SERMON FOR JANUARY 24, 2021

          Mark’s Gospel takes off with no preamble — no long genealogy for Jesus as in Matthew, no infancy narratives as in Luke, no lyric theological reflection on the Word as in John. Mark simply announces: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”    Then follow three preparatory steps before Jesus is ready to begin his public ministry.

          Last Sunday’s Gospel from John told how Jesus called his first disciples. The story begins with Andrew and an unnamed companion, who were with John the Baptist but leave him to follow Jesus. Andrew enlists his brother Simon Peter. The next day Jesus finds Philip, who then summons his friend Nathanael. Today’s Gospel from Mark offers its own account as to how Jesus called the first of his followers. Mark’s quartet are all fishermen, two pairs of brothers: Simon and Andrew, James and John. Jesus finds them hard at work, and he calls them away from their labor on the spot.

          We don’t know whether the four had some acquaintance with Jesus beforehand. Galilee wasn’t such a big place after all. On the other hand, Jesus was just starting out; it wasn’t like he had a reputation at this point to precede him. The fishermen’s move out of their familiar life into an unknown future at the behest of this man seems urgent, unanticipated. The adverb “immediately” appears twice in the text. Regarding Simon and Andrew, Mark writes “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” And shortly thereafter, upon seeing James and John, Jesus “immediately called them.” In both John’s and Mark’s accounts of the calling of the disciples, it is clear that there is something compelling about the person of Jesus, something that empowers those he invites to jump on the bandwagon without looking back or giving a second thought to the ties that already bind them.

          John the Baptist knew the role he was called to play, pointing to the more powerful one to come after him, the one he identifies as the Lamb of God to his own disciples when Jesus passes by. He readily acknowledges to others, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Still, I wonder how he felt when two of his disciples straight up abandoned him to follow Jesus. And what about Zebedee, the father abruptly left behind? There is also the passage about would-be followers of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, where the Lord makes it clear that they need to get their priorities straight. “Lord, first let me go and bury my father,” responds one potential disciple to the command to “follow me.” “But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ’No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:59-62). We are told that Jesus astounded his hearers because he taught as one who had authority, an authority that eclipsed that of the religious leaders they knew. He required devotion and sacrifice. He did not use the art of persuasion; he simply commanded.

          I want to go back to those three steps of preparation that I mentioned earlier, the ones leading up to the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry. First, John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing for the forgiveness of sins and announcing the coming of one more powerful than he. Then Jesus comes from Nazareth and is baptized by John in the Jordan River. The Spirit descends upon him, and a voice from heaven proclaims, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” The third event is the temptation: “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him”    (Mark 1:14-15). The lectionary omits these two verses. Yet this experience is crucial to making Jesus the powerful figure who will encounter Simon and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee by the Sea of Galilee. Only after the temptation does Jesus announce, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near . . . .” The Gospels of Matthew and Luke confirm this. Their accounts also place the temptation immediately before the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and the calling of the first disciples.

          Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark does not provide details of the encounter between Jesus and Satan, but his allusions to the Old Testament reveal the significance of the event to his readers. Jesus spends 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness, paralleling the people of Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus. During that time their leader Moses surrendered to temptation and failed to trust God on one crucial occasion ( Numbers 20:1-13). As punishment, he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land before he died (Deuteronomy 32:48-52). In contrast, Jesus resists temptation and remains faithful through his wilderness experience. When it is over, he surpasses the blessing of the Promised Land by bringing the kingdom of God to his people. As in the stories of the prophets, Mark portrays the Spirit as an overpowering force that seizes God’s chosen one and drives that person to some divinely appointed place and task. The same Spirit that proclaims Jesus to be the beloved Son at his baptism now thrusts him into a prolonged face-to-face conflict with Satan, to which only God and his ministering angels are witnesses.

          Then there is the interesting statement that “he was with the wild beasts.” According to Jewish tradition, hostility with the wild animals began with the fall. Human and beast had originally lived in harmony. Adam too faced temptation and succumbed, but now comes the second Adam, the righteous one, who reverses that failure and, in peaceful company with the animals, shows us a foretaste of paradise restored.

          The heavens are torn apart. The Spirit descends and is now at work in Jesus, confronting Satan in the world and bringing God’s peace in the midst of strife. It is no wonder that people were amazed by the authority of Jesus’ teaching and the power of his person. We can’t experience that firsthand as his contemporaries did. And this may actually work to the advantage of some of us — those who have learned with good reason to be suspicious of charisma. We have some advantage here over the original disciples, because we know the backstory: the baptism and the temptation that prepared and empowered Jesus, the Spirit that filled and tempered him. This is God’s chosen one, chosen on our behalf; God’s beloved, sent that we might know God’s love for us. According to Hebrews chapter 4[:15-16], “. . . we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We follow Jesus because he first followed us —    into the wilderness of temptation and the rocky terrain of deceit.    He prevailed to lead us out in turn. Jesus calls us to repentance so that our lives can be defined not by their failures but by their possibilities, our prospects shaped by his strength rather than our sinfulness. “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Through us Jesus brings the kingdom of God near. Amen.