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Jesus' dazzling sermon
Reflections on the lessons
for the Third Sunday after Epiphany
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Jeremiah 3:21-4:2
Psalm 130
1 Corinthians 7:17-23
Mark
1:14-20
My New Testament teacher once told
me,
"Remember, Jesus had only one sermon."
And, as it's remembered in today's gospel from Mark
(1:14-20).
It's a paragon of style and brevity:
Now is the time.
You can live in God's kingdom.
Open your eyes and you'll see that love is the basic connection among God and others and yourself.
See, I'm paraphrasing.
Even now I can't stop where Jesus stopped.
Here I am trying to improve on the sermon Jesus preached
with such power that people just dropped what they were
doing and took up a whole new life.
When I was in Sunday School - even in seminary - I just automatically assumed certain things about Peter and Andrew and James and John. I envisioned a magical moment when Jesus appeared and somehow, as if by magic, they dropped their nets and followed on behind Jesus.
I, at least, never thought very much about how that action might have connected with real people with real lives and personalities. Had they ever seen Jesus before? Or heard of him? That seems pretty likely. In traditional societies people tend to know about one another to a fair extent.
To me that attests all the more to the charisma Jesus must have had to be able to convince people to reorganize their whole lives around his core message - to reorient their lives from fishing to spreading the good news.
Archaeological digs at Capernaum suggest that the switch was significant. Commercial fishermen in an established family business were not poor folks. These guys were dropping careers with futures.
Peter, we learn a few verses down the line, was already married and a homeowner with a house big enough to accommodate at least his wife, children, and mother-in-law.
The break he makes is extraordinary. At least some of the cost of the disciples' actions would be borne by their families. They put down their nets and followed him.
In the Bible it all seems very abrupt. But in real life, it's much more complicated. I know that because I see how complicated the same thing is in our own real lives.
Jesus' one sermon is "Come, follow me."
And I believe that every one of us
in church
is in the process of answering that call.
No one has dropped everything
and gone walking off down the shore with Jesus.
But likewise every one of us has heard and heeded the
call
or else we wouldn't be in church at all.
We are all of us called to be followers of Jesus
and to share his mission.
And following him means to fish for people.
The genius of Jesus' one sermon is that it is thoroughly sufficient without offering any needless details.
Turn your life around.
Then show others what a new life can do for you.
We who are followers of Jesus today
are the church.
And the church exists only to keep spreading
the good news Jesus proclaimed.
Our call,
our mission,
our life
is to tell the good news
to the people we encounter
in ways that make sense
in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
It is our job to be figuring out new ways to do that.
Jesus knew he could not do his work
alone.
He needed a team,
one that has grown uncountably huge over 2000 years.
Through the power of an invitation
- rather than a command -
the first followers left behind everything
and started the community we belong to today,
a clan,
a society of people
who support one another
as we personalize
and tailor
and retell
the one dazzling sermon.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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