Mark 1: 14-20
Good morning and grace and peace. Third Sunday after the Feast of the
Epiphany already, last Sunday of January! And 32nd Day of the
expanded season of Christmas—time to feed the partridge and water the pear
tree! After our brief excursion last
Sunday into the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel we return now (and
continuing for a few more weeks) to the first chapter of St. Mark—and today
Mark’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and the gathering of
those who will be his first Disciples.
If we try to harmonize what we read in Mark two weeks ago and then what
we read in St. John last Sunday we would seem to have at least a general sense
of things. We last caught a glimpse of
Jesus in Luke’s gospel at the age of 13 or so visiting Jerusalem with Mary and
Joseph and amazing the elders in the Temple.
From then on Jesus has apparently a private life in the quiet Galilean
village of Nazareth. Some have pictured
him working as a carpenter or builder alongside Joseph. Some have pictured
Joseph and Jesus together in a workshop at home—or perhaps they would walk a
few miles to work on one of the many large construction projects in the new
port city of Caesarea Maritima, which had been developed some years before by
Herod the Great. In any event Jesus must
have been a bright student in the local synagogue--as he would demonstrate
later in life in his extensive and deep teaching of the scriptures.
But then Jesus learned that his kinsman, now known as John the Baptizer,
had become the prophetic leader of a movement calling the Jewish people away
from their accommodation with the political and social and cultural patterns of
the occupying Romans and their collaborators--and what we might just in general
call Mediterranean Hellenism. A culture that was in the main secular rather
than religious, characterized by a focus on money and sex, violent
entertainment, bread and circuses. In a
way that made the establishment deeply uncomfortable he is calling the Jewish
people to repentance of their association with and collaboration with the
forces of this occupying, alien culture—calling them to a renewed spirit of
holiness, and obedience to the scriptures. So Jesus comes down to the Jordan,
joins the crowd around John, is baptized—and of course as we read two weeks ago
with the dramatic moment of the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, the voice
at this anointing, “this is my beloved son.”
John tells us that in the next couple of days after the baptism John the
Baptist introduced several of his followers to Jesus in these somewhat strange
words, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and that when they heard this they then went
to see him, and then told others about him.
Mark tells us that soon after the baptism Jesus left the crowds around
John for a while and went on a personal and solitary journey of reflection and
prayer and discernment and what we might call vocational testing out in the
wilderness—40 days of struggle with the temptations of the enemy and of clarifying
and strengthening his resolve for the work ahead.
After that interval Jesus heads back home to the Galilee, where as we
read this morning he hears that John the Baptist has been arrested. That news gets him into action, and he goes
out and begins what is called his time of “Public Ministry.” His first sermon is concise enough to fit
into the 144 characters of a Twitter post: “The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Clearly building on the urgent message that
Matthew tells us had been John the Baptist’s core announcement, “”Repent; for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Not a
new message for Jesus, but continuing the trajectory, building on a
foundation. What we were waiting for,
has come to pass.
Jesus then travels around the
villages of the area and seeks out some of those John the Baptist followers
whom he had met at the Jordan and enlists them to join him. That’s where we are in Mark today. Their former leader imprisoned, some of John
the Baptist’s ardent disciples are back home and at their work fishing in the
Sea of Galilee, wondering what will come next, whether the soldiers are likely
to come for them next . . . whether God was really at work in John . . . whether
there really was some larger purpose and meaning to it all.
So they had taken a great risk to go down to John, who said his
ministry was to fulfill the prophetic vocation, “Prepare ye the way of the
Lord.” And now here Jesus reaches out to
them with those memorable words from the King James: “come after me, and I will
make you become fishers of men.” As soon
as they hear his call they know the answer to all their questions, the gears
mesh, it all comes together, and from that moment at the seashore they follow
him out into the wide world, in what we know will become the journey of their
lives—and of our lives. Andrew and
Peter, James and John.
I would say that what always strikes me about this moment in Mark is
the clarity and the sharpness of this transition. A sudden pivot. A turn in a new direction. 180 degrees. Whatever it was that Peter and Andrew had seen
in Jesus a few months before at the Jordan.
Whatever it was that they made of what John the Baptist had said. Something so powerful in the word that Mark
uses here about their decision. One of
Mark’s distinctive and favorite adverbs, recurring again and again. “Immediately.” Immediately they left their nets. Not even taking the time to finish cleaning
them and put them back in the boats for later use. They just let them drop where they are. And the same for James and John. I always picture their father Zebedee looking
up with astonishment. “Where are you
going, boys? We haven’t finished yet!”
I’ve always been fascinated by stories about these kinds of sudden
turns in the road. A friend of mine back
in the late 1970’s who had been living and working in Philadelphia. Where he had lived his whole life. He was at a holiday party with friends, when
as sometimes happened back in the 1970’s he discovered that he had run out of
cigarettes. He excused himself, told his
girlfriend that he was going out, put on his coat, and headed down to a store a
couple of blocks away. After making his
purchase he didn’t feel so much like going back to the party, so he thought
he’d take a walk. He was mulling over
his life I guess in some general way, I guess, but as he walked it got colder,
so he got on a bus, and soon found himself at the bus station. Where he got off the bus, walked into the
station, went upstairs, and bought himself a ticket for Greyhound to California
that was leaving in 20 minutes. “I
really hadn’t thought it out at all,” he told me. “I just knew in that moment that it was what
I needed to do.”
Anyway. I haven’t had anything
in my life quite in that pattern, I don’t think, but certainly moments of
sudden insight and decision. Falling in
love, like that. Susy is here, so I’ll
blush. I guess we all probably have
stories like this. Unexpected turns in
the road.
For St. Paul on the Road to Damascus
there was a burst of light in the sky and a thundering supernatural voice. For me, as many of you have heard the story, not quite so dramatic. I recall a moment coming down the stairs of
the Moffitt Undergraduate Library at Cal, in the winter of 1973, my junior
year. I had been thinking about things
for a while, big questions. Meaning of life kinds of things. Reading, taking classes, long hours of
conversation in Telegraph Avenue coffee houses.
Philosophy, politics, history, different kinds of religious and
spiritual things. Even slipping in over
at St. Mark’s across Bancroft Way from the Harmon Gym on an occasional Sunday
morning for Choral Morning Prayer and one of George Tittmann’s wild, scholarly,
convoluted, poetic 35-minute sermons. Obviously something was going on. I knew that,
but I wasn’t really sure what. Quietly
working its way, from the outside in. Then
there was this one particular day when I was on the third floor of the library
headed down, I was clearly in my own mind a skeptic and an agnostic, full of
questions, despite and perhaps in some ways because of all the years of Sunday
School and Acolyting and Youth Group and all the rest. But somehow, and it is simply a mystery to
me, by the time I hit the ground floor that afternoon I had heard Jesus say my
name and I knew who he was, and I had said yes.
All without missing a step. Don’t
think I even slowed down. Immediately. It wasn’t exactly “come after me and fish for
people,” but in many ways I think now that maybe that’s what I had heard.
In the gospels this happens in so many ways. It happens for all of us
in so many different ways. Not just one
template, one pattern for the conversion of life into a relationship with
Christ Jesus. How in the midst of lives
lived for ourselves we suddenly can hear as we never heard before, with the
ears of the heart, and can be transformed by him, meeting him, and given new
direction and new purpose. Whatever
“fishing by the sea” might mean for us today, and however we might hear the
invitation to a life lived with Jesus.
Just picturing ourselves there this morning, by the lake. Tending our nets. Minding our own business. And then to hear his voice. Opening our eyes and ears, and in the
imagination of our minds and our hearts to see ourselves dropping those nets,
and standing up, and walking with him from that day forward. As if it all were all happening here and now,
today.
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering
and a sacrifice to God.
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