3 Epiphany January 25, 2009

I don’t know about you, but I have always been astounded by Mark’s story of the calling of these first four disciples. The way Mark presents it, these four seasoned, rough and ready, professional fishermen respond instantly to the call of this man Jesus, whom they had, presumably, never even laid eyes on or heard of before this moment. Believing that it actually happened that way is more of a stretch for me than Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes or his walking on water. Rational, hard working, responsible adults just don’t act like that!

Luke gives a very different account of what happened, one which seems a whole lot more plausible for me. Here’s how Luke tells the story: "(After his baptism and temptation) Jesus returned to Galilee, and the power of the Holy Spirit was with him. The news about him spread through all that territory. He taught in the synagogue and was praised by everyone." (Lk 4:14-15) After the people of his hometown of Nazareth angrily reject his messianic message he moves on to Capernaum, the home town of Peter and Andrew and James and John. There he teaches in the synagogue on the Sabbath and delivers a man from possession by an evil spirit. He then goes to Simon Peter’s home and heals Peter’s mother-in-law. Later that day he heals many people who come to him at Peter’s home. Only after all this background does Luke finally relate to us the story of the calling of Peter and his friends. (Read Luke 5:1-11)

Luke makes it pretty obvious to us why Peter and his friends were willing to follow Jesus. We no longer have to doubt the rationality of their actions. What we do have to ask, though, is "Why the marked difference between these two accounts of the story?"

Mark’s Gospel is marked by a very strong sense of urgency. There is no birth story, no angels, no wise men, no listing of the genealogy of Jesus as found in Matthew and Luke. The very first verse sets forth the message Mark is out to convey: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." By the end of chapter one - a scant 45 verses - Mark has presented the early ministry of Jesus up to the end of Matthew 4 and the middle of Luke 5.

What’s the rush? Why this sense of urgency? Perhaps it’s because Mark was writing at the time of the destruction of Jerusamem and the Temple by the Romans in AD 70. The first generation of Jesus’ followers were dying out - it had been about forty years since his crucifixion and resurrection - and the fate of the Christian movement was very much in question. Mark was in a hurry to get things committed to writing and thus, hopefully, to ensure the continuation of the Church. "And immediately" is a frequently recurring phrase in Mark’s Gospel, conveying that sense of urgency with which he wrote.

Another Biblical word for that sense of urgency is crisis - in Greek it’s spelled with a "k" - krisis. Both our Old Testament lesson from Jonah and our New Testament lesson from 1 Corinthians today convey that sense of "crisis".

The image Jonah evokes for most of us is his being thrown overboard and swallowed by the whale. Jonah was in crisis. The last thing he wanted to do was to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s judgement on them. Nineveh was the capitol of Israel’s bitter enemy - and soon to be conqueror - Assyria. Jonah "fesses up" to this in chapter 4, following our lesson for today. The very thing that Jonah feared was that the Ninevites would repent and God would forgive and spare them. They did repent, and God did spare them, and Jonah was literally beside himself with anger. "I knew that you are a loving and merciful God, always patient, always kind, and always ready to change your mind and not punish. Now then, Lord, let me die. I am better off dead than alive." (Jonah 4:2-3)

The message of the book of Jonah anticipates Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Mt 5:43-45)

Jonah’s story is open-ended. We’re not told whether he was finally able to accept God’s challenge to love his enemies and forgive them as God forgave them. That’s the question of Jonah for us: Can we love and pray for our enemies as Jesus teaches us to do?

For Paul, the impending crisis was the anticipated return of Jesus within his lifetime and the lifetime of his readers. I believe this rather strange sounding advice in our lesson for today can be summarized very simply as:

"Hang loose. We really ‘own’ nothing; everything we have is ‘on loan’ from God. We can’t take it with us, but, when ‘the present form of this world’ does pass away, God will still be there to provide our every need."

The beauty of this is that it frees us to live life free from anxieties, which is what God wants for us in the first place. Jesus says it this way: "Do not be afraid. little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom." (Lk 12:32) What better assurance could we ask for in times like these?