An Urgent Mission

Mark 1:14–20 NRSV

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

January 24, 2021

You’ve seen it. The movie series that has a secret agent going on a special mission. And each mission is more urgent than the last one. And sometimes the mission is meant to be the last one. The agent is retiring and going to go live a simple life away from the danger and chaos that the missions always bring. But just as they are getting ready to take their final leave, a new world crisis comes up and the agent is called upon to once again to come and save the world. Think of some of the movies and the characters: James Bond, Ethan in the Mission Impossible movies, George Smiley. All of them have the same thing in common: they have an urgent mission to accomplish and if they do not succeed there will be disastrous consequences.

There is an urgent mission in our text for today. John the Baptizer was arrested. The one who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah is no longer preaching. He has been taken into custody and his preaching is no longer taking place. We are never told why John was arrested. Mark is not really interested in that. What Mark is interested in is letting us know that the forerunner of the Messiah completed his task of proclaiming and now the one to come is beginning his ministry.

It is not strange that Jesus was going to Galilee. This was his home area, where he was from. The reason that he has been in the south was to meet up with John and be baptized by him. Then he went to the wilderness to be put to the test by the devil. Now, he has returned to the place that he calls home and the place that knows him best. And there is a sense of urgency in his message. It is the message of the “good news” or gospel of God.

Jesus is calling to the people that the time is fulfilled. This is not time in a normal sense. This is time in an eschatological, or end times, sense. It means that time is coming to the end of the age. Jesus is telling the people that the message that John had proclaimed is coming to fruition.

What is happening is that the Kingdom of God has come near. This does not mean that the full kingdom is now upon us, but that the kingdom is beginning to break through. It is a now and not yet moment. With the coming of Jesus, God has reached down and brought the kingdom to earth. This does not mean that all things have been reconciled to God in the full kingdom as they will be, but rather that they are beginning to be. With this message comes a sense of urgency from Jesus. This is what one commentator has said about this: “There is an urgency about the nearness of God’s kingdom. Since it ushers in the end, it speaks of judgment. Jesus proclaims God’s kingdom so that people will repent and believe the gospel[1].”

Like Jonah and his message to Nineveh, this is a key moment. Jesus is calling upon them to repent and believe the good news. But what does it mean to repent? This is a word that most of us have heard and somewhat know but really are not sure what it means. For many, to repent is to feel remorse over something done and to stop doing what is causing that feeling. The meaning of the word in Greek is to turn away or around. To do a 180 degree turn and go back in a different direction entirely. Jesus is calling on the people to change their lives. Lamar Williamson Jr. says this: “Jesus calls his hearers to turn around, to shift the direction of their lives, to look, listen, and give their full attention to the kingdom which is arriving.” (Williamson, Lamar. Mark. Louisville. 2009, 42.) Like Jonah, the call is to the people that God is coming near and their lives need to reflect that they understand.

After beginning his ministry with a short and to the point message, Jesus moves on to the area of the Sea of Galilee. This area was well known for its fishing industry. The sea, or lake, was a vital part of the economy of the area. And it is here that Jesus calls his first disciples.

Now Jesus calling his disciples is very different from what happened with teachers and their followers in that time. Most teachers had students come to them to request that they follow the teacher. The teacher would then test the potential students, ask the pertinent questions, listen to the answers and then come to a decision. If the student did not have what it took, then the teacher would not take on the student. That was the way things worked. But Jesus turns this on its head by going out and calling the disciples. He goes out and chooses them, not them coming to him after they have chosen to follow. And there is nothing that stands out about them. They are fishers, people who work hard, make an honest living but who have nothing really to make them seem unique such that Jesus would call them. Of the calling that Jesus does Karl Barth says this: “They can only be called, and they can be called only in virtue of the particularity of the call of Jesus as it is issued[2]”. In other words, they can be called only because Jesus calls them.

The funny thing is, the call goes out to those who would seem to be the least likely to be called. Mark tells us nothing about those who are called. We know only their names and occupations. We do not know if they knew Jesus as fellow Galileans or if they had heard about him through some other means. We do not know if they are poor or well off. We only know that Jesus calls them to follow him, that he will make them fish for people and their response.

The response of the first two is this: they immediately follow Jesus. These two are Simon and his brother Andrew. One moment they are out with their nets fishing and the next they have dropped those nets.

Fishing was nothing like we think of fishing today. We think of rods and reels, bait and lures. Fishing in this time was casting a net out, letting it sink to the bottom and them hauling the net back with the fish that had been caught under the net. It was physically demanding and required teamwork. Notice that those who are called are working together. There is nothing of a lone fisher in this text.

When it comes to what Jesus calls them to do, the NRSV has an awkward phrase. It says that Jesus will make them “fish for people”. The Greek says that they will be fishers of people. There is a distinction in that. To fish for people is to have a task at hand. To be a fisher of people is to have a distinct and separate calling. No longer is this to be something to be done but rather something to be.

A little further down the beach we find James and John working with their father and the hired hands. They are mending their nets or rather preparing them to be ready for the night’s fishing. Then Jesus shows up and says, “Follow me.” James and John drop what they are doing and get up and follow Jesus. Imagine how their father must have reacted. Here were his two sons, working in a successful (they had hired hands and a boat. They were not poor by any means) family business and they seem to be throwing it all away to follow some guy who calls them to follow him. I’m sure there must have been some yells of “Hey where are you all going? Get back here and get to work.” You know, dad stuff. But they dropped what they are doing to follow the one who called them.

Now I want us all to think about this for a moment. Each of those called were doing something already. We may have a preconceived notion that these men were poor and uneducated and that Jesus was doing them a favor by pulling them out of the drudgery that they are in. Quite the opposite. Each one is doing a job that was fairly secure in the area where they lived. Most were family businesses and they were steady. These were also businessmen. They knew market value and how to make sure they made a profit on their catches for the day. As mentioned earlier, James and John were working with hired hands which shows that they were at least middle class. So what was it that led them to follow a man who said to them, “Follow me”? Was it the urgency in his voice? Was it the authority that the exuded? We do not know. What we do know is that they joined him in his mission to be fishers of people to deliver people from the judgement to come. To help bring about the kingdom of God and to bring people to that kingdom. They followed not because of what was promised but because they had been called.

We too have been called. We have been called by God to follow and be disciples of Jesus. The call is to take up the urgent mission of Jesus. To proclaim that the kingdom is coming near and that we are all to turn and believe the good news. And while we are called to be ones who will go out and be fishers of people, our main goal is to be faithful followers of Christ.

The first disciples were not ones who got everything right. In fact, they usually got it more wrong than they ever got it right. But they still followed. There was something about the mission of Jesus that called them to be a part of that mission. That something was Jesus himself. Today the mission is still the same. The urgent mission of Jesus is not that we are to go out and “catch” people for God. Rather we are to follow Jesus as disciples, whether or not we do a good or poor job, for the Kingdom of God has come near. Amen.

[1] Wessel, Walter W., and Mark L. Strauss. “Mark.” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew–Mark (Revised Edition). Ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Vol. 9. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. 711. Print.

[2] Barth, Karl, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance. Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 3.2. Vol. 4. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004. Print.