No Present like the Time
January 25, 2009
Rev, Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20
We’ve all heard this story many times – Jesus comes to the Sea of Galilee where he finds Peter and Andrew, James and John. “Come and I will make you fish for people,” says Jesus, and they follow him. And we marvel that these fishermen have now become evangelists.
Except that we don’t fully grasp the story. So let’s try and get it into perspective. First of all, we need to remember that Mark is writing about 40 years after the death of Jesus. To put that into perspective, it has been almost 41 years since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. To many of us, it feels very recent. This last week, as we anticipated and then celebrated the inauguration of President Obama, references to Martin Luther King Jr. seemed to carry extra meaning at times. As we listened to President Obama, there were echoes in his inaugural remarks to the words of Lincoln – and because we are familiar with our history, we heard these references to recent and a more distant images.
Retired Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong argues that we are largely illiterate about the Old Testament prophetic tradition, and a problem we have in reading the Gospels is that we tend to take it literally when it is often making connections to the Hebrew prophetic tradition. Like the fundamentalists, we read the New Testament as a literal account, except that we reject the literalism but our ignorance of the culture of the period and the history of Hebrew Bible images, causes us to miss much of what is actually being said in the gospel accounts. Mark is writing during a time of the 4-year Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire. It is a time of intense political awareness. As Mark wrote about the life and ministry of Jesus, he often evokes images from the Hebrew Scriptures. The political implications of his narrative would have been very clear to the original readers of his gospel. We need some help seeing it though.
The first sentence of today’s reading is one of those very clear messages…to the original readers. Mark writes, “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.” First he links the arrival of Jesus to the arrest of John – John was arrested because King Herod found him threatening. Mark doesn’t explain the linkage, but he sets it out there. And then he uses the word euangelion “gospel” which can be translated either as“good news” or gospel. As I explained back in Advent, when we first turned to Mark’s Gospel, the use of the word gospel is very potent: gospel is the translation of euangelion, which meant an imperial good news – it was most often used to describe the announcement of a victory in battle. By appropriating this term, Mark is suggesting a couple of things – first, that he is going to be waging a battle with the empire for hearts and minds, a battle for ultimate meaning; second, he is suggesting that the good news of Jesus Christ rivals that of the empire. We are also aware, instantly, that Mark is telling us things are not what they appear to be. Think about it. It is during the Jewish Revolt against Rome, 40 years after the state execution of Jesus, which occurred a couple of years after the state execution of John, Mark opens his story telling us: shortly after the first prophetic leader in whom we hoped had been arrested (and we know he was later killed), the second prophetic leader (whom we also know to have been executed) came to Galilee, proclaiming the victory of God and saying “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” Just to make this even more ironic, the Greek tense that is used for Jesus’ words about time and the kingdom signifies an action which has begun in the past, and continues on into the present. So Jesus is saying: the time has begun and continues to be fulfilled…the kingdom of God has come and continues to be near. Despite the death of John, despite the death of Jesus, despite that Rome is trying to crush our people – if we are 1st century Jews – despite all of that, we are living in a potent moment in which God is declaring victory. Either God is delusional, or victory looks different than we anticipated. And I’m thinking it’s the latter.
Continuing on, when Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled…” the word he used for time was kairos. The Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos denoted chronological time: minutes, hours, days, and so on. Kairos is a more subjective concept of time – the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament describes it as “the decisive point in time”. There is a sense in which it means: the right time, the appropriate time, the time God sets, the opportune time, or as another definition in the Theological Dictionary describes it: “the ever new point of time at which God must work creatively.” There is, implicit in the concept of kairos, a sense of God-given potentiality – in more than one place in the New Testament, it is translated as “the fullness of time.”
And Jesus is not announcing the Kingdom of God as heaven or some future event – another translation of “the kingdom of God has come near” is “the kingdom of God is at hand” – he is describing a here and now reality. No wonder he uses the word kairos!! He is in effect saying: time has begun to be full of new opportunities to participate with God in the ongoing act of creation – from this point on, God’s kingdom is among us.
And he brings this message to the fishermen along the Sea of Galilee – a large, freshwater lake that was home to the fishing industry. All fishing at this time was controlled by the state – there were many small fishing co-ops, which were heavily taxed. Fish were largely exported: salted, dried, or made into fish sauce. In this area of Galilee, fishermen would have been among the most oppressed people – the elite loved to look down on fishermen, even as they depended on them (much as wealthier people today regard factory workers). What a place to begin a movement – among the most oppressed people of the time.
And as Jesus talks with them, and mentions fishing for people, we shouldn’t misunderstand this as a call to evangelism. Four of the Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos and Habakkuk, refer to fishing for people – it is not a new idea with Jesus. In all of these references, there is an anti-imperial slant to the reference, and given the empire’s control of the fishing industry, it would have made sense to the early disciples.
Jesus comes and invites people to join him. And we read that both pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, and James and John, immediately left their nets and followed him. To do such a thing would disrupt family and economic relationships. But they leave, immediately. And the word for leaving, as in “they left their nets” is aphiemi – it is the same word that is used for freedom, liberation, release: immediately, they freed themselves from the state-controlled fishing business. They seize the God-given opportunity, although it comes with the cost of disrupting relationships and financial security. They are willing to take the risk of creating this new community, to find a way to live in God’s kingdom – even within the reality of empire.
Last November, Ched Myers, who wrote the commentary on Mark called Binding the Strong Man from which our adult forum study is adapted, was in Stevens Point last November for the Wisconsin Council of Churches Nonviolence Conference. And he asked the question “How could the fishermen respond so quickly to Jesus?” And his answer to the question was “When you’ve really fed up, and at the end of your rope, you’re ready for change.” He referenced an interview with African-American Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, AL in 1955. Parks was asked “Why did you refuse to go to the back of the bus?” She responded, “I was tired.” The interviewer asked “You mean, tired at the end of a long day?” “No,” Parks explained, “I was tired.” When you’re tired, and frustrated, and tired of being frustrated, you might be ready to do something different than you’ve ever done. When you are attentive to the present moment, you can see possibilities for action.
President Obama’s inauguration was last week. Millions of people have a new sense of hope about his presidency – people who are tired, and frustrated, and tired of being frustrated, are ready for change – and hoping that Obama will bring a change from the years of both parties exploiting partisanship rather than seeking common ground, of cronyism rather than competence being the basis for government service, of new ideas being feared instead of sought in order to solve intractable problems.
I wonder if Jesus wasn’t telling us that every moment is a kairos moment – an opportunity to turn expectations inside-out, to creatively partner with God to find a different way of being in the world. Even some of the conventionally wise folks in our world, people such as writer Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, economist Jeffrey Sachs of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and environmentalist Bill McKibben are all positing various versions of a Green economy that would create new jobs while at the same time address the environmental challenges to the world that are exacerbated by current economic development. Sachs has been writing for a while that the end of extreme poverty is achievable and in his most recent book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet he argues that a new economic paradigm can solve some of our most challenging issues: overpopulation, extreme poverty, environmental damage can best be addressed together, with a new cooperative global approach to problem solving. Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why we need a green revolution and how it can renew America also argues for a new economic paradigm.
Today’s psalm 62, in a translation by Australian minister Bruce Prewer, reads, “The life of the lowly hangs on a breath, but so also do the high and mighty. Put the powerful and rich on God’s scales and they are lighter than a breath. Don’t put confidence in making money through dubious business practices. If your bank balance does happen to grow, never trust your heart to it.” To live this way would indeed be a new paradigm. For years, many have dismissed the critics of our economic system as being latent communists – perhaps the current financial crisis provides the kairos to seek a new paradigm – one that addresses the most egregious problems facing us at the beginning of the 21st century without creating a whole new set of problems, as the communist states did.
Is it possible that there is an alternative to our hyper-consumerism, and that such an alternative could lead to more relational communities, with different bases for wealth, as posited in McKibben’s book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future?
I was reading an article called “How we went from $42,000 to $6,500 and lived to tell about it!” written by some of the new homesteaders. They gave up many of the things many of us find essential: cell phones, tv, internet, junk food, and debt. They embraced voluntary, creative simplicity, and they found themselves healthier and more joyous than in their previous lifestyle. They walked away from what they had, and found something better. Much as Peter and Andrew, James and John had centuries earlier. Follow me, said Jesus – and as near as I can tell, following Jesus means being willing to turn conventional wisdom upside-down to see if it creates a better life, following Jesus means valuing people more than bank accounts, following Jesus means discerning the truth and learning to speak it, and following Jesus means escaping the domination of oppressive systems even if we still live among them, following Jesus means to take seriously that every moment holds the possibilities of God, and that we can participate in God’s kingdom here and now. Following Jesus doesn’t mean having the answers, or everything going easily, or that we lose our individuality. On the contrary – following Jesus seems to create more questions than answers, following Jesus can still disrupt our relationships, following Jesus may indeed lead to peace, but you often get there through conflict. Following Jesus leads us to ourselves, but we are stretched in the way there, so that as we grow in our knowledge of the One whom Marcus Borg called “the God I never knew,” we might also find the self we never imagined.
Finally, we engage the possibilities of the future by being fully attentive and awake to the possibilities in the present – as I read the Gospels, and it is especially clear in Mark’s Gospel, it is clear that one of the many ways in which Jesus is different than most of us is that he is almost always completely focused on the present moment. He is utterly attentive to now, and he noticed things and people in ways that we don’t. Even with the great urgency he has about his mission, he is not always looking ahead to some goal to which the present moment is only a means. This is a radical difference from the way most of us live. We miss much of life simply by failing to be present to the present. I know that I mention contemplation often – part of the goal of contemplative prayer is practicing being present to the present moment : to be utterly in the time and space in which we are and to be available to Being itself – to God – in this moment. In this respect, contemplative prayer is very similar to mindfulness or Buddhist meditation – both of which are also tools to living in the present moment. This is, in itself, a movement toward simplicity and freedom in our lives: rather than being distracted by our many worries about the future or our ruminations over the past, we choose to live in one time: the present. By mining the riches of where and when we are, we choose a depth of living that creates fullness at the same time that it chooses simplicity…the simplicity of being exactly where we are. Perhaps this is both a dimension of and a means to the victory Jesus announces – as we find ourselves fully attentive to each moment, we are free to be present to the kairos, to the God-given opportunities of now, and to respond and live with immediacy. Perhaps it is when we are fully present to each moment that we will be able to see the full potential of each moment, to be alert for the possibilities for action, and to find time itself to be a gift, instead of either a burden or an unacceptable limitation. Be here, be now…be. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20
We’ve all heard this story many times – Jesus comes to the Sea of Galilee where he finds Peter and Andrew, James and John. “Come and I will make you fish for people,” says Jesus, and they follow him. And we marvel that these fishermen have now become evangelists.
Except that we don’t fully grasp the story. So let’s try and get it into perspective. First of all, we need to remember that Mark is writing about 40 years after the death of Jesus. To put that into perspective, it has been almost 41 years since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. To many of us, it feels very recent. This last week, as we anticipated and then celebrated the inauguration of President Obama, references to Martin Luther King Jr. seemed to carry extra meaning at times. As we listened to President Obama, there were echoes in his inaugural remarks to the words of Lincoln – and because we are familiar with our history, we heard these references to recent and a more distant images.
Retired Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong argues that we are largely illiterate about the Old Testament prophetic tradition, and a problem we have in reading the Gospels is that we tend to take it literally when it is often making connections to the Hebrew prophetic tradition. Like the fundamentalists, we read the New Testament as a literal account, except that we reject the literalism but our ignorance of the culture of the period and the history of Hebrew Bible images, causes us to miss much of what is actually being said in the gospel accounts. Mark is writing during a time of the 4-year Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire. It is a time of intense political awareness. As Mark wrote about the life and ministry of Jesus, he often evokes images from the Hebrew Scriptures. The political implications of his narrative would have been very clear to the original readers of his gospel. We need some help seeing it though.
The first sentence of today’s reading is one of those very clear messages…to the original readers. Mark writes, “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.” First he links the arrival of Jesus to the arrest of John – John was arrested because King Herod found him threatening. Mark doesn’t explain the linkage, but he sets it out there. And then he uses the word euangelion “gospel” which can be translated either as“good news” or gospel. As I explained back in Advent, when we first turned to Mark’s Gospel, the use of the word gospel is very potent: gospel is the translation of euangelion, which meant an imperial good news – it was most often used to describe the announcement of a victory in battle. By appropriating this term, Mark is suggesting a couple of things – first, that he is going to be waging a battle with the empire for hearts and minds, a battle for ultimate meaning; second, he is suggesting that the good news of Jesus Christ rivals that of the empire. We are also aware, instantly, that Mark is telling us things are not what they appear to be. Think about it. It is during the Jewish Revolt against Rome, 40 years after the state execution of Jesus, which occurred a couple of years after the state execution of John, Mark opens his story telling us: shortly after the first prophetic leader in whom we hoped had been arrested (and we know he was later killed), the second prophetic leader (whom we also know to have been executed) came to Galilee, proclaiming the victory of God and saying “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” Just to make this even more ironic, the Greek tense that is used for Jesus’ words about time and the kingdom signifies an action which has begun in the past, and continues on into the present. So Jesus is saying: the time has begun and continues to be fulfilled…the kingdom of God has come and continues to be near. Despite the death of John, despite the death of Jesus, despite that Rome is trying to crush our people – if we are 1st century Jews – despite all of that, we are living in a potent moment in which God is declaring victory. Either God is delusional, or victory looks different than we anticipated. And I’m thinking it’s the latter.
Continuing on, when Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled…” the word he used for time was kairos. The Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos denoted chronological time: minutes, hours, days, and so on. Kairos is a more subjective concept of time – the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament describes it as “the decisive point in time”. There is a sense in which it means: the right time, the appropriate time, the time God sets, the opportune time, or as another definition in the Theological Dictionary describes it: “the ever new point of time at which God must work creatively.” There is, implicit in the concept of kairos, a sense of God-given potentiality – in more than one place in the New Testament, it is translated as “the fullness of time.”
And Jesus is not announcing the Kingdom of God as heaven or some future event – another translation of “the kingdom of God has come near” is “the kingdom of God is at hand” – he is describing a here and now reality. No wonder he uses the word kairos!! He is in effect saying: time has begun to be full of new opportunities to participate with God in the ongoing act of creation – from this point on, God’s kingdom is among us.
And he brings this message to the fishermen along the Sea of Galilee – a large, freshwater lake that was home to the fishing industry. All fishing at this time was controlled by the state – there were many small fishing co-ops, which were heavily taxed. Fish were largely exported: salted, dried, or made into fish sauce. In this area of Galilee, fishermen would have been among the most oppressed people – the elite loved to look down on fishermen, even as they depended on them (much as wealthier people today regard factory workers). What a place to begin a movement – among the most oppressed people of the time.
And as Jesus talks with them, and mentions fishing for people, we shouldn’t misunderstand this as a call to evangelism. Four of the Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos and Habakkuk, refer to fishing for people – it is not a new idea with Jesus. In all of these references, there is an anti-imperial slant to the reference, and given the empire’s control of the fishing industry, it would have made sense to the early disciples.
Jesus comes and invites people to join him. And we read that both pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, and James and John, immediately left their nets and followed him. To do such a thing would disrupt family and economic relationships. But they leave, immediately. And the word for leaving, as in “they left their nets” is aphiemi – it is the same word that is used for freedom, liberation, release: immediately, they freed themselves from the state-controlled fishing business. They seize the God-given opportunity, although it comes with the cost of disrupting relationships and financial security. They are willing to take the risk of creating this new community, to find a way to live in God’s kingdom – even within the reality of empire.
Last November, Ched Myers, who wrote the commentary on Mark called Binding the Strong Man from which our adult forum study is adapted, was in Stevens Point last November for the Wisconsin Council of Churches Nonviolence Conference. And he asked the question “How could the fishermen respond so quickly to Jesus?” And his answer to the question was “When you’ve really fed up, and at the end of your rope, you’re ready for change.” He referenced an interview with African-American Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, AL in 1955. Parks was asked “Why did you refuse to go to the back of the bus?” She responded, “I was tired.” The interviewer asked “You mean, tired at the end of a long day?” “No,” Parks explained, “I was tired.” When you’re tired, and frustrated, and tired of being frustrated, you might be ready to do something different than you’ve ever done. When you are attentive to the present moment, you can see possibilities for action.
President Obama’s inauguration was last week. Millions of people have a new sense of hope about his presidency – people who are tired, and frustrated, and tired of being frustrated, are ready for change – and hoping that Obama will bring a change from the years of both parties exploiting partisanship rather than seeking common ground, of cronyism rather than competence being the basis for government service, of new ideas being feared instead of sought in order to solve intractable problems.
I wonder if Jesus wasn’t telling us that every moment is a kairos moment – an opportunity to turn expectations inside-out, to creatively partner with God to find a different way of being in the world. Even some of the conventionally wise folks in our world, people such as writer Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, economist Jeffrey Sachs of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and environmentalist Bill McKibben are all positing various versions of a Green economy that would create new jobs while at the same time address the environmental challenges to the world that are exacerbated by current economic development. Sachs has been writing for a while that the end of extreme poverty is achievable and in his most recent book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet he argues that a new economic paradigm can solve some of our most challenging issues: overpopulation, extreme poverty, environmental damage can best be addressed together, with a new cooperative global approach to problem solving. Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why we need a green revolution and how it can renew America also argues for a new economic paradigm.
Today’s psalm 62, in a translation by Australian minister Bruce Prewer, reads, “The life of the lowly hangs on a breath, but so also do the high and mighty. Put the powerful and rich on God’s scales and they are lighter than a breath. Don’t put confidence in making money through dubious business practices. If your bank balance does happen to grow, never trust your heart to it.” To live this way would indeed be a new paradigm. For years, many have dismissed the critics of our economic system as being latent communists – perhaps the current financial crisis provides the kairos to seek a new paradigm – one that addresses the most egregious problems facing us at the beginning of the 21st century without creating a whole new set of problems, as the communist states did.
Is it possible that there is an alternative to our hyper-consumerism, and that such an alternative could lead to more relational communities, with different bases for wealth, as posited in McKibben’s book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future?
I was reading an article called “How we went from $42,000 to $6,500 and lived to tell about it!” written by some of the new homesteaders. They gave up many of the things many of us find essential: cell phones, tv, internet, junk food, and debt. They embraced voluntary, creative simplicity, and they found themselves healthier and more joyous than in their previous lifestyle. They walked away from what they had, and found something better. Much as Peter and Andrew, James and John had centuries earlier. Follow me, said Jesus – and as near as I can tell, following Jesus means being willing to turn conventional wisdom upside-down to see if it creates a better life, following Jesus means valuing people more than bank accounts, following Jesus means discerning the truth and learning to speak it, and following Jesus means escaping the domination of oppressive systems even if we still live among them, following Jesus means to take seriously that every moment holds the possibilities of God, and that we can participate in God’s kingdom here and now. Following Jesus doesn’t mean having the answers, or everything going easily, or that we lose our individuality. On the contrary – following Jesus seems to create more questions than answers, following Jesus can still disrupt our relationships, following Jesus may indeed lead to peace, but you often get there through conflict. Following Jesus leads us to ourselves, but we are stretched in the way there, so that as we grow in our knowledge of the One whom Marcus Borg called “the God I never knew,” we might also find the self we never imagined.
Finally, we engage the possibilities of the future by being fully attentive and awake to the possibilities in the present – as I read the Gospels, and it is especially clear in Mark’s Gospel, it is clear that one of the many ways in which Jesus is different than most of us is that he is almost always completely focused on the present moment. He is utterly attentive to now, and he noticed things and people in ways that we don’t. Even with the great urgency he has about his mission, he is not always looking ahead to some goal to which the present moment is only a means. This is a radical difference from the way most of us live. We miss much of life simply by failing to be present to the present. I know that I mention contemplation often – part of the goal of contemplative prayer is practicing being present to the present moment : to be utterly in the time and space in which we are and to be available to Being itself – to God – in this moment. In this respect, contemplative prayer is very similar to mindfulness or Buddhist meditation – both of which are also tools to living in the present moment. This is, in itself, a movement toward simplicity and freedom in our lives: rather than being distracted by our many worries about the future or our ruminations over the past, we choose to live in one time: the present. By mining the riches of where and when we are, we choose a depth of living that creates fullness at the same time that it chooses simplicity…the simplicity of being exactly where we are. Perhaps this is both a dimension of and a means to the victory Jesus announces – as we find ourselves fully attentive to each moment, we are free to be present to the kairos, to the God-given opportunities of now, and to respond and live with immediacy. Perhaps it is when we are fully present to each moment that we will be able to see the full potential of each moment, to be alert for the possibilities for action, and to find time itself to be a gift, instead of either a burden or an unacceptable limitation. Be here, be now…be. Amen.