By the Rev. David Lose
“Crisis, confidence, and commitment. These are at least three of the ingredients that make this the right time.”
“I still remember learning the meaning of “kairos” my first year in seminary. It was such a cool and compact lesson in the difference that knowing even just a little bit of Greek made. You likely remember that as well. Chronos – root of “chronological” – as the steady, even relentless beat of the time that marks our days, our work, our waiting and watching, contrasted with Kairos, the special, even royal time of God’s intervention into human affairs. The time when chronos is interrupted by promise, presence, and fulfillment. And speaking of fulfillment, “pleroma” was another of those early and fascinating Greek words we learned, when something long planned comes to fruition, when all that was meant to be has come together and now is, the time of completion and fullness. Well, we get both of those words in Mark’s typically spare description of Jesus’ opening proclamation and subsequent calling of the disciples: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand!”
“What struck me this week was not so much an insight, but a question: what makes this particular moment the right time, kairotic time, the time of fullness and God’s presence and promise?
“No doubt there are numerous possible answers, including of course that it was all ordained by God. Maybe. But… three things from this week’s reading stood out to me in particular that I just hadn’t really thought about before.
“First, it’s a time of crisis: Israel has been living under the oppression of the Romans for some time. And it’s not just an external threat, but also an internal one, as Herod and company vacillate between being complicit in, or at least profiting from, the Roman occupation and being so corrupt that they are ineffectual to look after anyone’s interest other than their own. This is, of course, the backdrop of John the Baptist’s arrest. And I don’t think it’s an accident that this crisis is what propels Jesus into action, as Mark writes, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news….”
“Second, Jesus has received God’s blessing and his identity via his baptism just earlier in the narrative. And so, confident that God is present, active, and with him, he announces God’s coming, even impending, kingdom and calls for the corresponding actions and response of believing the good news and repentance (another cool Greek word that is less about apologizing or confessing sin than it is about being arrested in place and turning toward a new direction).
“Third, Jesus finds a willing, even eager audience of people willing to follow. Perhaps the message of good news and fulfillment he offered was so compelling that Simon and Andrew and then James and John cannot but help themselves at dropping everything and following, or perhaps Jesus already knows them and his appearance and summons is the call to action they’ve been waiting for. I think it hardly matters. What matters is that they hear the good news and believe it, not in the sense of mere intellectual assent but rather in that it creates in them a measure of trust and hope that moves them forward into active and committed response.
“Crisis, confidence, and commitment. These are at least three of the ingredients that make this the right time.
“Which makes me wonder, Dear Partner, if we might not also tell our people that it is still the right time, and perhaps more than ever. That is, perhaps our message this week might be that, even as we gather, “the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has drawn near.” After all, we are surely at a time of crisis. Pandemic and the profound loss that attends it, economic hardship and uncertainty, the brutal and deliberate stirring of long simmering differences into violence, radical and painful racial injustice, continued ecological devastation, and more. Yes, crises we have aplenty.
“As for confidence, I have absolutely no concerns about that when it comes to you. You continue to attend to God’s word and labor to proclaim the Gospel faithfully, creatively, and well week in and week out during some of the most challenging months for ministry in generations. I take heart each time I think of you living into your baptismal and vocational calling each week. And a part of that call, of course, is to share that confidence with our folks, reminding them that the words addressed to Jesus at his baptism – “you are my beloved; with you I am well pleased” – were and continue to be addressed to them, to all of us, at our baptism as well.
“And commitment? Perhaps here is where we might raise a question and, even more, make an invitation. God is still at work, still proclaiming the good news. And through the proclamation and our shared congregational life, God is still calling us to follow Jesus. Yes, first it is a question: are you, are we, willing to drop so much of what passes for normal and expected in order to follow in the way of Jesus? But far more than the question that demands a decision, it is an invitation: God sees you/us as worthy of God’s attention, as capable of great things, as called and equipped to be Jesus’ disciples in this new and challenging 2021. A year, we might remind our people, that whatever difficulties it may present, is still a year anno domini (AD), “the year of our Lord” 2021. It is an honor to be invited, and perhaps that invitation, issued by God and renewed in our preaching this week, may summon our folks to being arrested by the good news, turning in a new direction, and believing and trusting that, indeed, God is with us and for us. And with that call and invitation, perhaps we will be renewed in our confidence that God is working through us to care for and bless God’s world and people. If so, then in all these ways we might see and proclaim that the kingdom of God is still – and perhaps with fresh import – at hand.
FOLLOW ME
By the Rev. Hershey Mallette Stephens
“After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
“As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.”
– Mark 1:14-20
They say every preacher has one sermon.
And I think the Rev. Martin Luther King’s one sermon was “Follow Me.”
“Follow me” and find Jesus in your neighbor, in the school children in the south, in sanitation workers in Memphis, in the domestic workers in Birmingham.
“Follow me” and see Jesus in those living in poverty in the richest country in the world.
“Follow me” and see Jesus in the Vietnamese children, women and men being senselessly slaughtered in the name of empire.
The Rev. King was not seeking acolytes for vainglory. King, like all prophets in their time, was asking the people of God to join him in the discipleship of Jesus who preached repentance and the Good News of God.
In a speech given April 4, 1967—exactly one year before his assassination.
At Riverside Church, here in New York City, [the Rev. King] said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” [Cornell West, The Radical Jesus]
In other words, King is saying to us would-be disciples, our society is in need of a revolution! King described his vision of revolution as the Beloved Community. And the trials of the past year have made the call for discipleship and the need for Beloved Community abundantly clear. The isolation of this past year has also made our need for community and companionship increasingly evident.
The disciples called in this reading from Mark followed Jesus in pairs. I like to think that they brought a friend. Jesus came into their town, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
How exciting?!
And how absolutely terrifying!
The radical revolution of values that Jesus calls us to—a world in which love, peace and work are just sounds absolutely amazing. Like the Kingdom of God come near! Yet in order to get there we are learning that we must let go of life as we know it. And that can be scary. We have to put down the nets. The nets that entrap us and tangle us up in the ways of the world. The nets of selfishness, consumerism, materialism, racism, sexism, transphobia, lust for power and apathy.
In putting down my nets and leaving the ways of the world behind I have found that I need accountability, companionship and a good friend. Like Simon and Andrew, James and John, it’s nice to do new things and to follow Jesus with a friend. A friend doesn’t always keep me from feeling lonely as I live into the revelation of Heaven on earth, but it is nice to know that there is someone else who is living into the challenges and joys with me as I walk with Jesus.
The Rev. Hershey Mallette Stephens is the dean of the chapel and spiritual life at Saint Augustine’s University, Raleigh.