David Orendorff, Mark 1:14-20

This is the third week of our delving into Mark’s Gospel and we have made it all the way to verse 14. At this rate I hope to be done before I retire.

It has been an exciting ride thus far. Jesus has been baptized for the forgiveness of sin by John and has been adopted as God’s beloved son. Immediately, as Mark says, he is then driven by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, where he is put on trial by Satan as he lives with wild beasts and the angels care for him. It is a time of purification and refinement for his ministry.

But before Jesus’ ministry begins there is one more thing. John the Baptist is arrested. We get more of the story from Mark’s view in chapter 6:16-28. It is a gruesome tale of prison, birthday parties, and seductive dances; all ending in the beheading of John. And it is a tale that alerts us to the final tortured fate of Jesus, at least the final state in the life we have here.

Now we are ready for the message, the gospel, the good news we were promised in the first verse of the chapter. Remember that the message comes from Jesus after he has spent 40 days in the wilderness, being tested by Satan and living with the wild animals. Jesus preaches, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” It is a pretty optimistic message for one who has just faced the worst of himself and the world.

There are two parts to the message and each part has two parts. This redundancy is a way of emphasizing and clarifying the point. First, Jesus teaches that “The time is fulfilled” and “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Many of Jesus’ day are waiting for the time to be fulfilled. They are waiting for the day when God will right all wrongs, dry all tears, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, end political oppression, and restore the church to its full glory. They are waiting for the “day of the Lord.” Jesus teaches that the wait is over; today is the day of the Lord; now is the time of God.

“The kingdom of God is at hand” builds on the fulfillment of time. God’s reign is so close you can touch it. It is not some far off time or place, it is here and it is now.

And secondly Jesus teaches that this time, the time of the kingdom of God, is a time to repent. We have to be careful in our understanding here because to us repent usually means to say “I am sorry and I won’t do it again.” To Mark, as he understands Jesus, it means something all together bigger and broader. What we translate repent is the Greek word “μετανοια.” It is a compound word of μετα which is a prefix meaning higher or changed, and νοια meaning mind, thought, purpose or resolve. To repent is to have a changed and higher mind; to think differently; to have a higher purpose; to change an attitude. Thus, in a limited sense, it means to be sorry, because to be sorry is to have a changed mind and to resolve to do it differently. But it is not just changed thinking about what we did, it is changed thinking to all of living that Jesus wants. Jesus is saying it is time to change our minds, change the way we think, the way we view life. It is time to think that the time is fulfilled and that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Jesus continues to define what repentance means saying, “Believe in the gospel.” The word translated as believe is also the word we translate as faith or trust. The changed and higher mind Jesus calls his hearers to is trusting both intellectually and emotionally that the kingdom of God is here now; and then to live like God is in charge.

Many of Jesus’ days, and many of our days, think the kingdom of God is far away; if not years, then millennia or maybe not even until after we die. Jesus preaches that in fact the kingdom is right here right now; that we are living right now in the kingdom of God. Jesus wants the one who hears to think that this very day and every day belongs to God. The kingdom of God is not something that is coming tomorrow, next year, or after death. The kingdom of God is life in the here and now. This life, today’s life, is not a time deprived of God’s rule, or even only partly full of God’s rule; it is the time of God’s rule fulfilled. We are now living in the kingdom of God, we are to believe it and trust it.

It must have been a difficult message to accept for those first Christians. Surely they must have asked themselves how their life with all its cruelty and suffering, with wars that need not be wars, with hunger when there needs to be no hunger, where disease, ignorance, meanness and selfishness destroy good lives, can be the kingdom of God?

Yet this is the message by which Jesus calls first Andrew and Simon, and then James and John, to accept and follow. In his call he says both “come with me” and “imitate” me. His call to these first four disciples is to be his students and believe as he believes, and trust as he trusts, in God. And then believing and trusting, live their lives as he, Jesus, lives his.

Now that is the beginning of the good news as Mark tells it, from baptism, to the wilderness, to the message, and then finally to the calling of disciples. What if it weren’t story of the past? What if Jesus walked in here and said to us, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” And looking deep into us said, “Come with me and live as I live.” Jesus, as Mark presents him, is calling those who would follow him to a very specific message, to a very specific way of thinking which leads to a particular way of living. The rest of Mark’s gospel spells out how a life trusting the gospel is lived.

There is a part of me that hesitates to trust and believe in this good news. I try to believe it but there are parts of this life that don’t seem like the kingdom of God to me and I wonder if God is really in control of everything. Mom died of cancer last month and on the same day Vickie had an MRI for a suspicious lump in her chest. Well it was supposed to be of the lump but the technician and physician didn’t quite get it together and so this month Vickie again had an MRI and now we know there are suspicious spots and lymph nodes and that maybe her breast cancer has returned. And this week she goes in for a full PET scan to look for cancer in her body. This doesn’t feel like the kingdom of God. Nor do some of the issues my family and every family faces, from deteriorating relationships to all kinds of illnesses and sudden disasters.

And it isn’t just about my life. I don’t understand the why the innocent young men and women, babies and harmless old folks must die or terrorism and war. I don’t understand why how children are born with huge emotional or physical challenges can be the kingdom of God. I don’t understand why a huge national and international greed that destroys so many people’s lives by bringing the world’s economy to its knees can be called the kingdom of God. I don’t understand how the here and now can have so much cruelty and so much suffering and be God’s kingdom.

Yet there it is. For Mark, life, all life, the wonderful stuff and the horrible stuff, the great joys and the immense tears, all of it, right here and right now is the kingdom of God. And Mark is asking his hearers to believe the same thing – that the time of the Lord is fulfilled and that the kingdom of God is at hand. Mark is challenging his hearers to change their minds about how the time is not yet fulfilled to today is the fulfillment of all we have been waiting for, today is the kingdom of God, it is the day of the Lord.

But when I look at the life of Jesus and feel his love and know his power to heal, in spite of life’s cruelty and suffering, I know this life, all of this life, belongs to God. I look at Jesus and feel his love grow in my heart and I trust that indeed this is God’s full time whether I can reason it or not.

God lives and reigns in mom’s death. We had time to talk about things we never had time for. We had time to love each other without worry. We knew instinctively what was important and what didn’t matter. I learned of her depth in a new way. And I rejoice that my mother died with me for it was and is the kingdom of God.

And so too Vickie’s living with the uncertainty of recovering from cancer is the kingdom of God. God lives in Vickie’s regular consultation with doctors; for there to be doctors is the miracle of the kingdom of God. For her oncologist to be so quick and such an advocate for her is another miracle of the kingdom of God. To feel the support of your prayers holding us up is the kingdom of God. For her and I to find each other’s soul readily open as we hold hands in the night and through the day is the most tangible witness of the kingdom of God being this now and this place.

God’s kingdom is in the death of the innocents. Iraq, the Sudan and Gaza are all times and places of the kingdom of God. God is a living God who is very much in every aspect of the life of people. And though I can’t reason it, I know God is in charge. Even the economic crisis of our greed belongs and will be directed by God. The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand; let’s turn our minds around and believe/trust the good news.

I hold before us what it means when Jesus comes to our little fishing boat and our humble life and says, “Follow me.” Jesus is calling us to trust that this is God’s world right here and right now. It is what he learned in the wilderness. It is what I have learned in every wilderness of my life. Here and now is the kingdom of God. Jesus calls us to trust this truth; to live with the expectation of touching the kingdom of God in every time and experience of life.

This first chapter of Mark’s gospel is laid out in such a way that the reader must choose to follow Jesus or not to follow Jesus; and to follow Jesus first means to believe and trust that the kingdom of God is fulfilled and at hand.

If you ask me do I trust the good news, an honest answer would be that I don’t always or fully trust the good news. There are days when I doubt and/or stumble. But there are more days when even as we visit doctors wondering what will become of us, I trust that this is God’s day. The good news is alive, present and quite real, and in trusting the good news I know the peace of living in the kingdom of God. And to quote the anthem mom had the choir sing for her memorial; “He never failed me yet!”

Amen and Shalom