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 that’s 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 won’t 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 God’s call and went to Ninevah with the message.  Even in his reluctance, God’s 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, don’t bother buying anything.  Now that is urgency!  Paul doesn’t 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 didn’t 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 God’s 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 plan’s 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 another’s burdens, sometimes small but at other times so large we cannot bear them alone without the master’s 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 life’s 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 life’s 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.”  That’s 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.