Change of Focus
by the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer, Canon Pastor and Subdean
I have an ongoing argument with a good friend of mine. He claims that life is too short to waste re-reading books or watching the same movie more than once. I, on the other hand, find richness in re-reading and re-watching, and was indulging this not too long ago when I watched Chariots of Fire for what was probably the 13th time. Some of you may be familiar with the movie. Set in England in the 1920′s, it revolves around the heroics of two Olympic runners. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when the single-minded runner Harold Abrahams approaches the famous track coach Sam Mosambini and asks Sam to work with him. Sam is incredulous. In that gentlemanly culture, a runner did not seek out his own coach. It simply wasn’t done. Coaches sought out runners. And yet there clearly was something compelling about Harold’s gutsy invitation, even though it flew in the face of all convention. Sam accepted Harold’s invitation and the rest is, as they say, history.
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus is back in Galilee after his baptism in the River Jordan. His message is one of immediacy and urgency: “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” He then set about rounding up disciples. The account we heard this morning is a familiar one — some of us have heard Mark’s version at least as often as I’ve watched Chariots of Fire. In fact, the familiarity of the story might, for many of us, mask the real peculiarity of it all. Because, just like in the movie, it should not have worked that way. At that time, it was the rabbi who was the gate-keeper, saying yay or nay to would-be disciples. No self-respecting rabbi would be out recruiting disciples and if he did, the recruits would much more likely be suspicious than eager. And yet Mark tells us that not only did Jesus approach four fishermen and bid them to follow him, they responded immediately.
Peculiar and yet powerful, because in this short account we see a pattern – one which will be repeated throughout the whole of his ministry. And the pattern is this: Jesus is in the business of issuing invitations to the Kingdom.
Granted, it’s easy to miss that because of the language he used: “Repent, and believe in the good news.” Two thousand years and a Protestant Reformation later, we tend to interpret that as, “confess your guilt and adhere to the ‘correct’ religious dogma, and then you will be eligible for heaven.” I want to suggest a different way of hearing Jesus’s words. We know that the word translated as repent, metanoia, means to turn away. To change direction. So we might begin to think of repent and believe as a radical change of focus. We might begin to think of it as God, through Jesus, saying, “I invite you to give up your agendas and trust me for mine.”
And here’s the tricky part. God’s agenda, as revealed in significant portions of Hebrew Scripture, is one of radical inclusion. And we need look no further than the reading from Jonah this morning to see how scandalously inclusive God intends to be. Most of the prophets in Israel were sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Most were not at all successful. Jonah was sent to Gentiles. And not just any Gentiles, but Assyrians. And Assyrians, as some commentators point out, were the gold standard for government sponsored atrocities in the ancient near east. The northern kingdom of Israel was plundered by the Assyrians. Why on earth would God send Jonah to prophesy to them? Jonah is baffled enough by this question to bail on this project. Where is God’s much-vaunted justice in this equation? Why isn’t God issuing consequences along the lines of an eye-for-an-eye? Surely God cannot have regard for these murderous thugs. But God did. Because God’s agenda is different from ours.
And that is the pattern that Jesus will follow in the Gospel of Mark. Those whom we find troublesome or objectionable for whatever reason, those whom the world sees as throw-aways, those who are of little account, the least and the last and the lost are supposed to be included in the Kingdom of God! The idea that God’s mercy extended beyond the boundaries of Israel to encompass all of creation began to gain some foothold in the 6th century BC. But for 6 centuries this viewpoint stood in tension to the more predominant view that God’s Chosen were to be a holy people, kept apart and pure from any influence that might contaminate. So those who were most in need of God’s mercy were excluded. And they were excluded not because the Temple leadership saw them necessarily as evil but because the Temple leadership saw them as dangerous.
And if we think that this tension between inclusivity and purity of orthodoxy began and ended with our Jewish forebears, we need to think again. As members of the human race, we are usually more skilled at exclusion than at inclusion. In countless ways and in virtually every culture, it is invariably more expedient to exclude than to include. We see precious little in the way of material rewards for shaping our lives to reflect the radical good news that Jesus taught. That much has not changed in 2000 years.
The Good News of God that Jesus bade his followers to believe – to set their hearts upon – was that God longs for everybody to be restored to unity with God and with one another.
In the sermon that he preached at the National Cathedral in Washington 4 days before he was martyred, Martin Luther King uttered his famous phrase, “the arc of moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Justice begins with radical love. Radical love begins with seeing God as One who is crazy in love with every single one of us. Radical love begins with us putting down our agendas and embracing God’s.
