No Time to Waste

 

Sermon Mark 1:14-20 January 24, 2021

No Time to Waste

In the last ten months we have been jumping to schedules and radical changes and learning new ways that have been more than we could handle at times. Nothing before us has been like the way we are living now. 

I watched a Wheel of Fortune show last night that was from Feb 2020. It was so weird! They were standing close to each other and they were spinning the wheel with their bare hands. I was shocked.

And then I realized, oh my gosh-we’re now looking at everything pre-covid era and post-covid era. It’s been a real ride of radical change. Nothing before has turned us to quick thinking actions on our feet that we could be prepared to make. Everyday we keep thinking we have a routine until the call comes to say schools are shut down again. And then the call comes to say they are open again. 

Who in their right mind can keep a schedule like that? 

For some, perhaps life is a perpetual hamster wheel and each day is a desire to fill the moments with something to do. It has been a frustration of how to stay energized and part of the everyday life while staying at home.

We’re all realizing though, that there is no time to waste.

Each day there is new learning, new teaching, new methods. The miracle of new networks of friendships have developed in order to navigate in this way of living we never saw coming.

Thank God for the quick thinkers!

Thank God for the problem solvers!

Thank God for the unflappable mama bears out there!

What these mamas have done is no short of a miracle!

They remind me of the disciples who answered the call of Jesus.

Jumping out of a stable setting and running to something and someone most uncertain because the love in the call was so great-that’s the miracle…

In today’s text Mark, the gospel writer, doesn’t skip a beat to introduce us to Jesus. Jesus is baptized, sent into the wilderness and when he emerges from the wilderness we read that John has been arrested. In the same breath of the gospel writer’s announcement of John’s arrest he writes that Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the ‘good news’.  There is no pause for sorrow for John or even for Jesus to acknowledge the passing of the baton.

For Mark, the movement of the power of God is urgent, radical, and forward moving. The calling of the disciples as an opening act for the ministry of Jesus will give the disciples the authority they need to carry on after Jesus is gone.

Jesus comes to Andrew and Simon first and calls for them to follow him and fills them with a promise of a new vocation. His call to them implies a radical break from their former way of living. Immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus. Jesus places the same call on James and John who not only leave their nets but leave their father as well.

A radical departure indeed. 

They dropped everything and turned to a new way of life. 

Not unlike what so many of us had to do ten months ago and keep doing everyday!

We often get hung up on the ability of the disciples to have the will and the obedience to leave everything behind. But, if our focus is on what they did, then we miss the point of the power of God to change us and to turn us to a new way of life. 

Jesus CALLS them and they come running because Jesus’ call is undeniable and irresistible!

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests we’re missing something if we lay our focus on the yes of the disciples. 

“If we spend all our focus on what the disciples 

gave up and how they were so saintly and self- sacrificing 

we really miss the point of the message. 

These verses are about the miracle of God’s work 

in God’s encounters with people. She says, 

“the power of God to walk right up to a quartet 

of fishermen and work a miracle, 

creating faith where there was no faith, 

creating disciples 

where there were none 

just a moment before.”

Yes, God is at work with miracles within us. Jesus is calling us and we are without any apprehension following him through all that faces us because we understand the power of God.

Kate Huey suggests that we also get hung up on the idea that this disciple making or disciple becoming is something that we do. 

We think if we fix ourselves or shape our lives; 

if we determine our destinies, 

or take hold of the future 

then our independent choice of becoming a follower of Jesus is how we please God. 

But, it is God who works power within us 

and we can’t resist but follow. 

It is beyond our choice but a force so strong we know its right.

Taylor reminds us, “What we may have lost along the way is a full sense of the power of God – to recruit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hapless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God, and smack them upside the head with glory" (Home by Another Way). Whether we're ready or not, God acts.

I honestly believe God has acted in the lives of our saints during these radical times. 

We could not be here today in a secure and strong congregation 

without the miracle of God’s presence 

among us to stir us to action. 

The miracle is that God stirred our hearts 

to give us the strength to say 

that we would be the church through all times. 

God called us out of the darkness around us 

and puts us to work. 

We responded not out of our own ability but the 

strength of Christ within us.

At the PEVA Zoom presbytery meeting yesterday, I learned of all the ways the churches in our presbytery also heard God’s call to them that there was no time to waste. They turned to offering ministry and mission in their communities to meet the needs of many. They redid their food pantries and their child care. There was so much retraining and learning to work together with new technologies and assisting the home bound. Each church had a miracle story. We have our miracle stories.

You see when Jesus comes along and calls to us from the seashore, 

we drop everything and run to him knowing there is no time to waste. 

We are the church because the miracle of his call is still at work within each of us. 

We are the church because the power of Christ is irresistible! 

You see mamas know that when there is a challenge in front of us 

we don’t run and hide, we run to it for the sake of our family. 

Jesus called those disciples and they went running to him. 

They ran to him not because they were leaving anything behind 

but because they were running to him knowing it would be for the sake of many.

The little diddly put together to encourage the church in 2003 at First Pres in Harrisonburg, VA goes like this.

I am the Church

My church is composed of people like me. We make it what it is.

It will be friendly if I am friendly.

It’s pews will be filled (that’s online pews too), if I fill them.

It will do great work, if I work.

It will make generous gifts to many causes, if I am a generous giver.

It will bring people into its worship and fellowship, if I bring them (online too).

It will be a church of loyalty and love, of fearlessness and faith, and a church with a noble spirit, if I, who makes it what it is, am filled with these traits.

Therefore, with the help of God, I shall dedicate myself to the task of being all the things I want my church to be.

 When we see the face of Jesus and hear his voice, there is no time to waste. We come running to shore and follow him. 

Let each of us today heed his call and follow. 

There’s no telling how our lives will be. 

There’s no time to waste. 

Amen.

Resources: NIB Gospel of Mark Pheme Perkins; Barbara Brown Taylor; Working Preacher-Kate Huey 2012

Property of Monica Gould sharing is permitted but not to be reprinted without permission.