Living on a different planet

A sermon preached at All Hallows by Jan Betts on 25 January 2009
(Epiphany 3)

• Audio (listen to this sermon online)

Readings:

1 Corinthians 7:29—31, Mark 1:14—20

As I was preparing this sermon, Baroness Vadera talked about ‘green shoots of recovery’ just as yet more job losses were announced, and political commentators asked ‘What planet is she on?’ This felt like an appropriate response to some of what is going on in these readings. Jesus asks some men who have solid jobs, from families who can afford hired help, and who own their own companies through their boats, to come and be jobless! These weren’t poor peasants — they were quite solid people in Palestinian society, not rich but doing OK. What planet are you on, Jesus? Paul tells us to live as though we are not involved in the world, detached from what might feel like our true selves. I’m sorry, what planet are you on, Paul? In the other readings, which we don’t have time to look at, the Psalmist is being harried and got at by all and sundry — but he finishes up saying that God is all he needs. Jonah is faced with a forgiving God, who lets Israel’s seriously nasty oppressors off the hook because they repent, and Jonah finds that very hard to swallow. What planet is this God on? Or perhaps more relevantly, what Kingdom is he living in?

In the Gospel, we look at Jesus as he moves on from his baptism into his ministry. John has been arrested and imprisoned — now it’s Jesus’ time. He moves into a different phase, baptised with the baptism of John, affirmed by the Spirit, commissioned by God as his beloved son, to commission and bring together his own disciples to share his ministry.

That’s tremendously exciting. He’s choosing a group of like-minded friends to be with him for the rest of his life, to join him now at a time when it’s all kicking off, all beginning to become concrete for Jesus after years of preparation. Jesus says ‘the time is fulfilled’, but the grammar of this, as I understand it, suggests that the time is one which has been, is and will be fulfilled — this is a continuation of a work of God. The Kingdom of God isn’t visible to all, but to those who recognise God’s values as a way to live in the world, and the invitation is to engage with it, through repenting and believing. Jesus says it’s more visible now, through him and his ministry.

All the gospels talk about the calling of some or all of the disciples. They probably knew Jesus and knew John’s message too. In Luke’s account, Peter calls Jesus master, and obeys Jesus in throwing out the fishing nets one more time ‘because you say so’. Already a relationship of obedience is opening up, reflected, by the way, in the post-resurrection meeting between Simon Peter and Jesus. Whatever the context, it seems to have been by the lake, on their own home territory as fisherman, that Jesus calls them to become ‘fishers of men’.

Two things seem important here. Firstly, Jesus wasn’t inviting them to become scholars, students of the Talmud. He was inviting them to action, to an apprenticeship where they would learn on the job and work with him. It’s easy to retreat into learning, for some of us, to be scholars, and that’s just not the invitation at the heart of the Gospel, however important it is. Because the second point is that the invitation, and I am sure Ray has preached about this in the past, is to a radical approach to overturning social order.

‘Fishers of men’ in my childhood was always interpreted as mission, as catching souls for Christ. But its connotations and links from the Old Testament are about overthrowing those who have abused power, oppressed the poor and failed to support God’s people. It’s not just the political oppressors either — in Amos, for example, it’s political, economic and religious leaders who will be taken away into captivity with fish hooks because they oppress the poor, crush the needy and live in conspicuous consumption in front of those who they oppress. Pharaoh is similarly to have fish hooks in his mouth and be thrown into the wilderness, says Ezekiel.

Would the disciples have known this? I can’t believe Jesus would have had such impact on them if he used a phrase which didn’t mean a great deal to them. We don’t respond to polite invitations. We respond to invitations which catch our passions, and meet our deeply held longings. So somehow Jesus caught the minds and hearts of these men, and they saw in him something of the other Kingdom, the Kingdom of God which he came from and was bringing.

I have been reading Rowan Williams beautiful book about praying with the Icons of Christ. He describes an icon of the Transfiguration, which with the Baptism of Jesus is a time when heaven breaks through into a physical world for the Gospel writers. I knew that different colours in icons ‘meant’ things, and discovered that the dark background used in a Transfiguration behind Jesus is about the depths of heavenly reality. Jesus is shown coming out from an immeasurable depth, from the depths of the Father. Belief in Jesus, Williams says, is seeing him as the gateway to an endless journey into God’s love. ‘Jesus’ human life is shot through with God’s, carried on the tide of God’s eternal life.’ Peter, Andrew, James and John may not have seen all of this because we know that their journey to ‘knowledge’ about Jesus was as slow and bumbling as our own. They stumble through their life with him, not really understanding, being rebuked for not getting things right, being over-confident, being too down-to-earth, and only occasionally having glimpses of what it was all about. But here, at the very beginning, they have a sense that this was he who was spoken of by the prophets. They know enough to know that this is a decision which they can’t ignore.

One of my favourite quotes in times of change is from Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more’. I wonder if Peter might have thought something similar.

How do we recognise that? How do we keep the sense of not being in Kansas, of being in another kingdom? This is where I began to laugh, because something that should have been obvious hit me. There was a community who were called to be with Jesus. These twelve lived and worked and ate and quarrelled and got to know each other, and it was all about them being together to do a job, to support each other. We know more at All Hallows than many churches about the way we work together, but this is the model we have of being fishers of men. It’s a rare person I think who is a Christian alone. I need that reminder all the time. I was chatting recently to a friend, who I respect hugely, about retirement, and he said ‘Well, Jan, my time is the Lord’s, as it always was …’. It was such a help from someone in my Christian community further along my journey.

Let’s move on to Paul, because he too tells us about how times are different now. He says rather urgently that we are to live as though we are not in the world and yet we are. But I think it’s about the way we might live, should live, in the light that pours out from the depths of the Christ who is coming out from his Father, that sense of living in a different understanding from those who are caught up totally in here-and-now grief and joy and illness and problems at work and difficult relationships and pain; we are to live with Christ’s kingdom, that isn’t Kansas any more, as our home, transforming the meaning of all these things into spurs for being ‘fishers of men’ and bringing in the overthrow of all that cuts out and negates the kingdom of God. If that God does things which upset us, like forgiving our enemies, that’s how it is.

We learn that God is there at the end of the road. When everyone else fails us, God is the place of safety, of renewal, of comfort.

May we recognise that the Kingdom of Heaven is near and that we do live in that other Kingdom.

Amen.

Copyright © 2009 Jan Betts

Audio

This sermon was recorded. If you wish, you can listen to the sermon online. Just click on the appropriate link below:

*Notes on the audio formats

• MP4 format
  MP4 format is a multimedia container format standard. Audio MP4 files can combine high compression with very high quality. Many media players can play MP4 files, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, iTunes, and recent versions of Windows Media Player (you may need to download a codec from www.free-codecs.com/download/3ivx.htm).
• Windows Media Player format
  Windows Media Audio is the native format of Windows Media Player, which is installed as part of Windows. If you have an earlier version, you can download version 9 (for Windows 98SE, Millennium and 2000) or version 11 or later (for Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7) from www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/AllDownloads.aspx?displang=en&qstechnology. These are quite large downloads [~ 10 MB or larger], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
• MP3 format
  MP3 is a commonly used audio format using lossy compression. Most media players can play MP3 files, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, iTunes, Windows Media Player and many others.
• RealAudio format
  RealAudio requires RealPlayer (or the older RealOne Player) to be installed. A free version of RealPlayer can be downloaded from http://uk.real.com/player/ (choose the free player on the left of the page) — but again it’s a large download [~ 13 MB], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
  
  Alternatively, you can install Real Alternative, which will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. Real Alternative is free, and works well with all major browsers; it is also a much smaller download (5.7 MB). Get it from http://www.free-codecs.com/Real_Alternative_download.htm.

This page was last updated on Sunday, 25 January 2009

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