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“A New Day”
Mark 1:1-20
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Happy New Year!
Now that’s a bit of an odd thing to say, especially in September, but it is the start of our new season here at UBC. We’re glad that the new teachers and students are starting their work. It’s great to hear the choir once again. This week we’ll start a new Taize-styled meditative candlelight worship experience on Thursday night. We are enjoying working together with our friends at the University Episcopal Center who are living at UBC for the next year or so until they build their new facility. It’s a new year. It’s a new day.
But it is also a season that we are once again on the brink of war. We seem farther and farther away from peace, closer and closer to confusion and more and more in need of God. As we approach the September 11th anniversary, we will no doubt pause to think about how our lives have changed over the past year and how they might change in the year to come.
To help us on this journey, we have the Gospel according to Mark. From now until Easter we will look at Mark’s gospel, story by story. The Worship planning ministry team chose Mark’s Gospel because it is the earliest, earthiest and most dramatic of the four gospels. It seems that each episode implores us to make a decision of whom to follow, God, or the powers and principalities of this world.
Mark’s Gospel does not mince words. It does not give us and easy out to the problems which we face as Christians. It is a difficult book which calls us to embrace a new day and a new way of living under the watchful eyes of God.
Mark begins with calling the disciples. But before that, Jesus announces the following words after coming out of the wilderness. “The time is fulfilled, the reign of God is at hand, repent, and believe in the good news.”
We know all about how Jesus called the disciples and said “follow me.” And they left their nets and followed him. Mark makes it that simple, but I don’t think it was. I think there was a whole lot more persuading going on. I think there is a whole lot more that was in the lives of Simon and Andrew and James and John which made them be willing to give up their former way and encounter a new way. And that is what Mark’s gospel is all about. When you become a Christian, when you truly follow Jesus, you leave your nets. You leave all that ensnared you. You leave behind that way that leads to dissatisfaction and disappointment and disillusion. And you grab onto a way of life which will change your world. You embrace a new day.
Mark’s gospel is unique in that it begins without talking about the birth of Jesus, like Luke and Matthew. The good news which Mark tells about happens when Jesus takes action. The good news begins when Jesus makes the decision to be baptized. That’s where the gospel begins. The good news happens when we make a decision. The Holy Spirit descends like a dove after Baptism and a voice from the heavens declares “this is my child with whom I am well pleased.” The good news for us begins when we make a decision. When we choose to go in a different direction. When we leave our nets and delve into deeper, more satisfying waters.
Present and former students realize that in college our world gets turned upside down by the sheer body of knowledge that surrounds us. We run the risk of being so bombarded with options, opinions and information that we no longer have a clear sense of what we stand for. We might have a sense of what we don’t stand for, but maybe not enough of a sense of what we do stand for.
Being a disciple of Christ means knowing what you stand for. And Jesus gives us prescription for this. He says, “The time is fulfilled, the reogn of God is at hand, repent and believe in the good news.” This sums up Jesus’ whole ministry according to Mark. But he didn’t say this until after he made a trip to the wilderness—to a place where he could be alone, yet a place where he could be distracted, manipulated and even tested by evil. It wasn’t until he got through the wilderness that he was able to proclaim that “the time is fulfilled, the reign of God is at hand, repent and believe in the good news.”
The last year has felt like a wilderness.
Many of us spent the better part of this year in a daze, not knowing where to turn for comfort, hope and conviction. We have been sorrowful, angry, confused, immobilized and through it all fearful of the unknown out there that we cannot control. It’s like we have been tested in this wilderness, with our adversary offering us easy answers to complex questions, and my how we have been tempted to eat of that bread and get back to business as usual. But then we awake and realize that it was just a mirage, just the trickster trying to divide our loyalties, trying to re-ensnare us in those nets. “Don’t worry, be happy” said the spider to the fly.
Many of you have been tested in the wilderness time and again. There were times that you were alone, or hurting, or on a path with no clear direction. But if you can survive the wilderness, you come out with a clarity never before realized.
And we are here a year later perhaps on the other side of the wilderness. The time is fulfilled. The reign of God is here. Repent and believe in the good news.
Let’s look at each of those four points. This is what hooked the first disciples. Maybe it can hook us, too.
The time is fulfilled. The kairos is here. There are two kinds of time, there is chronos time which is the accumulation of minutes and hours and years. Everything proceeds during chronos time.
Kairos is different. It is the kind of time where something miraculous happens. When Jesus talk about his time, his Karios, coming in the Gospel of John, he’s talking about the time of his own suffering and death. Jesus begins Marks’ Gospel saying the Kairos is fulfilled. The time is at hand. We can’t wait for someone else to speak the truth. We are on the other side of the wilderness. In the words of the old Nike commercials, “just do it.” The time is fulfilled. A new day is here. Our waiting is over.
The reign of God is at hand. It is nearby, not far away. Look at each other. As clearly as you can see each other is how close the reign of God is. In the Lord’s prayer we say “Thy Kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will is to be done here on earth. The reign of God is at hand.
Remember, saying the
Repent. That means take on a new life. It means turn around. It means change your ways. It means distance yourself from the same old same old. It means as Paul reminds us, “be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of you minds.”(Rom. 12:2)
Mark records Jesus saying his first words after John the Baptist was arrested. It was John who preached a baptism of repentance. Jesus, many believed was a disciple of John the Baptist and well-schooled in his vocation of repentance. During his wilderness time, many of John’s disciples, we can assume, went back to their old ways. Maybe even James and John and Simon and Andrew were among those disciples going back to their old jobs. But Jesus challenged them. He said “don’t give in and don’t give up. I’m going to give you an even better way to live. John the Baptist said repent. I will say that too,” says Jesus, “but I will add, the time is fulfilled, the reign of God is at hand and believe in the good news.”
So, don’t let this world order decide your future and your calling. Don’t let others define what you believe. Repent.
Don’t let people say you are not worthy. Don’t let people convince you you are not worthy. You are worthy. Repent.
Don’t let injustice go unchecked. But like the prophet Amos declared “let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
Don’t allow violence to be the sad reality of our lives. Repent.
Show, yes model a new way to live with one another. Believe that we can and must find a way to not be held captive by an economic and political system which continues to make most of the world poor and the rest of us blind to their plight. Don’t delude yourselves into believing that the only security we can have is at the other end of a gun barrel.
Repent, says Jesus to the unbelieving disciples—to us skeptics—to those of us smart enough to ignore the gospel when we say that loving our enemy does not apply in this day and age. The time is fulfilled, the reign of God is at hand, repent and,
Believe in the good news. Believe in the Gospel. He does not say believe in a book. He is saying to believe in the good news, the new world order, the reality of God made human, the love of God for all people, the truth which has the audacity to tell us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
The good news is the unfolding story we are about to behold in the pages of Mark. But it is not a static story. It becomes alive only when it intersects with our very lives—only when it changes us. That is the good news. It is good news only when we refuse to be lulled by the soothing sounds of the world as we have it. Everything is not all right. The good news happens when we side with the dispossessed, the outcast and tell the powers that be that this is not God’s way. That is the good news.
The good news happens when we say to the powerful, the dominant ones, and even ourselves the time is fulfilled, the reign of God is at hand, repent and believe in the good news. The only way to do this is to lay down our nets of the old ways of looking at the world and embracing a radical discipleship which will change us and change the world. That is what discipleship means. When we do that, we will no longer simply be accumulating fish in our nets—no longer simply making a day’s wage, but we will be casting our nets into new waters and our catch will be people in need, maybe even people in positions of domination, maybe even our cynical selves.
But before we can believe in the good news, we have to know it. We have to study it, we have to be attentive to how the bad news of the world intersects with the good news of God. And that knowledge ought to change us.
Sisters and brothers, this is a new day for us as a church. Not only is it a new day because there are so many new people here today or because we are doing things a bit differently in our study time and our worship time. It is not a new day because of the programs we offer. It is a new day only in as much as we make it a new day. I am here to proclaim to you again, and so should we all, that the time is fulfilled.
There is no time like the
present. Great things are happening and
will continue to happen. It makes no
sense to wait. The time is fulfilled.
It’s time for us to wake up and live into what we have been waiting for.
The reign of God is at hand. We
answer to God, not to the ways of bigotry, of intolerance, of me firstism, of military might which is the way of the earthly
kingdoms of today. We seek to live our
lives by God’s politics where everyone is valued, where life and opportunity
and acceptance and abundance are the rights of all not just the privilege of a
few. We are citizens of the
Repent. Let us no longer settle for business as usual. Let us rather be transformed and let us never resort to violence in thought word or deed. Let us repent of our self-centeredness, our cynicism, or resignation to the world as it is.
And let’s believe in the good news. Let us know the gospel and know how the Gospel tells us to behave in a world run amuck. Let us always remember that God’s plan for us, our church, our families is one of compassion, justice and peace. Let us so believe in the good news that we spread it here and abroad.
When all of this happens, then it is truly that new day which we all seek. On this new day, let’s tear down the barriers we are so good at erecting. Let us plant the seeds of God’s justice so that we might all reap the harvest to come. And let us live lives of compassion and mercy which are the fruits of true followers of God. Let’s make this the new day which we all seek. Amen.