Mark 4:1-9 "Listen!"

         Listen!  Jesus spoke to the crowd that had been persistently following him for a while now, and the Gospel writer of Mark tells us that he met them once again the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee – just as he had done in the passage we read last week.  However, this time it was necessary for Jesus to actually get into a boat – so much were the men and women gathered there pressing close to him, hanging on his every word. 

         So – in your mind’s eye, imagine a large number of folks with front row seats at the water’s edge with the latecomers backed up onto the beach – standing room only.  And picture Jesus sitting in a small dinghy with the red paint chipped off one side of the bow, this small boat anchored a few dozen feet out into the lake and gently bobbing up and down with the rhythm of the swell.  

         And there he preached – well, not exactly an ordinary sermon.  You see, it was not laced with big “college” words and layer after layer of abstract theological reasoning and conceptualization. 

        His sermon – and just the way he taught - was more like a conversation around the evening campfire when people quietly shared bits and pieces of themselves as they poked the dying embers with sticks.  It was rather like a Moth Radio Hour – filled with the stories he told which, if they were not always literally true, were certainly true on a deeper, more significant level. 

         These stories Jesus used as his teaching model were called parables.  Theologian Frederick Buechner defines a parable as a little story with a big point and, if you have to have it explained, don’t bother.  You see, parables are simple, easily relatable stories set in places Jesus’ listeners were so very familiar with and peopled with characters that might just as well have been your next-door neighbor – or even yourself.

         The first parable Jesus ever told was about a farmer intent on planting and hoping for a grain harvest better than any he had garnered in past years.  Even the fishermen in the audience – though they had never sown a seed in their lives - listened intently because everyone – fisher folk or farmers - dream of a harvest big enough to feed a family for a year.

         In this story, the farmer tossed his seed everywhere – up against the stone-wall that bordered his field, in the field itself, and even on the other side of the wall that ran right along the roadway.  His fellow farmers were aghast and commented there at the cracker barrel in the general store that he was foolish because he was wasting much of his seed. After all, seed was an expensive investment and too valuable a resource to be strewn about with abandon.  And in some ways, I suppose they were right.

         After all, some of the seed fell on the hard-packed road itself. Many of those seeds were crushed underfoot or by wagon wheels.  Needless to say, the birds also came and gobbled up the remainder – a veritable feast day for those with wings. 

         Some of the seed also fell on what looked to be good soil.  However, just a couple of inches down a limestone ledge lurked, characteristic of the terrain.  Now – these seeds might sprout, but they hardly stood a chance.  The soil only went so deep before it hit bedrock – and resistance.  And besides, a gust of wind could easily stir up the couple inches of topsoil and send the seeds hither and yon, and they would never get enough water anyway.  

         And the seeds the farmer tossed that ended up in the thorns?  Maybe he did not see the culprits at first in the newly plowed field, but they were there.  So forget those seeds!  They were overrun in short order by the tenacious and rapacious weeds – choked off from water and essential soil nutrients. 

         However, some of the seeds fell on good soil – dark, moist loam – the kind that crumbles easily in your hands and you have to wipe them on your pants when you are ready to finish up and go inside for supper.  And those seeds flourished and produced grain in such quantity that even the farmer was surprised – and delighted. 

         Sometimes I think we get all tangled up trying to figure out what this parable means - for us, today.  Scratching our heads, we tie ourselves in theological knots wondering if the main thrust of the parable is the farmer – or the seeds.

         And, if it is the farmer throwing good seed into the nooks and crannies of the stone wall as readily as into the rich dark loam of the newly plowed field, then what choice does the seed have in where it lands?  And if the seeds are important, well, is that supposed to be us?  And should we feel guilty about the soil we have landed in? 

Or is the main character and protagonist neither the farmer nor the seeds at all, but the soil that should be front and center?

         So much to unravel that it makes us just want to close our Bibles and hope for an easier passage next Sunday.  However, I think this parable can have meaning for us – even this morning – if, before we dive into the parable itself, we reflect on Jesus’ words that begin and end it – rather like bookends.  “Listen!” Jesus starts off in no uncertain terms.  And again, in conclusion, “Listen, then, if you have ears!”

         This parable may be about agriculture – seeds and soil and sowing farmers.  However, first and foremost, it is about listening.  That is what Jesus is calling us to do first.

         A middle-aged man was distraught over his wife’s refusal to admit she had a hearing problem.  So he asked his family doctor how to convince his wife of this fact. The doctor told him that, when he got home, he could confirm the hearing problem by opening the front door, and from there asking his wife, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

         Then the doctor said, “If she doesn’t answer, move closer to the kitchen.  Repeat the question again, and if she still doesn’t answer, move right up to her ear and whisper, ‘What’s for dinner, honey?’

In this way,” the doctor assured him, “she will have to admit she has a hearing problem.”

         So the man raced home and opened the front door.  “What’s for dinner, honey?” he asked. 

        His wife made no reply, so he moved closer to the kitchen and asked again, “What’s for dinner, honey?”  Again: no response. 

         Finally, he tiptoed into the kitchen and whispered in her ear, “What’s for dinner, honey?” 

         She turned and looked at him straight in the eye, “For the third time, I said we’re having meat loaf!” 

         Can you hear?  As a follower of Jesus, are you a good listener?  My 97 year old mother recently got hearing aids.  The staff at the nursing home where she and my father live have a hard time putting them in properly – even after several months. Consequently, when I visit, I usually end up putting the hearing aids in properly and then asking her – kind of as a joke – just like the Verizon commercial, “Can you hear me now?”

        Jesus might just as well have said the same thing:  “Can you hear me now?”  “Listen!”  The Gospel writer of Mark would surely say that Jesus puts a high premium on listening well – and so we should do likewise.  Perhaps, as one blogger I read this week speculated, we have been outfitted with two ears and one mouth for a reason. 

         And so, using the symbolism of our parable as a framework, we ask ourselves.  Do we listen - here in church for instance – do we listen to the readings and the prayers and the songs and the sermon, but with hearts as hard-packed and impenetrable as the roadway where some seeds in our story fell? Do we listen in order to solidify our own theological or political position, not really being open to Jesus’ message of compassion and justice and inclusion? Do we cherry-pick what we leave with each week?

         Or do we listen and even get excited about what we hear, but the message and the uplifted feeling we get never lasts much beyond the postlude?  No matter how much the preacher analyzes the seed, no matter how beautifully the choir sings about the seed and the liturgist reads about it, if all that does not penetrate Sunday after Sunday, then growth is not possible – a hard lesson for every worship leader!  Or do we listen and get excited, but bail out when times get tough?  When a prayer is unanswered? Or a trust broken?  Do we shrug our shoulders and lament, “What’s the use?”

         Or do we listen and actually take to heart what we hear?  Do we leave worship with good intentions, but then life gets in the way? After all, there is competition for our time and energy.  Our priorities shift.  We are pulled in many directions.  Just as real as church had seemed on Sunday morning, getting the bills paid, our job, our reputation, and those endless To Do Lists seem even more real.  Even though we do not mean to, do we choke out and strangle the message we have heard with our shifting priorities?

         Difficult questions to be sure, but - “Listen!”  Jesus says.   “Listen if you have ears!” How in heaven’s name are we to do that?

         According to Reformed pastor, Scott Hoezee, “the Hebrew understanding of listen (shama) is more than just more mental activity, more than just passive acceptance of sounds through our ears. Instead ‘shama’ carries the old servant’s motto ‘to hear is to obey.’”

         Listening and doing therefore are inextricably linked for Jesus.  Consequently, on the one hand, our ministry in this church cannot be unfocused doing – or doing that only makes us feel good inside.  Our ministry cannot be doing without a purpose or doing that is not in alignment with our goals.

         Because we are small and do not have endless resources and social capital (that is, volunteers), our doing must be intentional.  That is why we are going to be engaging in some visioning as a congregation this year, so that our doing has meaning and is grounded in our listening to the needs of the communities around us.

         On the other hand, our ministry in this church cannot be only listening either.  As Presbyterian pastor John Kapteyn noted, “So many of us Christians are listeners. We focus on hearing, reading and learning the word rather than doing the word. We give Sunday School awards to those who memorize the word rather than those who live according to it. We come to church to hear the word, but do we go home to live the word?“

        A clergy colleague observed recently the difference between doing and being.  She wrote, “ Any congregation can do church. Doing church includes the to-do lists of congregational life—things that every church does that too often become the ends rather than the means. Being church is harder. Being church means loving one another, even when we disagree. Being church means supporting one another through the hard times. Being church means working for justice, rejecting racism, fighting for the powerless. Being church is more important than merely doing church.”

         Listening and doing are inextricably linked for Jesus.  That is the bottom line. One without the other makes for shoddy discipleship. And I would suggest that listening lies at the root of our church vision.  First, we must listen to one another, listen to the cries and whispers of our community both here in Raymond and beyond, listen first and foremost to the One who told us to listen in the first place, the one whose stories – parables - are so wonderful and so true.  Only then we will be discerning disciples who act – who do – out of a deep understanding of Jesus’ mission of compassion, justice, and reconciliation.

         ”Listen, then, if you have ears!”

Mark 3:7-12 "Is There a Doctor in the House?"

         “People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick.  I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts.” “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.”

         That is what Jesus told a couple of nosy and outspoken Pharisees who questioned the authenticity of a self-proclaimed rabbi who would intentionally dine with the likes of tax collectors and their assorted low life friends.  That is part of the story that we heard last week here in church. 

         However, what we did not hear was that Jesus apparently cared nary a whit if his actions flew in the face of strictly observed Jewish purity rules dating back to Moses.  You see, a couple of days later he healed a man with a paralyzed hand, on the Sabbath no less.  You can imagine the uproar that moment of selfless love caused!

         And so from then on, Jesus was known as the compassionate rabbi who was willing to stand up to the theological rigor mortis of first century Judaism.  Not only that, he had the reputation of being a healer for the common folks – for the ones who had no health insurance or primary care physician, the ones who knew that they were broken in body or in spirit (and probably both), that they were flawed and outcast in one way or another, that they needed to turn their lives around and become whole if they were to enter the Kingdom of God that lay at the very foundation of Jesus’ ministry, if they were to be part of God’s dream for the world, an expression of God’s passion.

         Wow!  When did all that occur?  I mean, Christmas is but a few weeks past.  Some of us still have our wreaths on the doors, and yet, so much has happened – particularly when told from the perspective of the Gospel of Mark.

         As Lutheran scholar James Boyce observed, “We seem only barely to have begun, yet in these first few chapters Jesus has whirled through Galilee -- baptized at the Jordan, the Spirit alights on him and God’s benediction of choice is pronounced; he walks by the sea and summons fisher folk to follow, and they fairly leap from their boats in obedient response; he teaches with an astounding authority, but a kind of secrecy enshrouds him which only the demonic seems to recognize; a secret power breathes from him that will not be contained, as witnessed by the numerous events of healing that mark his route. This is Jesus…”

         No wonder, according to Mark’s Gospel narrative, word spread quickly.  No publicity was needed.  The grapevine was very effective.  The goat herder told the shepherd.  The shepherd told his wife.  His wife told her friends when they gathered at the village well in the morning to draw water for the day.  Her friends told their friends and their friends told the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. 

         And the reputation of Jesus soon reached far beyond the Sea of Galilee along which shoreline he often strolled in the early morning hours and near which he had begun to tell stories about God’s dream for the world and had laid his hands upon the physically sick - and sick at heart.  And they all felt better for his words, and many were healed by his touch. 

         The Gospel writer of Mark tells us that people flocked to the little backwater villages that nestled at the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  As Baptist pastor Geoff Thomas observed, “Jesus had begun his preaching a few months earlier by telling people that the rule and power of God – (the) Kingdom – was near, and then (he) manifested the actual presence of the Kingdom in this eruption of healing miracles. These signs and wonders couldn’t be ignored. No one could close their eyes to all that was happening. It was absolutely gripping news, even to people who lived far from Galilee. This was the theme on everyone’s lips, “Did you hear what Jesus of Nazareth did yesterday?” 

         And so women and men came in droves from as far away as Jerusalem, walking over a hundred miles just to meet Jesus. They straggled in from Tyre and Sidon on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the north and west.  They journeyed even further from the southern land once populated by the Edomites near the Dead Sea, and they traveled from Judea. 

         So many were the halt and the lame, the deaf and the dumb, so many were the walking sticks and crutches, the hollow eyes of the blind and the trusted hands of the caregivers, so many were the wheelchairs and the pallets, so universal the cries and the moans – like the buzzing of a million bees – so overwhelming was the loneliness and depression, the emptiness and broken hearts, so piercing the cries of the evil spirits that haunted the demented and spooked the psychotic – so big was the crowd that Jesus instructed his disciples to prepare a boat and be ready to sail away from the shoreline and into the Sea of Galilee should the crowd clamor so much to reach him – be within earshot, close enough to touch him -  that he become overwhelmed and crushed. 

         What is going on here?  Why is the Gospel writer including this little vignette in his narrative?  I think it is a transition tale, a way to let us know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus had achieved rock star status.  Even his adversaries – the demons – knew who he is. 

         The Gospel writer is telling us six ways from Sunday that the world is about to turn – and not just Jesus’ local world. By going to great lengths to tell us exactly where people journeyed from , Mark proclaims that Jesus is on a global mission to make God’s dream a reality, to usher in God’s kingdom, to oppose the forces of evil the world over.  The Gospel writer wants us to understand that Jesus and his mission are big.  This is no small potatoes!

         We do not know whether or not Jesus had to step into that boat.  We do not know if he was able to stand his ground further up on the beach or if he ended up preaching, teaching, and healing in ankle deep water. 

         However, one thing we do know is that Jesus’ ministry began at the shoreline.  It began on the edge.  In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus does not march into the temple and announce who he is and what his intentions are.  He does not journey to Jerusalem and begin his work in the very epicenter of Jewish religious belief and scholarship.  He begins on the margins. 

         Jesus begins small – not with scholars and religious leaders to guide him but rather with a few fishermen and a tax collector – ones who were small in life experience and maybe even smaller in brains.   However, though they hailed from small towns, they were big on commitment and big on following this man wherever the Spirit might lead.  And look what was happening now!  Huge crowds were clamoring to be near Jesus, so many that a safety boat had to be ready to carry him away.

         We too – here in our church - may come with smallness – in numbers, in life experience.  The question is whether we also come with bigness – big on commitment, big on Jesus – as the disciples were. 

        You see, as ethics professor Ted Smith remarked, Jesus does not ask his followers to “add one more task to their busy lives. He calls them into new ways of being." Discipleship then is not a list of things to do, but "a new identity." 

         Imagine: This church business is about a whole new life!  This Jesus thing is no small potatoes!  How that calling will play out for us as a congregation – whether our bigness will win over our smallness – is an important question for us – one we need to take up a bit at our Annual Meeting and into 2018.

         Something else that the Gospel writer of Mark emphasizes in his narrative is the healing power of Jesus in an ancient world of hurt. In my mind’s eye, I picture Jesus stepping into the boat – if only to keep his feet dry – and I imagine this healer balancing in the gently rocking boat, his arms outstretched in an ancient sign of blessing and all the men and women around him standing and kneeling and sitting and lying on the beach, their moans and cries hovering in the air, all those people who sought to be whole and to leave their assorted ailments behind. 

      And I think of all the world’s people today who, like those first century men and women who walked hundreds of miles to find Jesus, all the people today would give just about anything to be healed.  I think of all the people on our prayer list and all the people you ask to be remembered in prayers and all the people whose names you murmur or whisper silently. 

         I think of the ones whose lives and the lives of their families have been irrevocably changed by illness or injury or death – those who are undergoing difficult chemotherapy treatments, who have recently been diagnosed with cancer, those with heart problems, those facing months of rehabilitation, and those who have become reconciled that the way they now are physically is most likely the way they will always be. 

         I think of those with dementia and those whose bodies are just worn out.  And then I think of those whose pain is not visible – those whose marriages are falling apart, those who battle addiction, those who cannot make sense of the world, those who are just plain tired.  Like the people who flocked to Jesus over two thousand years ago, we live in a world of hurt.

         And in my imagined scene I picture those people whose names we know on the shoreline clamoring for Jesus, for the one who, with power unlike any we have ever known, can bring healing, if not always physical healing then at the very least wholeness to any broken life.  And I imagine healing power surrounding them, emanating from the man in the boat.

         And then I re-imagine Jesus in that boat with all those people on the shoreline who travelled such distances to be near him.  And I picture Jesus not only as a man but also as a symbol – a symbol of love, grace, forgiveness, and acceptance.  In my mind’s eye, I envision that same healing power coming forth and surrounding the crowd, ferreting out all the petty malice and resentments they carry, all the intolerance, all the hatred and fear and racism, all the disrespect – and in the holes in their hearts left behind – I imagine a warm gush of compassion flowing in.

         I guess for me the gist of this passage for us today in our church is that our ministry – whether big or small - must always be a ministry of healing.  We too can and must be healers.  Why?  Because there is so much healing on so many different levels that needs to be done. 

         We could do worse than be the church whose mission is healing.  We could do worse than be the church whose mission is that all its programs and ministries lead to wholeness – for those to whom we minister, but also wholeness for ourselves.

         It would not be an easy mission because it would involve more than sitting in the pews on Sunday morning. It would involve a widespread commitment to actually engaging with each other, with our community, and with the world.  It would involve embracing a vision that is anything but small, but a vision that I believe would be authentic and could be deeply meaningful. 

         And my prayer is that we would respond to the “prescription” that  Richard Cardinal Cushing suggested when he talked about the modern church: “If all the sleeping folks will wake up, and all the lukewarm folks will fire up, and all the disgruntled folks will sweeten up, and all the discouraged folks will cheer up, and all the depressed folks will look up, and all the estranged folks will make up, and all the gossiping folks will shut up, and all the dry bones will shake up, and all the true soldiers will stand up, and all the church members will pray up, and if the Savior of all will be lifted up . . .then we can have the greatest renewal (and I would add the greatest healing) this world has ever known.”

Mark 1:14-20 and 2:13-17 "Fan Base"

         About ten years ago, Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired Magazine, wrote an essay arguing that a successful enterprise needs 1000 true fans.  He included a colorful and detailed chart and did the numbers.  But yikes!  A thousand true fans!  Anyway you cut it, a number like that to guarantee success is huge!

         If Kelly’s argument holds water, it goes without saying that the number is especially daunting (if not downright depressing) when it comes to the viability of the American church nowadays.

         However, I like to think that, since the church has survived for over 2000 years, most recently in these post-modern secular times and since half the churches in America these days have less than 75 regular Sunday morning attendees, when it comes to the church, Kelly’s figuring simply does not add up.  In short, when it comes to the church, the magic number of true fans would seem to be much less than 1000. After all, Jesus settled on twelve, and he found that most doable.  Actually he started with fewer than a dozen.

         First, there were the four fishermen he came upon during his solitary early morning stroll along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee.  As he picked his way amongst the seaweed and driftwood, he came upon Peter and Andrew, who were hauling in the last of their nighttime catch.  “Follow me,” Jesus famously said, “And I will make your fish for people.”  “Follow me, and I will show you how to capture people’s hearts.”

         Apparently those were just the words these two young men needed to hear because the Gospel writer of Mark tells us that they followed Jesus without a moment’s hesitation.  We will never know why, but maybe it was the idea of travel and excitement and challenge that hooked them. 

         Or maybe it was their so wanting to get out of the first century Galilean fishing business, an industry that was politically and economically embedded in the Roman imperial culture and taxation system.  According to Biblical scholar K.C. Hanson, fishing was controlled and sustained by either the political hierarchy or elite families (most likely an incestuous combination of both)….these fishermen (like Peter and Andrew and James and John) were (heavily) indebted to local brokers for their fishing rights, boat leases, and harbor slips.

         They were anything but independent businessmen, and so it was not a particularly easy life that Peter and Andrew chose to leave.  And, of course, the same goes for James and John, Zebedee’s sons.  Not only did they leave the fishing industry cold, they left their father and his leased boat high and dry - along with a stack of unmended nets.

         In short, as Reformed preacher Scott Hoezee notes:  “Smelling of fish and looking every bit like the working-class folks that they were, Simon, Andrew, James, and John hitch their wagons to Jesus’ still nondescript program and begin to follow him. Jesus does not tell them where they are going. Beyond some cryptic promise to become “people fishers,” he also does not tell these four the specifics of what they might expect to happen next. He certainly does not promise them riches or rewards or anything tangible whatsoever. Yet they follow - but their doing so hardly is the stuff of great promise or portent.”

         Face it!  When it came to picking disciples, Jesus went out of his way to choose ordinary people to be his fan base.  I mean, he asked illiterate, low class fishermen to do the unexpected things that characterized his mission and ministry.  During the next three years or so, their traditional beliefs and religious inclinations would be challenged.  Though they would on occasion sit at table with wealthy businessmen, more often they would be serving a meal to the poor on a hillside.  They would get kicked out of places and get way too close to lepers for comfort. Their lives would become increasingly complicated and downright dangerous.  And all those people they had been taught to look down on?  They would learn that it was precisely those types living on the margins that were the ones God inevitably favored. 

         Jesus chose ordinary people to be his first disciples.  Surely that is one idea that the Gospel writer wants to convey to us.  And, if we have any doubts about it, Mark also includes another story of Jesus calling someone, and that is the story of Levi the tax collector. 

         Once again, we find Jesus strolling by the shore of Lake Galilee.  He was in the midst of a crowd this time, and so he found himself both walking and teaching - mostly about God and repentance and the dawn of a new age, a new reign, God’s kingdom come to earth. 

        He ended up in town and saw the local tax collector, Levi, sitting in his office, chewing the eraser end of his pencil and furiously calculating the dreaded upcoming tax bills on his abacus.  Jesus stopped, the crowd backing up behind him, bumping into each other.  Jesus stuck his head in the doorway, cleared his throat a couple of times to get Levi’s attention, and then offered his quick one sentence invitation:  “Follow me.”  And just like the fishermen, Levi got up and followed – not even bothering to lock the office on his way out. 

         The men and women listening to Jesus were aghast that he should initiate any sort of a conversation with a tax collector. You see, the crowd might have been largely a group of marginalized folk, but tax collectors were the lowest of the low. 

         As one blogger I read this week wrote, “The actual collection of taxes was contracted out to private tax collectors. A tax collector paid the tax for his entire territory upfront, and collected the individual taxes from the populace later. To make this profitable, he had to charge the populace more than the actual tax rate and the tax collector pocketed the mark-up. The Roman authorities thereby delegated the politically sensitive work of tax collection to members of the local community, but it led to a high rate of effective tax,

and it opened the doors to all sorts of corruption.”  No wonder most of the Jewish populace despised people like Levi.  He was robbing them all blind!

         Levi, however, for his part, was so excited at meeting Jesus’ that he had him over for dinner that very night with a bunch of his tax collector and assorted low life friends.  Some Pharisees (who thought pretty highly of themselves and their grasp of Jewish religious mores) wondered out loud how Jesus, if he really was a rabbi, could justify hobnobbing with such outcasts.  Jesus answered them plainly. 

         He had come for the sick and the needy – and there was no time to lose.  He had come to invite the lowly and the sinners (like tax collectors) into God’s Kingdom that was, he believed, on the brink of becoming real.  The so-called respectable types would have to fend for themselves. 

         You see, the gist of Jesus’ message (at least in the Gospel of Mark) is this:  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  The world is about to turn – and so Jesus needed disciples, followers, to lead the way with him. 

        There is a sense of immediacy unique to this Gospel – and that is another idea that the Gospel writer wants to convey to us.  In fact, Mark uses the word “immediately” or “straightaway” over 40 times in his 16 chapters.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  The time is now – and – even over two millennia later - the message has not changed.  It is the same for us – as individuals and as the church.  The Kingdom – God’s dream – the way life should be - is so close.  It is so within our grasp.

         You know, often we live our lives in response to the time-honored (if not Biblical) adage:  Look before you leap.  As Methodist pastor Alyce MacKenzie notes, we “take days, even weeks, to consider each potential choice, to prayerfully enter into it, to weigh all the implications and all the ramifications.”  We crave preparedness – all the fish off the boat, every last net mended, each tax calculation completed and the abacus put away – all the risks accounted for and controlled.  And perhaps there is a time and a place for risk-free living.

         However, our theological lens this morning – and for these next few weeks of our worship series – is the Gospel of Mark.  And the writer of this Jesus narrative argues for the urgency of Jesus’ message – the need to immediately minister to the sick and the homeless, the need to immediately become peace-makers and reconcilers, the need to immediately turn our sights to who we are as individual Christians and to what our vision is for the Christian church in the 21^st century.  There is no time to lose, and so the writer of this Jesus narrative looks to another time-honored (if not Biblical) proverb:  He (or she) who hesitates is lost.

         Mark wants us to get on with kingdom building.  We may not feel prepared.  We may not be prepared.  Heaven only knows – Peter and Andrew, James and John were not prepared because Jesus was not looking for a few good men to ensure that there was a fish on every plate in the evening.  Levi was not prepared either because Jesus was not looking for someone whose fingers flew over the abacus with no errors. 

         Jesus was looking for folks who, at the very least, were captivated by the wild and crazy idea that here was a man who looked, as Scott Hoezee wrote, looked “like someone who offered…a chance to bring people into that kingdom whose nearness Jesus had been talking about ever since arriving in Galilee.  And maybe the thought of reeling folks in to that better place was just intriguing enough (for) these men to start modeling their lives on the life of the man whom they did not previously know but who seemed to believe (and this is important) seemed to believe in a future greater than could be imagined in that present moment.”

         And so it is with us – as individuals and as this church.  Jesus is not asking to see a resume.  He is not doing interviews and calling references.  He is simply offering that terse invitation – “Follow me” – along with the prospect of a life purpose more significant than any we have ever known. All the preparation we need is just being a little bit intrigued by his message and by the accompanying notion that changing our lives and maybe even our little part of the world deserves a high priority in our busy lives. 

         However, for us as a congregation, I sense that we are not all that sure what our vision is for our church and how we actually go about changing lives in our community and in the world.  My sense is that the first part of our mantra of “small church, big heart” may just be becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Not that there is anything wrong with being small in numbers, but being small in vision, small in energy and commitment, is problematic. 

         We have a couple of very important volunteer positions opening up this year.  We need a treasurer to help us strategize how to manage our money, so we can focus on what the church is all about – loving one’s neighbor.  We need a Missions Coordinator who can ensure that our outreach monies are being spent not only to assist people but also to encourage their independence rather than their dependence and sense of entitlement. 

         There is Jesus work to be accomplished, and Christian ministry to be done and, according to Mark, there is no time to lose. And, in the end, it really all comes back to the fan base.  As communications consultant Mark Behan recently noted in a conversation about churches, “Your greatest asset is the people who are already sitting in your pews.” He would point out that all of you are the true fans of this church. If you do not engage, no one will.  However, Behan would note, if we have a vision and are willing to think outside the box and take risks to follow our calling, then we can do just about anything.

         So – in conclusion, close your eyes for a moment and imagine…You are at the shoreline of your life and the life of this church.  Together we stand in the midst of all possibility. Imagine your feet planted firmly in the sand as you gaze out to the horizon, waiting to receive what comes in with the tide. Imagine climbing into your boat, sometimes rocking in the gentle give and take of church life and sometimes straining against the storms.  Here at the shoreline, we are alive, and anything is possible.  Here at the shoreline, we hear the voice of Jesus calling once again, “Follow me…”

         Are you ready?  Probably not.  But, hey, this is the Gospel of Mark, and the message is this:  The Kingdom is so within our grasp.  The spirit-filled direction of this church lies at our fingertips.  The world is about to turn.

         So - are you ready?  Probably not.  But neither were Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Levi, and Jesus called them, so let’s go anyway.