AFTER THE DELAY, THE TIME TO ACT

 

Sermon delivered on the 22^nd Sunday after Trinity, the 8th November 2009 (Remembrance Sunday) by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.

 Scriptures: Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 Hebrews 9:24-28 Mark 1: 14-20

 S. Mark 1: 15 Jesus said “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”           

 

Those of us who are getting on in years like myself often complain about how the people of this generation can’t wait for things. They must get everything NOW and not think there must be a building up first, we say. And certainly there is truth in what we oldsters say. Our new Cayman Islands constitution for instance, it must be said, is a change of great importance and significance to the people of this land, but surely the change is all the better for the 37 years of being under the previous constitution, albeit with some minor adjustments to that document over the years.  If the Islands had renegotiated constitutions every five years this change would not have seemed to be significant. Even now, some of the changes won’t take effect for another few years, which is a different cause of complaint for some. But when they do take effect, it will be better for the preparation that the delay was intended to enable. Yet others have complained that certain things they wanted did not get in, and that is only to be expected. Then let them go through the discipline of a constitutional referendum, which the new constitution affords them, if they think that most people want their further changes. And of course there are others not in our community here who also want immediate changes, but as for them, may they wait for ever!

 If we turn from the affairs of God’s world to the affairs of God Himself, we have to say that here too there is the NOW aspect as well as the waiting aspect. Jesus Himself knew both of these very well. He had a long period of waiting before embarking on His public ministry, having returned from those remarkable discussions he had held as a boy of twelve, sitting among the teachers in the temple, to years of filial obedience to Joseph and his mother in their home in humble Nazareth. This must have been a very ordinary kind of existence, unlike the dramatic prophetic ministry of his cousin that had been going on for some time in the wilderness. But now Jesus proclaims this period of waiting to be over. Jesus Himself, in our Gospel reading today, recognises that “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.” It seems that the signal was the arrest of His forerunner and cousin, John the Baptist, signalling the end of that ministry. It could be said that John was the last of the prophets of the old covenant, the last of the Jonahs. Jesus Himself referred to him as fulfilling the prophecy that Elijah was to come again as the messenger and forerunner of the Christ. John preached repentance like Jonah, and Jesus commended those who, like the Ninevites hearing Jonah, believed God through the preaching of John. But now John’s time was brought to an end, and it would soon be the time for the Christ to come under condemnation from His own and be swallowed up in death, and thus provide the sign of Jonah to His generation through His divine offering of His unblemished human life to God, His Resurrection and the proclaiming of the truth to all the nations.

 The Old Testament Lesson today from the book of Jonah portrays the preaching of Jonah the Jewish prophet to the inhabitants of a Gentile city and their positive reaction to his message. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth. There is a fine ironical strand in this story, that depicts the unwillingness of the Jewish prophet to go to Nineveh in the first place, and then his dismay that because of their repentance God decides not to have their city overthrown the way the prophet  warned. Apparently Jonah believes that God should not have pity on the people of Nineveh, but knows nevertheless that this kind of thing, having mercy and pity, is what God will actually do. The story tells us not only about the fast and the sackcloth, but that “the people of Nineveh believed God”. For all their pagan-ness, they “believed God” and acted immediately on their belief. The story tells us also that their believing action involved everyone turning from his evil way and from the violence that was in their hands. Their positive response averted the impending catastrophe because God in His graciousness and pity could not ignore it. No doubt the main lesson from this is drawn from the bad attitude of God’s own prophet contrasted with the good attitude of the pagan city that “believed God” through the prophet’s message. We can also draw the lesson that as St. Peter says in Acts 10:34, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him”. The Ninevites in the story of Jonah in spite of their long years of unbelief, “feared” God because they believed the prophet’s words as God’s Word, and they “did what was right”, because they immediately changed their wicked behaviour in line with what they now believed, becoming acceptable to God.

 Chapter 9 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, from which our second lesson is drawn, compares the sacrificial duties of the pre-Christian High-Priest, who entered the Holy Place once a year taking the blood of goats and calves offering it repeatedly for himself and the ritual and legal errors of the people, with the once-for-all unblemished sacrifice that Christ has offered “at the end of the age” to purify our consciences, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Both Priest and Victim, as God, Jesus offered the sacrifice of His human life to the Father; and as Man, He was without a blemish. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes the point that while people may have benefited in certain ways from the ministrations of the pre-Christian High Priests, how much more is the benefit now to be drawn from the High-Priestly Sacrifice and the Intercession before God of Christ Himself? The old order of things was but a schoolmaster unto Christ. Looking back on it now, we see the old order as a time of waiting until the Christ should appear. But now, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”           

 This is the Gospel that we proclaim to this very day, so that men and women of our own time may turn from their evil and provocative ways and be signed with Jesus’ sign of Jonah, that the gracious God of mercy and pity may look upon the perfect sacrifice of His unblemished Son, the Son of Man, and receiving His intercession for those who call upon Him, avert from us and others the disasters that apart from the atoning work of Christ are the inevitable consequences of the rebellion and wickedness of the world of our time and finally, we are warned, the judgment of God upon His wayward world.