'Binary Choices' - transcript of sermon St Pswald's 13th November 2024

 

Sermon – St Oswald’s Rugby ‘Tuesday Morning Worship’

Mark 1. 14-20

Over the past few years Americans have been presented with broadly two visons for the future of America. Trump and the Republican Party and Biden & Harris from the Democrat Party. There were two other candidates, but in reality this was a binary choice. And the American people have chosen. 

Making such a choice wasn’t something that the people of Jesus’s day would have known anything about. Not many, I would suppose, would have chosen to have their Roman overlords. And although the presence of Roman soldiers would have been rare in the northern provinces like Galilee, that was the job allocated to Herod, Rome’s vassal king, they would have known about the taxes, they would have seen the brutal punishments when visiting a larger town or Jerusalem with young men crucified and soldiers bullying local people and they would know of Roman coinage, even if it was treated with disdain. Remember the question about paying taxes to Caeser.  

And on visiting Jerusalem or a larger town they may have even heard an evangelist announcing Good News. Evangelist is simply a proclaimer of good news, the euangelion.

But this good news was about an all together different kingdom that Jesus spoke of and an altogether different king.

One speaks of good news about the emperor in far off Rome. Maybe a birthday or some other celebration. The other, as Jesus makes very clear, is that of the Kingdom of God.

And because this Kingdom of God is breaking into the world it demands a response. ‘Repent and believe the good news.’

It is almost as if a Democrat had decided that Trump’s vision is good news, offer healing and hope for the nation and the world, and then repented, turn around 180 degrees, and follows a very different path.

As Mark’s Gospel buzzes and fizzes along this is the stark choice that is being presented.

We will see that it is a choice first given to the Jews but then expands outwards and is a choice laid before everyone.  

Repent and believe the good news.

‘Come and follow me.’

We might wish we had more options, but from beginning to end of the Scriptures, this binary choice is the only one offered.

It begins in Genesis with Adam and Eve. The choice, the ‘test’ we might say, is, would they be obedient to God or choose their own path of acquiring knowledge and self-determination.

Cain also had a choice when he rose up and killed his brother.

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”  Genesis 4.7. Cain had a choice; it was not a done deal.

And that theme that gets repeated over and over again in the Scriptures.

About to enter the Promised Land, Joshua lays this stark choice before the people….

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”   Joshua 24.15

 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.

At once they left their nets and followed him.

I chose to repent and follow Jesus on the 1^st January 1975.

You may or may not know a specific date when you chose to follow Jesus. 

C.S. Lewes likened coming to faith as if you were travelling on a train from one country to another. You have purposefully boarded the train in faith. But it might be that you are totally unaware of when you crossed the border. The important thing is that you now live in a new reality, a Kingdom of God reality.

These are some of the ideas we have been exploring through our series on the Letter to the Romans on Sunday morning.

So, we have repented, we left everything and followed Jesus and now we are living in a different reality. We believe that the Kingdom of God is real, that its final expression was ushered in by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Like the D Day landings, it is not the end, but the beginning of the end.

A binary choice is made which has implications.

When the Romans colonised a country they did not want or expect the people to travel to Rome. What they did expect is that the citizens of that country would become Roman in the sense that they took up the ideas, the way of life, and the gods, of Rome. Which, significantly for the early Church, meant that the emperor was to be worshiped as divine.

What does it mean to live in the Kingdom of God reality. What does it mean to live as a Christian, an apprentice to Jesus. What does it mean to follow Jesus, to become like Jesus and to do the things that Jesus did.

That’s a lifetimes work. And we know Jesus was steeped in the Scriptures. Recall the child Jesus staying behind in the temple.

 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Could we do anything less than follow Jesus here. To sit in community and debate and discuss the Scriptures so that we might discern what the will of God is. To learn how to live as citizens of heaven while on earth.

There is such profound wisdom in these ancient texts, and we neglect them to our peril if we are seeking to live as God’s Kingdom people.

Remember the little story Jesus told about the man who asked his two sons to do a task. One said yes, the other no. But then when it came to it the one who had said yes, failed to turn up, but the one who had said no, repented and helped with the task.

Recall where Jesus speaks of the separation of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25.  (And this picks up my earlier point about knowing our Scriptures)

Let me remind you of some key verses….

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in, I needed clothes, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you looked after me, I was in prison, and you came to visit me.’

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.   Mathew 7.21

The Republicans and the Democrats offered two very different visions for America.

And Jesus offers a very different vision for what it means to be human. For how we are to conduct our affairs. Yes, in the Scriptures there is no mention of some of the complexities of life such as we face in the 21^st century.

But even if we took at face value just this one story from Matthew 25 we would find it profoundly radical.

Indeed, the early Church did just this and it was profoundly radical, and it turned the world upside down. Or perhaps the right way up. And despite some awful failing and aberrations, those who left everything and followed Jesus have had a profound effect for good upon the world.

But it begins with a choice made by Adam and Eve, a choice made by Cain, a choice made by Joshua a choice made by Noah, by Abraham and countless others.  It begins with the choice of Simon and Andrew, the choice of James and John.

And God’s Kingdom continues to advance by your choice and my choice to follow Jesus, to seek to become like Jesus, and to do the things that Jesus did.

If you have made the choice to follow Jesus let me ask this final question that I will leave you to ponder over.

‘Just what on earth are you are doing for God’s sake?’