Your story my story

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

YOUR STORY, MY STORY Your heart, my heart

Revd Dr Raymond Pelly 22 January 2012

• Jonah 3:1-5,10
• Ps 62:5-12
• I Cor 7:29-31
• Mark 1:14-20

If we turned today’s readings into one-liners, we’d get something like this:

Jonah: Job’s problem was undeserved suffering, Jonah’s is undeserved forgiveness. Put another way, disbelief at how a whole city (or society) can change once faced with the right challenge.

Paul (I Cor): We live in a time of rapid change. Nothing is set in concrete, nothing is permanent. In terms of the crises we face, the time is short, the suffering great. The urgency is of God.

Jesus (Mark): Salvation is all-embracing both personal and political. It takes great faith to believe this, but it starts when each person is willing to change & to initiate change.

I

‘Change’ is the word linking all three; but not change for its own sake, but change that is truly transformative, grounded, that is, in God’s promise of a new world, driven by passion for justice & fullness of life for all.

Like Jonah we probably find this totally daunting, seriously off the radar of our normal, day-to-day concerns. Jonah, we can imagine, was an ordinary bloke minding his own business, just as the disciples were fishermen, & Paul a pious shoemaker.

But then as now the Gospel challenges us to explore how we as individuals or as a society can become citizens of the kingdom of God, believers in the good news, agents of change, makers of a new world. In short, disciples of Jesus.

One way of bridging the credibility gap – how the big picture translates into our little pictures - is to see the Gospel as a story, a never-ending story, a big story that can touch & transform all our little stories. If we look at the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, we can see how the story unfolds & how we can become part of it.

II

It starts with John the Baptist (1:2-8) proclaiming repentance & forgiveness: what’s wrong - with me, with us? That’s the first step in the journey of faith. In the early church people started naming the pathologies of their time: pathologies or distortions to do with sex, money, power – the result, a new exodus into communities where all these issues were addressed. It was called ‘naming the demons’. We could compare it to the early years of the feminist movement when groups of women started naming the problem that ‘had no name’. All these issues remains actual; but today we would add climate change - among so many other things.

III

The story then moves on to the Baptism of Jesus (1:9-11). This is the moment of truth, of empowerment. ‘He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove’. Because we’re talking about ‘the kingdom of God’, who could initiate that except God’s own true representative or agent? ‘You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.’ We connect our story to the big story through vocation or calling. This is the moment when we catch the vision, sense that we too are called to make our contribution; when we can pray Jesus’ visionary prayer ‘your kingdom come on earth as in heaven’ from the heart; when we make common cause with Jesus as Lord, whose intimacy with God was closer than that of a parent to a beloved child.

IV

Next come the temptations, the wilderness (1:12-13). Maybe we get the vision, but then come the doubts. The problems are so huge & I am so small & insignificant. What difference can I make? The temptation is to give up, not to follow through on what we know to be right. And wilderness? We all know the force of social ostracism. Who does he think he is? I remember a poster which showed a little green frog awkwardly climbing over a stick. The caption: Social change only comes about when people are prepared to adopt unpopular positions! Recently I read the story of a woman, an Auschwitz survivor, who was passionate about educating children to be socially responsible. She tried out these ideas in the big bureaucracy in Munich where she worked. The outcome: indifference & hostility. To be a disciple, then, means knowing how to survive all that and keep going.

V

Which brings us the Jesus who, having got thus far, calls the first disciples (1:16-20). John the Baptist had created a circle of people waiting for something new. Jesus takes up the story. Fully empowered, a Spirit-filled man, his credibility fire-tried by temptation & wilderness, he is now in a position to call others into the work of the kingdom. ‘Follow me’ says Jesus to Simon & Andrew, James & John, a family of fishermen. ‘Immediately they left their nets and followed him’. These are what we might call ‘the early adopters’ of the vision, the first citizens of the kingdom. The point of the story is that we’re talking about a chain reaction: how the first lot of disciples called others; how the early adopters turn the small beginnings of the new vision into a movement, a Jesus movement – with all the dangers of dilution or taking wrong turnings that implies.

VI

Which is were we are now, invited to be disciples, citizens of the kingdom, children of God, brothers & sisters of Jesus Christ. Can we recover the old fervour of the first disciples? The rest of the first chapter (1:24-45) is about the unfolding of the mission. Then as now it’s Jesus, who takes the lead. He drives out a demon who’s making a man’s life hell; heals the many who throng around him; cleanses a leper; & all the time he’s giving out the message of the coming of the kingdom. Something truly wonderful is happening. Which is where we come in; where the story starts all over again –but with added task of working out the modern equivalents of the first beginnings of the kingdom .

VII

To finish, then, two words of wisdom. First, we can’t do it on our own. Our sense of calling is our initial empowerment; but it will only be sustainable on the basis of a daily waiting on God. ‘For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation’ (Ps 62:1). Just as Jesus, the Son of God, lived out of the power of God – the heavens torn apart, the Spirit descending – so must we, the sons & daughters of God. Second, in recalling that the Gospel of Mark begins with the words, ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’, we should remember that the next time we hear of his sonship is on the lips of the centurion at the crucifixion. ‘Truly, this man was God’s Son’ (15:39). In telling the story of Jesus we’re not talking about a religious freak, but somebody totally committed to making a difference in our world & willing to bear the cost of whatever that entails. That is the full story. The question is: do we want to be part of it?