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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.
Regardless of your opinion about the change in the U-S presidential administrations this past Wednesday, imagine knowing at all about the presidential inauguration without your favorite or any other news source. Long before electronic media such as radio and television—much less the internet and social media applications—there were printed sources of news and, even earlier, there were heralds or town criers who made public announcements in the streets to largely‑illiterate people. But, without any such news source, important developments of the day could pass by you and leave you completely unaware, for better or for worse.
In the Gospel Reading for today, the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark tells us that, after John the Baptizer was arrested, Jesus essentially inaugurated His ministry: came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel, or Good News, of God. Not unlike a town crier Himself, Jesus went about saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the Gospel.” Not only did Jesus Himself proclaim the Gospel so that others could believe in it, but Jesus also called men who themselves would later do as Jesus was doing, proclaim the Gospel so that others could believe in it. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading, directing our thoughts to the theme “Proclaiming and believing the Gospel”.
There is a close connection, of course, between “Proclaiming and believing the Gospel”. Someone needs to proclaim the Gospel in order for people to believe in the Gospel. The Divinely‑inspired St. Paul essentially says that in Romans chapter 10, tracing the steps necessary for people to call on the Name of the Lord to their believing and hearing and also to someone else’s preaching and being sent (Romans 10:14-15). As St. Mark reports it in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s proclaiming the Gospel consisted both of Jesus’s saying that the time is fulfilled and that the kingdom of God is at hand and of Jesus’s commanding that His hearers repent and believe in the Gospel. There may also be a close connection both between the time’s being fulfilled and people’s repenting and between the kingdom of God’s being at hand and people’s believing in the Gospel (confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:15, pp.174-175).
The Jews of Jesus’s day probably would have understood, perhaps better than we do, that the time’s being fulfilled meant God’s imminent judgment on their sin and so a need to repent (confer Voelz, ad loc Mark 1:15, p.147), to turn away from their sin with Godly-sorrow over their sin. For example, in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jonah 3:1-5, 10), God’s message through Jonah gave the people of Nineveh forty days to repent or be overthrown, and they repented, from the greatest of them to the least, turning from their evil ways and from the violence that was in their hands, calling for a fast and putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes. We do not know how long God might give us before it would be too late for us to repent of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, any one sin of which warrants death here in time and torment in hell for eternity. So, we repent now, turning from our evil ways and from the violence that is in our hands, even if we do not right now call for a fast and put on sackcloth and sit in ashes. As we sang in today’s Introit (Psalm 113:1-2, 4, 7-8; antiphon v.3), the Lord raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. The Lord does those things by mercifully sending His kingdom at hand and not only commanding but also enabling us to believe in the Gospel (confer Voelz, ad loc Mark 1:15, p.147).
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, Jesus’s proclaiming the Gospel of God in a wide‑sense consisted of His proclaiming both God’s law that shows us our sin and God’s Gospel that shows us our Savior from sin and so forgives our sin. Ultimately, the Gospel in a narrow‑sense is about Who Jesus Christ is, the Son of God (Mark 1:1), about what He has done for your sins and for my sins, and about how He gives us the benefits of what He has done for our sins. Jesus is true God in human flesh. Out of God’s great love for us, Jesus died on the cross for us, the death that we deserved, in our place. And, after rising from the dead, He now forgives our sins through His Gospel in all of its forms—preaching, baptism, absolution, and the Supper—as we repent and believe in the Gospel, making the content of His and others’ preaching the object of our faith, making His Gospel and Him Himself what and Who we put our trust in above all else.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus not only proclaimed the Gospel and called all people to believe in the Gospel, but Jesus also called four men who themselves would later do as Jesus was doing, proclaim the Gospel so that others could believe in it. So called by Jesus, fishermen Simon and Andrew and James and John immediately left their nets, their coworkers, and even their father in order for Jesus to make them, and ultimately to make their successors, fishers of people like us. Their tools of their new trade were preaching, baptism, absolution, and the Supper, which bring in to places like Pilgrim people like Joy and Truman. Today’s Gospel Reading may be the origin of an ancient baptismal formula, and today’s Gospel Reading’s closest context in St. Mark’s Gospel account may emphasize Baptism and its rescuing the baptized from sin, death, and the power of the devil (confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:15, pp.174‑175). But, it is especially here in the Sacrament of the Altar that the Kingdom of God is at hand, with its King’s Body with bread and its King’s Blood with wine. And, that King invites all who labor and are heavy laden to come to Him for rest for their souls (Matthew 11:28-29).
In today’s Gospel Reading, the original Greek forms of Jesus’s commands to repent and believe in the Gospel may emphasize repenting and believing’s being continued or repeated (for example, Wenham, 247). With the first of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, we recognize that our whole lives are to be ones of repentance (AE 31:25). As the Lutheran Confessions say, faith lives in repentance (for example, Apology of the Augsburg Confession IV:142). For it is with daily contrition and repentance that we drown and kill our old Adam, our sinful nature, with all sins and evil desires, so that our new person, our redeemed nature, can daily arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever (Small Catechism, IV:12). Not even the apostles’ successors today have to leave behind things the way the apostles did in the Gospel Reading (confer Mark 10:28), but our repenting and believing in the Gospel does change our lives. For example, in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 7:29-35), St. Paul says that, because the appointed time has grown very short, because the present form of this world is passing away, some may forgo marriage, in order to better focus on the things of the Lord. But, most important, is that, living in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and extend to one another, we have peace with God and with one another, and we can be content and rejoice in all circumstances.
We may or may not have been rejoicing on Wednesday at the news of the presidential inauguration, if we even took in that news much at all, and we might debate how much we needed to know about it and how much it actually affects us. Considering today’s Gospel Reading this morning, we have reflected on “Proclaiming and believing the Gospel”. And, we have realized that Jesus’s proclaiming that the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand, His calling and enabling us to repent and believe in the Gospel, does matter to us, both now and for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +