from time to time. The problem for Jonah is his lack of vision – he knows the Assyrians to be the oppressors of Israel, a dominating empire of cruel force with Nineveh its mighty city. Jonah is not a mighty prophet, and Israel is a land long overrun by Assyria and every other empire around. How is he supposed to make any difference in this situation? There is nothing in Jonah’s understanding of himself or of Nineveh to prepare him to accept this call from God. It’s little wonder he tries to escape.

In the gospel, we also hear about responding to a call – Jesus walks along the lakeshore and calls to Simon, Andrew, James and John, telling them that if they follow him they will fish for people.  Without a backward glance, they leave everything – jobs, security, family – and follow him. Something about Jesus is so compelling that they go without hesitation, or perhaps they’ve already heard his preaching and know enough to make an informed decision. But the road with Jesus gets rockier and rockier, and at the end of Mark’s gospel, these same disciples, the inner circle, abandon Jesus at the cross and run away. They respond to his call at first, but when they find out where it’s really leading, they flee.

Again, the disciples run into their own ignorance about how God is working. When they originally follow Jesus, they have visions in their minds about what this will mean, who Jesus is and what kind of power he will claim in the world. Maybe they hope they’ll get part of that power themselves. So when Jesus tells them he’s a Messiah who will suffer and die, they simply can’t hear it. And when indeed he does suffer and die, the visions they had in their minds fall to pieces. It’s no wonder they run away to hide.

This, I think, is what really makes us want to escape as well. It’s not that we don’t want to follow and respond to God’s call. I did get ordained, after all, and you all got up on a Sunday morning to come to church. All of that is worth something in the response department. But we each have a picture of how things are supposed to work – how God should be, what God should do, what the rules of fair play are that should be followed – and when life or God doesn’t follow the script, we don’t like it. My deep gladness meets the world’s deep need? Shouldn’t that mean that everything flows smoothly, I get a raise, I’m happy every day and everybody praises me?…that way I know I’m following my vocation, right? Isn’t that what my deep gladness is all about? Why should I be suffering if things are going according to God’s plan?

We might not get on a boat to go to Tarshish, but we all have our ways of running away – walling off whole parts of ourselves from God and God’s influence, so that God is only in the small box marked ‘spirituality,’ distinct from career, family, how we spend our time. We keep that box private so nobody else asks us hard questions about it. And eventually that box can get so small that it takes up no room in our lives at all – that’s when we opt out entirely from this faith thing and pursue our own way.

And yet God’s sense of the good, and of timing, and of fair play, doesn’t always match up neatly with ours. It may not be that our deep gladness correlates with a daily sense of happiness and fulfillment. There may be days, weeks, years, when things quite simply don’t seem to be going our way. We’re tempted then to bag it, to throw in the towel on trying to believe in and follow God. What saves us in these times is what carries us through in other ways as well – discipline, and community. When we are sick in body, the disciplines of rest and nourishment and medical attention, the community of caregivers and doctors and loved ones, all of those help to sustain and heal us over time. In the same way, these times of things all going wrong spiritually or in our lives require help and attention: the discipline of regular prayer and scripture even when we least feel like it, the community of fellow believers who can sustain us when we can’t do it ourselves. We can try to escape, of course, and run away – we might even be successful at it for a little while. But eventually the fish swallows us and we cry out for help in the darkness; or the resurrected Jesus unexpectedly appears to us and we find our joy again. After all, God’s call doesn’t come just once, but over and over again. ‘No’ is a fair answer from us; but ‘yes’ is what leads to real life.

So this week I invite you into a little reflection. Are there ways God is calling you right now in your life? Inviting you into deeper prayer and relationship, maybe, or nudging you into a new venture in your work? Calling you maybe to open your heart a little differently to somebody? And as you look at those possible calls, do you find yourself figuring out your escape routes? You know: I just don’t have time for this right now, the economy is terrible so I can’t seek new work, I just can’t reach out to that person one more time…whatever the excuses are. If you want to do something different, then apply a little discipline of prayer this week; talk to someone you trust about it this week. See if this time, for this one time, you might try saying yes – and find out what comes next.