A Change Will Do You (and God) Good
by Griff Martin
A Sermon for the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
On Jonah 3:1-5, 10 and Mark 1:14-20
For the Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 24, 2021
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Now Incarnate and Present God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing reality we can all together experience. Make us attended to your presence here in this space and in these words God, for if we are aware of your being here then nothing else will matter, but if we are not aware of your being here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter.
Originally it was believed that 147, 573, 952, 589, 676, 412, 927 was a prime number, a natural number greater than one that is not the product of two smaller natural numbers (thinking smaller helps, think 5. There is no way to multiple two numbers and get 5, 5 is unique in sequence). This might not be the kind of thing you pay much attention to unless you feel strongly about the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.
Prime numbers stand out in the math world and systems because prime numbers have no known sequence. A small group of mathematicians began to question the truth of this number being a prime number, however no one could prove that this was not a prime number. Until 1903 when Frank Carson presented at at the American Mathematical Society annual gathering. He went to the front of the room and presented, never once uttering a word, instead he wrote the number out, which had a certain amount of fame among mathematicians, and beside it he wrote two other numbers and then he began to do long handed multiplication using the other two numbers on the chalk board proving that this was not a prime number, it was the sequence of these two other numbers.
When the presentation ended he received a long standing ovation, later he announced that this work had taken him “3 years worth of Sundays.”
What all these brilliant minds had once thought was right was now proven wrong, they needed to change their mind.
I feel like that is what the last ten months worth of Sundays have been, so many of the truths that we once believed have been put up on a chalk board and then proven entirely false.
And I think we are now in this moment of reckoning, seeing things in a more truthful way than we ever have before. It’s like walking from a dark theater or restaurant into full sunlight, it’s overwhelming and then things begin to come back into view only this time in coming back into view nothing looks right, we are seeing a new truer world and we don’t love what we see always. We are walking out of some lies that have long held us all safe and the truth is overwhelming and blinding to us and we are adjusting to an entirely new world and space.
Early on the language we were using about this was the Great Pause and Better Normal, I think now I am more comfortable in language of the Great Reveal and Everything Has Changed.
And here is the good news, we have changed too. For some of us the faith that once held us did not hold us and we are desperate and digging for more. For some of us our eyes are opened to justice and accountability in ways that will better this world. For most of us we realize that the way things were is broken and we want to do better. On a practical level, I had long held that the church could not change quickly and that has now been proven wrong, when we need to we can invent and change almost overnight.
There is much good and hope in this, in the last few months we have seen that when faced with truths that we can’t avoid, we can change and we will change to make the world better.
And that right there is salvation. Literally it’s salvation.
Change is salvation.
Let’s go back to the blackboard, remember the professor who walked to the front of the room and wrote the number and then without words proved a whole new truth from what a world of academics thought.
We need to do that in church. So imagine yourself in a classroom and I walk in and wrote the word REPENT on the board. Now most of you would already be alarmed; so, repent often belongs in hellfire and brimstone sermons and I have never preached one of those, so hold on.
Underneath repent I would write metanoia and explain that this is the greek word we have translated to repent. I would then underline meta and explain that meta means beyond and then nova meaning mind or thought, taken together what these two imply is to change your mind, to change direction, change your thought, to go in a new direction.
So this word which we have often translated into something moral, change your immoral ways. Repent from a host of evils and if we are being honest in the church those hosts of evils have typically referred to sexual immorality because the institutional church is obsessed with sexual immorality which is a sermon to itself.
But what if repentance is not primarily with morality but more of a call to being open minded and changing your ways and thinking and thoughts in order to join what God is doing right now?
For instance what if the most famous repent, Jesus saying “Repent for the Kingdom of God has come near.” Which is his first sermon in the Gospels is an invitation not from a hellfire and brimstone pastor but from God in flesh saying change your mind about what God is doing because God is here now and wants you onboard with that message.
Which seems very fitting in the whole of Scripture…. The saints in our story are those who are willing to adapt to what God is doing now in order to better love the world and the whole story centers around a God who is willing to change God’s mind in order to better love the world.
Our first reading this morning is from one of my very favorite Old Testament stories, Jonah. Now, we pick this story up mid-story, post the whole whale bit. Jonah is finally in Nineveh and is about to go in and preach a sermon of destruction, it’s the only good news for him in the story because he wants to see the city and people destroyed. So he goes in and gives his sermon, "you have forty days until total destruction."
And then the Nineveh people change, they lament and put on sack cloth and ash and they respond to this old time revival and it pleases God. The Bible sums it up simply, “they believed God.”
God has said they will be destroyed, they change and when God sees their change God does not bring about the promised destruction. God changes God’s mind. God changes God’s mind to better love the world and to include more.
Or our second text today where we have two disciples changing their mind, Jesus is out walking by the sea, it’s here in Mark’s Gospel he gives his infamous repent sermon and then he calls the disciples, who are in their boat fishing with their father. Now pay attention to the fact that it’s their boat, they are taking their place in the family business, they are following the proper sequence of things where boys were trained in their father’s calling and then took over his work in order to support the family, this was how everything worked back then, you did not deviate from this pattern. And then Jesus enters the picture and they change everything… they leave family and job behind in order to follow Jesus on this new path.
They change their mind and adapt to what God is doing now in order to better love the world.
I have tried this week to think of a biblical story or character or saint that does not follow that pattern and I can’t…. The Gospel is folks who were willing to change their mind and their ways in order to adapt to what God is doing now in order to better love the world.
Which means there is something really wrong with the fact that in recent history, the religion founded in Jesus’ name has been so opposed to change, so resistant to change, so headstrong on the way things have been. It’s completely polar to the story we claim that we spend so much time protecting the past and status quo.
The way things were or that’s not how we have always done that should be the most sinful words of our faith.
Jesus following should mean being totally open to whatever God is doing now to love the world and doing whatever it takes to be part of that work now, being hopeful that God is always going to do a new thing and always open to whatever that new thing is going to be.
The Gospel tells us that Christianity is a posture of open arms and hands, not crossed arms and clinched fists.
Which posture have you more often held? What posture are we holding today? Because only one works at this moment -- open arms and hands.
There is salvation in changing your mind because that is being in a place of adapting to what God is doing now in order to better love the world.
Change is our calling.
When is the last time you really changed your mind on something? I want you to think about that question as we enter this new season of church. How did that make you more whole, more hopeful and how did love grow as a response to you changing your mind?
As a congregation, we changed our mind about the way we would respond to queer inclusion in the church. As a congregation, we changed our mind about women in leadership and ordination. As a congregation, we changed our mind about the direction of downtown churches fleeing to the suburbs. We have changed our minds about a lot of things in our history in order to follow God, to meet the needs of the world at that moment, to love better, to include more and to be faithful. And each time we have been part of God’s work and we have changed for the better.
And now we are being called to change again and maybe in ways we never have before -- bigger and bolder and braver, I feel that with every bone in my body.
The quote I used this week in the email from Jim Collins, I want us to hear that again: “History is the study of surprises. This line captures the world in which we live, we’re living history, surprise after surprise after surprise. And just when we think, we’ve had all the big surprises for a while, along comes another one. If the first two decades of the 21st century have taught us anything, it’s that uncertainty is chronic; instability is permanent; disruption is common; and we can neither predict nor govern events. There will be no ‘new normal’; there will only be a continuous series of ‘not normal’ episodes, defying prediction and unforeseen by most of us until they happen.”
Now, the first time I read these words, I lost my breath and my heart sank, I felt intense grief and fear. What he is predicting is a constant state of change and big risks. I don’t love this, I love control and predictability. I am spending a lot of time in prayer for courage and bravery to lead and call forth whatever change God needs in First Austin right now to adapt to what God is doing now in order to better love the world.
Because here is what I know… The most important thing any of us will ever do is make sure that we are part of whatever God is doing to better love the world. All that really matters is that we are smack dab in the middle of that.
Because if we are there then nothing else matters.
“There will be no ‘new normal’; there will only be a continuous series of ‘not normal’ episodes, defying prediction and unforeseen by most of us until they happen.”
Now this quote gives me immense hope… because you know what else was not normal episodes defying prediction and unforeseen by most of us until they happen? That pretty much sums up all that God has ever done.
God is in the change business. God is in the defying prediction and doing things unforeseen business. God loves making the impossible possible. God loves the new. God loves breaking paradigm and status quo. God loves moving us from the past to the now.
Which means that right now, where we stand is a moment of immense possibility and that gives me the deepest truest hope.
God is doing something new, are we willing to change to be part of it?
God I hope so.
Open arms and open hands. Call us God.
Amen and Amen. 147, 573, 952, 589, 676, 412, 927
One hundred and forty seven quintillion
Five hundred and seventy three quadrillion
Nine hundred and fifty two trillion
Five hundred and eighty nine billion
Six hundred and seventy six million
Four hundred and twelve thousand
Nine hundred twenty seven
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