A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Epiphany 3B and 4B
The text: None (next is Mark 1:21-28)
While there is no gap in the Revised Common Lectionary this week, there is a jump in the narrative that is worth noting.
After two weeks of call stories, with Jesus collecting disciples, this week we see Jesus dive into the proclaiming the Good News.
Many of those familiar with Mark’s gospel aren’t surprised in the least bit that his gospel has a couple of verses with Jesus calling disciples and then heading straight into the next action. Similarly, those familiar with the baptism of Jesus as entrance into his ministry are like,
Baptism. Check.
Temptation. Check.
Disciples. Check.
Let’s go.
And that’s totally me, by the way.
But I do want to take this small opportunity to linger a little bit, if just for today. To linger on the primary call stories in both the Synoptics and in John. And what it means to suddenly walk into Capernaum as “Jesus and his disciples.”
What I don’t want to get lost.
In our eagerness to talk about the disciples being called to fish for people and getting into our own sense of calling is that small gap between being called to be a disciple and then being counted among the disciples.
Most of us understand this tangibly in our context. It usually involves baptism and in the last decade or so, subscribing to a church’s email list.
But that doesn’t account for all that is happening between
Jesus being like, Hey, come fish with me.
and our being like,
OK.
There’s wrestling about place and fit and skill and what we’re supposed to do now.
I have never met a person who has experienced a sense of call and been like yep, the next ten years of my life are totally mapped out.
Everybody waffles. We’re conflicted, indecisive, and worried about screwing up.
This is not what we see in the story, though.
We see fishermen get the call from Jesus and go. And in John, we see some of John’s disciples hitch on with the real deal. The only one who questions any of it is Nathaneal. And even he gets a quick rebuttal and is converted.
What I’m taking from this isn’t that we’re doing something wrong exactly or that this is “just a story.” But that we beset one another with a priority that the first disciples didn’t have on them.
They, too, had a get-it-right thing going. So that isn’t it exactly.
It’s more that we are a 19,000 times more skeptical than they are. And, I think, 48,000 times more committed to an industrial capitalist economic system and a democtratic republican government. We’re like, Fish for people: OK, I’ll bite. But how’m I gonna make a living along the way, Hoss?
The fearlessness of the disciple’s leap of faith is notable, not just because most of us are more afraid to lose than they are. But because we are far more devoted to the need for personal income. And the call of fishermen to leave their jobs for an itinerant lifestyle has less than no appeal to us.
No, we don’t want to give up everything.
And this is the essential part, I think.
Don’t read this as a put down. At all. Because I’m the exact same way. I like my stuff. I think 99% of us are like the pious young man—we’re all about the commandments until Jesus tells us to sell our stuff, give the money to the poor, and follow him. Then we’re crying because the choice between piety and comfort is a hell of a thing.
Which means the next step is rationalizing. We’ll claim that Jesus wants us to give stuff up spiritually or some other nonsense that lets us keep fat cash in the bank. Or we’ll use the related option: relativizing. We’ll say we’re closer to that ideal than the next person because we give so much away.
As tiring as all of these excuses are, so is the kind of unyielding literalism that won’t be truly satisfied until we’re sackclothed luddites.
[And if you’re one of those gaslighting pariahs talking about why you can’t be that poor if you have a smartphone, just stop. You’re intentionally not working through the process.]
What is rarely mined in this conversation, however, is what we’re being called to and how.
It isn’t about being poor.
It isn’t about our personal vows of poverty or our actions to become poor. In truth, it really isn’t that much about us as individuals at all.
Jesus called those fishermen to do what?
No, not give up their stuff and sit around sad.
He called them to go fishing.
And that call to go fishing led them to leave all that other stuff behind them.
The sacrifice of the old life isn’t a comment on that life. It’s about needing to be reborn. Not just metaphorically, but totally.
We have famous examples of saints throughout history doing this very thing. And what is remarkable about each of them isn’t only the life they led, but all that they gave up to live that life. Often it was wealth and safety.
But we’re still missing something.
The missing ingredient: community.
When Jesus calls the disciples and they drop their nets and follow, what happens?
Pairs of disciples join a community.
At first, it was Jesus and then it was Jesus and two disciples. Then five.
Not one bit of this is solo.
None of these people are reading self-help books and trying to figure out what to do with their lives.
None of these disciples is a solo act.
And this keeps bugging me. That Jesus called people in pairs. He sent them out in pairs. And the first Christians traveled in pairs.
And then, somewhere along the line, we decided solo acts were the way to go. We broke up the bands and let people sing their own songs.
There is some incredible ministry being done by individuals in the world, but setting that as our standard is unChristlike.
But I’m not here to condemn that part of our structure as a whole (though go ahead and work through it on your own! I mean, for real.).
I want to name the more directly related notion that our call is always in and around and about community. Which isn’t about church structure or anything. Or about letting the church meddle with your good ideas. It’s about the very idea of thinking God is having a personal conversation with each of us that has nothing to do with all of us.
And further, the example of the disciples being called in pairs, should get us thinking directly about who we are with each other person.
From called to enrolled
Jesus calls these fishermen. And they follow. We get that. And we get that they buy into the vision and want in.
I also think we understand the communal part, at least in part. But we like to keep it separated. And I think that’s the part Jesus keeps pushing us to let go of.
It is the same thing he teaches about our stuff. Or, more importantly, wealth. When we’re wealthy, we gain on the backs of others. Which means we can’t separate the relational from the personal parts. It is all it all.
Individual wealth is communal poverty.
So we don’t get to think about our own call outside of the world and the mission. We don’t get to talk about our personal walk with Jesus without dealing with what Jesus is doing in the world.
This is particularly difficult for those of us in a tradition that does a lot of interrogation of call.
In places where we do catechumenate classes and expect months of preparation for confirmation. And years of preparation for ordination. We are simultaneously acutely aware of the community and ridiculously tied up in personal, solo development of the individual.
But what we see in the transition between the call stories and the next step in the ministry is a shift from being called to follow to being enrolled in the movement. The rabbi is leading them and they are following as students. The world is their classroom, and they are going through every single part of it together.
I don’t think we need to complicate it more than that.
This is especially important for us at a time when we focus on individuals—who is in charge or who is responsible—that the only example within the movement we get in the gospels is of a whole team or small teams.
In other words, the only one responsible is God. Everything else is we.