St. Mark, in our Gospel reading this morning, mentions only briefly Jesus’ time of preparation in the desert following his anointing by the Holy Spirit and the beginning of his public ministry. Jesus begins with the words you see there in v15 ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.’ Mark has just described this good news in v14 as ‘the good news of God’: it is Jesus, Mark is saying, who is the one who bears it. And this good news, says Jesus, has ‘come near’: a somewhat puzzling phrase, it is Jesus’ indirect but enticing way of saying that he is the one through whom this good news of God is to be discovered. And the rest of Mark’s Gospel is about people - of all sorts, sometimes the most unlikely candidates, at least in the eyes of the religiously and socially acceptable – ‘coming near’ to Jesus and discovering in him, in his ministry and in his teaching, that God must be working in him in some amazing if as yet incomprehensible way.
So I would like on this first Sunday in Lent just to refresh our memories of the meaning and significance of Jesus’ proclamation here in v15; and then to ask ourselves what this might mean for Christians today in a society that, increasingly, sees neither any ‘good news’ about Jesus, nor any need for him anymore, and most certainly sees no need to ‘repent’.
For his first listeners, the term ‘ God’s good news’ would have conjured up in their minds the twin ideas of rescue and kingship: this was to be the happy ending of their story, the story of the Jewish people, that God would one day return as their rescuer and reigning King. Obviously there were many ideas about how this might come about; and they were largely about the exercise of force and in triumph. But they were all going to be in for a big surprise: their God was going to act not with force and in triumph as the world understands these things but in humility and in grace in order to win people back to him.
‘The time is fulfilled’, says Jesus – it’s what you have been waiting for: the time when God himself would take charge has arrived. This story, this hope of rescue and reign, had sustained the Israelites for 100s of years; it was the story Jesus grew up with; and here he arrives saying that the time, the long awaited time of rescue and of God’s kingly reign, is ‘fulfilled’. And then he begins, through the chapters of Mark’s gospel to prove it, to ‘come near ’, that is to say God’s kingdom will be discovered in Jesus, in his ministry, in his teaching, in his claims about himself. But they would all be in for a big surprise.
Interestingly - and important for us to understand about the nature of God’s kingdom - is that Jesus’ frequent feastings with people (especially, as we know he was accused of, with society’s dregs and pariahs) were as much ‘signs’ of the kingdom as were his healings: this was part of what it meant for God to become King in the lives of ordinary people. It is as if he were saying in all this, ‘I know life is awful but you are looking for your answers and solutions in the wrong places. You must start by being with me, watching and learning, enjoying my company – and, we would have to add, those people whose company I enjoy but whom you treat as outcasts. But also – and here lies the stumbling block for many, as it always has been - you will not be able to enjoy, let alone properly appreciate, God’s rescue and rule unless, v15, you ‘repent and believe’. As someone once said, ‘The biggest problem in life you will ever have to deal with stares out at you from the mirror every morning’. And that is why we must repent if we want to be members of God’s kingdom.
So, some action is required by us if we are to participate, to enjoy, the perfect rule of God in our lives; a rule which can set us free from all those things of which we are either rightly ashamed or jolly well ought to be; a freedom we all need – and, especially perhaps, those who think they don’t.
The ‘Commission for truth and reconciliation in south Africa’ had this slogan. ‘No future without forgiveness’. So often we have to start by allowing God to forgive us and by forgiving ourselves, not just other people, if we want to make any progress in the Christian life: we must not let either our shame or our pride prevent us from this vital step. Jesus is always on hand to help: we just have to ‘ask and obey’ as the old hymn goes, ‘cause there’s no other way’. Don’t fight it – ‘let go and let God.’
As you have heard me say on many previous occasions, Christianity is counter-cultural; it is not what everyone wants to hear. Jesus challenged and offended; He upset the apple cart of the status quo; He welcomed legitimate enemies -this good news was for them too! Jesus’ ministry was a poke in the eye to the religious leaders, the social elites, and the politicians; no wonder they wanted to do away with him for a whole host of reasons.
I’m sure I’ve said before that the biggest problem people have with the Gospel is not an intellectual one but the moral one: the one that asks them, challenges them, to this act or action of repentance. Indeed, I would go far as to say that a person cannot understand – however intellectually gifted they are -God’s ‘good news’ unless they are willing to repent, to ask God’s forgiveness and to be willing to forgive others. They cannot. Instead, without this willingness to be forgiven and to forgive, what they believe, what they think is the Christian religion turns out to be little more than an imaginative construct of their own particular social, political, and other personal prejudices, which usually manifest themselves in quite strong emotionally charged arguments against the plain teaching of Scripture, with debilitating and dangerous consequences for their understanding of Jesus’ teaching, for their understanding of who Jesus was, and for the nature and meaning of his death and resurrection.
This is particularly evident in many comments I come across in the church and the world from people on moral issues today. And I am delighted and encouraged to find myself batting here on the same side as the Chief RABBI even if, at the same time, I find myself facing googlies and dousras from some in the house of bishops. .. but that is the church of England for you today!
The Chief Rabbi, in his refreshingly clear and simple way, explains that we cannot construct the moral life on the two simple popular and vote-catching principles of FAIRNESS and THE AVOIDANCE OF HARM. Life is just not that simple. Our natural British tolerance prefers such a ‘live and let live’ approach to morality, but, as he says, there is more to morality than being nice to people, especially when the tolerating of or indulging of other peoples’ preferences leads to their own diminishment as human beings made in the image of God or, worse still, to the diminishment and even death of others. The individualistic supermarket approach to morality sounds great but of course inevitably fails because it is just that -individualistic and supermarket. It has no coherence to offer society, no framework for a stable and healthy environment in which all can grow to maturity in love.
So much of what we term today ‘freedom of choice’ is in fact, in practice, and in consequence just an excuse to enslave and ruin the lives of others, especially the weak, the helpless, the impressionable, and the vulnerable.
What is so harrowingly frightening about what is regarded as morally acceptable today is the refusal by ordinary, everyday, decent people and even Christians to act as ‘neighbours’ and to intervene, albeit to their cost. Hard cases make bad law; and when, out of a misguided sense of sympathy for those whom we know or like, we create, by default, by naivety or disingenuousness, a living hell for others, we become responsible. To say that I am not my brother’s keeper or that another person’s moral or religious preference is no concern of mine is no argument in the court of God’s love for all. It may be very British; it may make us popular; but it is something this Lent of which we need to repent. Ignorance is no excuse, whether ignorance of Jesus’ teaching or of the facts and consequences surrounding the popular moral imperatives that run counter to the law of love; the law of love, that is, as defined not by modern secular liberal atheists but by the two great commandments.
Lent is a time to sobre up and toughen up spiritually and morally. If this means that we have to do some honest and painstaking research into some of the moral mazes we face at the moment, then so be it. For such research there are, for the Christian at any rate, but two fundamental guides, two guides by which the integrity, the authenticity, and the health, both individually and socially, of claims within these moral mazes may be judged...and these are, as I have said, the two great commandments. Leave these out of the discussion and our answers will be informed by all those popular but unreliable moral guides that, as the Chief Rabbi so convincingly argues, are failing and, in many cases, destroying family,
marriage, and the sanctity of life.
The Christian faith once rescued an empire from the destructive depravity of a self-indulgent moral and religious supermarket that thrived on fear, fatalism, and the ultimate futility of human life. Christianity brought the ‘good news’ of the kingdom of God in which love cast out fear, the sure hope of eternal life replaced fatalism, and where every human being, even one’s enemies, were to be seen as made in God’s image, and therefore valued as equals before him: this is the very heritage that is under attack from the more popular canons of atheist science, of individualism, and of secular libertarianism.
We need to use this season of Lent to refresh our knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ, and to make Him ‘Lord’ of our thinking. If we do this honestly and faithfully I will be astonished if we do not find a number of contemporary moral issues that we will be led to view in a very different light and indeed need to repent of if we want to be faithful disciples and active participants and effective, fruitful disciples in the Kingdom of God today.
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