Epiphany 3B | St. James, Bradley Beach, NJ

Jonah 3:1-5,10; Psalm 62:6-14; Mark 1:14-20

Some weeks ago I preached my first Advent sermon at St. James. You may have noticed in my sermons ever since I have been focusing on a symbol that runs throughout our Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany seasons: Light! From the light of the Advent wreath, to the light become flesh in Jesus, to the star of Epiphany.

In the Gospel readings during Epiphany we first hear the story of the wisemen drawn to Jesus’ birth by a star, symbolic of the spreading of God’s light to the whole world. We’ve also witnessed Jesus’ baptism and calling by God, and last week we saw Jesus call some of his first disciples.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus preaches what we could call his first sermon – and guess what – because it’s from Mark, it’s a short one! Unlike the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Mark gives us the essence of Jesus message in just a few words: The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. That’s it.

Simple enough. These are familiar words. These are familiar concepts. But as is often true with Mark, a few words can say much more than we may realize when taken at face value. We have to unpack their meaning.

“The time is fulfilled.” In days gone by I was an English teacher. I mostly had to help students wrestle with grammar and parts of speech. But when we deal with foreign languages, such as Hebrew and Greek, we have to consider the meaning of words as we translate them. Take for example the word “time”. The English word can mean many things, but the Greeks had at least two different words and concepts for time. So it’s important to look at a text in the original language and get a better understanding of what is being talked about.

In today’s Gospel the word for “time” here is not chronos, the Greek word that signified clock or calendar time. Rather the word here is kairos, expressing a concept not as nearly accessible to your casual listener. Kairos suggests the right time, an opportune moment. “When the fullness of time had come.” Or “Your time has come!” Here Jesus is saying, “This is it! You don’t have to wait any longer. God’s kingdom is at hand.” The longing expressed in today’s Psalm, the waiting on the Lord, has come to an end.

But Jesus hadn’t come to set up a kingdom that would merely rival the power and authority of the Romans. Jesus would not be enthroned as king in Jerusalem. The kingdom of God is not about a place, but rather about the actions and ministry of Jesus. It’s as if he is saying, “God’s kingdom begins here and now. Watch what I’m going to do next.” Jesus would spend him time healing and restoring the lives of the outcast and the forgotten. Jesus would begin to draw the hearts and minds of God’s people back to God. This is the true meaning of “repent,” to literally change your way of thinking.

But first things first, Jesus wouldn’t be like John the Baptist who spent his time alone in the wilderness. Instead Jesus was on the move. He would move among the people. He would go to Jerusalem, even if it was dangerous. He would find those who had been outcast and forgotten. But Jesus also knew that he couldn’t do it alone.

He must find helpers, people willing to learn from him and willing to help in his mission. Jesus calls these fishermen to leave their nets and follow him. This is one of the images we grow to love as children. We sing songs about it, “I will make you fishers of men” as the older translations have it. We have these images of salty fishermen in their boats, casting nets into the sun-washed sea. As a child, I guess I always assumed Peter and Andrew, and then James and John, must have been a little bored with fishing. So the first chance they got, they dropped their nets and followed Jesus. “Finally! Some excitement!”

As I grew older and heard these words, I actually grew worried about their father, Zebedee. How must he have felt when his sons took off, leaving him literally holding the net? They had abandoned the family business! Poor Zebedee!

But after doing some reading, I found out the disciples weren’t being irresponsible. They were being revolutionary. I came across an article by a scholar who gives us details what the Galilean fishing industry was really like.

These weren’t simple fishermen, out for a hot day of backbreaking work, who would then take their catch of fish to sell in the local market. The industry was not a “free enterprise” system. The fishing industry was overseen by the Judean authorities, namely Herod, who was managing it for the Romans. The boats were licensed. Any fisherman’s profits were heavily taxed. Rather than working to support their families, Peter, Andrew, James and John were working ‘for the man’.

The article gets pretty technical, complete with flow charts to show who was bribing whom and who owed tribute to whom. There were tax collectors and distributors, buyers and sellers. Needless to say this was a complex system, full of bureaucracy and corruption, just to get the fish from the Sea of Galilee to the table of your local Galilean family. These local fishermen were at the bottom of the flow chart. They called no shots. They had no power. They worked hard to make a living, with sweaty foreheads and scarred hands. They were caught in a corrupt system that had no future. This is the life Jesus is calling them to leave.

This to me sounds like the time Jesus calls Matthew to leave behind his life as a tax collector. Jesus has told them to walk away from a business that was probably choking the life and the spirit out of them. Change your minds, Jesus says, turn around. Stop working for the man and work for God’s kingdom instead. It took great courage, then, for these men to walk away from the system, to choose an alternative.

In today’s language, I can picture Jesus walking into the DMV saying to the startled clerks, “Log out of your computers and follow me!”

Now, don’t let the word go forth that Fr. Scott is calling the Department of Motor Vehicles a corrupt and worldly system. At least not until after I renew my vehicle registration.

What Jesus’ action here represents is a call to all of us, at least all of us who intend to follow Jesus, to examine our lives and our particular callings. What is God calling us to do to help bring the Kingdom of God in our time?

God called Jonah, a man minding his own business, to go to Ninevah and preach to them. Jonah ran away. Did Jonah really think he could run from God? Jonah has been immortalized for running away, and for God’s determination that he actually do the job he was asked to do. First God sends a storm. The sailors throw Jonah overboard, a sacrifice to the sea gods. Then a whale swallows Jonah. He’s in the belly of whale for three days. He gets vomited up on a beach right near, guess where, Ninevah.

Jonah was an ordinary guy, but God had plans for him. He had a destiny. When he finally did what God had asked him to do, preach repentance to the people of Ninevah, he was wildly successful! The people repented, and then some! Read the whole story of Jonah some time. It’s actually pretty funny in places. In the end the repentance of the people of Ninevah is so complete that even the cows repent!

God is forever calling people to make his plans a reality, to bring the Kingdom. God called Abraham – to leave everything and follow him. God called a young, Jewish girl to trust his plans. Her name was Mary, and she would give birth Emmanuel, God with us. In our own time, God called Mother Teresa to leave her family and life in Albania behind to live with lepers in Calcutta. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, was a pastor, whom God called to step out from behind his comfortable pulpit and challenge the unjust system of racism, even if it cost him his life. There are countless others, who have worked to change the system right where they were.

We may not all be called to leave our nets, but we are all called to be part of the coming of God’s kingdom. We are all called to challenge injustice when we encounter it. We are called to speak up for those who have no voice. We are called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be the hands of Christ in the lives of those without homes or hope.

This is the season of Epiphany, marked by light and by revelation. Let our lives reflect that light, the light of Christ. And may our lives be lives of revelation, even if only a little piece of the true Jesus, the true Christ. This is the calling, then, to spread the light, to live the revelation, that the truth of Christ may spread and bring others to the peace and freedom of the kingdom of God. That truly is revolutionary! Amen!