This is an excerpt of a sermon I preached on Jesus’ calling of Simon, Andrew, James and John in Mark 1 on January 24 at St. Tim’s Episcopal Church. You can watch the whole thing here, starting with the reading of the Gospel at the 39:00 mark.
Jesus’ arrival in Galilee coincides with the unwelcome encroachment of an aggressive power, which looms threateningly over Galilee like an ominous storm cloud.
A study by Old Testament and Near Eastern scholar K.C. Hanson reveals just how thoroughly the Romans occupiers had taken over the Judean fishing industry:
Every body of water was owned by Caesar, and the state regulated all fishing.
Jewish fishermen were a lot like the people whom we refer to as day laborers:
they could not fish independently, but had to work for a syndicate.
The grand part of their catch was exported,
at which time there were taxes, levies, and tolls to be paid on each and every fish.
Jewish Galilean communities starved -- economically and literally --
as their natural resources were extracted to pay tribute to Rome.
And the empire didn’t stop there --
Rome made it illegal to catch even a single fish outside this taxing system.
Fishing police were tasked with making sure that “no one was fishing illegally or selling to unauthorized middlemen.”
These are the conditions in which the not-yet-disciples are living, day in & day out.
To make matters worse, John has been arrested.
Mark doesn’t name names, though the other Gospels writers blame Rome’s puppet king Herod.
To think that John, living his alternative lifestyle way out in the desert,
would be considered a threat to Rome, must have come as a wake-up call;
his arrest was surely meant as a warning to the Jewish people not to underestimate the extent to which empire would go to quash social deviance.
There was to be no free thinking, no proclamation of liberation from the oppressor.
One can almost hear the Orwellian refrain buzzing through the air:
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Yet, on the tails of the trauma of John’s incarceration,
Jesus steps into ministry for the first time.
It’s is a remarkable thing to do --
the impact of the prison industrial complex of our own day has shown us how common it is for those traumatized by the incarceration of a loved one to end up locked up themselves.
We also know how quickly a movement can crumble when its identity has been built on a charismatic founder.
Fortunately, Jesus knows who he is and the mission he has been given,
and he has the courage to keep swimming upstream against the current of exclusion, abuse, and neglect.
He has a revolutionary message to proclaim:
“The time is fulfilled,” he preaches, “and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
What’s more, his message is made real by what he does.
When he sees Simon and Andrew, James and John,
he sees their dignity and worth.
They are not worthy based upon their utility to an imperial project,
but rather they matter because of who they are:
beloved children of God, purposed for freedom.
They are not simply given another job to do.
The action phrase “fish for people” is better translated, “fishers of people.”
This is about who they are.
Their worth is inherent, incontestable.
The invitation Jesus offers is a pathway to freedom,
an opportunity to leave behind an exploitative system that extracts resources from the poor to enrich the ruling class, a chance to chart a new course toward a vision of justice and joy for all of God’s children.
Political theologian Ched Myers calls this Jesus’ first symbolic direct action.
Jesus invites his would-be followers to participate in a defiant act of disinvestment from the current economic system.
It’s an act that calls to mind those courageous poor who responded to Gandhi’s call to defy the British,
marching by the thousands to the sea to illegally collect its salt.
That moment, and this one, are the rumblings of nonviolent revolution.
Those who are called know full well the risks -- Mark has made that clear.
Repression comes swiftly to those who dare to color outside the lines.
Still, they respond immediately.
I think it’s hard for those of us who do not know the constant threat of state violence breathing down our necks to understand this level of enthusiasm.
Why leave behind one’s family and friends, and a paycheck, however meager,
to follow an itinerant rabbi, who may not be far from arrest -- or worse -- himself?
Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is instructive here.
Describing the constant presence of state-sanctioned violence,
he wrote to his white clergy colleagues:
“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over,
and [people] are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”
Jesus notes the urgency of his own moment:
“The time is fulfilled,” he proclaims. In other words, “NOW is the time to ACT!”
And the fishermen do.
They choose hope over fear;
direct action over passivity.
What is happening here is about freedom:
“I will make you,” Jesus says.
Here is the joyful possibility of becoming actors in God’s story,
no longer cogs in the crushing wheels of empire.
Vulnerable, yes.
But expendable no longer.