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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Pilgrim’s Facilities Coordinator Brady Gage and I this past Wednesday talked a little about leaving the cold-water faucet in the small kitchen running over the last few extremely cold nights, in order to prevent the pipe from freezing, but in that same conversation we talked more about fishing—fishing technology, technique, technicalities, and the like. Pilgrim has a number of people who both like to fish and do fish recreationally, whether for pleasure, sport, or food. And, speaking of fish for food, my extended family’s meal last Saturday evening on Galveston island included some fresh gulf red-fish, though it was caught commercially by professionals, professionals like brothers Simon and Andrew and James and John in today’s Gospel Reading. Yet, even with the figurative connection between their then-present vocation as fishers of fish and their future vocation as fishers of people (BAGD, 37), today’s Gospel Reading is not primarily about their fishing but is primarily about all people’s—including our—repenting and believing, related as it is to fishing. As God through the prophet Jonah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jonah 3:1-5, 10) led the people of Nineveh to repent, as God through the apostle Paul in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 7:29-35) tried to secure undivided devotion to the Lord, so, in today’s Gospel Reading, after the arrest of John the Baptizer, who had proclaimed and practiced a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4), Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming and calling disciples, who later would themselves proclaim that all people—including us—“Repent and Believe”.
Even though we do not hear them all in our three-year series of appointed Readings, all four Divinely-inspired Gospel accounts, in one fashion or another, report Jesus’s journey into Galilee, His ministry there, and His calling disciples, as we heard St. Mark’s Gospel account report in today’s Gospel Reading (confer Matthew 4:12-22; Luke 4:14-22; John 1:35-51; 4:1-3, 43‑46a). However, St. Mark’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account uniquely refers both to Jesus’s preaching “the Gospel of God” and to Jesus’s telling people to “believe the Gospel”. Jesus’s preaching “the Gospel” is understood in a broad sense as consisting of both Jesus’s telling people to “repent”—with “repent” understood in a narrow sense as their recognizing their sins, feeling heartily sorry for them, and desisting from them (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration V:8)—and Jesus’s telling people to “believe the Gospel”—with “the Gospel” in that case understood in a narrow sense as their believing that they have a gracious God, not by their own merits but by the merit of Christ, when they believe this (Augsburg Confession V:3).
Although we did not explicitly hear Jonah, Paul, or John the Baptizer do so, Jesus proclaimed “Repent and Believe”, and the so-called “fishers of people” likewise were both to show people their sin and to show people their Savior from sin. That “fishers of people” figure of speech is said to “almost certainly” come from a passage in the book of Jeremiah (Mann, ad loc Mark 1:17, p.209; confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:16-18, p.184). In that Jeremiah passage, the Lord says that He is sending many fishers, who will catch the people of Israel, and many hunters, who will hunt them; for, the Lord’s eyes were on all their ways, He says; their ways were not hidden from Him, nor was their iniquity concealed from His eyes; the Lord was going to doubly‑repay their iniquity and their sin, because they had polluted His land with their detestable idols and filled His inheritance with their abominations (Jeremiah 16:16-18; confer Voelz, ad loc Mark 1:17, pp.153-154). You and I may not sin exactly like the people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day, but we are just as sinful by nature, and we certainly sin in other ways. Our sinful nature and our actual sin warrant both our deaths here and now and our torment in hell for eternity. We need first to be caught in the “negative” sense of being “caught” in our sin and being sorry for our sin, in order for us then to be caught in the “positive” sense of being “caught up” in the forgiveness of our sin through faith in Jesus Christ.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading, God through Jonah gave the people of Nineveh forty days. As St. Paul says in today’s Epistle Reading, the appointed time had grown very short, and, as he says elsewhere, now is the favorable time; now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). As directed and enabled in today’s Gospel Reading, we “Repent and Believe” today, when God is still enabling us to “Repent and Believe”. When we “Repent and Believe”, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, for Jesus’s sake. As St. Mark uniquely reports in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said the time was fulfilled. God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Galatians 4:4). As John the Baptizer was arrested, so later Jesus was arrested (Mark 14:43-52). Jesus was crucified, and, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). Jesus’s death and resurrection are the content of the Gospel in its narrow sense, so much so that in St. Mark’s Gospel account Jesus and the Gospel are essentially equivalent (Mark 8:35; 10:29). And, Jesus’s death and resurrection are for us, they are the basis of God’s grace for us, and so they are the basis of our salvation. The Gospel of God’s forgiveness by grace through faith in Jesus Christ truly is good news, and we believe it! We believe that God has forgiven us individually for Christ’s sake (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XII:45). In Christ, God loves each of us individually, who otherwise might be considered unlovable, so, in Christ, we can love ourselves, and then, in Christ, we can love our neighbors as ourselves, no matter the neighbor’s age or mental or physical health.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God was “at hand”, the English Standard Version put it; other translations have Jesus say that the Kingdom of God is “near” (NIV) or “here” (AAT). Truly the Kingdom of God is “here”, not only in this time but also in this place. The Kingdom of God is here in His Word read and preached. Notably, in the Old Testament Reading, after Jonah is said to have called out, the people are said to have believed God, Whose Word Jonah preached and Who was Himself “there” through that Word. The Kingdom of God was “there” in His Word read and preached by those called as disciples and later sent as apostles (Mark 3:13-19; 6:7-13), and the Kingdom of God is here in His Word read and preached by those apostles’ successors, pastors today. The Kingdom of God is here in His Word with water in Holy Baptism. The Kingdom of God is here in His Word with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution. The Kingdom of God is here in His Word with bread and wine in the Holy Supper, present with Christ’s Body and Blood given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins, as Zylan Blake finally will receive this morning for the first time.
You may know that Zylan likes fishing, and he was caught, as it were, in a net cast by Pastor Lowery more than fourteen years ago. Zylan’s time of catechesis before Confirmation is fulfilled, though his time of catechesis after Confirmation, like our time of catechesis after Confirmation, is never filled this side of eternity. Maybe Zylan later will be a professional fisher of fish, or maybe he will be a professional fisher of people; we pray, whatever God-pleasing profession Zylan might have, that he faithfully keep his vow to continue in his confession and the Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than to fall away from them. As in the Gospel Reading, so now, professional fishers of people are needed, and all people should consider both how they themselves might serve in a church‑work vocation and how those whom they know might serve in church-work vocations. Whether or not we all are called by our Lord to leave our extended family and the family business in order to follow Jesus and eventually be sent out by Him, as were the brothers in today’s Gospel Reading, God can use our words and deeds to shine the light of His love into the darkness of the lives of the people whom He places around us in our various vocations. And, when we fail to shine the light of His love into their darkness, or when we fail in other ways, as we will fail, then, daily repenting and believing, we live both in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and in the forgiveness of sins that we in turn extend to one another. Our believing in the Gospel gives us real joy already now, even if we will not experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God until the Last Day that never ends.
You may know that I personally do not like fishing for fish, which dislike is a problem for some people, given that fishing for fish is used figuratively for the Office of the Holy Ministry’s fishing for people, which fishing I do like. Thinking about passages such as today’s Gospel Reading, however, we really do not know to what extent even those brothers “liked” fishing for fish, especially James and John, for whom fishing for fish seemed to be the family business. Regardless of our like or dislike of fishing for fish, what matters is that we do as Jesus consistently through His ministers, His fishers for people, directs and enables us to do, and that is, namely, “Repent and Believe”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +