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Jonah 3:1-10; Mark 1:14-20
By Mark Schaefer

So, picture this: You're on your way to work and as you approach your workplace you notice someone walking down the street wearing a sandwich board and shouting "Forty days more, and Washington (or Baltimore or Hagerstown, etc.) will be overthrown!" What would you do? That's right, you'd keep on going. That guy is a nut.

Alright then, try this. You're sitting at your desk. Let's say you're in accounts receivable. And a man walks up and says, "Follow me and I will make you receive people." I know what I would probably say: "That guy, too, is a nut."

There are a lot of things about the passages from Jonah and Mark that I understand. I understand Jonah's reluctance to go to Nineveh and preach a message of repentance. This was Nineveh, after all, the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

These were the same Assyrians who had wiped out the Northern Kingdom of Israel and threatened to do the same to the Southern Kingdom of Judah; the Assyrians who had deported and bred out of existence the tribes of the north. I can see why Jonah would not necessarily want to do anything to save those people. That part I get.

I also get Jesus beginning his ministry in Galilee after the arrest of John the Baptist. The message of repentance that John was proclaiming, Jesus picks up and brings to the heart of his home country. I get that, too.

What I don't get is the responses made by the Ninevites. Some Jewish prophet comes wandering into the city of Nineveh, - a city that's "a three days' walk across" - proclaims a message of repentance from a God the Assyrians don't even believe in, and the whole city repents? The King of Assyria himself proclaims the fast.

Jonah has to go on record as the most successful evangelist ever.

I also don't get Simon, Andrew, James and John. Jesus walks along, says, "Follow me," and they quit their jobs? And James and John even leave their poor father in the boat?

Scholars often like to posit that the two pairs of brothers had heard Jesus preaching in Galilee and that they were responding to what they had heard earlier. But then why does Mark leave that part out?

I guess the part I don't get about that is that rarely do you see such overwhelming and spontaneous responses to the Word of God. You'll see it from time to time -- an altar call at the end of services, an enthusiastic revival. But even the best preached evangelistic sermon or the most dynamic camp meeting can hardly claim to have converted an entire foreign capital to repentance.

Even the best preachers can't get people who are in the church already to show up for committee meetings, let alone outsiders to drop their careers and commit everything to the Gospel.

Maybe that's why we don't try to reach out more often. Because we know, don't we, what people's responses will be: "They'll think I'm a nut." "No one's gonna respond to me."

But Jonah knew what the response would be. He knew the Ninevites would repent - that's why he didn't want to go.

He knew God would wind up forgiving them. Jonah knew something that we too often forget: it's not about people's responses, it's about God's invitation. Grace always starts with God - and it is preached not only to the worthy. Not just to those who are likely to respond - it is preached to all.

This is the faith that Jesus and Jonah share. A faith that the word of God would catch fire - even among the Assyrians, even among working-class Galilean fisherman. And a faith, relying on God, that can bear fruit, even in the most unlikely places: in Nineveh and in Galilee; in Baltimore and in Washington; in us.

The Rev. Mark Schaefer is a campus minister at American University in Washington, D.C.