When I say the word, “authority,” what comes to mind? Better, what feelings does it evoke in you? I think it’s safe to say that we’re all ambivalent about authority. On the one hand, we chafe against it. “No one’s going to tell me what to do!” That defiance shows up already in our earliest years.
On the other hand, we want to give ourselves to someone or something greater than ourselves. That longing we discover in our hearts already in our earliest years too. Indeed, it’s a spiritual need that belongs essentially to human nature.
What then should we do? We can reject all authority. We can “unmask” it, revealing it to be no more than a tool of oppression. Following this course, some have concluded that we must smash the patriarchy or capitalism or white privilege or some other power that, according to them, has unjustly held us down.
Or we can submit to authority. We can accept received wisdom, inherited traditions, and established institutions. Following this course, some have concluded that we must sponsor a political party or platform that promises to uphold traditional values, to preserve and defend a way of life that, according to them, is under dire threat today.
But in the person of Jesus, God confronts us, not with an ideology or a political platform, but with his own authority. God is his own party. Nor does he share his platform. But let us not react with suspicion and mistrust yet. For it is “good news.” In the original language, it is literally “gospel.”
The word in the original most accurately translated as “gospel” has political overtones. In Mark’s time, it was used by the Roman emperors, who claimed to be lords and saviors of the world. A message from their pen was called “gospel,” regardless of whether or not it was really good news. The point is that if it comes from the emperor, it’s not mere news. It’s a saving message.
When Jesus co-opts this word, what he is saying, in effect, is this: “What the emperors, who pretend to be gods, illegitimately claim, is here. I have it.”
The message that Jesus proclaims is a message that really is endowed with divine authority. And unlike that of the politicians, it is not mere talk, but action. Or rather, to put it another way, it is word as well as deed. With his word, there is a power that enters into the world to save and transform.
This is anticipated at Jesus’ baptism, which we would have considered last Sunday if the storm had not prevented us from meeting. When Jesus came up out of the waters of the Jordan, the heavens were torn open and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him (Mark 1:10).
This is a dramatic image. It recalls our Old Testament lesson on the First Sunday of Advent. Then, we heard the prophet Isaiah plead with God on behalf of his people: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down” (Isa. 64:1).
And there at the Jordan, the heavens were rent, as if in answer to the prophet’s plea. Before, the heavens constituted a barrier between God and us. What Jesus saw at his baptism was the puncturing of that barrier and the power of God entering through it into our world.
And now, clothed in the power of God, received at his baptism, Jesus comes to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.
What is this good news? The core content of the good news is this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”
It’s a remarkable claim. Only Jesus can know and say when the time is fulfilled. Only he can claim that all that God has been doing in the world and in human history until then is summed up in him.
Jesus can make this claim, because he preaches the good news about the kingdom of God, not as a messenger, but as its agent and bearer.
The message is simple. It is as old as that of the oldest prophets before him. But at the same time, it is new. In Jesus, God is now showing himself to be Lord of history in a new way.
When Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God, he is proclaiming God.
God exists. He is the living God, who is able to act in the world and in history, and even now is acting. He holds the threads of our lives in his good and strong and capable hands.
In connection with this claim, it will be helpful for a moment to reflect on the word “kingdom.” Implied here is not a static concept, but rather a dynamic one. Grammarians call it an “action word.” That’s why some have chosen to translate it as “reign” or as “exercise of dominion” rather than “kingdom.” The word does not so much denote a “realm” as it does a “function.” Our God reigns.
The truth is that God is actively exercising his sovereign dominion over our world. He still is, even though at times it appears as if he has turned away from us and left us to stew in our own juices.
But he hasn’t withdrawn from the world, but rather has come near it in and through Jesus. And that’s the good news! That’s why it must be proclaimed to all people, so that they can hear and obey.
How do people show that they have heard and obeyed? By repenting, believing and following.
One definition of repentance is changing our ways. To repent means to reject what is wrong and do what is right.
This is good as far as it goes. But unfortunately it too often suggests that to be a Christian is about being a good moral person. But Christian faith is distorted when it is reduced to moral teachings that are absolutely binding because their source is God.
Author James Alison has argued that this distortion has contributed to the decline of Christianity in the West. He notes that there are few things more tedious or joyless in life than rules that must be obeyed because God said so.
To be sure, there are commands that are to be taught and learned and lived. But these commands are not apprehended as they are meant to be unless we first see that the Christian faith in the first place is about an event.
Jesus announces the event first: The Kingdom of God has come near. Then he issues the command, repent! It is important to keep this in order.
Let me try to explain what I mean here. Imagine a mother and a daughter. The daughter comes home one day to announce to her mother what she learned in school. She says: “Mom, did you know that there is 21 million people in Mexico city?”
The mother assumes her daughter’s teacher is an authority, so she has no reason to doubt what her daughter said is true. But after pausing to acknowledge how interesting the fact is, she returns to making supper or doing whatever it was she doing before her daughter came home.
Now imagine that her daughter comes home from school one day with another announcement. Her boyfriend proposed to her and she accepted. She’s engaged to be married.
Now that’s an announcement of an entirely different kind. What she’s announced here is going to alter the mother’s relationship with her daughter forever.
It’s introducing something new, quite unexpected, and entirely outside her control, into the relationship, as well as into the circle of relationships of which they are both part.
The mother is going to find herself relating to her daughter, to other relatives, to other people, in quite a new way. The mother will discover a lot about herself and her daughter and others that she did not know in the process. The mother finds herself put in a new position by this announcement.
The illustration isn’t perfect, but it can help us understand what we mean when we talk about the kingdom of God as an event.
When we talk about Jesus’ announcement, we’re talking more like the “I’m engaged” announcement than the “Mexico City has 21,000,000 people” announcement.
We’re talking about the kind of earth shaking news about something happening outside us, outside our control, which is going to alter our relationship with everyone and everything forever. It’s going to lead us to discover things about ourselves and others we did not know before.
Here then the command to “repent” appears in a new light. It literally means to “change one’s mind” or “change one’s perspective.” Certainly, it is still a command that Jesus expects to be obeyed and carried out.
But if the kingdom of God that Jesus is announcing is an event, then are we not already undergoing change? Repenting then is a correlate of the change that we are already undergoing.
Let me emphasize this point: it is the event that is changing us. Because of this event, we no longer see things as we did before; we no longer order our priorities as we once did; what used to be important to us no longer seems very important now. Our perspective on life is changing. In short, we are repenting. Or rather, in response to this event we repent.
Is this not what we see in Simon and Andrew, and in James and John? They are engaged in their normal daily routines. There is nothing wrong with that. They are acting responsibly, providing for their needs and the needs of their families by means of a respectable profession. We are not to assume that in fishing they are committing a sin of which they need to repent. Nor should we assume, for that matter, that in leaving Zebedee and the hired men in the boat behind them, James and John are acting irresponsibly, of which they also should repent.
The point is that their meeting with Jesus changed them. It disrupted their routines. It introduced a break or discontinuity into their lives. For this reason, they cannot return to who they once were, to what they once did. Their mind has been changed. They have a totally new perspective. For this reason, their priorities have shifted, their desires and aspirations have been redirected.
Here we begin to see how the commands to “repent” and “believe” on the one hand, and to “follow me,” on the other, are connected. The change in the disciples as we have been describing it teaches us that who we once were, what we did at one time, lies in our past.
This amounts to the nets that we leave behind. “Turning away,” however, is only the first in a double movement. In “turning away,” we also “turn to” the one who caused this change in us. This amounts to believing in him and following him. To “repent” and “believe” and to “follow” are all links in one chain. Put otherwise, to repent and believe, on the one hand, and to follow, on the other, constitute two discrete moments in one double movement. And together they constitute a response to an event: “the Kingdom of God has come near.” And this is good news.
Jesus proclaimed this good news in Galilee long ago. But what he proclaimed then and there, he still proclaims here today. And the authority he had then, he still has today.
So let me ask again: what feelings does this authority evoke in you? We are ambivalent about authority. It is safe to say that this is especially so in our world today. Trust in established institutions in this country is at an historic low. And the voices of “woke” ideologues have become increasingly shrill. All this will become the more apparent, the more we progress through this election year.
But in the person of Jesus, God confronts us with his own authority. We long to be a part of what Jesus is proclaiming and bringing, but yet we also resist and fear and even sometimes resent it, especially as those who live in this world today.
Yet his call still goes out to us today, just as it did to those first disciples then. In its most profound experience, it is about conversion. It is a call that we have always to hear, because conversion is not a one and done. It is ongoing. How can it be otherwise, when it meets our series of conflicted “yes/no” responses? Let us nevertheless decide to hear and obey, trusting in God’s grace to make us ever more faithful followers of Jesus. Amen.