Author: HRPC Office

Mending People

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January 28, 2024        Mark 1:21-28  

My friend Licha called me maestra (teacher) for the longest time.  That was because I first met her when she attended the English class I was teaching for recent Latino immigrants.  In Mexico, maestra is a title of respect.  She would never call me by my first name or even my last name.  She would never call me pastor or reverend, even though she knew I was a minister.  It was always maestra, teacher.  Years after I stopped teaching English classes, when Licha and I would go together to an appointment or an event, or when she would call me on the phone, she would still call me maestra.

Jesus starts out as a teacher first and foremost in all three of the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke.  In the gospel of John, his first act of ministry is the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding.  Mark, who loves to add “immediately” or “right away” or “just then” to his story, describes Jesus as hitting the ground running.  He grabs four disciples and gets to work.  He starts out in the synagogue, the gathering place for worship and teaching, and he teaches.  People get to know him first as a teacher.  It becomes natural then, for people to call him teacher, or rabbi—a Jewish scholar or teacher– throughout any of the gospel narratives.  It is an oft repeated way to address Jesus throughout his ministry.  And the only places anywhere in the Old and New Testaments to find the word Rabbi is in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, each time used as a title for Jesus. 

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It’s Time

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1.21.24        Mark 1:14-20

            These two sets of brothers, fishermen, Simon and Andrew, James and John, have the honor of being the first disciples called to follow Jesus.  It is amazing that they did.  I have always wondered– was there something about the way Jesus looked at them, or the way his voice sounded?  The gospel writer, in a pattern he continues throughout the gospel, indicates that these fishermen responded by immediately following him.  No hesitation. Did they stop to think that they could be making a dangerous decision?  In a small community like Capernaum, on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee, they knew very well that a guy named John had already been arrested for his proclamation of the baptism of repentance, for his insistence on truth telling.  The word for arrested literally means “handed over”—John had been handed over by the King’s henchmen to the jailors because of his accusations regarding King Herod’s impropriety in marrying someone else’s wife.  He was a threat to the Roman powers that be.  John’s ministry proved dangerous—he was ultimately murdered at the order of the King. I wonder how the people who had been baptized by him felt after his arrest.  Nervous?  Looking behind them as they walked down the road?  Were they going to be next if they continued to follow John’s insistence on living in a new way?

The same word is used later to describe the arrest of Jesus—he was handed over to the authorities, endured a mock trial and was crucified.  He was a threat to the Jewish powers that be.  In today’s text, Jesus is picking up where John left off, with the same dangerous ministry.  He echoes John’s words calling people to repent, to do a U turn, to begin a new way of living. And these brothers want to put themselves in danger as well?  Jesus announces that he has the good news of God—it is time, he says. It is time for a change, a time when the reign of God has come close.  He expects a response of repentance and belief or trust in that good news. And immediately they head off in a new direction toward an unknown future, leaving behind their work, their families, their community.

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