Dangerous trust

Texts: Genesis 37.12-24, 1 Corinthians 1.20-31, Mark 1.14-28

Commemoration: Polycarp

O God, the maker of heaven and earth, who gave to your Venerable servant, the holy and gentle Polycarp, boldness to confess Jesus Christ as King and Saviour, and steadfastness to die for his faith: Give us grace, following his example, to share the cup of Christ and rise to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The opening declaration of Jesus’s ministry, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel,” is familiar to the point of irrelevance for many. In an age of easy believism, repentance is as easy as taking time out from our busy schedule of worldly pleasures and saying to God, “I’m sorry.” But Jesus has something far more radical in mind than a simple apology to fend off divine wrath.

The people of Jesus’s day trusted God well enough. But their trust was conditional. They expected God to make everything work out the way they wanted it. Certainly, Peter and Andrew, James and John trusted God to prosper their fishing business because it was the way they made a living, the way their father made a living, and (most likely) the way generations before them had made a living. They expected to do well as fishermen because they expected God to do things their way.

But Jesus’s declaration, and his subsequent call to his first disciples, shattered the expectations of those who had become comfortable in their conditional trust. Here was a call to return to God, not on their terms, but on God’s terms. Repentance was more than merely a turning away from their sins. It was also a turning toward God and trusting him in a new, and often dangerous, way. No longer were they to trust God to do things their way. They were now to trust God to do things his way. For Peter and Andrew, James and John, that might mean something other than a prosperous business. It might mean abandoning their dreams of comfortable lives as fishermen and risking everything for the sake of this rabbi who was now inviting them to “become fishers of men.”

Not much has changed over the last two thousand years. How often have we ourselves been guilty of trusting God only on the condition that he do things our way? The call to repentance, which we hear over and over again throughout the Lenten season, is as relevant today as it was when Jesus first announced the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. It is a call to turn away not only from our sins, but away from every desire or ambition which clouds our faith, and to turn toward God and trust him not to do things our way, but to accomplish his purpose, according to his will, and for his glory.

O Jesu Christ, from Thee Began

O Jesu Christ, from Thee began
This healing for the soul for man,
By fasting sought, by fasting found
Through forty days of yearly round;

That he who fell from high delight,
Borne down to sensual appetite,
By dint of stern control may rise
To climb the hills of Paradise.

Therefore behold Thy Church, O Lord,
And grace of penitence accord
To all who seek with generous tears
Renewal of their wasted years.

Forgive the sin that we have done,
Forgive the course that we have run,
And show henceforth in evil day
Thyself our succor and our stay.

But now let every heart prepare,
By sacrifice of fast and prayer,
To keep with joy magnifical
The solemn Easter festival.

Father and Son and Spirit blest,
To Thee be every prayer addrest,
Who art in threefold Name adored,
From age to age, the only Lord.

• Translated by Thomas A. Lacy