Mark 1: 14-20
This week we celebrated, as a nation, the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King found himself in a long line of prophets who held up the assumptions of the status quo for all to see and turned them on their heads to show them for the falsehoods they are. He then called us to live according to what is true instead of according to those falsehoods.
This week we also celebrated, as a church, the Confession of St. Peter, which commemorates his declaration that Jesus is the Messiah. St. Peter would later, much like Dr. King, find himself prophetically addressing vast crowds with a call to reject their false assumptions and live in the light of the truth he declared at his celebrated confession.
In today’s reading, when Jesus first stepped into the public sphere in the wake of John the Baptist’s arrest proclaiming the “gospel” of God, he holds up, in the prophetic tradition, the assumptions surrounding the great power of his time. You see, a “gospel” or “good news”—“evangelion” in Greek—was something told about Caesar Augustus, who was the “savior of the world.” It was he who instituted, through war and occupation, the Pax Romana, the reality in which everyone in Jesus’ audience lived and moved. “Gospels” were about Caesar, and everyone knew it.
So when Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel,” people would have heard something like, “Caesar’s gospel is false, it is not “good news.” From now on it is the story of how God saves the world and how God brings peace that can be the operative Reality of your lives. Utterly re-orient yourself to live in God’s story, no longer in Caesar’s.
So what is Caesar’s gospel? It is a story of power in which power is held in an iron fist and lorded over those with no power. It is a story in which opposition is crushed and brought into submission by force. It is a story in which peace is achieved through fear of punishment. It is a story of “us” vs. “them”, of citizens vs. slaves and barbarians. It is a story of self-interest at all costs. This is the gospel of Caesar.
And what is God’s gospel? It is a story in which power is held in a hand that liberates and heals the powerless. It is a story in which opposition is met without resistance. It is a story in which peace is a state of being that arises from inner freedom. It is a story in which all bear the image of God. It is a story of kenosis— of self-emptying, of a willingness to suffer death rather than inflict it. This is the gospel of God, the gospel Jesus proclaimed.
St. Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah near the end of the synoptic accounts, after spending years with Jesus who inhabited and embodied this gospel. The Messiah, the Christ, literally means, “the anointed one.” It is, first and foremost, a kingly title, and, as such, it is conceived of by most, including Peter, in terms of worldly power—according to some version of the gospel of Caesar. But Jesus embodied this title in the radically alternative vision that is the gospel of God. He would not sit comfortably in a palace, but walk among the poor and the outcast. He would not gather an army to overcome his enemies, but would bear in his own person the effects of their hatred. Among the final words on his lips would be words of forgiveness rather than curse.
What does it take to make a person like this? How does one come to live in God’s gospel when our inner and outer landscapes seem submerged beneath Caesar’s gospel? It’s as though we are made for one habitat and find ourselves stuck in another. Like we are trapped underwater and can’t get out into the air and onto the land. We live like fish when, really, we are women and men. It is as though we need someone to fish for us—to catch us in some net that pulls us up out of anger and conflict into forgiveness and peace, up out of power that serves only self-interest into power that serves to free and empower others, up out of the need to identify and rail against one’s enemies into the ability to perceive the very image of God in each face.
Dr. King was caught in a net that pulled him up out of the gospel of Caesar into the gospel of God. That net is called Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. It is where he learned to fill his lungs with air rather than water and breathe out words of nonviolence. It’s where he learned to use his feet to march in peace on land rather than to swim in the waters of hatred.
What net are you caught in? What pulls you up out of the socio-political assumptions, out of the mainstream cultural and religious stories that make up your watery habitat?
I have found myself caught in a net woven from Benedictine, Catholic, and Anglican spiritualities here in this time and place, in this community. It’s a slow ride to the surface of the water. Sometimes the undercurrent is strong. Sometimes the net gets snagged on a branch. Sometimes I thrash and struggle against the pull. But by the grace of God and faithfulness of fishermen like my father Benedict, like Sr. Joan Chittister, like my spiritual director, Fr. Bob Rossi, like Gil, my priest and mentor, I am moving steadily upward toward the air, toward the light, toward the revolution that is the gospel of God.
I ask once more, what net are you caught in?
Amen.
