Critics of Christianity are fond of pointing out that the gospel writers are inconsistent in telling their stories. They don’t agree with one another, therefore Christianity is a fraud. But the four evangelists were not filling out witness statements at the local police station. They were less reporter than they were editors – collecting and shaping the stories their communities had handed down and treasured about Jesus. These stories do not so much compete with one another as they complement one another and so we hold them in tension with one another.
As you may have heard last week, in the reading from John, it’s hinted that Jesus had been a disciple of the Baptist. We can’t know how long this apprenticeship lasted, but it may have been quite a while. A Rabbi’s disciple was expected to learn his master’s “Mishnah”, his teaching, through memorization; the word literally means “study by repetition.” The student learned the Rabbi’s favorite scriptures, and his interpretation of Jewish history and tradition. But not only what was said but how – the emphasis, the inflection, the tone of voice – so that to encounter the disciple even years after the Rabbi’s death, was to encounter the Rabbi himself still alive. It’s not surprising that when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?” They respond, “You are John the Baptist.”
In the gospel of John, at some point, Jesus drifts away from his mentor John and begins his own work. In the other three gospels, Jesus’ work only begins after John’s arrest and martyrdom.
Matthew tells us that Jesus “withdrew” to the Galilee. The Greek is actually stronger; it’s closer to “retreated.” After John’s arrest, Jesus and two other of John’s disciples retreated north to the relative safety of the Galilee. These disciples were Philip from Bethsaida and Nathaneal from Cana, where Jesus will in time attend a wedding and turn water into wine.
Jesus preaches John’s message in the local synagogues. In those days, synagogues were more like community centers where men would gather to study and argue scripture and to conduct community business. They were not places of worship. The Sabbath was simply a day of rest. Worship in synagogues will emerge later in reaction to the Christian practice of Sunday worship. In the synagogues, any Jewish male of age could speak…
As Mark tells us today, Jesus’ message was John’s message: God’s reign on Earth is coming soon. Repent – change your ways – so that you may enter in.
Perhaps it was at the synagogue in Capernaum that Simon and his brother Andrew and James and his brother John actually first met Jesus. In time, Jesus will move into Simon and Andrew’s family home and will receive financial support from these men’s family fishing business. These six then: Nathaniel, Philip, James, John, Andrew and Simon – soon to be nicknamed “Rock” – will make up half of Jesus’ “Talmidim” – literally “the instructed.”
Jesus and his disciples will continue to teach John’s “Mishnah” and to call people to the Baptist’s practice of water immersion as a sign of a commitment to change. But quite early, Jesus will discover the gift of healing and will discontinue the baptisms. The message about the Kingdom of God will shift as well. No longer is the Kingdom nationalistic and racial but more and more it is moral and even universal. Not a few were scandalized when Jesus seemed to suggest that even Pagan Gentiles might be welcomed into God’s Kingdom.
Jesus’ healings and exorcisms will draw large crowds while the disciples were tasked with being fishers of people – to build the Jesus movement, the “Ecclesia” – literally the “gathering of those summoned.” We just call it “church.”
So what’s the learning here? Perhaps it’s that the peasants of Palestine needed and responded to Jesus’ healing work and in it, found hope for the future during dark times.
For the most part today, people do not seek a cure from their diseases and infirmities in churches. Admittedly, when traditional Western medicine and then alternative treatments fail, people may seek a miracle in places of worship. Most churches do not claim, in all humility, to possess Jesus’ gifts of curing illness even while some tele-evangelists do.
But with all this being said, nevertheless there is a pervasive spiritual illness in our land. Evil spirits that possess the soul of America and its name is despair borne of cynicism and its progeny is fear.
But the Christian message is that of hope. We need to ask ourselves: “If a stranger wanders inside these doors, would they leave more hope-filled and less consumed by fear?”
I’m not talking about the caricature hope and false denial of what one of my colleagues calls the “dry tooth Christians.” But rather a genuine hope grounded in faith – the word means “loyalty to Christ” – which enables us to live more courageous lives. Dr. King, whom we celebrated last week, said this: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope… If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps you moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.”
Or as Paul wrote to the Hebrews living under persecution in Jerusalem. “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)
Now the second learning is this: John came out of the Qumran community near the Dead Sea. A semi-monastic group, they were folks who had abandoned the decadence of Jerusalem and lived together, sharing all things in common. They practiced water immersion for forgiveness of sin and longed for the coming of a Son of righteousness. John was called by the Spirit to come out of the desert and gather a following committed to living differently.
After John’s execution, Jesus gathered followers – “Come, and follow me” – and expanded John’s work. After Jesus’ martyrdom, Paul and the Apostles were faithful to Jesus’ great commission – to gather people into communities of hope and love.
In this atomized age – an age of counterfeit intimacy on a 3X5 inch screen and ever deepening division, isolation, and anxiety, you St. Matthians are challenged to invest more deeply in meaningful community here.
That strange Greek word I used earlier – “Ecclesia,” the gathering – is insufficient in these times. Perhaps we should reclaim the language of the Free Church of Berkeley in the 1960’s – the church as “The Liberated Zone.”
Why did the brothers leave their nets to follow Jesus? Why did the people hang around even after the healings and after the bread and fish were consumed?
It was because in Jesus, they found a living icon of hope, that the dream of God for all of us – no exemptions – was living still. Amen.