First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Mark 1:14-20

Once more this week, to help the people of our congregation--and anybody else who's interested--get ready for weekend worship, I'm presenting my thoughts and studies in progress surrounding the Bible lesson on which worship will be built. This is the first of what I think will be several "passes" at these verses.

This weekend's Bible lesson is Mark 1:14-20:

14Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 16As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Some thoughts...

v. 14: (1) John the Baptizer was an apparent threat to the religious and political power-holders. Inherent in his very call to repentance is the notion that people have something for which they must repent. To repent in the Greek of the New Testament literally means to change one's mind. The Hebrew word for repent, with which Judeans would be familiar from weekly reading of the Old Testament Scriptures in worship at their synagogues, means to turn, the idea being that while a person has been walking away from God, they now will walk toward God.

Smug religionists would have deemed John's call to repentance a threat. His talk of a mighty
King waiting in the wings of history would have threatened the Roman occupiers of Judea. And the sight of throngs of people seeking spiritual renewal in response to the Baptizer's preaching would have naturally caused jealousy among the priests and scribes in Jerusalem. These all would have been among the obvious reasons for John to have been arrested.

(2) The word for arrest, commentator Brian Stoffregen points out is paradidomi in the Greek. It's the same "word that is used for Jesus' 'betrayal' or 'handing over' ([Mark] 3:19; 9:31; 10:32; 14:10, 11, 18, 21, 41, 44; 15:1, 10, 15)." John's arrest, his handing over to the authorities, is really his death sentence. The same will be true of Judas' betrayal, his handing of Jesus over to the authorities, on the first Maundy Thursday.

Stoffregen goes on to suggest:

It may also be that John and Jesus are both precursors to the fate of the disciples who will face 'being handed over' (13:9, 11)

I think Stoffregen is right. There is a pattern iterated in the lives of those who follow God's will and Jesus. Christians must be under no illusions: To throw in with Christ is to be on the "winning side of history," so to speak. (Or more accurately, the winning side beyond history.) But following Christ in this world is not easy.

Stoffregen quotes Mark scholar James Edwards' commentary of the Gospel:

The arrest of John and the beginning of Jesus' ministry are intentionally correlated to show that the gospel is proclaimed and known in adversity and suffering, not in ease and comfort.

(3) In fact, there's an irony in Jesus' proclamation of good news (euaggelion in the Greek) at just this point. As Stoffregen notes, the words euaggelion and the verb, euaggelizonai, meaning to tell the gospel or good news, "traditionally...referred to victory in war."

You may remember reading, as a kid, about Philippides running from Marathon to Athens in order to give the good news that the Athenians had won a great battle in the Persian Wars. (Some historians believe that this is inaccurate, as you can read here.) In an era when there were no forms of mass communications, runners were sent with messages to far-flung places. This was especially true in times of war when cities and nations would anxiously await word on the disposition of battles. The messenger who brought word of a victory in battle had good news, euaggelion! (Conversely, the messenger who brought word of defeat had bad news. Bearers of bad news often were slain on sight, making the job of messenger one without much in the way of long-term security since not every battle can be won. But this is where our phrases of today: "Kill the messenger" and "I hate to be the bearer of bad news" come from.)

The irony in Mark's Gospel is that in the midst of the bad news about John's imprisonment, Jesus proclaims good news, victory in the face of seeming defeat. Jesus is saying that God is acting in the midst of the bad in the world. He still is! (You might want to read Four Things to Tell Children After 9/11, paying special attention to the fourth thing.)

v. 15: (1) Jesus' message is a three-part announcement:

• The time is fulfilled: History is ripe for God to break in with the Savior
• The Kingdom of God is near (More on this below.)
• Repent and believe in the Good News (Gospel, euaggelion)

(2) "The time has been fulfilled." The word for time in the original Greek of this passage is kairos. This is one of two main words for time in Greek. Chronos is the word for time that most closely approximates what we mean when we talk about time. It's chronological time, the succession of seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years.

Kairos though might best be thought of as God's time. For the time to be fulfilled in this particular case then, is for all the things God deemed necessary to be in place for the entrance of the Savior on the world scene. That God operates on His own timetable and not ours is important for we impatient humanoids to remember. Peter says:

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. (Second Peter 3:8)

(3) The phrase kingdom of God refers to the dynamic reign of God. It's not a place, but a state of being and that state of being is a status of restored relationship with God. Through Jesus Christ, all who repent and believe in His Gospel, come under the dominion of God. But the phrase means something even more specific than this, which I'll touch on below.

(4) I like what Brian Stoffregen has to say about the Greek word translated as is near:

The verb eggizo...means 'to come near." It can refer to space, as one person coming closer to another person. The same...form is used of the betrayer "coming near" Jesus (14:42) in the Garden of Gethsemane...The word can also refer to time, as "it's almost time."

[But the perfect tense of this verb, which is what we have in this passage]...indicates a past action with continuing effects in the present. When we say that "The rule of God has come near..." [that] implies that God's rule is near or perhaps God's rule has arrived."

Stoffregen goes on to quote Edwards' commentary again:

In Jesus of Nazareth the kingdom of God makes a personal appearance.

To paraphrase one of Amy Grant's old songs: "The Kingdom has a Name: Jesus." In Jesus, the Kingdom of God has made a very personal appearance!

(5) As is characteristic of all four books we call Gospels in the New Testament, there's an understated quality about Jesus' appearing. He just shows up. As Ched Myers, quoted by Stoffregen, notes:

Instead of a [grand] kingdom epiphany, the second act [in Jesus' ministry] opens with Jesus wandering by the sea, bidding some common laborers to accompany Him on a mission.

Nothing about this chapter suggests that very much about the world has changed as a result of the kingdom of God coming near through Jesus. In fact, if you weren't looking through the eyes of faith, you couldn't see His Kingdom at all.

This is not very like what you would expect from that word, euaggelion, the good news about some earth-shaking, life-changing victory. As Myers also writes:

Mark pursues a narrative strategy that consistently frustrates the equation between epiphany and victorious holy war.

(6) In my message last Sunday, I extemporaneously paraphrased Martin Luther's sentiment that "the problem with born again Christians is that they're not born again enough."

By that, he meant that for many Christians, faith in Christ is like a one-time business transaction. They think of repenting and believing, the last portion of Jesus' three-part message in verse 15, as a one-and-done deal.

But the verb tense in which Jesus' words are recorded in Mark put the lie to that sort of static approach to faith. As Stoffregen points out, those words translated as repent and believe "are present tense imperatives...[implying] continued or repeated actions. 'Keep on repenting!' 'Keep on believing!'..."

This and other passages in the New Testament explain why Luther wrote in The Small Catechism of the need for Christians to live "in daily repentance and renewal," always surrendering ourselves to God so that we can face life with God's power, forgiveness, wisdom, hope, and love.

(7) As to the substance of repentance, I can't say it any better than Stoffregen says it:

Repentance properly understood is an "I can't" experience, rather than an "I can" experience. If repentance is promising God, "I can do better," then we are trying to keep ourselves in control of our lives. If we can do better, we don't need a gracious God, only a patient One who will wait long enough for us to do better. When we come before God confessing, "I can't do better," then we are dying to self. We are giving up control of our lives. We are throwing our sinful lives on the mercy of God. We are inviting God to do what we can't do ourselves -- namely to raise the dead -- to change and recreate us.

It's impossible for me to tell you how excited I was when I read that paragraph. Stoffregen has nailed what repentance is about incredibly well! (I also can't tell you how much my sinful self wished that I had written it. That, in turn, goes to show you how desperately I need to keep repenting.)

(8) In explaining the "believe in the Gospel" part of Jesus' proclamation, Stoffregen says:

the flip side of the "I can't" is "believing the gospel"--"God can."

Amen!

v. 16: (1) Jesus calls a set of brothers--Simon and Andrew. Later, He will call another set of brothers, James and John. They were fishermen. Fishermen, generally, were wealthy people.

Fishing, as I've explained before, was a licensed operation. Those who wanted to fish had to pay hefty fees to the local tax collector. The prospective fisherman had other capital outlays in his equipment and boats.

But once fishermen established themselves, they could become quite rich. We see that James and John were part of a prosperous family business because, when Jesus called them, they left the employees and their father behind. Andrew, soon to be rechristened by Jesus as Peter, and Simon no doubt were well-off financially as well.

(2) Stoffregen points out that literally, Jesus didn't ask these new disciples to follow Him, but to "Come behind Me." The Greek word is opiso. It's the same word Jesus uses when rebuking Peter for trying to prevent Him from going to the cross: "Get behind Me, Satan!" (Mark 8:33).

The implication of this word choice on Jesus' part is that He's calling these wealthy young businessmen to voluntarily subordinate themselves to Him. That's Jesus' call to us today!

v. 17: Jesus calls these first disciples to work. His call to us is more than just a call to salvation; it's also a call to take on the work that He gives us to do, too.

The work? To fish for people.

There was in ancient Judean thought, a great fear about the sea. In the sea, the leviathan, the sea monsters mentioned in the Old Testament, lived. In the first of two accounts of Creation found in the book of Genesis, the primordial chaos over which God's Spirit hovered to bring about life was pictured as roiling, stormy sea (Genesis 1:1ff). The sea therefore symbolized darkness, evil, and separation from God.

Applied to the task which Jesus now says will be the work of these fisheremen, Jesus' words appear to mean that they will call people from lifelessness and separation from God to life and fellowship with God.

But, there will be a "dying to self," too. When fishermen drag literal fish from the water with their "embracing" nets, fish do die, after all and this is part of Jesus' image. Stoffregen writes:

They were dragged from life in the water to their death in the air.

The newly-called disciples of Jesus are to engage in a ministry in which they call people away from the securities of a world where for now, they can breathe, but will eventually die, to a life in a Kingdom that will last forever.

v. 18: Simon and Andrew respond to Jesus' call immediately. Subsequent events show that they needed to be called many times more and in many ways by Jesus. A faith relationship with Christ, while we walk on this planet, is always a work in progress.

vv. 19-20: James and John respond with a dispatch equal to that of the other two brothers.