Mark 1:14-20
Dear Friends, Today we begin this year’s journey with the wisdom and treasures of Mark’s Gospel. When Jesus proclaims the presence of the long awaited kingdom, He unites it to a call for conversion, a change of heart and a change of life for all of us.The kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was rooted in the long passage of the past Jewish experience from Abraham to Moses to David and the prophets. It was also a call into the future. It would be the fulfillment of God’s plan to return us to our original innocence where God’s love reigns over all, both the human heart and the historical reality.
This special plan of God takes place in history where both life and death along with sin and grace are in constant battle. God’s call to justice and love will win out. This is the kingdom Jesus was proclaiming.
In the call of the first disciples, Jesus shows us what is most fundamental to the necessary repentance and conversion. The call is an invitation to a personal relationship with Jesus. He is to be our friend and teacher. He is the greatest gift of the kingdom. Our call is to walk with Jesus. This goes before all rules and practices of our faith. We are called to a radical transformation of mind and heart. The repentance will be a continual and crescendoing process of encountering God’s love in Jesus. Our faithfulness to Jesus urges us on to proclaim the reign of God. As we let God’s grace take over in our hearts, our life becomes a witness to this healing presence of God. Equally important, this presence of God flows from the tension of the personal and historical. It is a process of personal transformation and the renovating power of justice and peace in the social, economic and political lives of suffering humanity.
Mark’s story of Peter and the other disciples is a story of hope and failure, of broken dreams and deeper acceptance of flawed human experience. It opens up to the mystery of divine love. It is a journey filled with the stuff of life in its fear and confusion, its wonder and joy. It rides the roller coaster of the feeding of the five thousand and the Transfiguration along with the denials in the courtyard. The yes to Jesus is always packaged in our human frailty but embraced by a patient and ever-forgiving Savior.
The message for us today is to seek a relationship with Jesus. We need to go beyond the words of the song, “What a Friend I Have in Jesus” to a way of life filled with trust and longing. We need to be ready for the question asked of Peter, “Who do you say I am?” (Mk 8:29) Like Peter, we will have more than our share of difficulty in understanding the command to take up our Cross and follow Jesus to Jerusalem. Also, like Peter, true faithfulness will ultimately show us that Jesus knows best what we need and what our world needs.
This relationship with Jesus must go through many different stages as we learn not only who Jesus is but who we are. Our vulnerability and weakness will blossom in our self-awareness. This gift of self-knowledge will help us to really recognize who Jesus is and how much we need Him in the journey of life. We will slowly discover that it is not in our heroic deeds but in our openness and surrender to Jesus that we will truly be proclaimers of God’s reign. Discipleship is primarily a surrender to Jesus. The only passage into true discipleship is the way of love.
As we grow in this deep-seated relationship and communion with Jesus, our hearts will open up to the second part of the call: to share the gift, to be “fishers of men.” (Mk 1:17)
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