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Dope Slap                        Jonah 3: 1-10; Mark 1: 14-20                   January 25, 2009

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you."

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

"Follow me, and I will make you fish for people."

These three statements, one from today's Old Testament lesson and two from today's Gospel lesson, remind us that sometimes God needs to get our attention in order to accomplish God's purpose in the world.

Or, to put it more bluntly, sometimes you and I are in need of a good dope slap.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, known to regular listeners of Public Radio as "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers" of the wonderful, hugely popular and often laugh-out-loud funny program, Car Talk, are clear - and quite specific - about how a perfect dope slap should be administered. If you can imagine someone standing here beside me, I'll do my best to illustrate the proper technique:

"Begin with your hand open and at a 45-degree angle to the floor," they write on their website. "Lean backward, and start below the shoulder level of the intended victim. Your starting zone should be dictated by the severity of the infringement necessitating the slap. If the infringement is not too serious, start just below shoulder level. For a serious infraction, begin your dope slap far down, near the waist."

'Move your hand as swiftly as possible," they go on to recommend, "while simultaneously yelling, 'Ay! Whatta ya, stupid?'"

"The dope slap should not deliver a forceful wallop directly to the head, but rather should be more of a glancing blow. The dope slap is not meant to inflict pain or injury. It is used strictly as an attention-getting device."

"Finally, The dope slap itself should be lightning fast. The recipient should be left wondering where it came from."

Every so often, God delivers a dope slap. And like many good dope slaps, it comes out of nowhere, sometimes, and catches us off guard.

Our scripture lessons for this morning are examples of just such action on God's part.

In the story of Jonah, the dope slap came in the form of what one scholar calls his "sabbatical at the bottom of the great sea."

Jonah, you may remember, had no interest in preaching to the people of Nineveh. In fact, Jonah couldn't stand the Ninevites. The last thing he wanted was for them to hear the word of the Lord, repent and be saved from God's wrath. So when God calls and tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, he sails off in the opposite direction. That is, until God administers one of those dope slaps we've been talking about and turns him around.

You've noticed, I'm sure, that I haven't mentioned the fish, or whale, or whatever you choose to call the leviathan that the story tells us administered God's dope slap. That's because it is easy to get all hung up on that part of the story and forget about the real meaning - the story's depiction of the way Jonah responds when God calls him to do something he really doesn't want to do.

Jonah got a call from God that he didn't want, and his response was to loudly, clearly, and emphatically say, "No way! No way am I going to do this thing you're asking me to do." Necessitating God's dope slap.

Jonah's response to God's call is not particularly unusual. On the contrary, it is pretty much par for the course. Our normal, everyday response to God's call - especially God's call to do something very different from what we've done before - is just like Jonah's. Most of us regularly say "No way!" when God calls. When God asks us to re-examine our behavior and do something different. "No way am I going to do this thing you're asking me to do" is our instinctive, knee-jerk response.

Our Gospel lesson, on the other hand, describes an entirely different reaction.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus gets the attention of Simon, Andrew, James and John, and suggests, like God did to Jonah, that they re-examine their behavior, attitudes, and presuppositions. He invites them to see things in a new way. He invites them to live their lives differently. Just as his cousin John the Baptist did before him, Jesus proclaims: "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news."

In other words, Jesus says, to these soon to-be disciples, "Wake up; look sharp; the time is now. Repent. Re-examine your presuppositions and attitudes and perspectives and, most of all, your behavior. Open your hearts and minds to the good news I am proclaiming."

Unlike Jonah, who gets in his boat and heads in the wrong direction, the disciples get out of their boat when Jesus calls. They drop what they are doing and follow him. Later on, we know, they slip back into more Jonah-like patterns and earn their own dope slap - or two - but this time they act quite differently.

Think about it. Here is group of men, Mark tells us, who are gainfully-employed, some of them self-employed, some of them probably co-owners with their fathers of the family business, presumably earning decent livings for their families, most of them presumably with wives and children to support, and all of them with social status to maintain in their community. They are, every one of them (as far as we know), decent, hardworking, responsible, God-fearing men.

One day, as they're in the middle of the day's work, some fishing, some cleaning up their nets, this total stranger-because remember, Jesus was not exactly a household word in that time, and in that place-he was simply a former carpenter who had become an itinerant preacher, and who almost no-one outside his home-town had ever heard of- this total stranger walks up to them, tells them to quit their jobs, leave their businesses, and become unemployed and homeless, all so they can follow Him.

And, says Mark, that is exactly what they do. Just like that. No questions asked. God calls; they say "yes."

Every time I read this passage, I find myself surprised by the behavior of these men. What on earth would possess them to do such an irresponsible, irrational, even crazy thing?

Was it because Jesus was so charismatic? Was it because these men were impulsive, shoot from the hip, act first and think about it later types?

Or was it because Jesus' call to repent and believe the good news was accompanied by the powerful movement of the Spirit of God - the same Spirit that caused the Ninevites, when they finally heard Jonah's one-sentence sermon, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown," to believe God, repent, turn from their evil ways and cause God to do an about-face and allow them to live after all.

The same Spirit that is calling right now. That must be the answer.

Yet two important questions emerge from our two lessons for today. Questions that are particularly important for us on this Sunday when we engage in that annual process we call Church Council.

The first question is this: Have things changed since the days of Jonah and the days of Jesus and the Disciples? Or is the Spirit of God trying to get our attention, as we sit here this morning? Do we need a dope slap from God? Or, perhaps, have we already received one?

The second question follows from the first: Will we try to stay in our boat, pretend to be in control of our lives and our congregation's affairs and steer in our own direction? Or will we be like Andrew and Simon and James and John and get out of our boat and follow the leading of the Spirit?

The year ahead of us could just be the beginning of one of the most exciting periods in the life of First Moravian Church.

The opportunities for mission and ministry that will be opened for us by our reconfiguring of Hahle Hall to make it accessible are only beginning to emerge. And turning that center of activity into one that is welcoming for all is a benefit for everyone - those with disabilities and the rest of us who, for now, anyway, are temporarily able-bodied.

Fortunately, the Spirit who sometimes dope slaps us also walks with us and leads us on the way to the kingdom. So join me, good friends, on the next step in our journey together.

                                                                             AMEN

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