The Calling of the First Disciples

Nobody’s quite sure how or when they came for John, but we know why. He’d been telling the truth about King Herod and his affair with his brother’s wife, a truth no-one else had had the guts to talk about in public. And as we all know, when you’re clearly in the wrong, it hurts to be confronted with the truth.

 

But luckily for Herod, if you’re one of those who holds power, you can get to hurt right back. And so the men in black came for John; and my guess is they came at night, just as a few years later they would come for Jesus in Gethsemane at night. Fewer people, less fuss. Best all round.

 

“Well, that’s that” people said the next day, as the latest batch of pilgrims trudged back home, unbaptised and disappointed. Surest way to kill a snake is to cut its head off. No John, no movement. It was nice while it lasted.

 

But then, says Mark, came Jesus, fresh from his 40 days in the desert. Lean in body, full of the spirit. And undaunted by John’s imprisonment. A lesser man might have paused for thought, following in John’s footsteps, but Jesus didn’t think twice. He knew what he had to do, and he knew that it wasn’t just prison that he was destined for.

 

And so he went to Galilee to preach the Good News. Galilee – home of those awkward, stubborn northerners who had little time for the sophisticated, moneyed elite of the south. Always the first to be trampled on when bigger nations turned their greedy eyes towards Israel. Always on edge, with Gentiles living around them and among them. Always practical and down to earth in the way they approached their lives. They were fishermen, farmers and tradesmen – proud and canny. Nobody’s fools.

 

And it’s among these folk, not the movers and shakers of Jerusalem, that Jesus begins his ministry, fulfilling the words of Isaiah, written seven centuries before his birth: “he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan—

²    The people walking in darkness

    have seen a great light;

    on those living in the land of the shadow of death

    a light has dawned.”

 

The light of God comes to them in person, though at first you’d have had to look closely to see it. And it’s to these hard-bitten people he brings God’s Good News:

 

“The right time has come, and the Kingdom of God is near! Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News!”

 

And with these words, Jesus is telling them two things – he’s telling them what’s happening among them and he’s telling them what they need to do about it.

 

It’s the right time – he says. The Greek word kairos means an opportune time, a time that’s ripe with possibilities. The time when all the things that have been spoken about before are going to come to fruition. God is doing a new thing among them, and they need to get ready for it!

 

And they need to repent- which literally means to change their thinking. They need to turn away from everything that’s false and worthless in their lives and turn back to God so they can be free to embrace everything that he has in store for them.

 

And it’s hard for us, at a distance of 20 centuries to hear those words and feel the impact they’d have had in that culture, but Jesus’ day was a time in which God’s people had largely acquiesced into hopelessness or apathy.

 

It had been 300 long, silent years since the last prophet, Malachai, had spoken. There had been centuries of invasions and guerrilla wars against their oppressors. Everything they held holy had been trampled on. And now, this latest catastrophe – being annexed by the monstrous power of Rome and ruled by a puppet King whose only genuine concern was for his own self-advancement.

 

God seemed to have given up on them. There was no hope of anything new. All the doors seemed to be closed.

 

And then Jesus comes with this word. God is acting NOW. This is the time, this is the place. You need to get in on this. You need to get ready.

 

It seemed like Israel had reached a dead end, but Jesus is reminding them that with God, all things are possible. Rowan Williams puts it this way: “To believe in a God who is Almighty means there’s nowhere God is absent, powerless or irrelevant; no situation in the universe in the face of which God is at a loss. An open door exists in the heart of every situation because of who God is”.

 

An open door.

 

Remember the heavens opening at Jesus’ baptism?

 

Remember the veil of the temple being torn in two after his crucifixion?

 

Remember the stone that was rolled away on that first Easter morning?

 

Open doors.

 

God is here, God is now, God is opening doors. Get ready for it!

This is the Good News Jesus is bringing to the people; and more than bringing – showing, in everything that he says and does.

 

And I believe those are words we all need to hear today. We need to remember them. Because life has a way of closing in on us at times, and what saves us is knowing that God always gives us a open door in the heart of every situation.

 

And that should inform our prayer in those times. When we find ourselves feuding with our own bodies because we’re getting older, or we’re falling ill. When we get the letter that tells us what we were most afraid of – that the results weren’t good, or the application failed, or that we’re surplus to requirements. When the sparkle in a relationship seems to be dying, or life has lost its lustre, or a besetting sin seems to dominate us, or a situation seems beyond remedy. Lord, where’s the door?

 

We’re not looking for a magic wand. We just need to know that there’s hope. That these things we’re living through won’t swallow us whole.

We need to find the door. Because when we follow you through it, you lead us into new life, both now and in the life to come.

 

I think of a man I spoke to many years ago whose actions nearly cost him his marriage. He came to me in despair because he’d put everything he loved in jeopardy. But there was a door. For him it looked like confession and repentance. For her, it looked like forgiveness and a willingness to trust again. They were both willing to go through. They saved their marriage. It looks stronger than ever now.

 

I think of a minister friend who tore his Achilles tendon a few years back in the middle of one of those awful winters. Six weeks in a stookie that looked like a spaceman’s boot. Suddenly his world shrank to the limits of his incapacity. But God helped him find the door that led to life in that situation. Enforced rest; time to read; insight into what it must be like for those with a permanent disability; the chance to develop humility and deepen relationships by having to rely more on others. A whole corridor of doors!

 

I think of another man, towards the end of his life. As hemmed in by infirmity as it’s possible to be. Weak, limited, powerless. All the doors are closed on him. Only they’re not, he’s discovered. Lately he’s discovered a door that leads to the presence of a divine father who’s wise, generous and kind beyond his imagining. He’s encountering God in new ways, even as he prepares himself for the end. Which is, of course, just a beginning.

 

 

There’s a door. There’s always a door. Because “The right time has come, and the Kingdom of God is near!”

 

If you don’t need a door this morning – thank God that you’re in a good place. But if you do, take heart and be encouraged. Because the good news for today is that THIS is the time and THIS is the place where God is at work.

 

We find Jesus this morning not in the rarified, incense-filled cloisters of the temple, but among the stray ends of frayed rope, the gutted fish and the laughter and curses of real men on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He meets us right in the thick of it. In our real lives. It’s there that he brings us this news.

 

And he speaks that same news into the reality of our lives this morning – all the complexity, all the busyness, all that weighs us down, and he says ‘Take heart. This is the time, and this is the place where God is at work”.

 

But we too have our part to play. He tells us we have to repent and believe that Good News. And it’s hard for us to hear that old hackneyed phrase in the way it was meant; but what Jesus is saying here isn’t just ‘say sorry for your sins’. It’s certainly that, but it’s far far more. Change your thinking, he’s saying. Stop living an effectively godless life, where the Almighty’s nothing more than a nodding acquaintance you say hello to on a Sunday morning. That’s fooling no-one  – least of all him.

 

You’ll never really know God until you realise that this is an all or nothing thing – he asks you to love him with heart, soul, strength, and mind. And it’s only when we do, when we make that choice to put him first, that we begin to discover the sheer wonder and delight of knowing him and experiencing him partnering with us in life.

 

The church, over the years, has been faithful in proclaiming what we’re saved from – from sin and death, and the eternal consequences of both. We’ve been less good at talking about what we’re saved for, though that deserves equal mention and maybe even more in the particular era we’re living in.

 

In short, we’re saved so that we might become genuinely, fully human; and if you want to know what that looks like, the Christian response is very simple ‘take a look at Jesus’.

 

Look at how he was with people – his honesty, with friend and enemy alike; his compassion for those in need; his resolve to take people as he found them; his gentleness, his courage; his enduring love. 

 

And look at how he was with God – that ongoing communion with the Father; the wisdom and power that flowed from it; his determination to see God’s will be done, regardless of the personal cost to himself.

 

This is what we were made for – love for God, love for neighbour.

And when we enter the way of faith through the small door at the foot of the cross, it isn’t just that our sins are dealt with as though that were the end of the story. What opens up to us is a whole new life with God at its centre. That’s what it means to be a Christian. That turning from and turning to that I’ve been speaking about a lot in recent sermons.

 

I learned that as a teenager, when I decided to follow Christ, and I’m still learning it now, thirty years later.

 

And I remember a song by the Waterboys from all those years ago that summed up exactly what I was feeling and thinking as I took my first few faltering steps into an adult committed faith. And I still can’t hear it without getting a lump in my throat.  It’s called This Is The Sea, have it played as you leave the church this morning.

 

These things you keep
You'd better throw them away
You wanna turn your back
On your soulless days
Once you were tethered
And now you are free
Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!

Now you say you've got trouble
You say you've got pain
You say've got nothing left to believe in
Nothing to hold on to
Nothing to trust, Nothing but chains
You've been scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
Scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
But that was the river
This is the sea!
Now I can see you wavering
As you try to decide
You've got a war in your head
And it's tearing you up inside
You're trying to make sense
Of something that you just don't see
Trying to make sense now
And you know you once held the key
But that was the river
And this is the sea!

Now I hear there's a train
It's coming on down the line
It's yours if you hurry
You've got still enough time
And you don't need no ticket
And you don't pay no fee
No you don't need no ticket
You don't pay no fee
Because that was the river
And this is the sea!

 

Leaving behind the security of the river, so you can explore the vast expanses of the sea.

Finding an open door, when you thought that all the doors were closed on you.

 

Whatever the image, the Good News is the same. God is at work, here and now, and he has more in store for us than we could ever imagine.

 

“This is the right time. This is the right place. Change your thinking and believe the Good News!”