3d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jan. 21, 2018
Mark 1: 14-20
Visitation Convent, Georgetown, D.C.
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Jesus Calling the Sons of Zebedee
(Marco Basaiti)
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Poor
old Zebedee! His 2 sons go running off
after some wandering rabbi and leave him in his boat with his unmended nets. Did he mutter, “Kids these days!,” or did he
shout something in their wake that Donald Trump might wish he’d said?
Let
us attend, however, to what Jesus says, in the wake of Mark’s foreboding note,
“After John had been arrested” (1:14)—a fate lying ahead of Jesus, too.
So,
from somewhere—we’re not told precisely, but Mark has just reported in 2 terse
sentences that Jesus was tempted in the desert after John had baptized him
(1:12-13). How long a gap between that
and John’s arrest? We don’t know. Did Jesus stay for a while with John and,
after his arrest, decide to return homeward?
We don’t know, but the 1st chapter of John’s Gospel could be read that
way.
Anyhow,
now he’s come back to Galilee, and he comes with a message, perhaps the fruit
of his meditation while in the desert, and certainly the fruit of the Holy
Spirit’s descent on him at his baptism (1:10).
Jesus
comes “proclaiming the gospel of God,” Mark says (1:14). Gospel means “good news.” It’s “of God,” which means both “about God”
and “from God.”
And
what is this “good news”? “This is the
time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God
is at hand. Repent, and believe in the
gospel” (1:15). “The time” isn’t
chronological time, time ticking on a clock, like how many days or hours till
the government runs out of borrowing authority; but existential time, the time
of God’s designs: God’s people have been
waiting for him to break again into history as he did at the exodus or the
anointing of David—and here he comes, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The time is fulfilled!
“The
kingdom of God is at hand.” God rules
the earth, human affairs, the destinies of nations and of human beings. The period of Satan’s rule is over, however
much he may fight back in a rear-guard action.
To quote my confrere Scripture scholar Fr. Frank Moloney, “The reigning
power of God is ‘at the door.’”[1]
If
that’s true, what are people to do?
“Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Repent means to turn around,
i.e., turn one’s life around, be converted, return to God from any manner of
living or any attitude of heart that is not God-centered.
Be converted
to what? To belief in the Gospel, that
“gospel of God” just mentioned. What is
God’s good news? The death, resurrection,
and glorification of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God (1:1). God reigns in the person of Jesus: his preaching, his activity in Galilee and
Jerusalem; in his passion, death, and resurrection, in his victory over Satan
and over sin.
All this is
good news because Jesus comes to heal us,
to preach to us God’s desire to restore humanity to his good graces thru the
forgiveness of our sins, and
ultimately to give us a share in Christ’s resurrection. Belief in this, and of course action based on
that belief, places one under God’s rule, gives one a place in the kingdom of
God.
As Jesus
preaches the nearness of the kingdom and its demands, he calls these 4 men to
follow him. He may already have met
them, conversed with them, intrigued them with his understanding of our
heavenly Father, sparked in them a suspicion of his mission; John 1 speaks of
this. In any case, now their response is
immediate: “They abandoned their nets
and followed him” (1:18). There’s a
conversion there, a turning from a way of life to embrace a new and radically
different one: discipleship and mission.
Mark doesn’t tell us this story for our admiration, as we
may admire the rescue of 300,000 Tommies from the beach at Dunkirk. He tells us because the message of Jesus is
aimed at us and demands our immediate response too. What in our life is holding us back from
fully embracing the rule of God? What is
there yet in our actions, our manner, our words, our attitudes that we need to
jettison as completely as Andrew and Simon, James and John did their nets,
their livelihood, even their father? How
ready are we to embrace Jesus as the pattern of our thinking and action, as the
key to our membership in the kingdom of God?
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