Mark 1:14-20 (Jonah 3:1-5, 10)
Leaving Where We Are
James Sledge January 22, 2012
How many of you here have ever gone fishing? How many of you enjoy fishing, at least on occasion? Fishing is like a lot of other things. Some people like it, and some others don’t, but as a general rule, most people don’t think of fishing as something inherently evil. I’m not aware of any Christian denomination that forbids its members from fishing. I know that I’ve never written a prayer of confession for a worship service that said, “Lord forgive us for catching fish.”
I raise this because, if I understand today’s gospel reading correctly, Simon, Andrew, James, and John all repent of fishing. Now granted they were fishing for a living rather than as a hobby, but I’m not sure that makes much difference. I don’t think that makes them any more sinful than a recreational fisherman.
And yet our gospel this morning depicts Jesus telling people, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” And the very first action associated with this call to repent and believe is his calling some fisherman to follow him. And immediately they repented and followed him. It doesn’t actually say they repented, but that’s what happened. They turned away from what they had been doing – fishing – left their nets, their boat, their father, and went with Jesus. There might not be anything evil or sinful about fishing, but they walked away from it, something that may well have been the only way of life they had ever known.
The word “repent” is not a word often used in general conversation. In fact it’s not a word used very often in Presbyterian churches other than when it shows up in a Bible reading. That’s because the word has taken on an almost totally religious sense, and a negative one at that.
“Repent!” comes from the mouth of a scary looking, bony fingered revival preacher who’s pointing at someone he thinks will go to hell otherwise. Repent has come to mean, “Stop being bad, and start being good,” or even more frequently, “Stop not believing in Jesus and start believing.” But in the Bible, while the word does meant to stop one thing and start another, it does not necessarily follow that the thing stopped is bad.In our Old Testament from Jonah, there is also some repenting going on. You might think I’m talking about the people of Nineveh who heard of God’s judgment against them. But in the verses we read, the only one who actually repents is God. The Bible translators are naturally a bit queasy about saying God repented, and so they write, And God changed his mind… But “repented” is more accurate, literal translation.
I suspect that when most Christians hear Jesus say, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news,” we assume it isn’t addressed to us. We believe the good news, so we’re done. But that misses the fact that Jesus calls us to do more than believe. He calls us to follow him.
Every call invites us into something new, but this requires us to leave something else behind. Discovering something new, something better, something more profound, something more meaningful, almost always means moving away from something else. It does not mean that previous things was bad. But the new, the better, the more profound cannot happen without this movement.
You cannot discover the joys of adulthood without leaving behind childhood. You cannot give yourself to another in marriage without, as the old wedding vow says, “forsaking all others.” Ties to parents, to old flames, must recede for this new thing to bloom. This means taking a chance, a leap of faith that this new thing is worth leaving behind the old.
Jesus says the coming kingdom, the reign of God, requires letting go of old ways. This reign of God doesn’t look like the societies or governments we humans devise, and he says that becoming part of this new thing requires repenting, turning away from old things to embrace the wonderful newness of God.
The other day I read a story about a teenage boy riding a Miami city bus back in the days before the Civil Rights movement. He and his brother took the bus to their downtown church for children’s choir rehearsals. The return trip home coincided with the workday’s end, and the bus would fill with domestic workers and day laborers returning home after a hard day of work. The boy, William, noticed that many of these workers had to ride standing the entire way. This was the days when “people of color” had to ride in the back, and the few seats there were quickly taken.
Bothered by this, William felt called to do something. He was white, but he took a seat in the back of the bus and remained in it until all the seats in that section were occupied. Then, when an African American woman got on, he would get up and give her his seat.[1]
William engaged in the sort of repenting that I think Jesus calls us all to do. The segregated bus system was not his doing. In a very real sense, this young boy could have simply sat in the front without doing anything wrong. But the call to move the world toward God’s reign requires turning away from the old and the comfortable. It requires a certain risk or leap of faith. William moved out of his comfortable place and toward something new, one small step toward a world a bit more like God’s coming reign.
Repenting, turning and moving toward God’s newness must have come naturally to William. He would later be instrumental in helping his downtown Miami church merge with another, becoming a multi-racial congregation known for its ministry to the downtown homeless at time when other congregations fled to the safety of the suburbs.
But what of us? How are we called to repent, as individuals and as a congregation. How are we called to turn toward the newness of God?
When Jesus calls those fisherman, we don’t learn anything about their love or dislike of fishing. For all we know, some of them had never wanted to do anything else. But that isn’t the issue. It is all about Jesus calling them to something new. He says, “Follow me…” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
If you ever sit down and read Mark’s gospel from start to finish, you will likely realize that one of his favorite words is “immediately.” He uses it so much that translators sometimes decide to leave it out. But I have observed that almost nothing happens “immediately” in church congregations. Most of us church folks tend to be careful, cautions sorts. We do things deliberately, after much consideration and debate. We don’t like to be hurried, or do things immediately.
This sort of caution has a great deal to recommend. It keeps us from running off half-cocked or chasing after every new fad. But I wonder if it also makes it very difficult for us to repent, to turn away from familiar habits and routines, and move toward the newness of God, the reign of God that Jesus invites us to be part of and show to the world. I worry sometimes that if Jesus passed by and said, “Follow me,” I’d say, “Could you leave some material with me, and perhaps a link to your website. Let me look it over and I’ll get back to you.” And Jesus would go on his way.
The world is not what God longs for it to be, what God dreams it will become. You and I are not what God longs for us to be, what God dreams we will become. There is something better, more wonderful, in our future, in God’s future. And Jesus calls us into that future saying, “Follow me.” And immediately they left their nets (their past, their comfort zones, their tried and true) and followed him.
[1] Cynthia Weems in “Reflections on the lectionary,” The Christian Century Vol. 129, No. 1 (January 11, 2012) p. 21
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