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New Envoy promises Victory, Freedom

January 21, 2018

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
"This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel."

As he passed by the Sea of Galilee,
he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea;
they were fishermen.
Jesus said to them,
"Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men."
Then they abandoned their nets and followed him.
He walked along a little farther
and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They too were in a boat mending their nets.
Then he called them.
So they left their father Zebedee in the boat
along with the hired men and followed him.

Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
"This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel."

It is useful to see this as a headline or summary covering all that follows in Mark's account of the gospel of God. As in any headline, the words are chosen for impact, while their full meaning will be explained gradually in the body of the work. However through overuse some expressions lose their impact.

Mark's introduction to Jeshua's "good news" suffers this problem. Some freshness can be restored by reading many different translations, but the more you read the more you realise that to our ears it sounds like a worn-out formula rather than the urgent call to action which it undoubtedly was at the time of writing. If I were to compose my own headline by borrowing from different translations it would read something like this:

Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the message of God, saying, "The time has come - the world as God would have it is very near. It's time for a change of heart, for embracing the gospel way."

Let's look at these words a little more closely:

'Proclaiming the gospel of God.'

'The gospel' - to euangelion : It is common today to modernise this as 'The Good News', but there's a problem. 'News' is what we get daily in the morning paper and in the evening TV reports on the happenings of the day. Mark is not giving us 'news' in that sense, for this message is proclaimed (as by an official herald) as a message of authority.

It seems that the term euangelion was adopted in the communities of Jeshua's followers quite early on for Paul uses it a number of times. Perhaps we need to keep it, and its quite adequate English form 'gospel', rather than substitute modern versions that will be quickly out of date. But to keep it alive we need to clean it up a little.

The word 'gospel' has come to refer to statements of teaching rather than to the living message as Jeshua proclaimed it. Some even use it to affirm the truth of what they say: 'It's gospel!' they say, and I wonder if they know what 'gospel' is.

Gradually as the years go by I try to focus on the essential core of this 'Welcome Proclamation' that is the Gospel. Essentially it encapsulates an idea that occurs repeatedly in the collection of writings we call 'The Book' (or should that be 'The Library'?) - tà biblía, "the books".

From the first lines of Genesis: 'God saw the light, and saw that it was good', through to the great promise to Abraham: 'I will make you a great people', to Moses: 'You will say to Pharoah, Let my people go!' and to David: 'I myself will make you a house', and then the prophets: 'I will send my servant..., and he will teach the way of the Lord' - always the message is one of liberation - from the darkness, from being a nobody, from enslavement, from frustration - and finally from the desperation of being caught in an historic process of endless frustration and miserable defeat.

'You are free to go!' - the words must sound so good to anyone taken into custody by the police. Perhaps more accurately the gospel proclamation would be: 'You can be free' - because it's not like the boss is washing his hands of us, saying: 'Do what you want; it's none of my business.' It's more like: 'Your freedom is in your hands from now on; I will give you all the help you need, but you've got to make some choices, take some initiative, work at it yourselves.' The key promise is of final victory, that all will be well in the end.

'The time is fulfilled.'

'Are we there yet?' - common complaint of impatience. The first item of this Welcome Proclamation is that the time of waiting is definitely over. We're at the point where promises are being fulfilled and things are starting to happen.

It is not possible to understand the gospel separate from its background. It is embedded in that tortuous history of the people where every form of human perversity has been experienced, every kind of set-back is on record - and when Jeshua says that Time's Up! it doesn't signal the end of trials but the start of victories - if only those who hear the message can take it in.

The kingdom of God is at hand.

This term has really lost its impact. We no longer relate to kings or kingdoms. 'Empire' still works, both in the literature of fantasy and in the hard-nosed world of business. But 'empire' equals power, control and profit at the expense of subjugated peoples, so I can't imagine 'Empire of God' being a useful term these days.

I think the idea is that of a world in which the influence of the divine is becoming more evident as people consciously and freely line up with 'the good', 'the honest', and 'the true'. Even scientists bent on objectivity are acknowledging an increase in conscious awareness of value, dignity, responsibility and unity among people. So I think of the 'kingdom of God' as being a world becoming more and more 'as God would have it'.

Repent, and believe in the gospel.

There's a long history to people being called to repent of their sins, but again for us it has lost its relevance. In part this is because we have become aware of so many factors in our enslavement that are not of our own doing, that are not 'sins', and therefore not matter for repentance. This consideration forces us to look at the Greek word to see if there's not a broader meaning. The idea of metanoia implies literally a change of mind, and one that is so deep and fundamental that we need to say: a change of heart.

While it is the practice of some christian preachers to call on people to 'turn away from sin and commit to Jesus once for all', metanoia really involves a continuous and on-going revision of one's assumptions, prejudices, and even of one's first and basic certainties. We have to be revising our thinking throughout our adult lives in view of growing towards a degree of maturity that will stand us in good stead in our final years as much around us begins to look less certain and less important than it once did.

Finally we come to the key idea: we are called to 'believe in the gospel'. Again, 'belief' has degenerated into an act of mental affirmation of some dogmatic formula, while in reality it involves a commitment of the whole self in trust to another person. When we've said: 'I believe in you' or 'I have faith in you', there's not much more to be said.

Especially in John's gospel it becomes clear that Jesus is himself the 'Welcome Proclamation', as he is somehow the manifestation of the divine among us and in us. Hence his demand: 'Believe in me!' It means trusting him as truthful, genuine, authentic, and entrusting ourselves and the uncertainties of our existence to his promise.

Ultimately Jeshua is the ground of my hope that in the end all will be well.

* * * * *

A final word about the calling of the disciples. I have sometimes wondered whether Jeshua ever thought of setting up a rabbinical school for children, such as were common enough at the time, and I've come to the conclusion that nothing would have been further from his mind.

He chose to address adult men and women, calling them to become people who would learn to review their lives and discover levels of commitment, and who would lead others towards such discoveries in their lives. This is not something you can realistically expect to be effective if preached at children whose lives are unfolding in a mesmerising array of untried possibilities. To channel a child's development within narrow limits seems to be an abuse, no matter how noble the intention.

Does the step of metanoia required today in the whole community of Christians involve shifting the focus from children's education to the creation of situations where adults can learn the possibilities of this life-enhancing review, an on-going, never-ending, change of heart?

I wonder too whether Mark saw the intention (or was it the irony) of Jeshua promising to make his disciples 'fishers of men'. Fishing is such a chancy operation. You never know what you'll catch, or why these and not those. Generally you're pretty sure that you have only caught a tiny percentage of the whole population of fish in the sea. Indeed today we know how important it is to leave most of them swimming along oblivious to your tempting bait. I think that is not meant to be ironic, but a genuine illustration of how God's world of influence is to come about, namely, through individuals sharing their conviction with others, one-to-one: that pinch of salt, that small spoon of yeast...