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[Music] foreign good day everybody how are you doing this third sunday of the epiphany if you are wary and need rest if you feel alone and want community if you mourn and long for comfort if you feel worthless hearing voices of self-judgement in your mind and experience negativity around you if you wonder if god really cares if you fail and desire strength if you worry and want peace if you hunger and thirst for righteousness take comfort that when we can't change the circumstances of life we can change how we react to them grace love and peace be to you in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit amen today we are going to share a few thoughts on what it means to follow jesus in the 21st century our scripture reading is from the gospel of mark chapter 1 verses 14 to 20. it concerns the calling of jesus's first disciples they heard jesus message that god's kingdom was near on this basis they decided to leave everything behind and to follow him listen now after john was arrested jesus came to galilee proclaiming the good news of god and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god has come near repent and believe in the good news as jesus passed along the sea of galilee he saw simon and his brother andrew casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and jesus said to them follow me and i will make you fish for people and immediately they left their nets and followed him as he went a little farther he saw james son of zebedee and his brother john who were in their boats mending the nets immediately he called them and they left their father zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him this is our scripture reading words of truth last forever to follow jesus in the 21st century has little or nothing to do with absconding from your employment or leaving your family it is not about joining a doomsday cult under the guidance of a charismatic leader proclaiming a looming apocalyptic revolution of epic dimensions it is rather adopting and translating the vision of jesus for today it is a profound new way of looking at and seeing the world it brings things we blurred or banned from our vision sharply into focus for me or for you it may mean to volunteer for the team cleaning up a nearby park or a beach in his final years of study my youngest son signed up as a maths tutor for disadvantaged students he helped to prepare them for the matric exams he found it very fulfilling to plow something back of the education he was privileged to have received to hear the call may well be caring for an aging parent my late mother-in-law spent her last years with us we built a garden cottage for her and it was not always easy she tended to order the children around i remember one incident clearly she called our youngest nicholas he was still in primary school and said tell your elder brother to come here he did so dutifully and reported back um jan says he is not at home when she later got sick and bedridden it put extra pressures on the family of feeding her dressing her carrying her pushing her around in a wheelchair but we got through it looking back it was immensely fulfilling and my children still tell the most amusing anecdotes of when their grandma lived with us for others it may mean taking care of a special needs child or just assisting someone going through a messy breakup or being engaged in a program to feed those overlooked or forgotten by society to follow jesus is to allow his face his body his person to take on a new form in the toils the conflicts and the sufferings of our time and to enter into his fellowship to journey figuratively speaking with him for this reason we need to shed the lenses through which we have been conditioned to read the the story many people think to become fishes of men is to win souls for jesus as a young minister i was required to participate in an evangelism training course it was supposed to teach us how to win souls for jesus and of course to grow the church you had to engage a person let's say on the street and ask the following questions if you die tonight are you sure you are going to heaven most people would answer with i don't know i tried my best to live a good life but you can be sure you know you had to ramble off a few bible verses referring to faith's certainties and this was supposed to change the subject's perspective and you could tick them off as souls being one take their names and enroll them in an adult education program and there you would then teach them the church's dogmas doctrines and creeds and then confirm them as new members it was all a numbers game even in our scripture reading jesus did not ask peter andrew james and john to agree or cite or ramble down a list of doubles i was quickly cured of this when i realized this is not what faith was for me i developed the perspective that to follow jesus rather had to do with being a good person not in preparing for heaven so sorry i have never converted one single person to christianity and probably deconverted a few from their fundamentalist faith but i have seen new understanding lighting up in the faces of students i think i may have encouraged a few children to make something of their lives and to emerge from a troubled childhood into an it adventurous adulthood to face what life throws at us squarely and not to be afraid or to be ashamed to ask for help in my considered opinion the two sets of brothers simon and andrew james and john follow jesus for the wrong reasons even jesus himself most probably did not foresee how his life would enfold and i know this is contrary to what most writings of the new testament tells us the great theologian and humanitarian albert schweitzer cross-referenced jesus sayings about the kingdom he published his book the quest for the historical jesus in 1906 and his findings are still widely respected i summarize what a jesus and his disciples think would happen how did they foresee the outcome of their journey very simply jesus expected god to make an end to the roman empire as well as the corrupt religious establishment of his time mark 9 verse 1 says within this generation a messiah the anointed one of god sometimes called the son of man would be the divinely appointed leader to establish this new era who was this person supposed to be when jesus was arrested according to mark 14 the high priest asked him bluntly are you the messiah and jesus said i am you see jesus regarded himself as god's messiah this is what he preached and this is what these four men busy with their fishing activities they used nets to bring in the fish the fish would then be killed sold cooked and eaten so when jesus promised to make them fishes of men of people they had a similar idea they thought it meant they would have positions of power over people and this then would make them affluent and happy matthew 19 the same peter called by jesus here on the shores of the lake of galilee says look we have left everything and followed you what then will we have jesus answers in verse 29 and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my name's sake will receive a hundred-fold jesus promises his disciples that they would sit on twelve thrones judging meaning ruling over the twelve tribes of israel in the next chapter of matthew chapter 20 james and john's mother asks jesus that her sons would sit on jesus left and right hand in the coming kingdom this is the same james and john of our scripture reading the sons of zebedee you see this was probably the expectation of jesus and his followers i'm fairly confident on the basis of solid research into the historical jesus that neither jesus nor his disciples foresaw the cross at the end of the road the early church re-interpreted jesus and put his compassion his care his love for lepers tax collectors tax collectors and street workers right in the center he gave hope to the hopeless and for this reason albert schweitzer himself declared that we need to make jesus relevant for the time we live in we need to re-interpret jesus we need to make sense out of his suffering from a cold and detached historical perspective jesus and his disciples failed in their vision of the kingdom after his crucifixion most of his disciples disappear in the mids mists of history and legend only james peter and john continued with his work a new disciple paul the apostle spread the gospel throughout the roman empire by reinterpreting jesus as the suffering servant who carried the sins of the world for me the concerns of jesus were valid his compassion for those oppressed with disease poverty loneliness and a sense of the meaninglessness of life it makes me ask what it means to follow jesus today in essence it is to experience a change of heart perhaps it is to let go of the notion that we define ourselves in terms of stuff material goods our wardrobes and our luxury items for an architect it may mean to design a housing complex where energy is generated from sun panels and where people are encouraged to form and function as a community for the i.t specialist it may imply designing algorithms to eliminate hate speech on social media and bringing the harbingers of fake news to book for those in the fast food business the call may be to reduce the sugar the salt the trans fats and the carb content so that people may eat more healthily for the mega rich it may mean to sell off properties standing mostly empty and to build schools for the disadvantaged or launch a satellite to provide free internet access to the unreached corners of the earth i am so grateful that people like bill gates warren buffett johann rupert patrick motzepere and elon musk are jude are doing just that maybe following jesus as a politician is to stop demonizing opponents exploiting people's prejudices and to create a following based on hatred to follow jesus simply means to be a good person a responsible citizen a promoter of life in all its crazy forms and the depths of our despair will become the heights of our ecstasy amen let us commit ourselves to do just that dear god i commit myself to be less judgmental critical and negative i will not allow the negative voices in my head or the pessimists around me to stop responding to myself my circumstances and my environment in constructive ways i undertake to accept the things i cannot change but to change the way i think about them i pledge myself to real compassion for myself for others and for this ravished earth i oblige myself to live a more simple life to not define myself or others in terms of material things and to redouble my efforts to see your image in everyone crossing my path in this way i will be reminded of the sacred and through the mists of history here in a new way what it means to follow jesus your son and so as we go may each and every one of us experience the love of god the grace of jesus and the presence of the holy spirit through all circumstances of life are men [Music] one more step along the [Music] old way to the new keep me traveling along with you and this from the old i travel to the new keep me traveling along [Music] more about the world i love and the new things that i see you'll be looking at along with keep me traveling along with you [Music] as i travel [Music] [Music] keep me give me courage when the world is [Music] along with you you are older than the world can be [Music] keep me traveling along with you