Good news: the reign of God is on the march and fast approaching! The present form of this world is passing away! For the Lord has repented of the threatened evil and the day of pardon and peace dawns! Therefore: turn around! About face! Re-orient yourselves, so that you join the victory march of the God of love and are not rather left behind in soon to be forgotten darkness! So Jesus enters into the workaday world of Galilee and announces.
This announcement stands over everything that he goes on to say and do. For He himself, this man on a Spirit-driven mission, is advancing in his words and works the very reign of God, penetrating into the workaday world, into the midst of family ties and familiar bonds and mundane concerns of common people. As an annointed king he speaks here with authority; his word commands and is obeyed. He seeks out, he fastens his eye, he chooses: You, drop everything! You, follow me! And just so Andrew and Peter, James and John are conscripted, enlisted, and drafted. A revolution is underway.
Heaven knows we need a revolution. A real revolution, in which the present form of this world with its wars and rumors of war, its Holocausts and Apartheids, its pandemics and famines is passing away. Only let it be the real revolution, not just one more turn of the same old wheel of human lust for power and domination. Let it be the revolution of God!
The gospel call of Jesus is, and it effects, this revolutionary power of God. Jesus brings the true revolution. It is not the French revolution collapses into Napoleon’s military dictatorship; it is not the Russian Revolution with its Lenin and Stalin who grimly drive the people to happiness with an iron fist; it is not even the American revolution, which, in spite of noble aspirations, left the suffering children of African descent to remain under the slave master’s lash. This is a revolution that is qualitatively better. It is not fought with sword and steel, but with Word and Spirit. It does not avenge itself upon enemies but mercifully redeems them, if only they execute the “about face” of soul-searching repentance. It does not derive its energy from hate, but from love excelling, beyond all telling.
Dear Christian: this revolutionary power of God overthrows the tyrannies of this sinful world and brings in God’s reign of freedom, justice and love; therefore it has nothing to do with a phony piety which runs away from daily life in the world. Jesus’ calls to you today, as to Andrew and Peter, James and John of old to follow, but he does not lead you from your place in life, in this present form of the world. Jesus is not like John the Baptist who stands on the border, calling people to come out as if to leave the dirty world behind. But Jesus comes right into the dirty world, right into the midst of an unclean people, right into my life and your life with all our confusions and failures, compromises and hypocrisies. Jesus comes into the Galilee of your life and mine. There he seeks us and there he finds us and there he summons: You, about face! You, follow me!
And where are we to go? Deeper into Galilee, so to speak, in pursuit of all the others still bound by slavish fears of nonconformity to the present form of this world which is passing away! “Follow me,” he says to these fishermen, “and I will make you fishers of men.” His is a redemptive revolution, this coming of God’s kingdom. Here is a merciful justice, this coming of God’s reign. This revolution gives life for death, righteousness for sin, the Spirit of God in exchange for our deathly, fleshly self-reliance. Those called themselves become callers for God. Those chosen themselves become God’s inviters, welcomers, with arms wide open for others. Participating in Jesus’ own mission, see, Peter and Andrew, James and John, you and me -- we are ourselves transformed, made into new beings, who more and more bear the image of the God of love which we see in Jesus who by his own Spirit revolutionizes peoples’ lives.
Now a revolution is not pain-free. Transformation of our lives involves a real, often wrenching turnabout. “Jesus bids a man to come and die,” wrote the German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr under the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” and in so dying to find his true life.” Do you know his story? Although he lived in extraordinary times, he was a mortal human like you and me, like Peter and Andrew, James and John; he felt and loved the ordinary bonds of life: love of homeland, love of safety and comfort, love of a beloved fiancée, love of his budding career, love of his own physical life with its creature comforts. These indeed are all real treasures of human life on this earth. To lose any one of them is to lose something of real value. In 1939 Bonhoeffer spent the summer in the USA. A prestigious academic post was available for him. American friends urged him to stay here in safety. Returning to Hitler’s Germany and wartime life would mean certain suffering, probably death. Indeed, life and safety in America would mean the opportunity further to develop his ideas and have a positive influence on the future.
As he wrestled through these questions, one Sunday he happened to walk into a rather conservative and old fashioned Presbyterian Church in NYC. He listened to these words from our Gospel lesson today and he heard the call of Jesus saying, Dietrich, Follow me. Follow me deep into Galilee, into that land of gathering darkness, into the midst of an unclean people, right there where Satan seems to reign. And so he did. He died on the gallows in a concentration camp just days before the Allied army would have rescued him. His last words to a fellow inmate were: “For me this is the end, but really it is the beginning.”
Jesus bids a man to come and die to the present form of this world which is passing away, and in dying to find true life. I judge it unlikely that you and or I shall be called to make this extraordinary witness of martyrdom, though Christians throughout world today are so called and do so obey: in Nigeria, in Nicaragua, in China and many other places. We should know more, and care more, about these persecutions. No one in their right mind aspires to suffering and the Lord himself teaches us to pray: Save us from the time of trial! There is nothing lovely about suffering and persecution or hanging on a Nazi gallows. Nevertheless, the extraordinary life of the martyr of Christ like Bonhoeffer illumines the ordinary witness that every disciple of Jesus makes in everyday life even in ordinary times where, hidden or visible, the form of this world is passing away.
Are you prepared to drop everything and follow Jesus when cruel language and hateful talk vilifies and degrades those who are vulnerable in our world? Are you prepared to drop everything and follow Jesus when office politics and personal power plays corrupt one and all on the job? Are you prepared in this society whose cathedrals are the malls, and whose values are ever more debased by insatiable binges of self-indulgence, to let all that glitter pass away, in order to follow Jesus in valuing the valueless of our Galilees, in loving the unlovable, in treasuring those who have no treasures in this life?
You are prepared if indeed Jesus is the One who is preparing you, you are able if indeed it is his Spirit who from baptism day to resurrection day is revolutionizing your life. People come to church looking for help with their personal problems, of course; God’s revolution really helps. But it does not help you to adjust to the present form of this corrupt world, which is passing away. It does not help you to go along in order to get along. That would be to cure the sickness with more sickness. But God really helps you by summoning you to leave behind the petty problems entrapping you in the present form of this world, by getting you involved with the mission and ministry of Jesus for others. Self-forgetting Jesus love for others is what really (dis)solves our personal problems. The real self-care is other-care in the context of the beloved community of God where we bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. The social form of God’s revolution takes is to make a community of self-forgetting love in the midst of Galilee; this is the missionary church, a caring community of Christ’s people where the call of Jesus is sounded in sermon and sacrament every Sunday, manifesting the dawning day of resurrection and the new creation. Here ordinary people are step by step changed into the likeness of Jesus.
Our God is in it for the long haul. He is the patient revolutionary. The progress of his kingdom ebbs and flows, though its victory is certain. Now is the appointed time. Today is the day of revolution. God’s kingdom is on the march and calls us to join in. For Jesus has stepped into Galilee. Therefore, the present form of this world is passing away. Game on! The true revolution has begun. Amen.