BOTTOM LINE GOSPEL: MOVING BEYOND THE PAST
(A sermon offered by The Rev. Earl William Greene, Jr. on the Third Sunday after Epiphany, based on excerpts from the Prophet Jonah, and Mark 1:14-20)
Jesus' first followers were fishermen. In those days fishermen would use big nets to catch the fish in the Sea of Galilee. They'd cast a big net into the lake. The net would spread out over the water. After awhile, it would fill up with fish, and then the workers standing on land, or perhaps from their boat would pull the net ashore - trapping as many fish in the net as possible.
On shore they'd sort out the fish - keeping the good, and tossing the bad ones back into the lake. They would sell some of the fish to local markets. But most of the fish would be dried and sent to other places where fish weren't as plentiful.
I always assumed that the first disciples were the "poorest among the poor." But my research indicates that commercial fishing was a solid "middle class" occupation in those days. Those first disciples probably owned their own boats and equipment. As business men they knew all the "ins and outs" about commercial fishing - where to fish for the best haul, something about the seasons and the weather, and what time of the day or night was best. James and John even had hired hands to help them in their business.
It was hard work, but it may have been very lucrative. The sun was hot by day. Sometimes they worked all night. Their muscles ached. Their nets broke. And the fish stank to "high heaven." But they were better off than most other people in Palestine.
On this particular day, here they were - under a strong, hot sun, wind blowing a little, the smell of fish in the air. Jesus walked by and called them saying, "follow me and I will make you fish for people." Immediately, they left their nets and boats and turning them over to the hired hands, they followed Jesus.
What a daring thing to do! Was Jesus a complete stranger - or had they talked before? Why did he choose these particular men? What about their families? We know that Peter had a mother-in-law, so he must have had a wife! The man of the family was the sole source of income back then - what would his family do now?
We don't know the details. The events that may have been developing for days, perhaps weeks have been telescoped in Mark’s gospel down to just a moment or two.
It’s possible that the fishermen knew Jesus, that they had had a number of conversations with him - maybe they trusted and admired Jesus. We just don’t know. What we do know, is what Mark wanted us most to know - something about what it meant to follow Jesus.
Jesus had just been baptized. He had preached his first sermon. It was a short one! He said, "the time has come, the reign of God is near; repent, and believe in the good news." And that was it!
Good news? There wasn’t much good news in Palestine in those days. Life had been nothing but "bad news" for a long time. Rome was an ever-present "bully landlord." People were pushed around and intimidated. Everyone was taxed into poverty.
Yet, in spite of it all the Jews were "survivors" while others in similar circumstances broke apart. There was a deep hope in Judaism that never really died: that God would someday intervene into their situation and create a "whole order of things." There would be plenty enough for all. Their homeland would be a place of freedom and justice and peace.
Jesus' "one-sentence sermon" said it all - "the time is near, be willing to give up your obsession with the past and be open to change. Believe the good news. Come, follow me."
What would people in our day do with such a call? In my wildest imaginations I can’t imagine giving up everything with such an open-ended invitation. No, even the most daring people I know would want to have meetings and long discussions about it. We’d weigh all the options, we’d do research on Jesus. We’d get a professional opinion. But, by the time we’d done all these things Jesus would have moved on to another town.
What does it mean to accept a challenge like that? For Peter, Andrew, James and John it would be to take some enormous risks. Everyone knew that John the Baptist had been arrested. And this Jesus and John knew each other, didn’t they? How safe was this whole thing?
Repent. What’s it mean? It means to do a 180 U-turn, about-face. It means reorienting ourselves from the assumptions of our past. It means being willing to let some attitudes go - some old habits, ways of looking at things, and take a giant leap into the unknown, trusting that you really don’t have anything to lose.
I understand that in the ancient baptismal rites the person being baptized would face to the west and the priest would say, "do you renounce the power of evil in your life? The person being baptized would say, "Yes, evil will no longer have power over me." Then the priest and the person being baptized would turn toward the east and the priest would ask, "do you, leaving your past behind, intend to follow Jesus into the future?" You see, facing west was where the old day ended; facing east looked toward the new sunrise. That’s a powerful symbol that shouldn’t be lost.
For the disciples, it meant "breaking with their past." It meant coming to grips with the fact that the structures and values of their lives were based on the past, and had lost their relevance to living in that day.
That's a hard one for anyone to take - to come to grips with the idea that old ways just aren't going to work in the same way in your present life. Despite the fact that we confidently sing the words "you call from tomorrow, and break ancient schemes," it's very hard for us to behave as though we really believe it, for all of us are enmeshed in old ways, and the old ways have enormous power over us.
The writer of Mark's gospel made it very clear. Following the dream of a "new age" can bring us face to face with the "demons" of our own age. Sometimes that can be painful, and risky!
"Breaking with the past" means to behave like the past doesn't have the kind of power to hold us back, to limit our horizons, or to define who we shall become. That the mistakes of another day belong there - not here with us now, haunting our every moment, - that God calls us forward, not backward, and that our focus and energy needs to be in the present, and looking to the future, not stuck in the "might have beens" or with all the regrets - playing them back over again and again night after night, held in bondage to things from long ago.
Moving beyond the past is making some changes in the way we think about money, and the way we think getting more is the most important thing in our lives, and instead to discover that we can indeed be "rich in things, but poor in soul."
To move beyond the past is to reject the kind of "eye for an eye mentality" too popular in our world that says, if you get me I'll sue and "get you back" twice as much!
To move beyond the past is to leave behind the idea that we're here on this earth to be served and pampered, given every possible advantage, to have our whims and fancies patronized and to engage in the luxury of blaming someone or something else for things that are of our own doing.
To move beyond the past is to reject the notion that other people are just pawns to be controlled and manipulated. It is to reject the still popular idea among men that women are to be used for their own entertainment. It is give up on the idea that there always has to be a scapegoat somehow - the Mexicans or the Blacks, or some other targeted group. It means to draw upon the power to rise above the familiar "win-lose" mentality where there always has to be a loser, and that some people "count" and others don’t "count" at all and instead, to create radical new ways where all people can "win."
To break with the past is to leave behind our tendency to set ourselves up as judges over other people - pretending that we’re fit to focus on other peoples lives and faults, fit to find the chapter and verse that we think suits them - as though we are the "chosen ones" who have all the "light and truth."
"Moving beyond the past" means that we understand faith and religion as a thing of "Spirit" rather than a thing of "Law," and "appearance."
It's not that all of the past is wrong. It isn’t! We would do a disservice to disregard what has been truth in another time or to minimize the heroism, the sacrifice, the hard lessons that others learned back then. There would be great tragedy to that.
It’s not that we need to re-invent the "wheel." But to live in the present is to live solidly in this day - doing exactly as people of other days did when they did it well - to face the situations and challenges of their very present moment - informed by the past yet aware that each new day, each new generation has its own truth that it must discover. What is "passed on" to the next generation is the courage to go into the unknown with integrity, free to use both the "old and the new" without being enslaved to either one.
To be honest, we don’t make the 180 degree change all at once. Maybe some of the disciples did. There may have been other brave souls in history that did it. But It’s more likely that we try out a piece of it, and sometimes even that takes immense courage. We live with it, we test it out, then try another new thing, moving a few "degrees" at a time.
However we do it creating change takes courage. It helps to be in a place like this where you can walk with others who are also committed to their own change process - to tell each other how it’s going, to pray for each other, to experience "starting all over again" among people who accept us as we are, yet who can affirm the eventual "180 degree makeover" to which God calls us.
God doesn't expect us to always be perfect - only to be faithful - to be willing to stoop down and pick up the pieces and try it again - maybe in a different way.
Do you remember how the story of the disciples went? Near the end they left Jesus behind at the cross - alone. But God was not finished yet. The angel met them at the tomb two days later and said, "go...Jesus is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will find him again."
Even with God the transformation reaches into the future. It doesn't get bogged down in the troublesome moment, nor defeated by tragedy. It's ahead of us in some "Galilee," within our reach, if we’ll "get on the move" and get going.
"The time is now," said Jesus, "the realm of God" is near. Repent and change. Believe in the good news." God promises to be with us and to lead us to resurrection life.