Now Is the Time!

 Mark 1:14-20

Rev. Monte Marshall 

In April, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference joined with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in a massive direct action campaign to challenge the system of racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.  The effort involved a series of mass meetings, sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and libraries, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping period of the year.  Hundreds were arrested.

On April 10, a state circuit court judge issued an injunction to the stop the protests. 

On Good Friday, April 12, Dr. King was arrested in Birmingham after refusing to observe the injunction.  He was placed in solitary confinement in the Birmingham jail.[1]

On that same day, the Birmingham News published a statement entitled “A Call for Unity” written by eight white Birmingham pastors condemning the demonstrations.  Their statement included these words:  “We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized.  But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.”[2]  In other words, they were saying:  “Now is not the time for justice to be done!”

In his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote this response:  “Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.  For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’  It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.  This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ 

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights.”  Dr. King’s letter then presents a litany of brutal injustices endured by his people at the hands of their oppressors.  He then concludes:  “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.  I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”[3]

I suspect that over the course of human history, in every culture that’s faced radical, transformative change advocated by those on the margins who insisted that “Now is the time,”  there have been have been powerful defenders of the status quo who cried in response:  “No!  Now is not the time!”

This tension is actually found in this morning’s scripture reading from Mark’s gospel.  John the Baptist is in jail.  We find out later in Mark’s story that he’s been arrested by Herod Antipas, the man who ruled over the region of Galilee by the authority of Rome.  He was a puppet ruler.

Antipas could not tolerate the message of change announced by this wild man from the wilderness, so he had John locked up to shut him up.  Antipas was saying, in effect:  “Now is not the time for rabble-rousing preachers who call for change!  This is my time!  This is Rome’s time!” 

By the way, the Greek word translated “arrested” in reference to John’s imprisonment, is the same word used later in Mark’s gospel to describe the arrest of Jesus.  This connection casts a shadow over Mark’s gospel from the beginning—it’s “the shadow of institutional violence,”[4] instigated by those who insist that “Now is not the time!”

Mark then brings Jesus back onto the scene.  We’ve already been introduced to Jesus in the opening verses of Mark’s gospel.  Mark has told us that Jesus is from Galilee and that he was baptized by John in the Jordan River, complete with a vision of the heavens being torn apart and the Spirit descending upon Jesus like a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus “my beloved.”  Mark has also spent all of one verse telling us about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.

But with John locked away, Mark again locates Jesus in Galilee—in this region dominated by Rome and ruled by Herod Antipas.  Jesus is in Galilee—in this “multi-cultural” region with a significant Gentile population living in Greek and Roman settlements established on conquered lands given to high-ranking soldiers and major politicians as the “spoils of war.”  Jesus is in Galilee—in this region of poverty where the “vast majority of the indigenous native population [were] poor” and living “at a bare subsistence level.”  Jesus is in Galilee, in this marginalized region looked down upon by the “sophisticated” religious elites of Jerusalem and Judea.  Jesus is in Galilee, in this region that served as a breeding ground for violent revolutionaries, intent on overthrowing their Roman oppressors and any Jewish collaborators.[5]

And what is the significance of Galilee to us?  One commentator says it well:  “‘Galilee’ is the place where most of us live.  Most of us live not in the citadels of power or in the glare of the bright klieg lights of history.  No, we live in the Galilees of the world, on the margins, in those places where the powers-that-be do not visit and…do not know much about.…We start in Galilee because the Galilees of this life—and the simple…folk who live there—are the places and the people Jesus came to save.”[6] 

And what is Jesus doing while in Galilee?  He’s proclaiming the good news of God.  And believe it or not, this is as a subversive activity.  As one commentator notes, the Greek word translated “good news” is a word most frequently used, in the world of that time, to refer to the great acts of Caesar, as in “Good news!  Caesar is victorious in Gaul!”  But here in Mark, “the ‘good news’ has nothing to do with Caesar, and everything to do with Jesus.”[7]

And what is the content of Jesus’ proclamation in Galilee?  Our translation this morning puts it this way:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  That phrase, “The time is fulfilled,” can also be translated, “Now is the time!”  It can also be translated, “Now is God’s time!” which means:  It’s not Herod’s time!  It’s not Rome’s time!   “Now is God’s time!” 

And why is it God’s time?  Because God’s reign has come near!  God is on the loose.  We see it in Jesus.  So now is the time!  Now is the time for the vision of God’s reign to become a reality in the concrete, here-and-now of life.  Now is the time for justice to roll down waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!  Now is the time for the hungry to be fed, the naked clothed, and the homeless housed!  Now is the time for the oppressed and their oppressors to be set free!  Now is the time for the excluded to be included—the marginalized to be front and center—the broken to be made whole—the diseased of mind, body and spirit to be healed!  Now is the time to reject violence and turn our resources away from producing weapons of war, and toward production of the implements of peace that feed people instead of kill people!  Now is the time!

And yes, now is the time for radical, transformative change.  According to Mark, Jesus puts it this way, in the form of two imperatives:  “repent and believe in the good news.” 

The Greek word translated “repent” literally means “to turn.”  It is a verb “that is plural in number, present in tense, active in voice, and imperative in mood.”[8]  This means that the word “repent” doesn’t just apply to individuals, it also applies to nations and peoples and communities and churches.  The word also conveys urgency:  The time to turn around is now!  And the word conveys a sense of continuous action in which we don’t just repent once, but continually. 

Gary Charles makes this observation about our continual need for repentance.  He writes:  “I wish all our fresh starts would result in totally changed people.  We know better.  No sooner are New Year’s resolutions made than they are broken.  No sooner to we promise to be a kinder gentler nation than we act in ways that betray that kindness and gentleness.  No sooner do we paint the church as a place of high moral value than another minister or priest is arrested for an immoral act while the church closes its doors to human need on its doorstep.”[9] 

So the first imperative in Jesus’ proclamation is to “repent; the second imperative is to “believe the gospel.”  The Greek word translated “believe” doesn’t mean intellectual assent or theological agreement.  It means instead “radical trust”—a trust that involves “all of who we are.”[10]

So when we put all of this together, we’re offered an urgent invitation to change, to “[t]urn around to take hold of something better than we have now…to trust in a future made possible by God”  in which “every old way of living is going to change and every wall of resistance is going to fall.”  Because of this good news, “we are not stuck forever living in ways that knock the breath out of us.”  Because of what God is doing, “we can find a new way to live that is literally a breath of fresh air.”[11]

So, my brothers and sisters, now is the time!  Do we believe it?  Or do we deny it by saying:  “No!  This is not the time” so that we can go on making our own way through life without regard to the reign of God that’s come near to us in Jesus Christ?  Do we believe it? 

Well, the evidence is to be found in the lives that we live.  And how might our lives look when we yield to the change?  Pastor Robin Meyers gives us a clue.  To a group of graduating seminarians, pastor Meyers said this, using the metaphor of “Empire” to encompass every system at odds with God’s reign:  “Not only do we live in the Empire.  The Empire lives in us….But in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, our Teacher and Lord, we do not have to obey the Empire.  We do not have to cower before it, or subsidize it, or be its compliant acolyte….   

“Instead of passing one more resolution about the importance of feeding the hungry, we can simply resolve to actually feed them—and then resolutely go about doing so.  We can refuse to give upon on the lost; we can forgive those who have wronged us; we can reject violence in all of its guises.  We can refuse to participate in the glamorizing of war and tell the gospel truth:  war is sin.  It is the greatest failure of the human species. 

“We can boycott products that hurt workers or children or this earthly garden that has been given to us.  Those of us who have more than we need will share out of our excess with those who have less than they need.  We will not participate in making a scapegoat of our Hispanic sisters and brothers, and we will make arrangements ahead of time to hide an innocent Muslim family should another major terrorist attack occur.  We promise God and one another that we will find ways to withdraw our cooperation from all systems that deal death and diminish dignity…. 

“Every communion table should be open, and all human beings should be welcomed as children of God.  Loyalty to a new ethic, The Way of Jesus, will be our only creed.  And worship will be as diverse as the human family….Instead of pretending to know everything, we will admit that the older we get the less we know, so that we will not confuse faith with certainty or knowledge with redemption.

“We will seek to live comfortably inside our own skins and in harmony with a beleaguered planet.  We will regard the final act of grace to be that which makes a person gracious.  Love of God and neighbor will be more important than arguments over the virgin birth or endless enterprising calculations about the end times.  We will build communities in which no one can be denied access to an experience of the divine.  The final act of love will be to love even the unlovable.  We will do strange and wonderful things that make no sense to anyone and then we will smile when someone wonders why improbably wonderful things keep happening to us.”

Pastor Meyers then asked:  “Can we do this?  Yes we can.  We can do it because it has already been done for us.  We don’t have to make it up.  We just have to turn it loose.”[12]

My brothers and sisters:  “Now is the time; the reign of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!”  Thanks be to God!  Amen.