Epiphany 3B, 21 January 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Jonah 3:1-5, 10. God changed [God’s] mind.
• 1 Corinthians 7:29-31. The present form of this world is passing away.
• Mark 1:16-20. And immediately.

O God of many callings, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning we heard a short passage from Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth. It sounds as if he were saying, “The end is near, so shelter in place.” If he did think the very, literal end was near, he was wrong; so why read his teachings 2000 years later as scripture? Here’s one reason: I think that Paul was using rhetorical language to communicate a sense of urgency about behaving as if we were free from the slavery of mistreatment and of mistreating others, so that the present form of this world does pass away, can pass away, and will pass away. In the very next verse after our short passage he writes, “I want you to be free from anxieties or worries.” (It seems as if that would have been a nice verse for the lectionary to include.)

Paul was arguing not for greater confinement, but for greater freedom until the end of the world of oppression and misery. One of my teachers defines anxiety as an emotional state of feeling under-resourced for an imagined future scenario. [1] Paul is writing to these relatively new Jesus followers to assure them that, as a community, they have just what they need to live fully in the redeeming love of God (aka the Christ). Paul is encouraging them to live as if they are not bound by cultural or political limitations of who is slave and who is free, who is non-citizen and who is citizen, who is married and who is not. There is good news in not being enslaved to the expectations of economic or military power. There is good news in behaving toward one another in a way that demonstrates that the present form of this world is passing away. [2] That was the good news then and it’s the good news now.

The Gospel of Mark’s story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is all about that same kind of good news. After John was arrested, according to Mark, Jesus came out of an ascetic quarantine in the desert and into Galilee announcing, as John before him did, that God’s realm was very near. In other words, the Roman government might incarcerate John, but his message cannot be stopped. Jesus’ instructions were to repent, that is, turn around toward God. A complete re-orientation is what Jesus was calling for: a change of heart and mind. “Turn around,” he was saying, “The God you are searching for is right behind you, loving you, supporting you, prodding you to love others!” He began to assemble a team to help him spread this good news. The good news is healing of disability and disease, freedom from oppression and possession, food and drink for those who are hungry and thirsty, and love so comprehensive and generous that everyone is included. That was the good news then and it’s the good news now.

If you were to read the Gospel of Mark from beginning to end (it’s not that long, only about twenty pages), I bet you would notice the breathless pace of his storytelling. It’s even faster, and more spare, in Greek. The word that here gets translated as immediately [euthos] appears 42 times in those 20 pages. The eu part of the word has to do with goodness, wellness, and has moral undertones. Think right away, which conveys a sense of closeness in timing and uses the word right with its allusions to being morally sound, correct, decent, and opportune. The word can also be used to mean directly, open, frank, without reserve. Mark characteristically uses it over and over in his story about Jesus and his followers. He’s talking about what came next, and after that in terms of both timing and a sense of goodness.

Perhaps his emphasis on goodness, on rightness, in this story is because fishing is and always has been hard work that is not particularly highly regarded as a profession by others. The Roman philosopher Cicero wrote to his sons, “The most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures: fish-sellers … and fishermen.” [3] According to K.C. Hanson, “There was an ancient Egyptian observation that the fisher was ‘more miserable than any [other] profession.’” [4] Added to the low-esteem in which fishers were held was the fact that after paying for the ability to fish (the Romans sold and enforced fishing licenses), after paying the hired help if your family wasn’t large enough to fully staff a boat, after paying the taxes on the haul of fish, and maintaining the boat and the nets, fishers were lucky to be able sustain their families. Roman taxes and tolls placed a heavy burden on peasants in ancient Palestine. Also, fishing is and always has been dangerous work, as storms can take away everything in a flash. 

Fishing on the Sea of Galilee happens (and has always happened) at night when the fish can’t see and escape the nets! Fishermen went out at night, threw their nets over the side of the boat again and again, hauled in fish (if they were lucky), and came into shore in the morning to sell their fish and wash and mend their nets by the springs that feed into the Sea. Nighttime on the Sea of Galilee is pitch black even now, with only the moon and stars for light when there is no cloud cover. Nevertheless, fishing was what Simon, Andrew, James, and John knew and did. The story is that Jesus called them from their casting and their mending. They were not at the synagogue worshiping, at home eating, or asleep and dreaming. They were working at the break of day after a long night.

Cesáreo Gabaráin was a Spanish priest and author of a number of beautiful hymns. One that you might know is Pescador de Hombres, “Fisher of Men.” I often think of it when I read this story. I’m going to sing it to you in English because most of us are not fluent enough in Spanish to have the lyrics sink deeply into our hearts. It’s a snappy song to Jesus. You might want to close your eyes if that will help you listen, because as my dear friend Evan Thayer said once before he sang from the pulpit, “There’s nothing to see here!”

You have come down to the lakeshore seeking neither the wise nor the wealthy, but only asking for me to follow.
O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes; kindly smiling, you have called out my name.
On the sand I have abandoned my small boat;  now with you, I will seek other seas.

I’m going to sing two more verses, but first I want to tell you two things about this story that occur to me. The first is what this story illustrates about how and where Jesus works. It reminds me of the Irish joke in which a traveler asks, “How do I get to Dublin? And the response is, “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t start from here.” That is never Jesus’ response. To get to the realm of God, Jesus wants his followers to start from wherever they are. There are no try-outs, interviews, or future meeting dates in other places. They are at work. Jesus wants them to follow him starting immediately; and they do! The second thing is the way that Jesus sees the skills that these four fishermen have and knows that those same skills can be applied to spreading the good news of God’s goodness and of all of the possibilities in the midst of the problems of poverty and oppression. He sees them casting and mending, working the nets, and says:

Come with me. I’ll show you networking!
You know full well my possessions. Neither treasure nor weapons for conquest,
Just these my fish nets and will for working.
O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes; kindly smiling, you have called out my name.
On the sand I have abandoned my small boat, now with you, I will seek other seas.

The story then and the story now is that Jesus doesn’t work alone. Jesus needed the hands and the love of people like Simon and Andrew, like James and John. He wanted their love for himself, sure, but what he was really after was their love for all people. He wanted them to move beyond their own small boats. You know, a lot gets made of the idea that these four fishers left their work right away to follow Jesus (and maybe that is a big deal) but actually, they didn’t leave fishing and the sea completely. While learning from Jesus, they continued to have experiences fishing and traveling across the Sea of Galilee by boat. They learned to work together in an entirely new way. In the last part of the Gospel of Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome encounter a young man at the tomb in Jerusalem, who tells them that the Risen Lord will meet his disciples back in the Galilee.

You need my hands, my exhaustion, working love for the rest of the weary,
a love that’s willing to go on loving.
O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes; kindly smiling, you have called out my name.
On the sand  I have abandoned my small boat, now with you, I will seek other seas.

It may be that this story set in a Galilean fishing village has little to do with our stories set at a church in a Back Bay shopping village. None of us fishes for a living (well, I kind of do). And yet, the narrative, the meta narrative, of our tradition is that Jesus calls us by name (in our case, the name Emmanuel) from wherever we are. This story may be teaching us that to experience the realm of God and to spread the good news, we must start where we are: at our work with our skills, our responsibility in our daily existence. We are invited to re-examine our own work, re-examine our daily lives, to move beyond or through our many fears, and imagine new possibilities. We are invited to abandon the smallness of the constructs that keep each of us from spreading good news to those who know little of it. We are invited to seek other venues and work together in entirely new ways. We are invited to use the skills we already have to deliver the good news that God loves without measure and God needs each and every one to love without measure. We are invited to stop doing whatever keeps us from building an even-more-loving community. We are invited to know that Love is a healing and reconciling force in the world and that Love needs each and every one of us to be a healing and reconciling force in the world. Today is a great day to begin again, right away because (and so that) the present form of this world passes away. That was the good news then and it’s the good news now.

1.  The Rev. Rob Voyle
2. See David W. Kuck’s argument in “The Freedom of Being in the World “As If Not” (1 Cor 7:29-31), in Currents in Theology and Mission 28 no. 6 December 2001, pp. 585-593.
3.  Cicero, On Duties 1.42.
4. K. C. Hanson, “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition,” in Biblical Theology Bulletin 27 (1997), pp. 99-111.