Jesus Assembles His Team.
Mark 1:14-20
Joy and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, friends. Amen.
I like heist movies. Ocean’s Eleven, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs. The slow unfolding of a plan, the unforeseen obstacle that derails a clean escape, the final montage of happily-ever-after shots.
I especially love the opening sequences where we’re introduced to the crew. These movies always start off introducing us to the head thief, who then starts assembling his team. A safe-cracker; a technology specialist; a muscle man; a femme fatale; all of whom will play their own particular roles in the successful heist.
The beginning of Mark’s Gospel reminds me of a heist movie. And of course Mark didn’t intend to make us think of that, he lived two thousand years before heist movies when he wrote his record of Jesus’ life. But it’s funny; Jesus himself, in the Gospel of Mark, actually does describe his own ministry in terms of a successfully executed robbery. In Mark chapter three, a section which we’ll read later this year, Jesus describes what he came to earth to do this way. “No one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.”
Jesus compares himself there to a thief who enters a strong man’s house, ties the man up, and steals his things. The “strong man” in question is Satan, the devil, who holds the world captive in sin and in fear of death. Jesus came to deliver us from Satan. To break sin’s power over us. To remove our fear of death.
But just like in any good heist movie, he would do so with a crew.
We meet the first few disciples in today’s reading. Simon and Andrew, a couple of brothers, and then another set of brothers, James and John. That word “disciples” is one I could take a minute and explain. “Disciple,” throughout the Bible, means someone who follows Jesus. Who hears his teachings and puts them into action in their own lives. The Greek word we usually translate as “disciple” is mathetes, literally, “student.”
Everyone who, during Jesus’ ministry, followed him and listened to him and sought to put his teaching into practice, could be called one of his “disciples.” But sometimes the word “disciple” gets applied in particular to a small group of twelve men. These four were the first four of those twelve. We have all their names recorded a bit later, also in Mark three: “These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), James and John, and Andrew.” That’s our first four. Then “Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.”
These twelve get called “the twelve disciples” at times. They’re also given a name which specifically applies to them: “The apostles.” That group name refers to this particular subset of Jesus’ followers, plus one man whom Jesus would call into his service years later, the apostle Paul. He wrote what we read as our second reading this morning. But Paul was not one of the OG apostles, and he notes that about himself in his writings.
These first four had all known Jesus already before he called them in this event to follow him as part of that small band of leaders. The Gospel of John tells us that John and Andrew used to follow John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. They initially began following Jesus because of John’s preaching about Jesus. And - I know - it’s a pain sometimes to keep these Bible people straight. Multiple Johns, multiple Jameses. John the Baptist was a preacher who was Jesus’ cousin and whose ministry came before Jesus. John the disciple, or the apostle, was one of the first four followers of Jesus. He wrote the book of the Bible called “John.”
When that John and the other three first followed Jesus, they weren’t doing it “full time.” They traveled to hear Jesus preaching and teaching. But they continued to work day jobs for some time. All four worked as fishermen. We actually learn in another portion of the Bible that the four of them were business partners, along with James and John’s father Zebedee. They had what seems to have been not a small business. At least two boats, and hired employees along with them as the business owners.
So, in our “heist movie,” we’re getting introduced to the crew. Who are they? Not professional safecrackers or getaway drivers. They’re small business owners with greater than average interest in spirituality; in religion. They’re interested by this particular spiritual teacher, this “Jesus.” They’ve met him already. They have, on at least one occasion, even loaned a boat to Jesus so that he could address a large crowd gathered on the shore.
It’s important to note that this isn’t their first ever interaction with Jesus. Sometimes I’ve heard this text explained as if Jesus expects every Christian, when they’ve heard the Gospel message, to immediately sell their house and their car, quit their job, buy a plane ticket, and spend the rest of their lives sharing that Gospel in the remotest regions of the earth. But that’s just not what happens here. Jesus identifies some of his followers who have already shown themselves to have a particular interest in his teaching, and who have materially supported his ministry, and he calls them, still not into direct independent ministry, but into a three-year apprenticeship. They will spend the next three years following Jesus and learning from him before being commissioned by him to run to the ends of the earth with this message.
In theology - the study of all of what the Bible teaches - there’s a concept which we’re being shown here. We can call it the doctrine, or the teaching, of the call into ministry.
The call into ministry refers to the way that church workers receive their positions. They are called into them. That “calling” is not some kind of internal, “voice in my heart” calling. It is an actual call, a summoning, from someone else to serve in ministry. In the case of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, that call came directly from Jesus. In the case of modern church workers, such as me, or our elders here, or Katie, that call comes not directly from Jesus, but through the church the worker serves.
Most of you here today have started worshiping here in the last two and a half years, since I arrived here as pastor. And so you might never have heard explained to you the way that I became pastor here. In our network of churches - the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod - becoming a pastor requires a church to call you to be their pastor.
This is important, and it’s Biblical. No one can simply declare themselves a pastor. I have the fairly extensive training which our church network requires of its ministry candidates. But if there were not a church which had asked me to be its pastor, I wouldn’t be a pastor, training or not. The call into ministry makes me a pastor. I don’t make up my own call into ministry.
My call came through this church. The people of this church requested a pastor. But we also recognize, because the Bible speaks this way as well, that our church workers are called by Jesus through the church they serve. A call into ministry today through a local church is just as much a call into ministry as the call Jesus issued to those four.
And this is where - I’ll be honest - I got a bit hung up on what, exactly, I wanted to preach on for you all from this text of Scripture. Because I wanted to avoid this: Laying it on all your hearts that the only genuine, appropriate response to the Gospel message is jumping out of your lives as they are and becoming full-time church workers. I have heard preachers expound messages like that on the basis of Bible texts like this. And it’s wrong.
Not all those who followed Jesus during his ministry were called to be full-time workers for the church. The twelve eventually were. Jesus also chose another group of seventy-two people later to go on short-term mission trips. But they were not, seemingly, called permanently into full-time ministry like the twelve were. Most people who followed Jesus were not.
So there’s my hangup. A major theological point of this text is to teach us about the call into ministry. And it would be very, very easy to hit that point so hard that you could all walk away feeling like not being a church worker makes you a second-class Christian. So to be very clear: Church workers are not better Christians than other Christians.
This text does lead me to share something that’s on my heart, though. One of my deepest wishes for our church would be to have a native Long Islander go into called ministry. As far as I know, no called church worker in the Wisconsin Synod’s one hundred and seventy three year history as an organized church network has come from Long Island. Which isn’t terribly surprising. Our particular congregation has only been around for fifty years as of this year. And it’s always been a small congregation, so there’s not been that many people who would want to train for ministry.
Why do I pray for that, and why does this Bible text lead me to tell you about it? Because the Christian church always needs new leaders. If there aren’t future leaders being raised up by the current leaders, there won’t be a next generation. Thankfully, Jesus promises us that his church will never be overcome. But he makes that promise to his whole church. All Christians, of all denominations. He does not make that promise to a particular local church, or a particular denomination.
I love who we are as a member of our church network. I love what it is to be a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Christian. And raising up leaders from places where we have not previously raised up leaders is foundational for our missions to share Biblical Gospel-centered Christianity with our world.
I want to ask you to pray for that also. Pray that our little church can play a big part in the next generation of evangelism. But again - what can I preach to all of you, who maybe are not ever looking at being that person? Here’s two things to leave with today.
One. If you’ve heard the kind of preaching I was talking about before - preaching that makes you feel as if you’re less of a Christian than a church worker - put it out of your head. It’s not true.
Because - here’s the second thing you can walk away with - you’re still a part of the team. The crew which Jesus is still, wherever his message is shared, he’s still assembling. He’s still carrying out this heist. Snatching people out of Satan’s house. Bringing them into life with him.
You are a part of that crew. Whether you’re a called church worker or not - whether you’re ten or twenty or eighty-nine - your life of faith and deeds of love play out, every day, as a part of Jesus’ plan. You’re a part of this crew because someone brought you in. Your parents; a friend; someone you met on the internet. Someone who was, in many cases, probably not a called church worker.
The tool which we’re given to carry out our work as Jesus’ crew is the same tool which brings us in. It’s the Gospel. It’s what the apostle-but-not-one-of-the-twelve-apostles Paul said in our second reading. “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
You have that message, just as much as I do. You belong to this crew, just as much as anyone else. So let’s go fishing. Let’s do this heist. Amen.