2024 Sun Jan 21

“This week’s texts convey urgency. Jonah has wasted time and gotten off course — he must go to Nineveh immediately. Once there, he delivers the ultimatum: four words in Hebrew saying, essentially, “40 days, you’re toast!” (Jonah 3:4). Paul reminds the church in Corinth that time is of the essence. And when John is arrested, Jesus immediately gets to work.

“In Mark 1:14-20, Jesus calls to Simon and Andrew, and then James and John, all of whom respond immediately. I always feel bad for poor Zebedee, left holding his nets in the boat. Did James and John commandeer one of the smaller boats? Or did they jump in the water and swim to shore? However they got there, and when Jesus called, they responded without delay.

“While Jonah and Paul both point to near-future events, Jesus proclaims, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark uses the present perfect continuous tense, indicating that the action has been completed, but the result is ongoing. The phone has rung and keeps ringing. Are you going to answer the call?

Photochromic photograph of fishermen in the Sea of ​​Galilee between 1890 and 1905

From the SALT blog.

1) How do we discern and follow God’s call? One fruitful way of receiving these stories is to think of them as opening up spaces for us to think and reflect:

Are there nets God is calling us to drop today, ways of life we are ready to “immediately” leave behind? Has the decisive, consequential moment arrived? Do we hear an invitation from Jesus to set out in a new direction, a path toward God’s Jubilee? Are we behaving like Jonah, either fleeing God’s call outright or reluctantly, half-heartedly straggling behind?

Perhaps the best thing we can do in order to discern our vocation or life purpose is to keep these questions warm and open, returning to them again and again. And perhaps the best way to do that is to intentionally form a small group (even as small as two or three) devoted to that task, providing both ongoing support and accountability.

2) It’s worth noting that Jesus doesn’t say, “Believe in this way of thinking, and follow me,” or “Sign on to this cause, and follow me.” He simply says, “Follow me.” The sheer minimalism of the invitation is startling — and worth thinking about. It may signal that, while intellectual and practical life do come into play in discipleship, they’re not really the heart of the matter; Jesus is the heart of the matter.

At the end of the day, being a Christian is about following Jesus, a living, breathing person — not a set of ideas, or rules, or ways of behaving. Thinking and acting are important, of course, but they evolve over time as we learn and grow. The constant in discipleship is the ongoing relationship with Jesus, the togetherness, the give-and-take, the struggle, and the openness to learning anew every day. Follow me. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer emphasizes this aspect of Jesus’ call; for Bonhoeffer, the most striking thing about it is that it’s “void of all content.” There’s no program here, no plan, no persuasive set of promises. Only a call to companionship, to closeness, to living together along the Way.

3) God’s call manifests in a thousand different ways, and we respond in a thousand more, from courage to reluctance to hopping on the next ship out of town. But there’s at least one golden thread running through it all: God’s calling is frequently surprising and unpredictable, spilling over the edges of conventional wisdom in ways that are more than a little bit wild. Who is called? Not the supposedly brightest and best, but a half-hearted coward (Jonah), or the lowest ones on the ladder of social status. And to what end? So God might save our supposed enemies (Nineveh). So the world might turn upside down in a magnificent Jubilee. Or for no apparent reason at all (“Follow me”) apart from companionship itself, that mode of love that lives and walks together, calling and supporting each other as we go.

By Lawrence

Here in v14 is the Man and his Message – his Gospel. This is a summary statement of Jesus’ message: “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe in the Good News!”

We have already been given strong hints that the Kingdom of God is something that is going to cause huge reactions. This is a message of confrontation between the powers of Imperial Rome and the religious authority of the Temple and its leaders. This isn’t a message that will be received with the enthusiasm that Nineveh showed! The message of the Kingdom will set Jesus and those who respond on a collision course with those who will oppose it. It is the beginning of a life and death struggle.

This is not a message to be assimilated quietly and easily. To “repent and believe” requires a fundamental reorientation and the embracing of a whole new set of values and norms. It will change forever the way in which those who respond – the disciples – will view the world and live in it. It is a call to take up the Struggle against the Strong Man and all the powers that hold the world and its people captive – demons, sickness, hatred, discrimination, political and religious authorities.

That is the point of Scene 5 – the lakeshore near Capernaum. Jesus calls – and the fishermen get up and follow immediately! There is no demurring, or argument, or demand for further details or explanation. It’s as though they recognise in an instant both the authority of the one calling them and the truth and urgency of the message.

These first disciples show us what Jesus means by “repent”. In this context, it doesn’t mean to don sackcloth and ashes. It isn’t a call to a religious act. It takes us to the root meaning of the word – to change one’s whole way of thinking and being in the world. “Stop living how you are doing! Change your plans for your life’s work and your future! You thought you were going to be fishermen? You’re going to fish – for people! You thought you were going to live out your days in this village on the lakeshore? You’re never coming back here!”

From Ched Myers’ article recounted in the SALT blog Jan 15, 2024,” Jesus’ Call to Discipleship in a World of Injustice” originally published in “Radical Discipleship”, Article was entitled “Let’s Catch Some Big Fish!” Summary follows:

“The Sea of Galilee is the ecological and social setting of the first half of the gospel of Mark. A large freshwater lake about seven miles wide and 13 miles long, its shore is dotted with villages connected with the local fishing industry, the most prosperous segment of Galilee’s economy. The lake (also called Sea of Genneseret, Lake Kinneret or Lake Tiberius) is fed by the Jordan River, which flows in from the north and out to the south. Some 209 meters below sea level, it is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth. Due to this low-lying position in a rift valley, the sea is prone to sudden violent storms, as attested in the gospel stories…

“In 14 C.E., Caesar Augustus died and Tiberius became ruler of Rome. To curry the new emperor’s favor, Herod Antipas (the client-king Tetrarch of Galilee) began building a new capital city called Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Antipas hoped to demonstrate that he was the best candidate to intensify Romanization of the region by establishing Tiberias as a thoroughly Hellenized administrative and military center. The primary function of this city was to regulate the fishing industry around the Sea of Galilee, putting it firmly under the control of Roman interests. There Antipas built a royal palace, where it is likely he beheaded John the Baptist (Mk 6:7ff).

“The construction work at Tiberius may have drawn Jesus, as a carpenter/construction worker, to the Sea from Nazareth, and as an itinerant laborer he might have moved up the coast from harbor to harbor. This explains how Jesus appears in Capernaum, a major harbor and an important center of the fishing trade, and the narrative center of gravity in Mark 1-3.

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by David Lose

So perhaps Mark’s message to those reading back in the first century – as well as to those of us following along in the twenty-first – was more about following Jesus in general than it was about any following him only by leaving everything to proclaim the coming kingdom of God.Except that we can never follow “in general.”

We follow him in particular and distinct ways that may or may not be like the first disciples. And that, I think, is the point. Perhaps we follow by becoming a teacher. Perhaps we follow by volunteering at the senior center. Perhaps we follow by looking out for those in our schools who always seem on the outside and invite them in. Perhaps we follow by doing a job we love as best we can to help others. Perhaps we follow by doing a job we hate but contributes to supporting our family and helping others. Perhaps we follow by being generous with our wealth and with our time. Perhaps we follow by listening to those around us and responding with encouragement and care. Perhaps we follow by caring for an aging parent, or special needs child, or someone else who needs our care. Perhaps we follow by….

And, indeed, follow him immediately – here and now, in the world and time in which we live. What seems at the heart of the matter is that we can follow Jesus in all of these different situations and circumstances precisely by trying to imitate him – by trying, that is, to treat others with the same regard, love and patience that he did, including all manner of people but especially those who were overlooked by society. This, I think, is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian: to try to live and treat others as Jesus did, embracing the values of inclusiveness, love, forgiveness, and healing that he radiated in word and deed.

In the closing passage of his monumental “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” Albert Schweitzer – theologian, doctor, Bach scholar – offers a similar insight that I think is still both poignant and relevant. Having concluding that separating the “real” or “historical” Jesus from the “Christ of faith,” Schweitzer nevertheless discovers that we can come to know Christ Jesus Christ fully and authentically only by following Christ. As he writes,

"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is."