January 21, 2024
3rd Sunday after Epiphany
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Cor. 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
Rev. Tim Mitchell
The Good News is both personal and global. We just celebrated the incarnation, and Richard Rohr writes, “When Christians hear the word “incarnation,” most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God’s radical unity with humanity. It speaks to humankind that God is for us and not against us. The incarnation is a sign to us that God is with us. That is good news—that is the Gospel. God is for us, not against us.
We must also recognize that Jesus brings to earth the “kingdom of heaven.” Jesus has come to literally “turn the world upside down.” To bring justice to those who have suffered injustice, health to the diseased, and peace to conflict, distress, and war. That will mean the end of established political structures to feed themselves without any concern for the economic hardships created by their rulings.
Let me begin with the global impact of the Good News first. In an article published on RadicalDiscipleship.com by Ched Myers, entitled “Let’s catch some big fish!” Jesus’ call to Discipleship in a World of Injustice happened around the Sea of Galilee. All fishing had become state-regulated for the benefit of the urban elite—either Greeks or Romans who had settled in Palestine following the military conquest of Jews connected with the Herodian family. They profited from the fishing industry in two ways.
First, they controlled the sale of fishing leases, without which locals could not fish. These rights, and often capitalization as well, were normally awarded not to individuals but to local kinship-based “cooperatives” (Gk koinōnoi)—such as the brothers Simon and Andrew or the Zebedee family we meet in Mk 1:16-20.
Second, they taxed the fish product and its processing and levied tolls on product transport. Local administrators handled royal leases, contracts, and taxes—such as “Levi, son of Alphaeus,” whom we meet in Mk 2:14.
Thus, fishermen were falling to the bottom of an increasingly elaborate economic hierarchy. Elites looked down on them, even as they depended upon their labor:…“The fisher,” attests an ancient Egyptian papyrus, “is more miserable than any other profession.”
With such rigid state control of their livelihood and the oppressive economics of export, it is hardly surprising that in Mark’s story, fishermen are the first converts to Jesus’ message about an alternative social vision! Jesus is calling for a more fair world. Restless peasant fishermen had little to lose and everything to gain by overturning the status quo. Thus, Jesus’ strategic decision was not unlike Gandhi’s attempts to mobilize the “untouchable” classes in India in campaigns such as his famous Salt March or M.L. King’s fateful choice to stand with the sanitation workers of Memphis in 1968.
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people’” (Mk 1:17b). This famous phrase is beloved to evangelicals, who have traditionally interpreted it to connote the vocation of “saving souls.” But we miss the point if we remove this text from its social matrix and if we ignore the roots of this metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, where it appears in no less than four prophetic oracles. Here are two examples.
Jeremiah envisions YHWH “sending for many fishermen” to catch the wayward people of Israel, specifically “those who have polluted the land with idols” (Jeremiah 16:16-18). The prophet Amos targets the elite classes of Israel, whom he calls “cows of Bashan,” warning that YHWH will haul them away like sardines to judgment: “The time is surely coming upon you [who oppress the poor and crush the needy] when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks” (Am 4:1f).
Here is my takeaway—the Gospel is good news because as people respond to Jesus’ call to Love God and love one another as they would themselves, it will change all of society! It will begin at the bottom with lowly—ORDINARY–fisherman and end with the upending of the “Big Fish” at the top, and that will restore God’s justice for the poor. Currently, the top 1 percent own 63 percent of the wealth or $23 trillion, and the bottom 99 percent own the remaining 37 percent. Our time cries out for this!
So, the revered image of “fishing for people” may be understood to be closer to the sense of Dr. Martin Luther King’s struggle for “the soul of America” than in terms of a call made from an alter. The Gospel speaks to the upending of a social order that is rigged to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I would postulate that the Good News of the Gospel includes a societal, global, and personal change. But before I do, let me say that preaching is hard work. It reminds me of a story about Jones, the mechanic, who was scheduled for a heart transplant by the famous heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey. Jones complained to DeBakey, “Look, I’m a mechanic. I also take valves out, grind ’em, put in new parts, and when I finish, this baby will purr like a kitten. So how come you get the big bucks when you and me are doing basically the same work?”
DeBakey, very embarrassed, walked away and said softly to Jones, “Try doing your work with the engine running.”
I’ve taken this point last because the first will never happen until the “least of these” respond to Jesus’ call to Love God and love one another as ourselves. People who respond to Jesus’ call are people who 1) are willing to upset the status quo.
Recently, I was reading the history of the Presbyterian church in this area. In times when slavery was legal, some participated in the Underground Railroad. From Wikipedia: The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early-to-mid 19th century and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists, both black and white, free and enslaved, who aided the fugitives.
People willing to upset the apple cart because of their love for their fellow man. People who were willing to risk arrest. What a great example and one to follow. People who respond to Jesus’ call are willing to upset the status quo, and they:
2) Are people who ReJesus their lives. You’ve heard the term to repurpose. Alan Hirsch and Mike Frost use the term ReJesus. these authors contend that the essence of the life of Christian faith is “the conspiracy of little Jesuses” (Hirsch’s phrase). “People observing us ought to be able to discern the elements of Jesus’ way in our ways. If they cannot find authentic signals of the historical Jesus through the life of his people, then as far as we are concerned they have the full right to question our legitimacy”
Leonard Sweet writes: “The kingdom of God is found in the Christ body community, the body of Christ on earth. We enter and inhabit the kingdom of God every time we act to incarnate Christ in the world. Every time we give a cup of cold water in Jesus name, every time we respond to a call for an offering, every time we respond to a call to provide justice, to give to the poor we ReJesus.
Have you “reJesused” your life? Have we “reJesused” your church?
So, people who have responded to Jesus are people who 1) are willing to upset the status quo. 2) They are people who Re Jesus their lives and 3) They are People who as Leonard Sweet writes lifts crosses rather than climbs ladders.
“Right here is one of our greatest problems. In the “prosperity gospel” that has gripped so many of our churches and most of our minds, “conversion” is less a turning toward Christ than a turning toward success or fame or fortune, especially a turning towards self. Just check out best-seller Christianity, which has become ladder-climbing wrapped up as spirituality. A survey of CBA’s best-selling books as we began the 21st century found that family and women’s topics accounted for nearly half of the titles, with the rest focused mainly on success and the self. Of the top 100 books, just 6 were about the Bible, 4 about Jesus, and 3 about evangelism. The rest of them were about how to climb higher and higher on the ladders of success. “The Christianity of the bestseller lists tends to be personal, private, and interior,” writes Gene Edward Veith in World magazine (July 2008), “with little attention to objective theology or to the church.”
We have even made conversion primarily about ourselves, a finding of ourselves and a fulfilling of ourselves, a journey of self-discovery rather than a journey of God discovery.
For a kingdom identity, turning towards God is not about us, but about God’s overture of love, without which we are without sufficient motive or power to change and be changed. True “conversion” is to lay hold of Christ, or rather, as Paul corrects himself, to allow Christ to lay hold of us (Philippians 3:12). True “conversion” is directed toward the one to whom we convert, the one to whom we turn. True “conversion” is a life of “fullness” where the “fullness” is Christ, not the highest rung on the ladder. What did Paul say? “We preach success?” No, Paul said, “We preach Christ, and him crucified.”
“Any version of the gospel that substitutes the message of personal success for the cross is a manipulative counterfeit,” writes A. C. Thiselton in his commentary on The First Epistle to the Corinthians.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news that justice is coming, peace on earth will come as people respond to Jesus’ call to follow him and his ways. To love God and love one another as we love ourselves. It is the kingdom of heaven coming to earth. We can taste and see. There is an invitation made to us today, the same one made to fishermen along the shores of Galilee so many years ago. Come and follow me! Join me in spreading the Gospel—the Good News of the Kingdom.
© Rev. Tim Mitchell, 2024, All Rights Reserved
Westminster Presbyterian Church | 1420 W. Moss Ave. | Peoria, Illinois 61606
WestminsterPeoria.org | 309.673.8501
“Throughout the week, there are many worldly things pulling me away from my commitment to God. I come to church on Sunday at Westminster to reconnect and renew my relationship with Him. Part of my worship is to ask him for forgiveness for my lack of faithfulness. I leave, reminded that he loves me, forgives me, and walks beside me every day. What a profound blessing that is!”