Church of the Crossroads, Sermons

Church of the Crossroads
Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 22, 2006
Neal MacPherson

BREAKING WITH BUSINESS AS USUAL

Mark 1:14-20

As I read and re-read today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark, I came to the realization that 20 centuries of Christendom have served to soften the spirit and intent of the original Christian movement. In the centuries following the life and ministry of Jesus, the Christian Church became less interested in carrying forth the original spirit of the Christian movement and more interested in its own worldly power and success. A softened Gospel message suited the churches of Christendom as they sought respectability and acceptability in the world.

From the Christendom that has dominated the Christian scene for a very long time now, we have inherited a domesticated Gospel. The values of American culture have not helped. Richard Horsley in a wonderful new book, Jesus and Empire, convincingly argues that culturally it has suited North Americans to view Jesus not as the initiator of a movement that was deeply involved in the political, economic, and social institutions of his time, but as an individual figure who dealt mainly with other individuals. North Americans have preferred to view Jesus as a teacher of moral values rather than as a prophet speaking truth to power.

This view of Jesus has been aided, I am afraid, by Biblical scholars who have done their work out of a modern scientific point of view. Here, I must make an admission. Those who have been around Crossroads for a time will recall how enamored I once was with the work of The Jesus Seminar and its efforts to determine which sayings and actions of Jesus were truly authentic. You will recall the book they published, which color coded every word from the four Gospels as well as the Gospel of Thomas. Only words coded red were deemed to be the authentic words of Jesus. Words printed in pink or grey or black signified varying degrees of authenticity, black meaning that in no way could Jesus have said anything like that.

The work of The Jesus Seminar was important work, but the impact of the work has not been all that helpful, for it has served to isolate Jesus as an individual, as a religious teacher who uttered isolated parables and sayings relevant only to individual persons. When we disregard or set aside all those passages coded in black or grey, we set aside much of the original spirit of the gospels. After all, the gospels as a whole reflect not only Jesus as an individual teacher of wisdom, but also a movement larger than Jesus, a movement which was deeply involved in addressing the social injustices and inequities of 1st century Palestine.

Christendom and 20th century Biblical scholarship has given us a Jesus who was a teacher of wisdom. The Gospels give us a Jesus who inaugurated a movement of change and transformation that was focused on the reign of God and its engagement with the principalities and powers of the world.

Today’s gospel lesson describes the beginning of that movement:

Galilee has high symbolic value for the gospel writer. Jesus came out of Nazareth in Galilee to be baptized by John the Baptist and now returns to Galilee to begin his prophetic ministry. To report that Jesus came from Nazareth was tantamount to saying that Jesus came from “Nowheresville,” so insignificant and obscure was that little town. As for Galilee, it was notorious and regarded with contempt and suspicion. Galilee was populated heavily by gentiles, most of whom were poor. It was a territory on the periphery, far from the centers of influence and power.

It is to this territory that Jesus returns to inaugurate his kingdom movement. His movement will not be respectable or sedate. It will have a hearing among the poor; and it will be intent upon change and transformation. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom - the realm - of God is near; repent (literally, turn around), and believe in the good news.” God’s reign is breaking in upon the world. With the coming of that realm, there will be justice for the poor and solace for the weary. Things will be turned upside down.

Immediately, Jesus calls the first disciples: Simon Peter and James and John. They are fishing, and Jesus says, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

The domesticated Gospel given to us by Christendom has wanted to interpret this statement in a certain way. We have understood “fishing for people” as “saving souls.” Chad Myers, from whom I have taken the title for this sermon, Breaking with Business as Usual, points out in his book Binding the Strong Man that we need to go back to the prophet Jeremiah to really understand the meaning of the phrase, “fishing for people.” In the 16th chapter of Jeremiah, verses 16 and 17, we read:

I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Sovereign God, and they shall catch them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight.

The phrase, “fishing for people,” then, implies a judgment upon the unjust ways of those in power. The phrase has a revolutionary ring to it that a domesticated gospel and an established Christendom could hardly imagine.

You see, when the reign of God breaks in upon the world, there must be a break with business as usual. Ordinary fishing is set aside in order to engage in a bold and new witness in the world.

In our day, as I hear what is being said about the Gospel on the religious television networks, I hear a domesticated gospel. It would seem that the main idea of the Gospel is to address the needs of individual human beings, and promote Christianity as a system of morality. Nothing is said of the principalities and powers of our world. There are no words of judgment against the war or against governmental policies that neglect the needs of the poor and disenfranchised. It is as if we all should simply get right with God and be good and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

That, may I say, is not the Gospel. The good news of the Gospel has to do with the realm of God breaking in upon our world as it broke in upon the world in the time of Jesus.

When Church of the Crossroads has been at its best, it has caught that original spirit of the Gospel. I am reminded of Judy Rantala, our 2006 Peacemaker, who, in 1969, stood in the doorway of what was once the Draft Counseling Office and now is my office, and was confronted by agents from the FBI or CIA (we do not know which) who had come to confiscate the records of the draft resisters. Judy stood there, her arms outstretched to the door frames, questioning the agents, “Do you have a search warrant?” “No,” they replied. “Then you cannot come in,” she said. They retreated. At that moment Judy broke with business as usual. She decided to follow Jesus and fish for people.

And so, my sisters and brothers, we hear the call in our day. I know it can be discouraging, this business of following Jesus. I know it can be chaotic at times, uncertain at times. I know that at times we don’t quite know what we should be doing. But somehow, if we give ourselves over to the call and believe in the good news of the Gospel, we will find our way.

We are a church, and churches are always tempted to take a path that is safe and comfortable. That is why it is always important for us to hear the Gospel story as if we have never heard it before. Let’s always be willing to do just that, to hear the good news as if it were being given to us, here, now, today. And then let us respond to the calling, fear not the falling, and trust in God’s plan. So will we be as those first followers of Jesus, who gave up business as usual and turned themselves over to a new way of being and doing. So be it.

Amen.

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