Fish and Fowl

"Fish and Fowl"

Mark 1:9-20

First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown , New York

The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet

January 25, 2009

We witnessed this week the historic inauguration of the first African-American president in our nation's history. No matter our political stripe, it was an act of great hope and healing for President Obama observed that "...a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath." (1) Even the president's detractors acknowledge a palpable sense in our land these days that the clouds of gathered gloom that cover our country might yet be pierced by sunnier days. Elizabeth Alexander said it this way at the end of her inaugural poem:

Love beyond marital, familial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light. (2)

Our gospel reading this morning tells the story of an even more auspicious inauguration, the inauguration of a way of life and living called "the kingdom of God " of which Jesus and his Galilean ministry are both herald and harbinger. The way Mark tells it is that

...Jesus came to Galilee , proclaiming the good

news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled,

and the kingdom of God has come near; repent,

and believe the good news.” (3)

We still are early in the "Mark year" of the lectionary so let us re-visit the context and purpose of the gospel that Mark wrote. You may recall that when Alexander Shaia was here in November to teach us about the four-fold gospel path he calls "quadratos," he told us that each of the four gospels addresses one of humanity's eternal and universal questions. (By the way, those of you who attended the quadratos weekend might be interested to know that Shaia's books on quadratos, being combined into one book, went to auction on Friday among four of the biggest publishing companies in America . The bidding for the book has gone so high that it will be continued tomorrow. Each of the four publishing houses has promised that, if it wins the bidding, it will make "quadratos" its major book of 2010, thus signaling its belief that "quadratos" is the most important new development in Christianity. And you had the opportunity to hear it here first!)

Matthew helps us to deal with the question of change in our lives. How do we enter into and embrace the changes that we inevitably are asked by life to make, some of them against our desire and will? I think, for instance, of Jesus saying to his disciples, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (4) Sometimes the circumstances of life lead us into change. A job disappears. The last of the children flies from the nest. A relationship ends. The economy craters. Sometimes a deepening faith reconfigures our priorities in surprising or compelling ways. How do we handle the changes that come to us?

Suffering is the theme of Mark’s gospel. How do we endure the seasons of suffering in our lives caused by changes in our lives or events in the world? How do we navigate the trials of our lives?

The gift of John’s gospel is to help us to find joy. Caught in the throes of change and the pangs of suffering, how do we discover joy again in our lives? When life seems lifeless, when our lives seem barren, how do we find fecundity again?

Finally, Luke helps us to build a new and meaningful life after our old one has been dismantled. How do we mature in service? How do we put to use what we have learned in the crucible of change and trial to help others and to serve the greater good?

Immersing ourselves in Mark this year, it helps to know its original context. It is generally agreed that it was written in the mid 60s of the first century. Shaia says in his first book (Beyond the Biography of Jesus: The Journey of Quadratos) that on July 19^th of the year 64, a huge fire began in Rome that burned out of control and eventually engulfed much of that city. Not even the elegant homes of the elite and aristocratic class were spared. Many people died. Gossip on the street was that the Emperor Nero started the fire in order to be able to implement his plan to raze many of the buildings in the city and then to rebuild Rome in a grand, classical architectural style. The rumors gained sufficient traction so as to land Nero in trouble with the Roman senators, many of whose own homes had been destroyed in the conflagration. Nero needed either to find those who started the fire, if indeed he himself had not, or, if he had, to find others on whom to cast the blame.

It had happened that the Jewish ghetto in Rome escaped the fire because it was located on the outskirts of the city. For reasons never discovered, and in order to head off their own destruction at Nero’s hands (for they had gotten word that Nero had planned to incriminate them), a faction of the Jews living in Rome went to Nero and put the finger on a small fringe group of Jews, the Messianic Jews more commonly called the Christ-followers, those who had joined the Jesus movement, who were living there among them. Nero demanded that these members of the Jewish community who had reported the Christos community collaborate with the Roman soldiers in identifying who belonged to the Christos group. While it was odious for them to do so, self-interest persuaded them to go along with Nero’s orders. So they began to identify those in the Christos movement and when the soldiers knocked on their doors and accused them of being Christ-followers, their answer determined their fate. If they said yes, they and all of the inhabitants of their home were taken and publicly executed. If they said no, they were forced, under threat of death, to identify someone who was. It was a horrible time for the Christ-followers with many of them suffering tortuous deaths and neighbor turning against neighbor. So it was into this terror, betrayal, and death that Mark wrote his gospel to people who had good reason to question the veracity of the claims and promises made to them in the name of Jesus the Christ.

Mark wrote to help the people keep their faith in the times of their troubles. He wanted to them to stand fast and steadfast. He wanted them to know that God’s truth holds firm even when the appearances of things seem to indicate otherwise. He wants us to know that we are held firm within God’s truth even when the appearances of things in life and our lives seem to indicate otherwise.

To make his point, Mark writes that“…when Jesus was coming up out of the water (at his baptism), he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him…(the lone, wild bird). And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The heavens are torn apart, ripped open. What a powerful picture Mark draws! No longer would God be confined to sacred spaces. God is on the loose in the world. God’s Spirit descends on Jesus. Interestingly, the word that is translated “on” also can mean “into.” The Spirit of God not only descends on to but also into Jesus. God is present in Jesus is what Mark means to say. So, even when Jesus is killed, as so many of the members of the community to whom Mark is writing were being killed, he is in the care and keeping of God. Not even the threat of death deterred Jesus because God is in Jesus and Jesus is in God. Jesus remained faithful to God’s ways in the world, what Mark calls the kingdom of God . So, Mark is telling the Christos community that even the prospect of suffering and dying should not dissuade them from trusting God and living accordingly. Later in his gospel, Mark would write, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Mark exhorts and encourages the people to remain faithful. God is with them and so, as we have said many times, they may not be safe in the world but they are secure in God.

Mark says that in Jesus the kingdom of God has come near, is close at hand, is in full view for all to see. “The time is fulfilled…” It is the right time for the people to get with God’s program. They are to repent and believe the good news about God. We are to repent and believe the good news about God. They are, we are, to repent and believe that the news about God is good. To repent is not so much to say we are sorry for something we have done. It means to change one’s mind. It is an act of transformation. Change your mind about any ill-conceived ideas about God you might have. Change your mind about your tepid involvement in the realm and reign of God. Change your mind about living fearfully. Change your mind about living closed up and closed off to the possibilities to which God longs for you to be open. “Repent, and believe the good news.”

Change your mind about thinking you live a small, insignificant, and relatively irrelevant life in this big world, Mark told his readers. He pictures Jesus calling to Simon and Andrew and James and John, all of them fishermen and representative of every common person who has no special training for either gospel or God, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.”

This is no call to the evangelistic saving of souls as often it is made out to be. It has ties to Old Testament references, such as when Jeremiah reports God saying, “I am now sending for many fishermen…and they will catch people…for my eyes are on their ways; they are not hidden from my presence nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight.” (5) In Amos, we read his warning to those who tread on the poor and crush the needy: “The Lord God has sworn by his holiness: The time surely is coming upon you, when they will take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks.” (6) These allusions to fishing for people have overtones of judgment and censure. For as Charles Smith points out, “Fishing is a congenial diversion and perhaps occupation – for the fisherman, but scarcely for the fish. For them (the fisherman’s) coming is ominous.” (7)

BUT…but…even these passages of judgment are not ultimately meant to destroy, but to transform. The fisher’s goal in each of these Old Testament pictures, and others like them, is to effect a change in the lives of those being fished. So, too, in the lives of the four disciples whom Mark pictures Jesus calling. Remember that there was nothing special about those whom Jesus called. There were no requirements of nobility or wisdom or wealth or academic degrees. They just had to repent of what they had thought was their lot in life and believe the good news of what God is doing in the world and that God could do it, in fact, has to do it, chooses to do it, through the likes of them. Heeding the divine call to transformation themselves, they then could “catch” other people and help them to align their lives with God’s dream and hope for them and for the world, what we call the kingdom of God.

Earlier this morning in our congregational meeting, we elected seven people to the office of Elder…seven people who have allowed themselves to be “caught” (not trapped, but caught) by the good news of what is possible when life is transformed by the grace and mercy of God. They now will go fishing, in Christ’s name, to “catch” others up on the same possibility. In reality, that is the ministry to which all of us are called who have been caught by God. Only then will the church thrive and the world shine with the radiant sun of healing, hope, and harmony.

Have you been caught by God’s love, by the vision of a way of living in the world that brightens life for all people and creatures? If not, will you let yourself be so caught? And then go fishing yourself, fishing for other people who need to know and live the presence and power of God’s love in the world?

Love beyond marital, familial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Amen.

(1) from the Inauguration speech given by President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.

(2) from the Inaugural poem by Elizabeth Alexander called “Praise Song for the Day” on the occasion of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

(3) Mark 1:15

(4) John 21: 18

(5) Jeremiah 16:16

(6) Amos 4:2

(7) William H. Wuellner, The Meaning of “Fishers of Men” (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), p. 94.

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