God’s Looking Out For You

I don’t know if you have had this experience, but you have to get up early in the morning.  There is a flight that you have to catch, or a train, or there is a meeting that is important, or an exam you have to take.  You set your alarm particularly early in order that you don’t miss it.  Having set the alarm, you roll over and go to sleep, only to find out that throughout the night you get up almost on the hour every hour to make sure:  a) you haven’t missed it, and b) that the alarm clock is still working.  After a night of completely disrupted sleep, finally you start to nod off – and the alarm goes off!  You have no rest, you have waited for the alarm to blast, and you are exhausted.  I’m sure this has that happened to you, too!  

When that alarm goes off, we are shocked.  It gets us to our feet, we get going, but we have been waiting for it for hours!  I think the beginning of Mark’s Gospel is just like an alarm clock.  It is different from any of the other stories of the life of Jesus.  Some of them were about, for example, the story of the birth of Jesus in Matthew or in Luke.  John has a great, big, long prologue to introduce the ministry of Jesus, but Mark sets off with an alarm clock – he goes right to the beginning of it says the writer Ted Smith!  He wakes you up immediately.  The Gospel begins, and Jesus is all fired up and on the scene. No prologue, no preparation, Jesus starts his ministry and he begins by calling the disciples.

Mark is capturing what the life of Jesus was like.  For all the prelude, for all the birth narratives, for all the stories of Jesus being at the Temple, none of that really mattered for Mark  What really mattered was when Jesus’ ministry began, burst on to the scene, got everyone’s attention, and he did it by starting to call people.  The whole of the Gospel at the beginning is about timing.  The wake-up call, the timing of everything has been set by God.  It is almost as if God has been moving the hands of the alarm clock to set the wake-up time, to get things in motion, to get peoples’ attention, to get them ready.

If we look at time in Mark’s Gospel, what is fascinating is that the timing is everything.  When we look at the arrival of Jesus, the writer Paul says in Galatians (4:4) that it was “the fullness of time.” In other words, it was the right moment. Everything had come together as it should for the arrival of Jesus.  Now, if I could be so crude today, on Super Bowl Sunday, to use a sports analogy, everyone who plays sports knows that it is timing that really makes greatness.  It is timing that is more important than strength, more important than any other skill.  If you have timing, in tennis you can hit the ball correctly, in golf you can hit it powerfully, in football you can throw it properly, in skating you can jump at just the right time.  The thing that separates very often the truly great players from the ordinary players and the great teams from the ordinary teams is timing.  When your timing is right, then the power comes naturally and the game is won!  When the timing is right, everything else falls into line.

The timing of Jesus coming was right.  Israel had a great history. It lived with God; it had been corrected by God; chastened by God; followed by God; led by God.  It had the kings, it had the queens, it had the prophets, it had the teachers, it had the priests, and it had moments of agony and moments of ecstasy.  Israel had such a vibrant, loving, powerful relationship with God.  But even they knew that there was a sense of expectation in the air.   There was this Messianic hope that God was going to do something more and different than ever done before.

It seemed as though before Jesus burst on the scene that those seeds of expectation were in fact starting to grow in the ground.  Israel was getting ready.  It knew that a new time was coming, but it didn’t know what form it would take.  Finally, according to Mark, at the right time – “in the fullness of time” – Jesus comes.  It is as if they had been tossing and turning all night, knowing something great was going to happen, getting ready for something powerful, and suddenly the alarm clock goes off, Jesus appears on the scene and everything changes!  When Jesus burst on to the scene, they knew that this was God’s timing, maybe not their own, maybe not established according to their own principles, maybe not quite in keeping with their own schedule, but God’s timing had come in Jesus.  That timing was everything!

Look how dramatic it was:  Mark recalls that Jesus didn’t come on to the scene with some wise words, he didn’t come on with a manifesto, and he hadn’t prepared many things in advance.  Some scholars have suggested that the story of the call of Jesus was what they call “telescoping.” In other words, that Jesus had probably been around and met with different people, and had a reputation before he started to call those first disciples.  But there is no sense of that in the text.  On the contrary, Jesus just bursts on to the scene and in the midst of the ordinary lives of the people, commands them, calls them, saying, “Follow me.”

There is quite a bit of debate about who these disciples were.  Clearly, Andrew and Peter and James and John became famous in the Church. Those who read Mark’s Gospel afterwards would have known that these were major players within early Christianity.  But at the time who knew who they were?  Some have suggested that they were just poor fisherman.  There was no such thing as a poor fisherman in Galilee at that time.  In fact, the text gives us clues that Andrew and Simon Peter and James and John might have been by their standards quite affluent.  For example, Peter owned his own home, and not everybody did that.  Peter’s home became the centre for Christians to gather, so it must have been large enough.  Peter’s mother stayed with him, so it must have been a large enough home to accommodate his family.  James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were the sons of somebody who owned not only one boat, but many boats.  And we are told – and this is quite interesting in Mark – that when James and John decided to follow Jesus the hired help was there to help Zebedee and the family.

My point is that Andrew and Simon and James and John were not people who just thought, “Oh, here is something that is going to take us out of our misery” or ‘We will follow him into and our lives will change for the better.”  On the contrary, Andrew and Simon Peter and James and John were prepared to disrupt everything in their lives for the sake of following this Messiah.  In that very moment, in that very encounter, God had spoken to them in such a profound way that they knew in their hearts that this was the right thing. They knew they had to leave the security of the place where they worked in order to go where God wanted them to be.  We are told that they went “immediately.”

In a great children’s story, this morning Katherine had the children do an exercise.  They were all gathered here on the steps, and she got up and said, “Come on everyone, follow me!” and she walked down the aisle, and every single one of the children went with her.  They didn’t even bat an eye!  Immediately, they went and followed her down the aisle.  Why?  Probably because they love her.  Maybe they are terrified of her.  Who knows?  I nearly went myself – I am so terrified of her!  Off they went down the aisle, every one of them.  And. they did so immediately.  She said, “That is how the disciples went.”  This is because what they knew when they encountered Jesus was that the alarm clock in their lives went off.  This is the moment for me to go.  This is the moment to leave behind family and shelter and home and do what God wants me to do.  This is the moment!  Follow me – immediately.  Three times that Greek word euthyos appears in this passage:  right away, immediately, no delay.

I was reading another wonderful biographical piece this week about one of the most famous eighteenth century people.  He might not be known to any one of you, but here is a bit of news for you, you probably wouldn’t be here in this church if it wasn’t for him.  Now that’s got your attention!  His name was Thomas Coke. Coke was a wealthy English law student.  He had completed his Doctorate of Law at Oxford.  He was a brilliant man looking to have a great academic career in the teaching of law and jurisprudence, one day he went to hear an itinerant preacher called John Wesley, who was on campus.  John Wesley, himself an Oxford student, began to preach, and as he preached, Thomas Coke immediately decided he wanted to follow the teachings of Wesley.  He gave up his legal career immediately, and he asked to receive ordination.

He went through studies, became ordained as an Anglican priest, and went to an Anglican parish that was a little bit stuffy and dying.  When he went there he said to the Rector, “You know, it would be good if we had some missions in this place and reached beyond our own selves.” But no, they were so wrapped up in themselves and their own parish life they said, no.  And, on Easter Sunday, they fired him.
 
Thomas Coke then immediately went to John Wesley, and John Wesley said, “I will send you somewhere.”
 
In the meantime, Wesley went to the Bishop of London and said, “There is this country called America, and there is a reason why we should be setting up bishops and sending them to the Americas.”

The Bishop said, “No.  America is not going to amount to much.”  (Now there’s a clever guy – right?)

Thomas Coke said to Wesley, “I am willing to go where you want me to go.”

Wesley laid hands on him, made him a Bishop, completely illegal by the way – no protection under the law unlike the Dissenters who had some protection.  This was seen as schismatic, and Coke went off to the newly formed United States.
When he got there he started to preach and he moved around the country.  One day, he wrote a letter to George Washington, the new President of these United States.  He said:  “I am seeing problems in the country, and one of them is slavery.  I am seeing social problems and spiritual problems in the nation, and I would like to meet with you.”  George Washington agreed.  He actually met with Thomas Coke twice.  He was so impressed by this five-foot-one-inch little man, who was nicknamed “The Flea”, that he asked him to address the newly assembled United States Congress.  This man preached to the United States Congress.  He got into the seat of power but he had gone in the name of Jesus Christ.

Thomas Coke went on to do all kinds of things.  He went to help the Christians during the revolution in Paris.  He travelled all over the world from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone.  He even had a mission in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.  He was so worried about the pastors in Nova Scotia that he demanded that the churches provide winter long underwear for them.  Clearly, my colleagues today in Nova Scotia are wearing their long underwear in this storm.  He set up Methodist churches all over.  Finally, in sailing to Sri Lanka after the death of his second wife – he lost two wives who had gone with him on all these missions throughout the world – he died on a boat.  Francis Asbury said of him, “He was one of the truly great people of the eighteenth century, and one of the great Christians of all time.”  Look what happened:  he went immediately when he was called by God, and, look what he did!  
 
My friends, I am convinced in so many ways that call of God, that call of Jesus to people is something that fundamentally changes lives.  The question we have to ask ourselves is, is this in any way applicable to us?  Is this just an historic moment, as some would argue, that only called Andrew and James and John and Simon Peter for the sake of establishing the Church and being the Apostles, and maybe that was the moment that only applied to them.  I don’t think so.  The reason I don’t think so is because I see how over the years that call of Andrew and James and John and Simon Peter has resonated throughout the history of the Christian Church.  I don’t think Mark set this as the alarm clock at the beginning of his Gospel because he just thought it was for then.  The urgency of the call of God in Christ is there for all time.

That means at times we have to make decisions.  Oh, I understand that even the faithful can become complacent and feel there is no need to make a decision anymore because you have already decided to be a Christian.  Or maybe you want to know a little bit more in order that you could be a better informed Christian.  Or maybe you are just genuinely seeking or searching.  If you are listening on the radio today and you are saying “Is this call of Christ for me?”  Well, let me tell you this, in every part of life there is a need to make decisions.  We never stop making decisions.  There is not a moment in our life when we can say, “We are so arrived that no decisions need to be made.”
 
There is a glorious, humorous parable told in Christianity Today about how we all need to make decisions right up until the end of our lives.  It is the story of a man who is left in a will a great deal of money, millions of dollars. At the time he is living in South America and he wonders, “Should I live in Brazil or should I live in Chile?  I have no home, and I will choose one or the other.”  He chooses Brazil, only to find that the economy in Brazil was actually going into the tank, and the economy in Chile was thriving as copper prices went up.  He invested in the wrong country.  When he is in Brazil, he says, “Do I invest in nuts or do I invest in coffee?”  He has to decide.  He invests in coffee.  The bottom goes out of the coffee market; nuts are in short supply; and the value of nuts goes up.
 
He says, “Oh, I have got to move back to the United States.  I can’t stay here anymore.  I am losing too much money.  Should I go to New York or should I go to Boston?”  He decides to go to Boston.  The flight that would go to New York would have been a 747; the flight that went to Boston was a 1935 turbo-prop.  He gets on the turbo-prop and one of the engines dies.  It seems the plane has a very limited future.  So, he says to the pilot, “What can I do?”

The pilot says, “We always supply parachutes on this plane.”

He puts on the parachute and he jumps out of the window. He makes that decision.  Then, there are two different things he can pull, so he pulls the first and doesn’t work – it has rusted.  He pulls the second one and it opens and there is a hole in it.  He is plummeting towards earth, and he has to make a decision.  The decision that needs to be made is which saint should he pray to?  He decides to pray to Saint Francis.  He calls out, “Saint Francis, please save me!”

God says, “Which Saint Francis do you want:  Xavier or Assisi?”

The story ends quickly!


There is never a point in our life where we don’t make decisions.  There is always a decision to be made.  There is always an alarm clock to go off.  There is always a new possibility that Christ has for us.  Ask yourself this day, what is that alarm clock of Christ coming to you calling you to do and be?  As sure as we are here, there is something.  Jesus doesn’t come into our midst for nothing.  He might call you as someone who is a deep believer to an even deeper, meaningful service, which we find blessed today in the Stephen Ministry, a great ministry of our church.  He may call you to go outside the bounds of the Church to make a difference in peoples’ lives:  to lift up the poor, to change the status quo, to be a voice for good and peace in the world.  He might be calling you to repent and turn your life around and to seek to be faithful.  He might be calling you just simply to enrich your devotion to him every day in prayer.  He might be calling you to anything but as sure as the Gospel begins with the call of Andrew and Simon Peter and James and John, Jesus is looking out for you! Amen.