Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Jeremiah 3:21-4:2
Psalm 130
1 Corinthians 7:17-23
Mark 1:14-20
The lesson from Jeremiah reads like a confession. God’s people are repentant of their manifold sins and spend their time proclaiming the greatness of their God. God responds to these people as God is wont to do, by promising a covenant of responsibility and blessing. “If you return to me,” says the Lord, “and you remove your evil from before me, and if you swear by my name to live in truth, in justice, and in righteousness, then will I bless you.” It seems a simple deal, but of course the people of Israel could no more live up to that deal then than we can today. Besides, this is only chapter three, and Jeremiah is just getting warmed up.
Jeremiah’s words seem somewhat unoriginal. A prophet calling for repentance, and asking his people to live truth and justice. This is a very old story. Literally a very old story in Jeremiah’s case. But prophets have been haranguing the human race about these things probably since the race was born. I think they continue even today.
I have heard it said that if a prophet such as Jeremiah were to return today he would be thought crazy and hospitalized for hearing voices. This may be true if the prophet were to dress shabbily and live on the street. If we met a shabbily street person who told us that they could hear the voice of God we would most likely conclude that they were schizophrenic and not necessarily prophetic. This is a natural assumption for me, as I have met more schizophrenic street people than I have met prophetic street people.
Yet prophets come in all forms, and a prophet of Jeremiah’s stature returning to our world today would not necessarily be thought crazy. This past Monday we marked the life of a modern day prophet of the caliber of Jeremiah. Martin Luther King Jr. was born a black man, and so the issues of race were where his prophecy began. But it didn’t end there. Dr. King preached truth, and justice, and righteousness for all people, regardless of color. And like all prophets through history, he asked for the apparently impossible, and dreamt of what that might look like.
Another dreamer speaks to us from today’s collection of stories. Paul the former prosecutor renders his argument on the nature of equality in Christ. I am almost afraid to compare Martin Luther King Jr. with Paul. I’m afraid that I will offend someone here, and not because they feel Paul does badly by the comparison. Yet whatever your opinion of the Apostle Paul and his writings, I think that he reached brilliance on several points. One of these points is his understanding of our equality in the face of God’s redeeming gift: Jesus Christ.
The passage from Corinthians quoted today features Paul’s thoughts on the difference between Jew and Greek. The language is of circumcision, since that is how the Jews set themselves apart. The Corinthians were nearly all gentiles and uncircumcised, so the news that they would not need to be circumcised was probably welcome news indeed, but it was not new to them. They were an established church. They knew they could be Christians without being Jewish first. Then Paul moves into another topic, the difference between slave and free.
It would not be fair to judge Paul’s thoughts on slavery by the standards of Dr. King. In Paul’s time slavery was such an established practice that it would have been inconceivable to question it. Yet even by today’s standards Paul fairs none to badly. In the presence of God, in the kingdom preached by Jesus, a slave is made free and a free person made a slave to Christ.
All of this from Paul is taken from the middle of chapter 7, which is one long discourse on marriage and divorce and men and women. Do these three subjects ring a bell? The difference between Jew and Greek, between slave and free, between man and woman? It takes Paul a whole chapter in Corinthians to say what he said in one sentence in Galatians. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, man nor woman. In Christ there is somehow no difference between us. This is the prophets dream: that we be equal not only in the mind of God, but in the eyes of each other.
…Jesus walks along the shore of a lake. It bustled even this early in the morning. There are houses of fisher folk strung out along the bank, the fishermen casting their nets from the shallow water. A few of the better off families gather around their boats readying them for the day’s work. He walks up to two young men busy with their heavy woven nets.
“Hey,” Jesus says to them. “I’ve got this crazy idea. It seems to me that all of God’s children are equal in His sight, but that we don’t really act that way very often. And I think that if you and I and a few others got together and really started telling people about this that maybe we could convince people to treat each other like God wants us to.”
The young men traded puzzled glances.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Jesus continued, “and it probably is. I mean, we’ll most likely fail miserably and end up getting killed for our trouble, but what if it worked? What if we succeeded? What if even a small group of people tried treating each other like the prophets are always telling us to? Can you imagine?”
The two brothers looked at each other, shrugged, and for some reason they would never be able to recall, dropped what they were doing and followed Jesus on down the shore. The same thing happened about a quarter of a mile later, and even though Jesus made no more sense this time than he did the last, the first two weren’t surprised when the next two dropped what they were doing and followed too. And before the sun came up over the Sea of Galilee that morning the world had changed…
Can you imagine what that must have been like? We know the rest of the story in our heads: the parables, the miracles, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the two thousand years of trail and error since. But try to put yourself in that morning for a minute. Try to imagine that you have no idea what will become of this Jesus. Try to envision a face to face confrontation with an honest to God prophet. Why in the world did you say yes? Why are you following this crazy man? You can’t change your mind now, it’s too late for that. All you can do is follow this fool, and see where he leads you.
Hard to imagine? It shouldn’t be. Prophets are rare, but they aren’t extinct. You may come face to face with one yet. And because we know what happens next in the story, because we know about the death and the resurrection, we know that whatever it was that Jesus was up to, he isn’t finished with it yet. Hard to imagine that you have no idea what this Jesus is up to? It shouldn’t be. Because you don’t. All you can do is follow, and see where he leads.