The Time is Fulfilled

Scriptures: Psalm 62:5-8; 11-12, Mark 1:14-20

There are those who claim that the whole of Jesus’ message – the complete chronicle that he wanted to communicate – is summed up in the four phrases of that verse in our gospel passage this morning: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Edmund Perry, for example, in a study book I used with a group a few years ago, wrote, “these verses are the text upon which the rest of the New Testament is commentary”. Yet, each one of these words is suspect for one reason or another to our contemporary mind. “Time” is associated with not having enough time, with the rat-race, as an enemy against which we must battle. The “kingdom of God” has lost force for two reasons – first, because it is usually understood as a far-off and future place, so it’s irrelevant to our everyday lives; and second, because the symbol of a “kingdom” has less significance in a world in which there are few real kingdoms left (how do you think an English child feels when told about “the kingdom of God” when he or she knows that the reigning monarch is only a figure-head with real authority existing in the Prime Minister and Parliament). “Repent” – well, we know what that’s associated with and how much we dislike hearing it exclaimed – especially by an Elmer Gantry-like charlatan. The “good news” (which is another interpretation of the word “Gospel”) is a bit better, and we happily use it to talk about what we have received from God – but even this term gets associated with pulpit-pounding and electronic church preachers in a way that sometimes makes us cringe.

So, if this verse is key to our understanding of Jesus’ message to us as well as our key to communicating that message to the world, we need to re-invest these terms with meaning that says something significant to our 21st century world. What Jesus has to say is too important for us to lose it in outmoded, musty words that don’t communicate. We need to find a way to give them renewed vigor for our own day and age.

One way to get into seeing what renewed meaning these words can have for us is to follow the spiritual journey that Jesus took in order to be able to say, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Mark, the first Gospel to be written, doesn’t waste any time with those beautiful nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, or with waxing theologically on “the Word became flesh” like John. He plunges right in to the crucial beginning point: the baptism of Jesus. Heeding John’s call for repentance, Jesus comes to him…..for baptism! Later Christians were shocked by this. How could the Son of God – which, after all, is what Mark calls him – feel any need for the baptism of repentance? Precisely because he was the Son of God, though, Jesus felt this need; he identified with each one of us, and thus he realized that every one of us must come to recognize our complete dependence on God. Baptism is the next step – the starting point of a conversion, a turning around, that signifies our full and true repentance. That’s why Protestants affirmed that, along with communion, baptism is sacramental – that is, it enables us to participate in the sacred. But the important thing to remember is that it is only a starting point. When we are baptized at whatever age it is not a case of, to re-phrase the old saw, “they got baptized and lived happily ever after.” No, as I’m sure you’ve realized in your own lives, being a believer in Christ doesn’t give you any less difficulties than skeptics. What the acceptance of faith through baptism does do is to affirm our complete dependence upon and relationship to an awesome, forgiving, loving God, who cares for us through all eternity.

The fact that baptism is but a starting point is reinforced by what happens next to Jesus: he is driven into the wilderness of temptation, doubt, fear, and anxiety. Oh, we can identify with this, all right! We make our professions of faith through baptism and church membership, but problems and fear of failure and all the other agonizing doubts do not just dry up and go away. No wonder Christ taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation”, for he knew that in the everydayness of life there is a constant source of wilderness temptations. Yet, we are not without resources. The line in Mark, “and the angels waited on him” (I actually like it better in the earlier Revised Standard Version: “and the angels ministered to him”) is a symbolic way of saying that because we have known baptism we have help with the reality of the wilderness experience. As Hal Luccock puts it, “There are re-creative forces available in spiritual struggle – the renewal of life in prayer, the support of fellowship in worship and living, the recovery of vision.” “Be Now My Vision”, as we sang just a few moments ago.

I’ve spent some time recounting the experiences of Jesus leading up to his pronouncement about the time, the kingdom, and the good news because his experiences are so like our own. This was not an abstract, theological statement that sounded fluent as it rolled off the tongue, but rather it came from his in-depth encounter with the will of God and the temptations which all humans are subject to. Having known the baptism of repentance and having experienced the temptations, doubts, and fears of the wilderness (as have we all), Jesus came into Galilee preaching – not a carefully constructed three-point, 20-minute (or shorter – as you all would prefer) sermon, but a simple declaration that is the heart of the Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

What is the time that has been fulfilled? The Greeks, as I’ve talked about before, had two words for “time”: chronos, which is chronological time – one moment following another – the past, present, and future with which we are all familiar. But their second word was kairos – the kind of time that gives a quality of meaning to particular chronological events. I hunch that each of us has in our experience moments that give meaning to our lives far beyond the duration of that moment. We remember a place or a face or a word or an encounter that shaped how we looked at things from then on – in fact, may even, in retrospect, have shaped the way we looked at our lives before that moment took place. We spoke about this a bit three weeks ago in talking about epiphany moments. One such moment for me occurred in the summer of 1961 when, while driving across the north of Spain I knew with a certainty that I had not experienced before that I wanted to go back to seminary that fall in order to become a pastor and not a religious dramatist, as I had been thinking about up to then. Why that particular kairos moment – that moment in time for me? It’s impossible to say, but somehow all the elements that had gone into shaping my life up to that summer came together during that trip – a kind of climax in my own personal history. And this is what Jesus is here affirming about himself. His entrance into history marks the climax in God’s time – THE kairos moment that changes the whole of human history – the fulfillment of what God began in creation.

Recall that in literature a climax does not necessarily mean an ending, but rather it is the essential moment toward which the story is pointing – both up to the point of climax and following it. That’s why the next phrase is so crucial: “the kingdom of God” – which is neither a geographical place nor something that is somehow “inside us”. Rather, the kingdom of God is identified with Jesus Christ himself. So, the order of the sentence is important: it is only because Christ has appeared fulfilling the time that the kingdom of God is now a reality.

“The kingdom of God has come near.” What a tantalizing phrase! Almost feels like it’s just out of our reach (reminds me of that song near the beginning of “West Side Story”: “Could be! Who knows? There’s something due any day; I will know right away, Soon as it shows….. It’s only just out of reach, Down the block, on a beach… I got a feeling there’s a miracle due, Gonna come true… ‘).

“A miracle due”. That’s what the kingdom of God should feel like. It’s something of a paradox, as well: that is, in the person of Jesus the kingdom is here, but in the efforts of people to respond to it the kingdom is still coming. Frederick Grant has said it this way: “the kingdom is still approaching, it is coming ever nearer, [that is] it has begun to arrive…..” Our own efforts can never bring in the kingdom of God, but what we as individuals and the church as a community do – through worship, mission, service, responding to human suffering – point to the kingdom that is God’s, that has come, and that is coming.

So, what is it that Jesus wants us to do? Now comes that word again: “repent!” But wait, there’s more: “and believe in the good news.” The need for repentance is linked to the tremendous good news about God’s love for you and for me and for the whole of the world. John the Baptist had been sounding the call for repentance, but now Jesus adds this new dimension, and the world will never be the same again. Is it any wonder that when Jesus goes to Simon and Andrew along the Sea of Galilee they left their nets immediately and followed him? And James and his brother John also respond with that sense of immediacy, leaving their father in the process. These early disciples got it. They understood that here was indeed good news. Repentance in this context is a joy-filled process. The time which has been fulfilled in the coming of the kingdom is not a dire time of dark foreboding, but it is a leaping, dancing, singing, shouting time of good news. It is the fulfilling of the good news of Isaiah:

 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and release to the prisoners;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…

to comfort all who mourn….. (61:1-2)

 

And so Jesus comes to Galilee announcing God’s good news. What are we to do with it? As Cynthia Anderson, a United Methodist pastor, says, “…the proclamation of Good News is no longer an abstract rumor circulating at local gatherings; a person is looking at particular people and inviting them to participate in his mission. It has that ‘take it or leave it’ note. Jesus tells them he wants to make them part of his life and mission, and they must decide what, if anything, to do in response.” (The Christian Century, January 13, 2009)

At its core “to repent” really means to take the kind of action that Simon and Andrew and James and John and so many others down through the years have done: to decide to follow. And that can be uncomfortable because we have to make that decision without having all of our questions answered. Cynthia Anderson again: “Following Jesus is life-giving and transformational – but we don’t get to draw the map…before we start walking. We have to listen to Jesus’ call and take the first step….. Jesus stands on shore giving an invitation that makes real promises with real demands. The one thing that makes it possible for us to follow is that we know he will walk the entire way with us, leading the way right into the kingdom.”

In a few minutes we will be holding our Annual Meeting during which new officers and Board members will be chosen. I use that word very deliberately, for your service to your church is a choice that results from your initial decision to leave your nets, whatever they may be, and follow the one who gives you everything. We are not responsible for bringing in the kingdom of God on this earth. We are responsible to point to and proclaim all the ways God’s time is fulfilled, God’s kingdom has come and is coming, God’s good news of love is more powerful than all the kingdoms of the world.

At their core these words stand for Jesus himself: he has brought the time to fulfillment, he embodies the kingdom of God which has come and is coming, he is the good news which we receive as we repent. Here is the content of our worship and of our lives, if we but let it be so. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

 

Amen.

 

Dave Pomeroy

 

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Las Vegas, NV

January 25, 2009