Mark
1:14-20
Leaving
Where We Are
James Sledge January 24, 2021
I used to do a bit of fly fishing, and I sometimes go shrimping with a casting net when I’m at the beach. Maybe some of you do a bit of fishing now and then. I bring this up because our gospel reading seems to speak of Jesus’ first disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, and John, repenting of fishing. Why would they need to repent of fishing?
Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming, “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 inviting some fisherman to follow him. And immediately they (repented) and followed him. I know. It doesn’t actually say they repented, but that is 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. It’s not a word used often in Presbyterian churches other than when it shows up in the Bible. The word has taken on an almost totally religious sense and a negative one at that. “Repent!” comes from a bony fingered street 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, more frequently, “Stop not believing in Jesus and start believing.” But in the Bible, while the word does mean to stop one thing and start another, it does not always follow that the thing is bad.
There is some repenting in our Old Testament reading. 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 one who repents is God. Bible translators are a bit queasy about saying God repented, and so they write, And God changed his mind… But “repented” is the literal translation.
I suspect that when we 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 already 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, and repenting is part of that.
Every call invites us into something new, but that requires leaving something else behind. Discovering something new, something better, something more meaningful, means moving away from something else. It does not mean that previous things was bad. But the new, the better, the more meaningful cannot happen without this move, without repenting.
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 and old flames must recede. Every new thing requires taking a chance, a leap of faith that this new thing is worth repenting and leaving behind the old.
Jesus says the coming kingdom, God’s new day, requires repenting, letting go of old ways. God’s new day doesn’t look like the societies or governments we humans devise, and Jesus says that becoming part of this new thing requires turning away from old things to embrace the wonderful newness of God.
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Some years ago I read a story about a boy riding a Miami city bus back in the days of segregation. He and his brother took the bus to their downtown church for children’s choir. The return trip home coincided with the workday’s end, and the bus would fill with domestic workers and day laborers returning home from a hard day’s 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 Black 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 ridden up front without doing anything wrong. But the call to move the world toward God’s new day requires turning away from the old and the comfortable. It requires a certain risk or leap of faith. William moved out of his comfort zone and toward something new, one small step toward a world a bit more like God’s coming new day.
Repenting, turning and moving toward God’s newness must have come naturally to William. He would years 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 a time when many 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? What are the things we must leave behind in order to move toward the newness of God? They needn’t be bad things but simply things that must be left behind in order to follow Jesus.
What about the white privilege that most of us enjoy? We didn’t create it and it may not be our fault, but we are advantaged by it. It is our nice seat on the bus. What would it mean to turn away from that?
I wonder if another thing isn’t a rigid allegiance to budgets. Lots of congregations struggle with budgets, but I think it is worse in the DC area. We don’t put anything in the budget unless it’s been thoroughly examined and we know exactly where the money is coming from. If we’d been the fishermen in our gospel, we’d have asked Jesus how we would make up for the lost income, where our food would come from following this drop in revenue. We’d need a lot more information and reassurances before doing anything so rash.
But our scripture says of those fishermen Jesus calls, And immediately they left their nets and followed him. If you ever sit down and read Mark’s gospel from start to finish, you might notice that one of his favorite words is “immediately.” He uses it so much that translators sometimes decide to leave it out. Lot’s of things happen immediately in Mark’s gospel, but almost nothing happens “immediately” in church congregations. Most of us church folks tend to be careful, cautious sorts. We do things deliberately, after much consideration and debate. We don’t like to be hurried or to 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 doesn’t make it very difficult for us to repent, to turn away from the familiar and move toward the newness Jesus calls us to be part of and to show 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, consider the financial implications, and I’ll get back to you.” And Jesus would go on his way without me.
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 God’s future, in our future. And Jesus calls us into that future saying, “Follow me.” And immediately they left their nets (their past, their comfort zones, their carefully crafted budgets, the way they’d always done it, 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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