Epiphany 3, Year B, 2024: Mark 1:14-20

My cat, Scribbles, is allowed in every room in the house except for one. She is not allowed in the office. If she gets in, she eventually climbs up behind my husband’s desk, will end up in a drawer, and will get stuck. Every time. She could go literally anywhere else in the entire house. But she spends a good portion of her day sitting outside that office door, mad that she can’t get in, and waiting for any opportunity for the door to be open for a little longer than we should leave it open so she can slink in.

We like to think we’re smarter than cats. We at least have some more logic, right? But when it comes down to it, the cat disobeys me for the same reasons we disobey God. She thinks she knows better. She really wants to do what she wants to do. She doesn’t remember how badly it went last time. Even when she does remember - which I know she does because she runs away as soon as she sees the spray bottle, not even waiting for the water to come - she still tries because maybe I won’t catch her this time.

Now, I know our world is more complicated than Scribbles’ world. I’m quite aware that we have bigger temptations than wanting to get into an office - and bigger consequences than a spray of water. But sometimes, we have to take the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid, and apply it to our way of thinking. Simplicity can help keep us from getting so caught up in the complications of life that we spin out - or get overwhelmed and check out. And, after all, an attribute of God in classical theology is simplicity - meaning God is God, not a sum of any parts. God is one God, and this oneness and unity extend through God’s entire essence. God is, simply, God.

And God recognizes how much we struggle with obedience. Obedience, or perhaps humanity’s lack thereof, is a theme throughout scripture. Sometimes our disobedience is active, like in the story of Jonah - the part before today’s text. In the first three verses of the book of Jonah, “the word of the Lord came to Jonah…saying, ‘Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” (1:1-3) The text doesn’t say why Jonah doesn’t want to go to Ninevah until he’s yelling at God like a petulant child for being too forgiving of the people in Ninevah, but it really doesn’t matter why. In the words of my colleague Fr. Sam, “if God tells you to do something, you gotta do it!” None of Jonah’s reasons why he shouldn’t do what God  told him to do matter. Scripture operates under the assumption that God knows better than each of the individuals, communities, or nations who oppose God’s will, and we continually see the repercussions of humanity acting against the will of God.

Sometimes our disobedience is frustratingly obvious, and when things go bad you can’t help but shrug your shoulders and say, “well, what did you think was going to happen?” My daughter was in the habit of running on the wood floors in socks. You might imagine how that ended. Every time. And it happened so often that when she would fall, we wouldn’t even have to say anything as she would say, “well?” And the story of Israel is maddeningly similar. In a nutshell, God said, “don’t do this”, the people did it, things went badly. Rinse and repeat.

But oftentimes, it’s not as clear as “God said this, I did the opposite.” Sometimes our disobedience is more sinisterly subtle. Sometimes we have to really think through all of the implications of our actions to even realize we’re not obeying. Oftentimes our choices indicate a tacit acceptance of the status quo that we might not even realize we’re communicating. For example, what we choose to do with our money communicates to those around us where we put our values, which can be so complicated in a globalized economy. In the words of the late sports television producer Don Ohlmeyer, “the answer to all of your questions is money.”

And that, of course, brings us to Jesus. Jesus, who had a lot to say about money. It’s something we’re clearly obsessed with and it’s also something concrete that can be counted, so you would think it wouldn’t be so easy for us to try to weasel our way out of Jesus’ directions.

Jesus shows us, in his earthly ministry and his passion and death, what it looks like to live a life of perfect obedience. But Mark doesn’t start with Jesus’ obedience. Other Gospels have Jesus doing a lot of talking before he starts calling disciples. To compare between the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Matthew has John the Baptist argue with Jesus at his baptism, Jesus has a verbal sparring match with Satan in the desert, then calls disciples in the middle of Chapter 4. Luke describes a similar sparring match with Satan, then Jesus does some teaching and healing, and doesn’t call any disciples until Chapter 5. But Mark has things to do. Mark was the first Gospel written and it’s as if he is exploding with urgency about this Good News and wants to get right to it as fast as he can. There’s no birth narrative, no genealogy, Jesus enters into a story that, without the first verse of the Gospel of Mark saying this story is about Jesus, seems like it is about John the Baptist. John does all the talking at first. Even at Jesus’ baptism, the only speaking role is the voice from heaven. Nobody talks during the temptation in the desert. 40 days pass by quickly in two verses. Mark assumes his readers know something about John the Baptist because he dates his next section, the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson, by saying, “after John was arrested.” And then we finally start hearing from Jesus, who is proclaiming the Good News.

Even though Jesus hasn’t said anything yet, all that has been written in the opening 13 verses certainly lets the reader know that this is someone to listen to. Someone to obey. In Mark’s telling, neither Simon and Andrew nor James and John have all of this information. Could they know about what happened at Jesus’ baptism? Possibly, but the text doesn’t say anything to suggest that. Simply that Jesus came, Jesus called, and they obeyed. And in the same way as it doesn’t matter what Jonah’s reasons were for not listening to God, Simon and Andrew, James and John, their practical or impractical reasons for listening to God by following who Mark has told us is the Messiah, are also irrelevant. They followed God because God is God. We know how messy the disciples’ journey will be, how they will go back and forth between being model pupils and messing up and repenting and returning to the Lord - as Jesus says to do today in his proclamation, “repent, and believe the good news”, their story starts with hearing God’s call and obeying.

What is even better news, is the way in which Jesus tells us to repent and believe. They are both present imperative active verbs in Greek. What that means is that it is commanding ongoing action. That believing and repenting are not one-time things. They are ongoing actions that we are instructed to do continually. Jesus knows we will mess up. We know we will mess up. But as part of our active, continual returning to God for guidance - and then following that guidance - we, like those first disciples, can work to live our lives in obedience to the living God. Amen.