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Commentary
Back in 1963 Bob Dylan, at that time coming into his own at a folk singer, wrote and recorded a folk song based on an old English ballad, “Lord Randall,” and called it, “The Times They Are A Changing.” As in the ballad, the singer asks, “O where have you been, my blue eyed son, and where have you been, my darling young one?” In Dylan’s song, the sun replies in a series of cryptic and sometimes not-so-cryptic images, concluding each stanza with the refrain, “For the times, they are a changing.”
I like the biblical images that tumble out in the final stanza —
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past.
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
The song warned that history was reaching a crescendo and things were about to change. Indeed, in the early sixties, what with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the constant threat of nuclear war, as well as racial unrest and the call for justice, and the general impatience with the old order, an apocalyptic turning point seemed very timely.
Sixty years later, the song still seems current — because we still live in a time when society is being turned upside down, and the times they still are a-changing. Rather than becoming dated, tied to the early sixties, it seems to have become, instead of timely, timeless.
I bring all this up because the three scriptures we are studying this week also point to the moment as a time of change, timely if you will, but they are also timeless. They are not only addressed to their historical moment, but to ours! The times, they are still a changing.
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The lectionary invites us to jump past the first two chapters, when the prophet is called by God, refuses the call, flees as far as he can imagine, all to no avail. Wind, storm, and the casting of a lot leads to seeming death and destruction. He is cast into the waters of chaos, swallowed by a large fish, which should lead to total eradication, with nothing left to be buried, something of the ultimate punishment for his disobedience. And yet it is not so. Jonah is vomited ashore, and we see him at last accept God’s call to preach doom to the Ninevites.
The Ninevites delighted in leaving behind in their wake unimaginable carnage, and they also left behind monuments in which they bragged about the brutality they inflicted on other people. I can’t imagine choosing to be a missionary to Nineveh, but the author of this book chose it because Nineveh stood not just for the evil of that time, but the evil that exists in all times, including ours. The Hebrew style and vocabulary strongly suggest that this book was written long after the destruction of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire, but in every era and in all times there are evil empires, some uncomfortably close to us.
This particular lectionary passage allows us to get past the Big Fish, and your explanation that it was not a whale, and either your spirited defense of the literal truth of the man-swallowing reality denizen of the deep or your pained explanation of whether it all matters or not and get down to brass tacks — God intends to save everyone, including our enemies. Whether it happens or not has something to do with free will, but heaven is not going to segregate us into separate warrens. The times, they are a changing, because there’s no telling with God.
Did you notice there is no “if” in Jonah’s message (if you do not repent Nineveh will be destroyed). It’s a declaration that destruction is coming. Period. No way out. Yet God is able to repent as well as the Ninevites. Nineveh repents from top to bottom. God relents. Jonah takes God’s mercy as a personal insult, and in the end God’s prophet is invited to rethink God, the way God acts, and his own vision and version of God. Nineveh changed. (Unbelievable). God changed (inconceivable!). How about us? (Why do I have to?)
In our world today, there are nations and peoples for whom repentance seems unlikely, or even impossible. In the midst of our own prophetic witness let us remember that we are not exempted in these changing times from confessing our own sins and asking that our own hearts be changed.
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
You know, the Apostle Paul has been trying to explain in his first letter to the house churches in Corinth that the times, they are a changing, and in 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 he gives a few suggestions about how we should act in this new age. Some may think this is a dead letter. Nearly two thousand years have gone by and we’re still here, so why do we have to act as if “the appointed time has grown short,” or that “the present form of this world is passing away.” Jesus didn’t immediately return. No need to put off a wedding engagement, nor cease buying and selling. Indeed, it’s hard not to laugh (or to cry) when, as happened over a decade ago, some self-appointed prophet proclaims the exact day of the end of the world, and his disciples sell their houses and possessions in order to get his message out, and then find themselves broke and homeless when the appointed day comes and goes (though the prophet himself doesn’t seem to have missed any meals along the way). Indeed, words like these, depending on the way they’re presented, can turn earnest hearts away from Jesus.
Yet for many of us, the times haven’t changed enough, or maybe what I mean to say, is we haven’t done any changing. We’re still living by the old rules. Marriage, intimacy, mourning, rejoicing, buying, selling — none of this has to change yet it all has to change, because the present form of this world is passing away. Time is growing short. As one nonagenarian in my congregation likes to say, “Every day is judgement day for somebody.” Jesus calls us to a radically different way of living, living in the world, but remaining decidedly not of it. I can still plan a vacation, buy gifts for Christmas, think about what I want to cook for dinner, do some planning (jointly, with my spouse) for our fiftieth wedding anniversary which is still over a year away, and enjoying living in this moment, while never losing sight of the radically different way of living we are called to share in Jesus.
Mark 1:14-20
In Mark 1:14-20 Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” History — sacred history, Roman history, Judean history — has come to the point. Jesus calls disciples and expects them to act NOW because there is no moment like then. It’s the same now. The kingdom of God is come near — and the Greek word near allows both the meaning of right next to us as well as close but on the way — and we must be prepared to drop everything and follow Jesus in this moment.
This passage has a trigger — the arrest of John the Baptist. It’s not that the ministry of Jesus is tied to current events. But current events make it clear that we don’t start living differently, repenting and believing in the good news of Christ Jesus — then we are condemned to live according to the dictates of the false prophets, phony Caesars, and misguided values of the world around us.
What follows this initial proclamation of the good news by Jesus is the calling of the first disciples — and their response! I think of this wonderful passage in The Lord of the Rings, where Fordo and Sam take a short rest in the darkness of a corridor outside of Mordor, and Sam speculates about how being in a story has turned out to be much different than he imagined when he used to love listening to stories. Speaking of those who ended up in a great tale, Sam said:
Folk seems to have just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.” (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, chapter 8, The Stairs of Cirith Ungol.)
Did Jesus ask others before Simon, Andrew, James, and John? Perhaps he did. If so, we don’t know their names because they refused. For that matter, did Gabriel visit another young woman before Mary? Those who turn aside from God’s call may have a more comfortable story, but maybe not as glorious!
The kingdom of God has come near, Jesus says. (and here I’m translating) “The season is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near — (near to us physically, near as in “still on the way but getting closer!”) Change your minds and believe in the good news.”
The Greek word kairos refers not to chronological time, but to the change in a season, a way of saying the times, they are a changing! It has started, we’re not finished, but it’s happening, right now. The nearness of the kingdom of God means it’s all around us, and we’re living it, but it’s not actually quite physically present with us — yet! Repenting is not simply the rejection of what happened in the past. It’s a turning around (something like the Hebrew word shuv, used for the same purpose), a change in orientation and direction, the beginning of a journey back to where we belonged all along. And believing means acting.
If we have changed our orientation and are facing in a different direction, if we truly believe the kingdom of God is all around us, yet it’s not quite here but on the way, if the season of God’s grace and love is all around us, whether those we share this world with perceive it or not, then not only the times are a changing, but so are our hearts!
I like the biblical images that tumble out in the final stanza —
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past.
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
The song warned that history was reaching a crescendo and things were about to change. Indeed, in the early sixties, what with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the constant threat of nuclear war, as well as racial unrest and the call for justice, and the general impatience with the old order, an apocalyptic turning point seemed very timely.
Sixty years later, the song still seems current — because we still live in a time when society is being turned upside down, and the times they still are a-changing. Rather than becoming dated, tied to the early sixties, it seems to have become, instead of timely, timeless.
I bring all this up because the three scriptures we are studying this week also point to the moment as a time of change, timely if you will, but they are also timeless. They are not only addressed to their historical moment, but to ours! The times, they are still a changing.
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The lectionary invites us to jump past the first two chapters, when the prophet is called by God, refuses the call, flees as far as he can imagine, all to no avail. Wind, storm, and the casting of a lot leads to seeming death and destruction. He is cast into the waters of chaos, swallowed by a large fish, which should lead to total eradication, with nothing left to be buried, something of the ultimate punishment for his disobedience. And yet it is not so. Jonah is vomited ashore, and we see him at last accept God’s call to preach doom to the Ninevites.
The Ninevites delighted in leaving behind in their wake unimaginable carnage, and they also left behind monuments in which they bragged about the brutality they inflicted on other people. I can’t imagine choosing to be a missionary to Nineveh, but the author of this book chose it because Nineveh stood not just for the evil of that time, but the evil that exists in all times, including ours. The Hebrew style and vocabulary strongly suggest that this book was written long after the destruction of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire, but in every era and in all times there are evil empires, some uncomfortably close to us.
This particular lectionary passage allows us to get past the Big Fish, and your explanation that it was not a whale, and either your spirited defense of the literal truth of the man-swallowing reality denizen of the deep or your pained explanation of whether it all matters or not and get down to brass tacks — God intends to save everyone, including our enemies. Whether it happens or not has something to do with free will, but heaven is not going to segregate us into separate warrens. The times, they are a changing, because there’s no telling with God.
Did you notice there is no “if” in Jonah’s message (if you do not repent Nineveh will be destroyed). It’s a declaration that destruction is coming. Period. No way out. Yet God is able to repent as well as the Ninevites. Nineveh repents from top to bottom. God relents. Jonah takes God’s mercy as a personal insult, and in the end God’s prophet is invited to rethink God, the way God acts, and his own vision and version of God. Nineveh changed. (Unbelievable). God changed (inconceivable!). How about us? (Why do I have to?)
In our world today, there are nations and peoples for whom repentance seems unlikely, or even impossible. In the midst of our own prophetic witness let us remember that we are not exempted in these changing times from confessing our own sins and asking that our own hearts be changed.
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
You know, the Apostle Paul has been trying to explain in his first letter to the house churches in Corinth that the times, they are a changing, and in 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 he gives a few suggestions about how we should act in this new age. Some may think this is a dead letter. Nearly two thousand years have gone by and we’re still here, so why do we have to act as if “the appointed time has grown short,” or that “the present form of this world is passing away.” Jesus didn’t immediately return. No need to put off a wedding engagement, nor cease buying and selling. Indeed, it’s hard not to laugh (or to cry) when, as happened over a decade ago, some self-appointed prophet proclaims the exact day of the end of the world, and his disciples sell their houses and possessions in order to get his message out, and then find themselves broke and homeless when the appointed day comes and goes (though the prophet himself doesn’t seem to have missed any meals along the way). Indeed, words like these, depending on the way they’re presented, can turn earnest hearts away from Jesus.
Yet for many of us, the times haven’t changed enough, or maybe what I mean to say, is we haven’t done any changing. We’re still living by the old rules. Marriage, intimacy, mourning, rejoicing, buying, selling — none of this has to change yet it all has to change, because the present form of this world is passing away. Time is growing short. As one nonagenarian in my congregation likes to say, “Every day is judgement day for somebody.” Jesus calls us to a radically different way of living, living in the world, but remaining decidedly not of it. I can still plan a vacation, buy gifts for Christmas, think about what I want to cook for dinner, do some planning (jointly, with my spouse) for our fiftieth wedding anniversary which is still over a year away, and enjoying living in this moment, while never losing sight of the radically different way of living we are called to share in Jesus.
Mark 1:14-20
In Mark 1:14-20 Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” History — sacred history, Roman history, Judean history — has come to the point. Jesus calls disciples and expects them to act NOW because there is no moment like then. It’s the same now. The kingdom of God is come near — and the Greek word near allows both the meaning of right next to us as well as close but on the way — and we must be prepared to drop everything and follow Jesus in this moment.
This passage has a trigger — the arrest of John the Baptist. It’s not that the ministry of Jesus is tied to current events. But current events make it clear that we don’t start living differently, repenting and believing in the good news of Christ Jesus — then we are condemned to live according to the dictates of the false prophets, phony Caesars, and misguided values of the world around us.
What follows this initial proclamation of the good news by Jesus is the calling of the first disciples — and their response! I think of this wonderful passage in The Lord of the Rings, where Fordo and Sam take a short rest in the darkness of a corridor outside of Mordor, and Sam speculates about how being in a story has turned out to be much different than he imagined when he used to love listening to stories. Speaking of those who ended up in a great tale, Sam said:
Folk seems to have just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.” (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, chapter 8, The Stairs of Cirith Ungol.)
Did Jesus ask others before Simon, Andrew, James, and John? Perhaps he did. If so, we don’t know their names because they refused. For that matter, did Gabriel visit another young woman before Mary? Those who turn aside from God’s call may have a more comfortable story, but maybe not as glorious!
The kingdom of God has come near, Jesus says. (and here I’m translating) “The season is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near — (near to us physically, near as in “still on the way but getting closer!”) Change your minds and believe in the good news.”
The Greek word kairos refers not to chronological time, but to the change in a season, a way of saying the times, they are a changing! It has started, we’re not finished, but it’s happening, right now. The nearness of the kingdom of God means it’s all around us, and we’re living it, but it’s not actually quite physically present with us — yet! Repenting is not simply the rejection of what happened in the past. It’s a turning around (something like the Hebrew word shuv, used for the same purpose), a change in orientation and direction, the beginning of a journey back to where we belonged all along. And believing means acting.
If we have changed our orientation and are facing in a different direction, if we truly believe the kingdom of God is all around us, yet it’s not quite here but on the way, if the season of God’s grace and love is all around us, whether those we share this world with perceive it or not, then not only the times are a changing, but so are our hearts!
