“THERES GOIN’ BE A REVOLUTION…”

TUESDAY AFTER FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT 2015

The Beatles sang that song in 1968. Today is Mark 3:1-19 with Bishop Wright focusing on verses 13-19. In the first 18 verses Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath and large crowds continue to follow him. Then, he calls the disciples—12 of them.

Bishop Wright tries to get us to understand how revolutionary this action by Jesus really is. Most of us understand the symbolism of the 12 disciples…to replace the 12 tribes of Israel…but Wright asks, “Do we really?” What if you saw someone hold a press conference at the White House, or on the steps of Congress, announcing a new group of followers…what would that mean to you? And notice, Jesus is not one of the 12, but he calls them. Who called the 12 tribes? We might say Jacob, their earthly father, but we might also say, “God.” Jesus, in addition to healing people and in addition to teaching, is doing revolutionary things.

His idea of revolution will take some time for the 12 freshly minted disciples to sort out. Their mistake is that they are expecting it to follow all the earlier attempts at revolution, but this time to succeed. Jesus has a completely different plan. His revolution leads to Calvary. It is first a revolution in the heart. A revolution to overthrow the forces that seek to enslave us. What are those force? Anger, lust, impatience, and more (see Galatians 5 for one such list). They are very real forces that take very real power to defeat. How then do we defeat them? The answer is by following Jesus. Let’s face it, you cannot only partly be a revolutionary…you are either all in, or not. As our world became to look more and more civilized, we looked less and less like revolutionaries. Being a good citizen, following the law, well, it looked (I repeat looked) approximately Christian. Today however, people we Christians call brothers and sisters are being beheaded by ISIS, we see just what it means to be a revolutionary…to oppose those who are motivated by anger and hatred…we see these martyrs at their own Calvary…we should not be surprised for this milepost on their journey of faith is the milepost that most of the first 12 endured. I say milepost because these terrible deaths are not the end. It is Lent. A time to reflect on the path to the Cross. A time for us, not to beat ourselves up, but rather to reflect on the call of Christ—the call that is deadly serious…may we, may I, truly follow.