Responsive

Text: Mark 1:14-20

I began today by commending those who had found time, or made time, to take an hour for worship. I assured newcomers that if they think everybody else is here every week, it is not so. At a seminar this Tuesday in Newmarket, church development guru Anthony B. Robinson told us that in the US, active churchgoers now average 1.7 Sundays a month, out of 4.3 weeks in a month.

I know, and God knows, a lot of you are busy. The retired ones say they don’t know how they found time to work. The working ones say we don’t know to make tie for anything else. We are choosing from among the best things this world has to offer – retirement travel and recreation, and excellent demanding jobs.

I know, and God knows, a lot more are suffering the worst that this world has to offer. They are sick and tired. The money runs out before the next payday, or we age into more days than we have dollars. We’re aging and aching and our horizon draws closer till all we can focus on is our own pain.

Yet today you’ve come, as each week about 150 or more come out of a pool of a thousand affiliates. You’ve found time, and made time, to take an hour today, to spend an hour, to waste an hour. Thank God!

I think you’ll like this year of Mark. The lessons in the church lectionary follow Mark all year. If you’ve missed January, you’ve only missed 13 verses already! Mark is blunt, urgent, to the point, as our world, and God’s world, collide.

There’s no Christmas story in Mark. Bang: John the baptizer says God’s world is coming. Get ready! He baptizes Jesus, who heads out to the desert for 2 verses. Today, the baptizer is in prison, and Jesus shows up preaching God’s world is now near: turn to it. He invites two pairs of brothers, who leave work and follow him.

It’s easy to keep up – and hard to keep up. It’s like an action movie: less elaborate dialogue, but scenes change and stuff happens. Come along for the ride!

We started with the rebel John at Jerusalem and the Jordan: downtown, let’s say. He’s in jail now, and Jesus is off in the hinterland, back from the desert: York region, maybe Thornhill. We’ve moved from God’s world is coming close – to God’s world is now near. We were asked to get ready – now it’s time to go!

I’ve been preaching this Mark cycle every 3 years for a long time now. Mostly I rely on the old Marxist materialist liberation theology circles, Fernando Belo and others. For the past decade I’ve included more from the Jesus Seminar scholars like Dom Crossan digging into the political and economic context of Jesus.

I’m leaving today for a week of study in Calgary, to generate a daily, weekly Lenten blog, and weekly sessions from late February to early April. I’m taking 4 new studies of Mark from the 21st century. But for today, you got the old stuff.

Remember, I know you’re busy. God knows. The retired ones say they don’t know how they found time to work. The working ones say we don’t know how to make time for anything else. We are blessed with these choices from the best our world has to offer. And I know you’re suffering. God knows. We’re sick and tired and the money won’t stretch – all the worst things our world has to offer.

Mark may be the gospel to reach us this year. There’s so little descriptive flowery stuff, the elaborations of Matthew and Luke, the poetry and symbolism of John. Here, we catch more by the setting: Galilee, fishing, in the hinterland. I know you’re busy, and I know you’re suffering. You think the fishing brothers weren’t?

This world will take all we got, whether choosing the best it has got to offer, or suffering the worst it has to offer. But what if there’s a whole other world, that we risk missing: God’s world, the reign of God, as if God were running things?

Last week we were talking of epiphany and calling: God in and through any or all people, any and all moments, for those with eyes, ears, and hearts open. We have to unlearn and relearn: what are you going to be if and when you grow up?

God forbid Christianity just gets us busier, as if we were human doings, not human beings. God forbid we reduce our faith to another hobby, interest, class, leisure activity, or a cause, recognizing another need, saving the world.

Mark’s good news is that God’s world is near now. Walk away from some of this world, and it’s right there. But you have to notice Jesus passing by and inviting.

You think fishermen weren’t busy in Galilee? Scholars say prices were down for Galilean fishermen. They worked more, earned less – and then had to pay more taxes to pay for the big new Roman city nearby. They had to work with old technology, nets weighted with rocks. Haul the fish, sell the fish, pay the tax, mend the nets – and do it again. Who had time for anything else? Who had no arthritis?

Some guy comes out of nowhere, after John was arrested downtown for saying God’s world was coming, and get ready. Here comes Jesus, out in this hinterland
proclaiming God’s world, near, now. Fish for people! We are human beings, not human doings.

Simon and Andrew, James and John, were called from something, and freed to something. Simon and Andrew abandoned their boat. James and John left Zebedee behind. There’s no reference to women and kids, or other dependants. Maybe these men never saw them anyhow, given all theirvworking hours….

These first 4 disciples in Mark are called from ‘man’s world’ – in the worst sense of that old sexist term. They were invited to share God’s world – in the best sense. They left their resource industry labour, to join a creative class.

We’d be horrified at something similar today. We’d be terrified if it happened in our family, wouldn’t we? Last week I confessed that our middling classes, in our middling ages risk reducing our gospel to something too small.

See, we’re all responsible. We respond to the choices and demands of our world. We take care of ourselves and of others. We’re se busy responding to every call our world makes on us that we risk forgetting what once moved us.

God knows, and we agreed last week, that God calls through people and moments, the sublime reaching us through the mundane But we get stuck in the mundane, and lose track of the sublime.

Marriage forgets romance, careers forget passion, and sickness forgets life. Tyranny thrives when good people do nothing. I quoted Yeats’ poem from January 1919, ‘The Second Coming’:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tied is loosed, and everywhere
He ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand’
Surely the Second Coming is at hand…

I know you’re busy. God knows. You can’t respond to everything, and if you squander energy on each fleeting fish of the best the world has to offer, you might miss the call as Jesus goes by. You can’t respond to every pain and injustice, and if you live as a victim of the worst this world has to offer, you might also miss the call, as Jesus goes by. What if he’s right, and God’s world is near, now?

You may have to be called from something to be freed for something. Like Simon and Andrew leaving the boat, like James and John leaving Zebedee. This is not about time management or balancing or rounding out your life. It’s about risk and loss. You had to leave the womb, leave your parents, go to work, then retire, to open each new gift in your life.

This is about saving your life, or finding your life, that sublime life through and beyond our mundane world. This is about finding who you are, whose you are as a citizen of God’s world, not simply busyness person of this world, or victims of it.

Good news. It’s near, now. That’s call: God’s world is near, now. Follow me.

What word do you have for our hearts, O God, give us ears to hear. Amen.


Break in on us now, God.
Interrupt the chattering classes
Silence the constant clamour we call news
Put a stumble in the march of troops
Put a smile on the weeping face
For you know we need it.

Our world is running us hard
Keeping us so busy
We may have forgotten
What moved us before
Like punch drunk fighters
We may be dazed and confused
Faced with all the bet that this world can offer.

Our lives are running us down.
Sickness and suffering
Pain and injustice
Not enough money to get to the next payday
Not enough dollars for our days
Our lives extended for years we didn’t fund well
We are scared and our horizons narrowed
By the worst the world can offer.

Relieve us now of burdens you never laid
Release us from false responsibilities
‘Renew in us a right spirit’ says the psalm
‘Reclothe us in our rightful mind’ sings the hymn

‘The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!’
Writes the poet…


God bless us busy ones,
Who dare not stop, less we face the abyss

God bless us suffering ones
Who forget to look beyond our pain and anger

Give us grace, to glimpse and imagine better
Your world, near, now.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen

We closed as we have all 5 Sundays this January, with words from Martin Buber and an alternative commissioning and blessing:

We cannot avoid.
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion.
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction,
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully

May you see the face of Christ
In everyone you meet
And may everyone you meet
See the face of Christ in you

Go in peace,
and may you find peace

Go in love,
and may you share love

Go with God,
for God will surely go with you!