Mark 1:14-20

Epiphany 3- Year B

 


When G*D draws near freedom rises. The old cultural and survival icons of job and family loosen their hold. We can move in new ways that see the world in new images.

Whatever we have been up to can be translated into an alternative vision. The resources and stability of job and family can be seen as more than they are.

If resource gathering is only for gathering more resources (maximize those dividends - ultimately what silliness), who among us can be set loose from the drudgery of life? If the safety and security of tradition is only for perpetuating the same old stuff through the generations, who among us will be set loose to step into the choices life presents?

The good news comes to loose us from the hold of "we have always done it this way." Here we can choose to travel toward the "more" of life that is found in purposeful community building, dying for what we believe, and rising to new life beyond the usual boundaries we impose upon ourselves and others.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html

 


 

Time - complete
G*D - present
Me/You - recognize and act

Can we live from the perspective of the wholeness of time - was, is, and will be? Can we live as though the important issues of life were settled and we just naturally participate in the details of loving our enemies and all the love that leads up to that. To have time fulfilled takes the burden off and frees us to free the spirit within.

Can we live from the perspective of the presence of G*D? So in the kitchen and every other part of life we can cook up a feast, a banquet at which all are not only invited but joyfully accept said invitation. We can walk and talk with G*D in the cool of the evening and the burning of the noontide heat. Out of this multifaceted present we find a sense of enough. With G*D, it is enough so we can relax into life in all its fullness.

Can we take all this in - time complete and G*D present - and have it affect what we think and feel and how we respond to the situations of life (including crucifixion). Does repentance lead you to believe everything is broken at the outset or does repentance lead you to believe everything is a new good creation?

As we mess with this formula we begin to sense that it is metaphor upon metaphor and not didactic deductive dogma. Where does this old formula lead you? I trust it is to new life for if it is only to the tried and true it will soon pass into the annals of a trivia quiz, "What is the marketing slogan of both John the Baptizer and Jesus the Baptizee?"

Can old formulas learn new meanings?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html

 


 

After Baptizer John was arrested, Jesus, away from the Jordan, back in Galilee, began preaching the same message as John.

Comment 1: Jesus is focused on the nearness and the activity of G*D, not himself. As John points to Jesus, Jesus points to G*D. This awareness of G*D calls for a shifting of gears.

Comment 2: Jesus calls folks away from the water. We are going not going to be fishing among the baptized, but among those flopping around on land straining for a breath of oxygenated water (creation water, flowing water, living water).

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/january2006.html

 


 

The time has come.

"Of course there are those for whom all this exuberant urgency is rather too much. We have become more or less content with the normal ways of marking time, of waiting out our lives. We postpone all our commitments supposing that it's not the right time. And so we make our peace with the way things are, with the mind-numbing tale of human inhumanity, of hope deferred and longing forgotten. And so we are likely to find all this joyous urgency rather suspect and more than a little annoying. And so long as this is true for us we can hear no gospel. Perhaps that is why the ones who most readily respond to this 'good news' are those who have nothing left to lose." [The Insurrrection of the Crucified: The "Gospel of Mark" as Theological Manifesto by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.]

Look around. Do you really have anything more to lose? The time has come!

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/january2006.html

 


 

There are many great balancing acts where we are not shaken, where we rest. Among the greatest is that of "none."

Are you seen, do you see yourself, as being of little value, of great value? The difference is smaller than a jot or tittle. It takes nothing to push a balanced scale, an empty scale. Let it go.

Fisher of fish or fisher of folk? Net leaver or family leaver? First journey or second journey to Tarshish or Nineveh? We tell ourselves stories that one is better than the other.

In a time of fulfillment "all" and "nothing" lose significance.

Let me have all things, let me having nothing, I freely and heartily yield.
Let me have repentance, let me have good news, I freely and heartily yield.
Let me have mourning, let me have rejoicing, I freely and heartily yield.
Let me have prison, let me have Galilee, I freely and heartily yield.

What has been the tension you have been holding on to to define your present time here? Might this be a time of fulfillment where you can yield to both rather than wait for one to knock off the other?

- - -

rock against rock
devil against sea
addiction against addiction
we set our dilemmas
wavering between them
holding both so precious
we could never put one down

time against space
matter against energy
galaxy against quark
we set our paradoxes
choosing one and then
favoring the other
once, twice, and thrice

doctrine against doctrine
hymn against praise
faith against hope
we set our institutions
burning with passion
burning each heretic
loving sets more than love itself

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

 


 

Time is always fulfilled or redeemed. It don't get any fuller than "now!" Deemed or redeemed – now is now. The presence of G*D is always eschatologically present. This is a truism Jesus and many have affirmed down through time.

A trickier part is the relationship between repentance and good news. Following on John, Jesus starts with repentance as the initiating action. This then leads to or reveals good news.

This repentance first policy works for many people. However, it is interesting to note that, if you posit Jesus doing a cold call on Simon and Andrew, the first word he says to them is about good news – that they will learn to "catch men and women instead of perch and bass" [The Message]. Only later will they find out that they will need to learn repentance, prayer, and mercy to fulfill this new life they now sense rising within them.

Of course we can imagine that Simon and Andrew had heard or heard of Jesus and the repentance first message he is reported to have continued from John. In this case there may have been some repentance work that went on previously that had opened Simon and Andrew to actually follow.

A tension of preaching repentance and recruiting based on good news has the most appeal this day of remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr. It reminds us of a long line of saints who have helped us refine issues of nonviolence. A reality-of-brokenness and a hope-of-better is a productive pairing.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

 


 

Was the stimulus for Jesus proclaiming “good news of G*D” the arrest of John or Jesus’ return from wilderness of post-baptismal temptations?

If Jesus is seen as the inheritor of Baptist John, folks might well shy away from what appears to be a losing cause - personal repentance and baptism as political/religious resistance. 

If this is an external manifestation of an internal strengthening, we might better hear a communal invitation to repentance and trust as good news in and of themselves. Was Jesus empowered by an experience of temptation recognized and dealt with to such an extent that Simon, Andrew, James, and John were able to catch more than the words reported - “Follow me”?

Where, these days, do you hear an invitation to trust a repentance based on a direct encounter with temptation’s power. Is it in the political realm, the religious, the personal, the economic? 

Should you be blessed/cursed with hearing an invitation into larger living, which realm will not be affected as you engage yourself with a new level of conscience and consciousness? Yes, every part of life is renewed. You can catch a part of this as you reflect on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s official day, today.

Repentance as empowerment toward a common good is worth looking at. In particular, how this dynamic works within your life and, in general, within the life of the world.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/01/mark-114-20.html