THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – B 2018
Dear Sisters and brothers in Christ,
Today’s gospel tells us about the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Mark tells us three things we need to be reminded of and need to bring into our own lives of faith.
First, Mark reminds us that Jesus began his ministry as a result of the imprisonment of John the Baptist. In a sense, John’s arrest is what allowed Jesus to pick up the baton and continue the urgent message John became famous for: God is doing something new and it is happening among us right now.
Then Mark gives us the four points of Jesus’ preaching: and notice that it’s not a list of doctrines and commandments but it’s about developing a new consciousness, a new awareness, of what God is up to.
- “The time has come.” In other words: Don’t look back anymore. 2.) Second, He’s saying: “The Kingdom of God is near!” In other words, he is saying: “God is right now in the process of creating a better and a more humane world.” 3.) Third, Jesus says: “Repent.” In other words: You can no longer pretend that nothing is happening, so you have to change your way of thinking about yourself and about the world. And, 4.) fourth, Jesus is saying: “Believe in the good news.” In other words, what God is doing is the best news you could ever imagine.
So, after we hear what Jesus says, Mark tells us what Jesus does in order to bring supporters on board to help him spread his message. Notice that what Jesus doesn’t do is build a school and publish a curriculum for training. He doesn’t conduct interviews and ask for resumes and letters of recommendation and salary expectations. He doesn’t hire a consulting firm.
Mark tells us that “Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee.” He took to the road. He went on a journey looking among ordinary people so he could call those he wanted to be with him and invite them to willingly sign up to help him open up new pathways to the Kingdom of God. We need to notice that to be a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean just learning doctrines, and it certainly doesn’t mean disagreeing unpleasantly over minutiae. It means walking with Jesus, learning from Him, trying to put on his heart, learning how to see the world through his eyes.
It’s important to notice that, in all the gospels, Jesus is the one who takes the initiative. He goes in person to those he calls and he finds them in their ordinary lives. In our reading from Mark today, Jesus fixes his gaze on those four fishermen, and invites them to trust him and, thereby, to accept a new direction in their lives. Our faith, too, begins with an encounter with Jesus and with the decision to live with more faith in him. You and I need to consider more often and more seriously how it is Jesus is inviting us personally to walk with him, to get to know him, so that we can be the recipients of the promises he makes to us. And we need to develop the habit of allowing ourselves to hear his invitation every single day: “Come, follow me, walk with me, learn from me and you will find rest and meaning and joy and peace.”
Today, every day, Jesus is inviting you to take to the road with him. The road is not an imaginary road, like the “yellow brick road.” It is the road through this world, where we cannot help but see enormous suffering and inhumanity, in the poverty, the homelessness, in the displaced; so much cruelty and indifference, so much superficiality and selfishness. But, this road, just as it was for the disciples, will also lead us to encounter and to create a world in which, because we walk with him, and to the extent we allow him to reveal it to us, we see healing and reconciliation and forgiveness and five thousand fed with five loaves of bread, and a storm at sea calmed by a single word from him, and, and ultimately, this road leads to a man crucified and buried, who joins us again even though we have locked all of the doors of our hiding places.
Sisters and brothers, this is all possible for us if we don’t harden our hearts against it, if we don’t say: “No. I’d rather catch fish than people” or “No, I don’t like the benefits package for the job of apostle.” or “No, I simply can’t be bothered; all of that’s too good to be true anyway. Risen from the dead? Spare me.”
If your heart is too hard, and your sensitivities are too dulled to perceive the fact that this world as we know it is imploding, then you’re not paying attention.
Last week, our sisters and brothers in Hawaii got a huge shock when they were warned, incorrectly as it turned out, that they were about to be attacked by a nuclear missile. That kind of message tends to garner a lot of attention and to cause not a little panic.
In a sense, Jesus beginning his public ministry is like that warning: “Time’s up. The world as you knew it is ending. Change your thinking about the world.”
The difference is that Jesus is attacking, not with nuclear power or violence, but with love and with mercy, not with a weapon of mass destruction, but with the way to eternal joy.
Let’s go on the road with Jesus, let’s follow him and learn from him, and let us help him to continue to transform our world by our living his values and putting on his heart.
Amen.