4th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 28, 2024

Prayer

In Christ your Son, O God, you impart to us a new teaching from one who speaks with authority, for Jesus is the unique master of wisdom, and our only liberator from the forces of evil.  Make us convinced and courageous in professing our faith, so that by word and deed we may proclaim the truth and bear witness to the happiness enjoyed by those who center their lives and put all their trust in you.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.




Some Thoughts on Mark 1:21-28

"The kingdom of God in Mark is good news because it brings liberation at a number of levels. The central thing is enabling people to be how God made them to be."
"First Thoughts on Passages from Mark in the Lectionary," Epiphany 4, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia. 

A Byzantine church was built on top of
a synagogue in Capernaum

Oremus Online NRSV Text


What is unbound in us?  This is the question that I am taking with me into the Gospel reading from Mark appointed for this Sunday.

This is a very dense and important passage. The author of the Gospel is very much laying a firm foundation upon which he is building his revelation of who Jesus was and the import of his mission in this world and in the world to come. 

First, let me caution the reader and preacher against taking this simply as a story about healing.  I think this is an important caution as there are people in our congregations who are prone to seizures and epilepsy.  They, like their loved ones, are very wounded by preaching on this lesson that does not embody Good News for all people.  We as pastors and leaders should not do anything in our teaching or in our preaching that implies that these people are filled with some demonic spirit when what we know is that they are ill.  In point of fact to say that this story is solely about healing and the casting out of demons from a person is to miss a great deal of what is going on in the passage and in the entirety of the Gospel according to Mark. 

Is this a story about healing? Yes, by all means, it is.  But what is it that we are being healed from? What is it that is being unbound in us? How and for what are we being freed? These are the questions that must be answered as you prepare your sermon for Sunday.

A couple of things to note: First is that this passage parallels the passage in Mark 5:1-20; wherein Jesus heals the Gerasene demoniac.  It parallels the passage EXACTLY.  The difference is that this passage takes place in the midst of the Jewish community and the passage in chapter 5 takes place in the midst of the gentile community.

The second note is that the community of Mark was indeed a community oppressed on every side.  Joel Marcus writes:

For Mark's community, which feels itself to be the focus of the hatred of the whole world because of its preaching of the good news about Jesus (13:9-13), this feature of the initial exorcism would function as a reassurance that eh world's reaction of convulsive hatred does not invalidate the community's claim that its preaching imparts God's eschatological message. (Marcus, Mark, vol 1, 195)

In keeping with most of the scholarly perspectives around this passage, it is my opinion that Mark's community feels bombarded by hatred from both the religious leaders of the day and the political leaders of the day.  As the passage in chapter 5 reflects the political attacks and adversity to the Jesus message; so here in our passage for this Sunday, we can see the attack from the religious leaders of the day.

Let us look at the passage closely. We remember that John the Baptist is now faded to the background. Jesus is taking up his full teaching mission. He is calling people to follow him and he is proclaiming the absolutely good news of God and the kingdom of God.  We find ourselves then in this Sunday's passage following him into a major center of religious life - Capernaum.  It is the sabbath and so he goes and he teaches in the synagogue.

They are astounded at his teaching in part because his teaching is good news but also because he teaches with authority.  This kind of teaching is different than the leaders of religion that they normally hear from.

As if to sharpen the distinction between the different messages and preaching a force enters the synagogue.  Characterized in a demon-possessed man, this force challenges Jesus' teaching.  This is essential. We can get caught up in the demon part and not realize that the dialogue here is of the utmost importance. The man says, in the midst of this religious center filled with people:

24 “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

We might remember that the earliest manuscripts had no punctuation so that these may not be questions at all.  We might read this as:  What are you doing. Why are you teaching here? This is not good. You have come to destroy us.  And, yet too in the enmity cast on Jesus (and for Mark's community anyone who is proclaiming Jesus as Lord) we see recognition and proclamation of Jesus as the son of God - the Holy One of God.  Let us also remember the rest of the story and how these same religious authorities will decry Jesus' ministry and that of his followers.

Jesus unbinds the man from his rejection of the Gospel and his preaching.

The response to this is that people are amazed. Amazed at the freedom to believe? Amazed at the revelation of Jesus as Holy One? Amazed at his power over and against the religious authorities? "Yes," I say.  All of these and there is in verse 27 a recognition that this is a new teaching and one that comes from God. The response of the people is one that affirms Jesus as preacher and teacher of this new movement. He is bringing reform to the old way. He is in fact leading a new way of being disciples of God.

I am currently reading the Bonhoeffer biography by Metaxis.  In it, the author makes a persuasive case that Bonhoeffer while on the one hand believed in the importance of the Christian community he also recognized the reforming nature of Jesus' words and ministry upon a Christianity that was simply religious.

Yes, people who trust in Jesus do experience the healing of life. I have seen it. I know it is true.  But the passage for this Sunday is about the reform of religion. The Gospel of Jesus Christ challenges all Christians and their communities to remember the Holy One of God and the Good News of Salvation at the core of its life. It challenges Christian communities to boldly proclaim the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  It challenges the Christian community to hear the absolute and grace-filled message of love. 

I want to take a moment and ask you to think about your religion. Now I am not talking about your denomination. I am not talking about your church. I am talking about your personal religion? I am wondering if you might make a list of certain things that are required for you when you go to church. Only men as priests or women as priests, incense or no incense, lots of vestments or no vestments, Rite One language or Rite II language or non-gender-specific language, ancient hymnody in Latin or guitars... I can tell you these are not the requirements of Jesus. None of these are mentioned in his teachings.  Yet people are constantly at war over these or other lists of required religious iconography in order for the true gospel to be preached.  The Gospel is there every Sunday and Jesus is present but I wonder what shackles we bring into the church that keeps us from hearing it and proclaiming it.

Let us think of our own church now.  As a church embattled in structure and economy, in a church struggling with the different orders of ministry and asking questions about how we do our mission, we must hold the mirror of Mark's Gospel up and ask some serious questions about reform.  Has religion become more important than the message? Is the benefit of the Christian community lost in the chaos of faith at war with itself? 

As Christians, as Episcopalians, we are imprisoned by our religion.

Jesus Christ comes into our midst. He comes right down into the center of every congregation this Sunday.  He challenges us to teach our faith with authority. To boldly claim the Holy One of God as our own.  To proclaim that God is love and that we are to love one another. We are challenged to teach our response to that love is the mission.

Jesus comes in and this Sunday looks at our heart's religion and he seeks to free us from it.  Jesus offers us unbounded love, free from the shackles of our inherited religion, and challenges us to be at work in the mission field.

I am an Episcopalian and I love being an Episcopalian and I want other people to meet Jesus in our church and worship him as Episcopalians. To do that we must be freed from our heart's religion and our church's religion that says it is my way or the highway. We must be freed and unbound from those ties that bind us to a certain death that our faith and our communities may be part of the kingdom that is coming.

And, like the demoniac in that synagogue and the religious leaders of Jesus time you and I both know our religious heart and our puritanical faith rejects this invitation be to be free.

Jesus keeps coming though.  Again and again he invites us along the way just like his disciples and those he first goes to in Capernaum.  He invites us to allow those parts of ourselves that do not glorify God to fall to the wayside and invites us to be freed for the mission.  We are invited to live lives in communities where the Holy One of God is present and alive and proclaimed.  He invites us most of all to change the nature of our dying religion, that all that is around us (in our neighborhoods and cities) might be amazed at our proclamation of freedom and our teaching with authority -- the unbounded love of Jesus and the freedom to lay our religious shackles down and follow him.

Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

"Paul suggests, in reply to the Corinthians, a new reason for caution about eating such food, and that is a concern for the effect that doing so might have on others who lack the knowledge that the Corinthian church claims keeps them safe from harm."

The Politics of Food Offered to Idols, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Richard Davis, Political Theology Today, 2015.


"The passage gives us a glimpse in the manner in which Paul understood the world, and in particular the space between God and human beings."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Frank L. Crouch, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.


"The problem develops when we let football (or other sports, or a military, or corporations, or other forces) define strength in terms of dominance."
"The Superbowl and the Church in a Culture of Dominance: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13," Matthew L. Skinner, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks, 2015. Video: 5 Things You Didn't Know About America and Violence.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

If you know this text well, or you have it open in front of you, you will see that Paul is continuing to answer the questions posed by the situation in Corinth. 

The issue at hand is eating meat that had been an offering at a pagan festival. Those who ate this meat were believed to be "weak believers." The issue seems trite in today's world, though we can easily think of religious traditions that continue with strict dietary rules of life. So, the weak believers and their counterparts are disruptive to the community. 

Paul, as he does in other texts, comes at the issue as an apostle offering wisdom to the community. He points out that Christians should not be so convicted by knowledge so as to miss the commandment to love. For Paul, the "necessary knowledge" is that of "love."

He then offers a different way of seeing the problem. He turns the problem on its ear and points out that if people in the community were wise they would understand that there is only one God and no lesser gods. That because there are no lesser gods then nothing is happening to the meat. This act of worshiping other lesser gods is nonsensical. He then performs a mic drop. He suggests that those who do not understand this (clearly he means those who are suggesting the community has "weak believers") still maintain that the lesser gods of Greece and Rome are powerful. The weak are those who have not let go of the power of the gods of the world. They are the ones being disloyal to Christ. 

He concludes by suggesting that if the meat, and we might add the conversation about the meat, draws you from the "love" of each other and of Christ then one should abstain. 

In an age of "doing right," we in the Christian Church today have similar issues. Our partisan politics, our social wars, are all examples of our weakness. 

I suggest the church should be clear and vocal about those things that draw us from the love of God and the love of each other. At the same time, we should be careful not to judge such that we are drawn from the love of Christ as well. It is a very easy thing in the age of partisan politics and litmus tests for faithfulness that we get wrapped up in doing right rather than serving the one who good or doing good. We need to be wary of those things about living in the community and in the world that draw us from the love of each other and the love of Christ.

Some Thoughts on Deuteronomy 18:15-20

"Who speaks for God? The answer requires discernment and prayer."
Commentary, Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015

"Maybe Moses was remembering” even as he spoke these words ”his own failure at the rock some years ago. God told him to speak to the rock, he whacked it with his staff instead, and even that little switch-up of the divine message was enough to get Moses banished from the Promised Land for good."
Sermon Starters, Textual Points and Illustration Ideas, Scott Hoezee, Center for Excellence in Preaching, 2015.


"All of this is relevant to our thinking of Jesus, the word of God incarnate, and to our pondering of his teaching and what the church has proclaimed about him."
Deuteronomy 18:15-22, Epiphany 4, The Old Testament Readings: Weekly Comments on the Revised Common Lectionary, Theological Hall of the Uniting Church, Melbourne, Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This passage is about how the people of God are to remain faithful to God. They are entering a land of many gods. Moses is the chosen one, the prophet, who will be their go-between. Moses will have a vocation of going on behalf of God to the people, and speaking on God's behalf to the people. In this way, the people will be able to be in contact with God.

I suggest there are two facets of rabbinic tradition worth considering before we consider the Gospel application to our Gospel mission today. The first consideration is: what does it take to be a faithful people? The second is: how does the prophetic word work? Let me begin with the first consideration.

In Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman’s Torah commentary we discover that part of becoming the people of God is not about individually besting others but about a shared experience of communal flourishing with God. She writes, 

"Deuteronomy teaches, 'If there is a needy person among you in any of the land Adonai your God gives you, do not harden your heart. ... Rather, open your hand and lend what your neighbor needs' (15:7-8). The tribal world of the Torah isn't a dog-eat-dog competition. The 'primitive' society of the ancient Hebrews is interdependent--all members of the community jointly support each other and their religious and political institutions.

Rabbi Litman offers that the key to the ethic of a survivor mentality is the notion of competition for scarce resources accompanied by personal bias. The Torah community of Deuteronomy on the other hand has a different set of values that have an orientation to justice for all in the community. There is a turning to God in humility and a turning to each other without partiality in this deuteronomistic vision of the whole. I propose that this actually rejects individual flourishing that comes at the cost of others or the wider community. The theology of the deutoronomists is that there can be no individual flourishing that does not include the whole of the people. 

This is a vision of a community that is wholistic before God and will depend not only upon Moses as intercessor but upon one another to live out the faithful invitation of God.

The second consideration is the prophetic vision of a faithful people who together will inherit a land of milk and honey. What we know of prophecy in the rabbinic tradition is that negative prophecies that do not come true do not prove the prophet's worth. Only the prophet who foretells good things may be tested. In Yesodei haTorah 10:4 it is written, "But if the prophet, in the name of G‑d, assures good fortune, declaring that a particular event would come to pass, and the benefit promised has not been realized, he is unquestionably a false prophet, for no blessing decreed by the Almighty, even if promised conditionally, is ever revoked..." (See Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Testing Prophecy)

As Richard B. Hays wrote regarding the people of God and its connection to the first followers of Jesus: “There can be no question here of a purely individualized spiritual formation. Matthew is strongly ecclesially oriented.” (Hays, Echoes of the Scripture in the Gospels, p. 97) We have here a rabbinic notion of The Shekinah meaning to ‘settle’ or ‘dwell’ and is an attempt in rabbinic teaching to speak about the presence of God among the people. As Christians, we understand that Christ has come and dwelt with us in the manner described by the deuteronomists. God has manifested God's self in Emmanuel. In this way God has revealed in the person of Jesus not only God's presence or shekinah, and also the manner of living with one another. Jesus Christ brings forward the lesson from Deuteronomy, it does not exist as a past notion of communal life but as the template for the ministry, teaching, and life. It is the structure upon which Jesus Christ offers the sermon on the mount - as an example.

3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 21, 2024

Prayer

In your Son, O God, you have given us your word in all its fullness and the greatest of all your gifts. Rouse our hearts to grasp the urgent need of conversion, and stir up our souls with longing to embrace your gospel. May our lives proclaim to those far away from you and to those filled with doubt that the one Savior of us all is your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Mark 1:14-20

"How ready are we to encounter people, share our truth and then instead of manipulating, cajoling and trapping them, allow them the freedom to re-enter the waters of life and make up their own minds about the truth we have shared?"
"Hooking up with Jesus," Peter Woods, I Am Listening, 2012.

"What would make you drop everything and pursue an entirely new life?"

"The Call of the Disciples and the Decline of the Church," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2012.

"People in the New Community would derive their identity not from their present economic condition or their past familial relationships, but rather be given a new identity as followers of the 'way' of the 'kingdom of God' as taught and lived by their leader, Jesus of Galilee."

Lectionary Blogging, John Petty, Progressive Involvement, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

We begin this passage as Mark clearly breaks from the testimony of John the Baptist and focuses directly on the work of Jesus. Jesus is now the focal point of the Gospel and of Mark's witness.

A second theme emerges directly as Galilee. We are beginning to read Mark more regularly in this year's cycle of Gospel readings. In Mark's Gospel Galilee is the "land of salvation" while it is contrasted throughout the story with Jerusalem; which is the place of rejection. (This was pointed out by such great New Testament scholars as Lohmeyer and Lightfoot; and has been repeated throughout most Markan commentaries.) In Galilee, great and miraculous things happen. Healings, exorcisms, teaching, and the growth of the Jesus movement all hallmark Galilee as the place of salvation. Mark as a Gospel author so focuses on this theme that it is the primary and driving force behind his confusing geography. For the Gospel author, the story and miraculous works are more important than factual place.

In our passage, John is handed over, Jesus comes from Galilee, and he proclaims "good news." I love Mark's Gospel and I have studied it quite a bit. What stood out for me in this reading is Joel Marcus' point that this is "good news" really stood out. In his exegesis of the text (Marcus, Mark, vol 1, 171) Marcus points out that the word "God" and "kingdom of God" were later added and not necessarily part of the early Christian witness to Jesus' ministry. Marcus even reminds us that John's Gospel does not even use the term "euangelion," or Good News. This is Good News! It is not good news and, or good news but. The early Christian testimony preserved in Mark's account is that what we have is Good News.

Then Jesus teaches our response. Our response to the Good News that God is near, that God claims us, that God reinserts himself into the world, that God invites our relationship is to discover that we are in a new age of God; we are now in an age of the kingdom or dominion of God...our response is repentance and belief.

What seems very inspiring here is the notion that this is not a one-time event. We are not to repent and believe, but rather we are to live a life of repenting and believing. These words of good news and repenting/believing are words that would have resounded in the ears of the newly baptized Christian. They are words deeply connected with the earliest Christian tradition. We are a people who recognize our relationship with God; we celebrate the grace of God and the goodness of God. We then are constantly responding attempting to glorify God in this world by moving our lives closer and closer to the life of God.

We are a people who are not satisfied with the old age or the past; we are a people who want to come ever closer to God's kingdom. We are a people not satisfied with the world as we experience it for we know that when we try and work and repent and move ever closer God's love and grace transforms us and the world around us. It does this through kindness, charity, and good works. This is the center of living a life virtuously. The virtuous life is one that is constantly trying to remove the old and dead life; letting it fall away. And, consequently attempting to live a life where belief matters and affects how I am going to act in the next moment.

This opening reading from Mark's Gospel would have reminded the first hearers of the first moments when they followed Jesus. (Marcus, 176) As we read it today and think about our words for Sunday morning we must recognize that we have the opportunity to stir up and reinvigorate our discipleship. We have the opportunity to see again for the fist time what it means to turn and follow Jesus.

Good News of our salvation and the unique proclamation of God's kingdom and our invitation to be a part is good news indeed!

Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

"Paul's word may jolt us into asking whether we have in the process lost God and lost ourselves - let alone the real interests of others."
"First Thoughts on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 3,"William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"And so, the challenge for us today who are in the world is not merely to divorce ourselves from it. And I use the word “merely” intentionally here."

Changing the Form of the World, Amy Allen, Political Theology, 2012.

"In the end, the primary message of this text is that nothing in this world can compare to the eternal fellowship we have with God and Christ."

Commentary, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, Arland J. Hultgren, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

Almost all of our historical understanding of Corinth points to the fact that it was a major port during Jesus' time. Because of the Peloponnesus peninsula, it also was an essential land route. It was a commercial center, a center for the arts, and the crafts of shipbuilding, and trade.

Into this cultural mix, we know that the church there has asked for help and is having some trouble. So it is that Paul sits down to write.

The point of the passage seems to be at first glance centered on the relationships between husbands and wives.  Marriage is important and somehow their faith is causing problems within families. Based on my own experience my feeling is that people are in each other's business and have asked Paul to intervene. Paul has done so BUT he is desperately trying to redirect their attention from what he believes are cursory matters.

Corinth is caught up in issue conversations. They are important but for Paul, they are not as important as the mission.

So it is that Paul reminds them they are living in an in-between time. They are waiting for Christ who is to return. Their work is clear - the few Christians in Corinth are to work hard together to share the Gospel and teach others about Christ. They are to bring people into the family. They are to work with God to bring salvation to as many people as possible.

Paul certainly believed this was all going to be over before he himself died.

How often we look at and focus upon those things which really are the things of this world and issues of our time, instead of being attentive to God's reconciling love and his ministry of grace.

Some Thoughts on Jonah 3:1-10

"As you preach this sermon, you might ask your listeners to think of a person that they find difficult to love. (Be sure, of course, to make clear that they are not called to stay in abusive situations.) Then proclaim to them that God loves that person, and that God loves them, too."
Commentary, Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.


"Maybe we are not actively awaiting and licking our lips over the potential destruction of this or that group, but if certain types of people did come to us (as they are), would we generate the kind of joy over this one might wish for?"
Commentary and Illustrration Ideas, Scott Hoezee, Center for Excellence in Preaching, 2015.

"Jonah challenges the perspective of the righteously indignant to put aside moral superiority and take on the character of God, whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting."
Commentary, Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Callie Plunket-Brewton, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 


God invites Jonah to go, he gives him a vocation, to go and speak on God's behalf.  Jonah does not go out and do God's work in part because they don't see eye to eye. Jonah felt it was unjust they should suffer the consequences and be punished and not be forgiven so easily. Jonah did not like that God was going to forgive the people because they repented after hearing the prophet's words. Jonah believed Jonah had a sense of retributive justice. God then teaches Jonah a lesson about how God is concerned for the people and concerned that they learn and change their ways.

I suggest this is more than doing right or a moral idea of acting rightly. God is interested in the people
coming to understand how to serve the one who is good and the good itself. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote:

God teaches Jonah to care by giving him something and then taking it away. Loss teaches us to value things, though usually too late. What we have, and then lose, we do not take for granted. The religious vision is not about seeing things that are not there. It is about seeing the things that are there and always were, but which we never noticed, or paid attention to. Faith is a form of attention. It is a sustained meditation on the miraculousness of what is because it might not have been. What we lose and are given back we learn to cherish in a way we would not have done had we never lost it in the first place. Faith is about not taking things for granted. (The Unanswered Question.)

For early Christians, Jonah prefigures the three-day resurrection of Jesus. (See Matthew 12:38-41.)

These are two themes that I think you can easily preach about. 

I am interested in the story of Jonah as a call about vocation. there is the story of Jonah. I mention Jonah because he flat out rejected God’s invitation at first. God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah’s response was to go to Tarshish. He went to Joppa, got on a boat, and attempted to flee from God’s call. A storm came up, the sailors threw Jonah overboard, a big fish swallowed him, and then, upon being spit upon the shore, Jonah heard God again: “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” Jonah went to Nineveh to be God’s messenger (Jon. 1–3).

The reason that Jonah did not want to go was because God was too forgiving! Jonah knew that if he did what God wanted, then God would simply forgive the people. Jonah complained angrily when God proved him right. He cried out in prayer, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jon. 4:2).

God’s invitations are very persuasive. Through visions, voice, and the advice and counsel of friends, God invites God’s people to go. The specific circumstances of this going vary across different contexts, but there is always a purpose behind God’s invitation to go. People are always being sent. There is a hinge here in the language—a double meaning: going and being sent are about both the invitation and the purpose. 

God called Abraham and Sarah to become a people that bless the world, which is a habit of God’s throughout all of scripture. Jonah reflects a similar habit. Faithfulness is the act of accepting the invitation and opening oneself to becoming the blessing. Those whom God invites, God also blesses, in order that they might bless others. God said to Abraham and Sarah, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Their promised family would outnumber the stars of Abraham’s counting and be a blessing to the world. Brueggemann ponders the meaning of this blessing and says, “‘Blessing’ is not a religious or moral phenomenon in the world,” it is a “characteristic feature of creation that is fruitful and productive.”  (See Vocātiō: Imaging a Visible Church.)

Excerpt from Võcatiõ on The Call of the Disciples

You can purchase the book here.

Chapter Three: Disciples of Peace

I love to think of them at dawn

Beneath the frail pink sky,

Casting their nets in Galilee

And fish-hawks circling by.

Casting their nets in Galilee

Just off the hills of brown

Such happy, simple fisherfolk

Before the Lord came down.

William Alexander Percy, Poet 

The gospels differ in their account of how Jesus and his disciples begin their ministry. Nonetheless, a common pattern emerges: Jesus' ministry begins after his baptism and his journey in the wilderness, as John the Baptist is fading away. Jesus boldly renounces worldly power and violence during his conflict with the devil in the desert. This powerful renunciation foreshadows the choices Jesus makes throughout his ministry: The community he founds, and the reign he reinvigorates will demonstrate God’s intentions. Through Jesus, God will create an intentional community of shalom.  

The first two disciples that Jesus brought into this community are two brothers, Simon (who is Peter) and Andrew. Jesus came across them as he walked by the Sea of Galilee. They were fishing from the shore. Jesus invited them to follow. (Mark 1:16-18, Matthew 4:18-19) They dropped their nets and followed immediately. A little further along, they picked up James and John - the sons of Zebedee. (Mark 1:19-20, Matthew 4:19-22) John's Gospel tells us that Andrew brought Peter to Jesus after John the Baptist points him out. Jesus said to Andrew, "Come and see." (John 1:35-42) The disciples took Jesus’ invitation because they believed that he had inherited the mantle of John the Baptist. Jesus was the one about whom John had been preaching. John's Gospel continues with Philip in Galilee. Philip and his brother Nathanael came to Jesus. Jesus is proclaimed as the one "about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote." (John 1:43-51) Significantly, Nathanael believes that Jesus was to be the king of Israel. Jesus flatly rejected the revolution Nathanael implied. Jesus’ kingdom is to be a reign of peace, and not borne from the world of violence.  (John 1:10; John 14:17) As the disciples came and saw, they discovered that they too were called to inaugurate a reign of peace, and reject the world of violence. (John 15:18; 17:20-26) 

The first disciples Jesus encountered beside the Sea of Galilee were invited to be "fishers of people." This is not a general invitation to follow. It is not a mere pun. The Church's unconscious habit of reading scripture as legitimating text for a vast institution has made these call stories about bringing people to Jesus and church growth. The call stories represent how church members should bring other people to church where they can meet Jesus. Within the narrative arc of the shalom community, these stories have a different meaning. 

"Fishers of people" create the shalom community itself. By calling his disciples to become, fishers of men Jesus harkens back to the holy narrative of the Old Testament and the patriarchs and matriarchs God called to make a community for all people.  The first mention of this metaphor in the narrative of God is found in the prophecy of Jeremiah: "Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the LORD, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks." (Jeremiah 16:16) The people of Israel have forgotten their call to build a community of shalom. Jeremiah is reminding them that they were to be a community of blessing to the world. They were to take care of the poor and the least and the lost. The blood of the innocent poor are on Israel's hands. (Jeremiah 2:35) Through Jeremiah, God says that the leaders of God’s people have been poor shepherds, scattering the people when they were supposed to gather them. (Jeremiah 23:1-6) God pledges to overturn Israel because it has forgotten itself and its God. (Jeremiah 18:15; 30:14) God intends to gather God's people anew, and frustrate those who prey upon the poor. The image of “fishing for men” returns in the prophesies of Amos (4:2). Through the prophet Amos, God declares that those who forget the needy and live upon their backs will be taken away by fishhooks.   And, again in Habakkuk (1:13-16), God will catch the people up in his dragnet. Ezekiel prophesies that the people are the fish and shall be gathered in (29:3b-4),. 

Jesus uses the image of fishing for people to convey that his mission is in line with God’s mission of ancient days. Using the Old Testament and language of Palestine, Jesus declares his intention to gather God's people into a new reign of peace (Matthew 23:37-39). This gathering will include the rich and the poor, the found and the lost. All people will be gathered into a community of peace exploitation, injustice, and violence of any sort are unknown. In this community, neither the poor nor the rich will become scapegoats. God’s people will be gathered in like fish caught in a dragnet. Jesus’ message is consistent with the scriptural narrative from Abraham and Sarah to Mary. So when Jesus called these fishermen from the Sea of Galilee, Jesus invited them to be part of a different community doing a different kind of work. Their habit in life was to be different from the world of violence that surrounded them. They were joining Jesus in his work of shalom. Remember, the reign of God is near. The captives were to be released, the blind receive sight, and the oppressed to be unbound. God's blessing is proclaimed, all are to be gathered in, and a new order of living is to be established. (Luke 4:16-19)

Let us pause here and speak of this word “vocation” because what Jesus is definitely not doing is inviting these fishermen into a church job or an engaging hobby, which is how must of us understand vocation for the Church today. If we aren’t careful, our ingrained expectation of a professional class of clergy quickly sabotages our ability to understand the ministry of Jesus and the disciples. Our bias builds churchy furniture into this story where there is none. We put our church goggles on and read back into the scripture the idea that the disciples called on that seashore were the first priests of the church. They used to make money as fishermen now they are going to make their money as ministers. (Luke 10:4-11) This is not the case.  

The root of the word vocation is the word “voice”. A related term is vocāre which means “call”. To be “called was to be invited to do this or that.  The meaning of vocation as we have been using it is a call to "go" on God's behalf. Vocation is about being sent to be the voice of God. This is not a professional obligation, but rather a dynamic partnership of humans with God that has persisted from the very beginning. Adam and Eve worked with God in the caretaking of the garden and creation. God walked with them in the evening to survey the work they were doing together. Humans have always been invited to join God and to "work it and keep it." (Genesis 2:15) We are possessed by God's invitation to speak and be a blessing to the world. We are occupied with undoing the violence of the world by ending the cycles of sibling rivalry. Humans are uniquely suitable to this vocation. 

Martin Luther and John Calvin regularly thought of vocation as a community at work, though they were not the first.  The Middle Ages imbued vocation with an expectation of special training or craft skill. The guilds promoted this idea of vocation, and bound up the practice of the professions in religious ritual.  Only after the sixteenth century would the term vocation be regularly used to describe the priesthood. Modern Christians and humanist philosophers strained the sacred meanings out of the idea of vocation over time, and eventually participation in the church became an optional avocation unless you were part of the clerical hierarchy, and then church work would be your vocation - your professional work. Such a partitioning between religious obligation and professional obligation is foreign to the Scriptures. The disciples are called into the community of God's peace. They are being invited to be God's voice and to cooperate with Jesus in making a different community that rejects violence.

We return now to our disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Luke's Gospel tells the story of the calling of the first disciples as a fishing miracle. Jesus came by and taught the people using the boat as a platform. He then invited the disciples to cast out into the sea and to put their nets in. The fishermen doubted, as they had been fishing all night with nothing to show for their efforts. They did as Jesus said and a great multitude of fish was brought aboard. Luke tells us that their nets were breaking. They called other boats to come and help. Peter immediately told Jesus he was not worthy to follow. Jesus told Peter, James and John to join him and he would teach them to fish for people. (Luke 5:1-11) At the end of the John’s Gospel we have a similar story, where Jesus appeared on the seashore and called out to his followers who had gone fishing, ordering them to cast their net on the others side of the boat. Again, they did so, and multitudes of fish were brought in. They joined Jesus for breakfast and he was revealed as the risen Christ on the shore in the breaking of the bread. Jesus then invited them to be leaders in the new community of shalom. He says to them, "Follow me." (John 21:1-19) These two miracles gesture towards the work of fishing for people, and demonstrate that the reign of God is a community of shalom.

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter thirteen, Jesus returns again to fishing images when he taught that the kingdom of peace is like a dragnet. Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind." (Matthew 13:47)  This parable is the last among a long series of parables about the kingdom of peace.  Robert Farrar Capon uses this parable to speak eschatologically about the kingdom to come at the end of the age. I think Jesus must also be speaking of the reign that is at hand in this world. So, while I concur with Capon’s interpretation, I want to broaden it to fit into a wider discussion of the disciples’ work as peace builders,  because followers of Jesus are doing work in this world that will remain at the end of the age. Jesus uses the dragnet as a metaphor for this peace-making enterprise. The community the disciples build is to be universal, catholic, with everyone included.

Dragnets gather in everything because they dredge the sea floor. They capture wood and plants as well as fish. They capture inedible fish as well as edible fish. The community of peace that Jesus inaugurates in this world has the same characteristic of "indiscriminate-ness".  God is making a community that connects, or net-works all kinds of people. While we normally think of this kingdom-net only containing fish, and good fish at that, it truly contains everything: the weeds, the detritus of dysfunctional relationships and human brokenness, the debris of daily life lived in service to the masters of economies and political power-mongers. The community of shalom, our dragnet, "touches everything in the world: not just souls, but bodies, and not just people, but all things, animal, vegetable, and mineral."  God in Christ Jesus is in this very world gathering into the community of shalom the whole of creation. As God in Christ is lifted up on the cross, the great crossroads of community is bridged - heaven with earth, man with God. All is drawn to God's self. (John 12:32) As the book of Revelation indicates: all of creation is drawn to God in Christ - not just people. 

The disciples are called to participate in the transfiguration of the world. This is partly why they are led down from the mountainside after Jesus’ transfiguration. They are to be the transfigured Christ in the world. The work of transfiguring creation only happens down in the village where demons are cast out and people are healed. (Matthew 17:1-27) The mystery of the community of shalom is that it includes God and people and must include the whole of creation. Secular moderns, imprisoned as we are in the immanent frame, will want to differentiate between what is worth capturing in the net and what is not, but no such distinction is made in the parables of the kingdom in the Gospels.  The dragnet rejects nothing in the sea and encompass all things. The only people missing from God’s dragnet when it is hauled ashore will be those who carve themselves out of the net with their own sickle of judgment. This is what the scriptures imply when they say that the sickle will soon enough come for those who refuse the community of peace and instead choose power, abuse of the poor by neglect, and do violence to others and creation. (Matthew 25:31-46; and Revelation 14) The sickle comes for those who cannot live with the least, the lost, and the unclean. They have spent their whole life being different from those “other” people. They hold too much judgment in their heart, keeping track of the negative marks against others. It is very hard for people who routinely use power and authority to keep others down and out, to accept that God has invited all into the reign of peace. I pray that it will be very difficult indeed to resist God’s grace, to deny God’s sacrifice is enough even for my enemy, and to reject God’s love when I come face to face with God’s eternal peace.  

The story of scripture also tells us that this separation of judgment will not take place before the transfiguration at the end of the age. There is always time. In this hope we live and work and have our being. Between now and the end of time, the disciples of Jesus can reject nothing, for the dragnet rejects nothing, and the community of peace has no "business setting itself up in the judging business. And, neither, a fortiori, does the church." The disciples are to follow Jesus and learn from him, as regular members of the great narrative of God's shalom. They are to learn how this new dragnet of community is to hold all kinds of people. This is how the band of Jesus followers become a "sacrament", the continuing body of Christ in the world. They will have to "avoid the temptation to act like sports fishermen who are interested only in speckled trout and hand-tied flies," says Capon.   No, the disciples are to be the worst kind of fishermen. The only thing they are to discard is the temptation to reject the mess of creation and humanity. Their community of shalom in this world participates in the reign of God at the end of the age if it remains in relationship with all the "old boots, bottles, and beer cans" that a truly random dredging of humanity must be. The Church will be transfigured to the extent that it is one and the same with the mess it intends to drag in.  

To point out how important this work is, Luke follows the call story of the disciples with an encounter with a leper. Lepers were shunned from the religious community of the day. Their illness made intimacy and belonging impossible. Lepers were seen as sinful and not worthy of community membership, but Jesus restores one such leper back to the community by engagement with the God of creation. God's Living Word made the leper whole, rejecting the status quo. God in Christ Jesus engaged someone who was not to be engaged. (Luke 5:12-16) Moreover, Jesus tied his healing of the leper into the story of Moses. 

After the call story in Mark, Jesus went to the home of Peter where they found his mother-in-law on death's door. Jesus brought the dragnet of peace into Peter's home, and there restored the woman into community. (Mark 1:29-31) 

In Matthew's version of the call story there is a fight between Jesus and the religious powers that be. They were concerned about Jesus’ congregating with sinners. In Matthew’s version of the gospel, Jesus' next action was to call a sinner to participate in the community of shalom, a tax collector named Levi. (Mathew 9:9) Levi participated in the systemic oppression of the poor, supported the Pax Romana, and the religious powers in league with Rome. He participated in a system of “peace” enforced by religious and political violence. Levi collected the seven layers of taxes that oppressed the people while lining the purses of the powerful. Of course he would have added some cost into the mix for his own trouble, as was the tradition for tax collectors. Jesus invited this sinner, this corrupt player in the systems of violence and oppression, to follow and to join a different community - the community of God's shalom. Levi received the call and left his table. (Matthew 9:9) Jesus then took Levi with him into a home. Again, Jesus placed the new community of shalom within a home and at a table. Here Levi, one of the undesirables, an inedible fish, joined Jesus and other tax collectors and sinners and they ate together a meal. (Matthew 9:10) Jesus responded to the critics, explaining that the community of shalom is going to be like the dragnet. It will be made up of many who the religious and the political establishment see as unfit. Levi's call is a powerful witness to this dragnet kingdom that Luke made the call of Levi the first call of all the disciples. (Luke 5:27-32) 

The community of shalom and God in Christ Jesus is not populated with worthy heroes resplendent in glory. The community of shalom is composed of unworthy and unlikely human beings who renounce systems of violence out of a hunger for peace. They reject sibling rivalry. They are random contents of the dragnet- the good fish and bad.

The only place in the Near East where such a heterogeneous community could be assembled was in the Galilee, in Nazareth, Capernaum-  places outside of orbit of Jerusalem. Jesus’ work is only possible at the margins of society, for it is there that the mixture of misfits is found. In the Gospels the kingdom of peace always takes root in the wilderness - out in the countryside. As the reign of peace begins to take root, it immediately comes into conflict with the powers of state and religion. Its very existence challenges the accepted norms of social behavior that protect the powerful. Transgressing these norms brings violence. So to accept the call to speak the voice of shalom brings the violence of the systems of oppression down upon the follower of Jesus. Mark's Gospel provides an example. From the beginning Jesus eats with sinners, challenging accepted religious and social boundaries. (Mark 2:15) Jesus challenges religious purity codes by being in contact with lepers. (Mark 1:41) He gives food to the hungry. (Mark 2:23) All of this creates conflict with the authorities (Mark 1:22; 1:43; 2:6; and 2:15).  By the time Jesus and his disciples have traveled for three years building their community of peace, the Roman political machinery, the Jewish religious hierarchy, and the most revered clerical powers decide that violence is the only solution to the threat that Jesus’ community poses to their power and they plot Jesus' death. (Mark 3:1-6)

The reign of peace demands a transfiguration of the community and portends radical change for the institutions that enforce order. Jesus’ own experience demonstrates that building the kingdom of shalom will require direct confrontation with the powers of this world. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus takes on the powers of religion that prey on humanity and in the next moment he takes on the powers of the state which do the same. Jesus wants to show all who follow him what work is in store for them. New Testament scholar and activist Ched Myers writes, "Thus at the heart of Mark's Gospel is the assertion that the messianic vocation--and our discipleship as well--is defined by redemptive suffering, not triumph.” 

Sermon Preached on these Texts

The Perfect Meal and Perfect Christianity

Jan 27, 2015

Sermon preached at Holy Apostles, Katy and Hope, Houston on 3 Epiphany Year B, the calling of the disciples in Mark's Gospel.