"The time is fulfilled. And the kingdom of God has come near. Repent! And believe in the good news!"
When you open the Gospel of Mark, this is the first thing Jesus says. It is not the first thing Jesus does. He is baptized in the wilderness by John. But after John is arrested, Jesus comes to Galilee and proclaims the good news of God.
"The time is fulfilled."
How long does it take for the time to be fulfilled? Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it really takes years. It is like when parents have been waiting for their baby to be born. Think back to that experience in your own life. In ours, we did all kinds of things to get ready. We painted the nursery, we picked out the crib, we went to classes so I could help coach Judy, by making helpful suggestions about how and when to breathe. The weeks and months went by.
We told our friends and family that we were expecting. Judy took special vitamins. I worried that our old car was not right when one lived out in the country and had a baby at home. More weeks and months went by.
Judy went to see the OBGYN. Actually the three OBGYNs two of whom were not members of our church (though one later joined--hi Bob, Charlie and Bob!). We learned about sugar free lolly pops and APGAR scores. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Is this what Jesus means? Yes and no. Yes, getting ready. In His case, He was telling the people that what they had been getting ready for has happened. It has been fulfilled! The people had been looking for and waiting for God's salvation in the person of God who would be with them, and who would somehow bring all of time to its fulfillment. The waiting had been long. Not weeks and months, but years and centuries. Hopes never died but they did dim from time to time. And now, what they had hoped for had happened. In the person of Jesus himself.
We can take Jesus at His word. He is the salvation of all people, as the Old Testament prophets promised.
Or we can make Him something less or other than that. It is up to us, really. And even then, Jesus will do what He chooses to do and accomplish what He means to accomplish, in us and through us, if we are willing, or in spite of us, if we are not. And even then, there is no telling when Jesus is going to come our way and change everything.
"The time is fulfilled" is another way of saying that now that Jesus is on the scene, everything has changed. And is forever changed. Why? Because...
"The kingdom of God has come near."
When you open the Gospel of Mark, this is the first thing Jesus says. It is not the first thing Jesus does. He is baptized in the wilderness by John. But after John is arrested, Jesus comes to Galilee and proclaims the good news of God.
"The time is fulfilled."
How long does it take for the time to be fulfilled? Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it really takes years. It is like when parents have been waiting for their baby to be born. Think back to that experience in your own life. In ours, we did all kinds of things to get ready. We painted the nursery, we picked out the crib, we went to classes so I could help coach Judy, by making helpful suggestions about how and when to breathe. The weeks and months went by.
We told our friends and family that we were expecting. Judy took special vitamins. I worried that our old car was not right when one lived out in the country and had a baby at home. More weeks and months went by.
Judy went to see the OBGYN. Actually the three OBGYNs two of whom were not members of our church (though one later joined--hi Bob, Charlie and Bob!). We learned about sugar free lolly pops and APGAR scores. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Is this what Jesus means? Yes and no. Yes, getting ready. In His case, He was telling the people that what they had been getting ready for has happened. It has been fulfilled! The people had been looking for and waiting for God's salvation in the person of God who would be with them, and who would somehow bring all of time to its fulfillment. The waiting had been long. Not weeks and months, but years and centuries. Hopes never died but they did dim from time to time. And now, what they had hoped for had happened. In the person of Jesus himself.
We can take Jesus at His word. He is the salvation of all people, as the Old Testament prophets promised.
Or we can make Him something less or other than that. It is up to us, really. And even then, Jesus will do what He chooses to do and accomplish what He means to accomplish, in us and through us, if we are willing, or in spite of us, if we are not. And even then, there is no telling when Jesus is going to come our way and change everything.
"The time is fulfilled" is another way of saying that now that Jesus is on the scene, everything has changed. And is forever changed. Why? Because...
"The kingdom of God has come near."
If you have a feeling that the world isn't functioning at its best, maybe that is because the nearness of the kingdom has not been seen, noticed or acknowledged by those who do the busy work of the world. If we look to what else Jesus says about the kingdom of God, what do we discover?
The kingdom of God is a place and a state of being, a place unlike any other and a state of being somehow in sync with God. Jesus came with power to reveal that the Kingdom of God had come upon them. He told them that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus told them that the kingdom of God belonged to the poor. He said that the kingdom of god was like the mustard seed, small almost unnoticed and yet a safe haven for God's creatures. Jesus said that the kingdom was like seed that was growing in secret. And he told some who heard him that they would not taste death before they saw the kingdom coming in power. The kingdom of God was coming close, in the person of Jesus. Bringing the kingdom close was God's doing. And is always God's prerogative. The question then remains, what are we to do...?
"Repent."
That is what Jesus says. Now, before we turn into The Lord High Executioner from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" and start making "A Little List" of all of the offenders who need to repent--remember, Jesus is saying this to each person, individually. Turn around, 180 degrees (that is what the word repent means; turn from sin and death to righteousness in Christ and life). I once had someone say that they had turned their life around "360 degrees"!!! No, I am not making this up (you cannot make this sort of thing up!) Oh, it still makes me giggle. Since a turn of 360 degrees puts you right back where you were.
But how true. Each of us are tempted to do just that, to turn and come down wrong instead of right, back where we started.
We "get" repentance. It is just the "doing" of repentance that is a challenge. So much so that we sometimes forget the rest of what Jesus says:
"And believe in the good news!" Jesus is God's Messiah. Jesus brings the kingdom of God close. Do you believe this? All the repenting in the world is just spinning your wheels until you do.
No comments:
Post a Comment