3 Epiphany B Mark 1:14-20 26 January 2003
Rev. Roger Haugen
There is nothing that gets our attention so quickly as a phone ringing. Few of us can resist the urge to answer a ringing phone. If the office phone rang right now there would be someone who would get up to answer it. They might leave it for a ring or two but if it were to continue to the fourth ring then someone would go get it. Today in the day of cell phones, the urgency, the pull to answer is even greater. Now thats authority! This is an urgency that moves us to action. Too bad, so often it is a telemarketer that wants to waste your time.
All three of our texts today have
a sense of urgency. Jonah has received
a message from God and in true prophetic tradition, God simply wont give
up. God has a message to deliver to
Ninevah, change your ways or the city will be overthrown. Jonah ran away from the message, only to
spend time in a whale thinking about it, but he eventually answered the urgency
of Gods call and went to Ninevah with the message. Even in his reluctance, Gods urgency got through to the
people. They heard the word from God
and repented from their sin, changed their ways and God decided not to destroy
the city.
In 1 Corinthians Paul is speaking
of the appointed times that are approaching so fast that they were to drop
everything. There is no time to worry
about that promise to bring milk home, no time to mourn even if you just lost a
loved one, you who are shopping, dont bother buying anything. Now that is urgency! Paul doesnt want us to think that there is
room for any commitment beyond God as the end times approach. The world as we know it is passing away.
Jesus invitation to these
fishermen carries with it the same sort of urgency. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near,
repent, and believe in the good news.
Follow me! Mark gets right at
it. In his Gospel, there is no time to
tell of the birth of Jesus, get right into it.
John prepares the way, Jesus is baptized, and off he goes to be about
his ministry of healing and teaching, stopping only long enough to gather some
followers he hopes to turn into disciples.
Follow me! and they do. The
fishermen didnt miss his authority with which he spoke, his urgency. The time is fulfilled.
Because of the urgency, the
fishermen had to respond, they had to make a decision. Would they follow or ignore the
invitation? Here was Jesus telling them
that Gods plan for the great sweep of history was at that very time being
carried out and they were invited to be a part of it. To be a part of that plans completion. Follow me! It was their
time of decision. We see, over and over
again, in the ministry of Jesus where people are confronted with the power of
God in the words and works of Jesus.
Moments when the kingdom of God was unfolding and a decision was
required to follow, become a disciple, or let the moment pass. There was no time to put off the decision. Zacheus climbed down from the tree, took
Jesus to dinner and had his life turned around. The Samaritan woman at the well, gave Jesus a drink of water,
entered into a conversation with this urgent man and had her life turned
around. The rich young ruler, who
stopped to consider the cost and decided not to follow and went away
dejected.
Jesus comes to us with the same
urgency, the same invitation, Follow me!
The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God has come near, repent and
believe! The message is unmistakable,
we must choose to listen or to ignore.
To listen means we wish to repent and believe. We want to enter into the urgency of Paul, the determination of
Jonah, the trust of the fishermen, to set aside what has our attention and
become a part of the Kingdom of God that is coming about even as we speak. To follow, to listen is to be ready to
repent and to believe.
To repent is to shift the
direction of our lives to coincide with the direction Jesus is walking in this
world. To believe is to put our
confidence in God and God alone, trusting that whatever God has in mind for our
lives is good. To listen to the call,
to repent and believe is to choose the path of discipleship. It is to choose to walk with, to follow
Jesus wanting to act as Jesus acts. To
do the things well that Jesus does well.
It is to enter into an apprenticeship, seeking to capture all that is
important to the master and reflect the same importance in our lives. It is at this point that Jesus no longer
wants followers but wants disciples.
William Barclay is to have said, It is very easy to have followers, but
more difficult to have disciples.
Jesus wants us for disciples. A
disciple who responds to the master without calculating the cost. One who responds because we have heard the
urgency of Jesus and trust him to lead us toward the Kingdom of God, to include
us in the accomplishment of the Kingdom.
To be a disciple is not an easy
course. I will always remember The
Karate Kid. The boy wants to be a
disciple of the great Karate master and all he seems to be doing is washing and
waxing cars and painting fences. The
absolute obedience, even in the tedious, led him to be a true disciple, one who
knew the discipline required to be a disciple.
As a disciple of Jesus we may spend much time in the tedious, a cup of
water here, a bite to eat there, a kind word, a caring smile, a shoulder to
rest a head upon. A disciple reflects
the master in all aspects of life, the large and the small. We will be asked to bear one anothers
burdens, sometimes small but at other times so large we cannot bear them alone
without the masters help. We will be
asked to forgive and to accept forgiveness.
We will be asked to live the life
of the cross. Forfeiting our lives so
that others may see Jesus in us. What
did Jesus say about losing our lives so that we might find them? Give up what we see as giving meaning and
purpose to life and discover as we give them up that Jesus has so much more
life in store for us. Just ask Zacheus,
or the woman at the well, or the disciples.
Just ask the rich young ruler who went back to that which he could not
give up.
Jesus call is to fish for
people, focuses on the question of lifes ultimate loyalty. Jesus call comes to us with urgency and
requires that we determine which loyalty will claim us. Will it be God or something else? Jesus comes to each of us, as he came to the
fishermen with an invitation that is very hard to ignore. It is also hard to respond. We are called to question everything we have
thought important, evaluate how our past decisions and priorities fit with the
master. It requires a willingness to
accept risks of stepping into the unknown with only the trust in the master to
assure us that it is the right step.
These are choices that bring with
them growing pains. There will be risk
taking, there will be failures, a time to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves
off and start again. We will be asked
to stretch ourselves into trying new things.
We may be stretched until it hurts.
To follow, to repent, to believe can be costly but only measured in the
terms of this world. A true disciple
gives up much in order to excel in that which the master excels. In that is the reward.
Jesus invitation today asks us
to consider what is the core of the meaning of life. It is an invitation to be a disciple of one who bypasses and the
transitory allegiances of this world.
It is an invitation to stop drifting through life with little sense of
purpose of meaning. Jesus invitation
to life challenges us to choose today whether we will take lifes dead-end roads
or whether we will walk with Jesus into a fulfilled life and blessing.
The invitation continues to come,
with an urgency that is meant uniquely for you and me. Just like the telephone that keeps
ringing. We can shut out the telephone
with other noise or busy-ness, or by shear will power. So too with the call from Jesus.
Jesus comes to us today with his
urgent call, Follow me, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come
near, repent and believe in the good news.
Thats what it is, good news. It
is good news that as disciples of Jesus we will find our reward in serving, in
giving of ourselves, in losing our life for the Jesus sake. As we lose our life we will find it, not the
life we would have imagine for ourselves but the life that God created us to
live. That is the good news.