Today’s devotion is the completion of the devotion by Brian Maas, bishop of the Nebraska Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to prepare us for Nick Wallwork’s upcoming sermon on this text.
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/january-21-epiphany-3b-mark-114-20
Honesty in preaching compels us to inform our hearers, Jesus’ disciples, that faithful living has consequences. It’s important to remind them of that in this very text—that immediately after John is arrested for proclaiming repentance, Jesus’ first act is to proclaim repentance. Preaching has consequences. Faithful living has consequences, too: arrest, repudiation, condemnation, even death—including the death of biases and prejudices, privilege and the insistence on one’s way, one’s ego and one’s facades.
In spite of the consequences, Jesus preaches. In spite of the consequences, the four fishermen follow. Though those four cannot know it in advance, we know (and too often forget) that the consequences of faithful living also include the experience of true resurrection—resurrection to new awareness, new opportunity, new relationships, new life. Something in Jesus’ call, perhaps because they’ve heard and believed the Good News of his preaching, leads them to repent, to set a new course for their lives, and to follow.
Unlike the call of the first disciples that John’s Gospel describes the previous week, most of those to whom we preach are not waiting around, curious for a kerygma to latch onto or a faith leader to follow. They are more like Peter and Andrew, James and John, engaged in the mundane tasks and familiar distractions of their daily lives. Yet for all that, some of them will be ready for a message that catches their attention, for a word that appeals, for the Good News of a freedom from and a life beyond their dutiful dailiness.
“Jesus came to Galilee, preaching,” and four dared to follow, and the world forever changed. That possibility exists still—not in our preaching but in the Good News it contains. Long after John’s arrest, perhaps not so long after the equally abrupt departure of the pastor down the street, this remains our call, and our promise and our hope.