I will make you fishers of men
Hebrews 1:1-6
Mark 1:14-20
There is a motif that runs through today’s readings, and that is of “letting go”. The very first message of Jesus’ public ministry according to Mark, is: “The kingdom of God is close at hand, repent and believe the good news”. Repentance is surrender; it is letting go of our sinfulness. But most of the time we do not sin because we want to sin; we sin because we pursue some seemingly good thing, which is not. We look for some reward where it is not. We go for what is not allowed because of some attraction in it. Letting go becomes painful. It feels like some form of loss.
In the readings we see that it is not only the sinful that has to be surrendered. Jesus calls the first two pairs of apostles, and at once they leave their trades. Mark who is typically brief, makes it sound as if it was a sudden thing. However, we know from other gospels that it was not. It was not the first time that the four had met Jesus. They had known him for some time, and perhaps he had given time to consider the possibility of leaving everything and following him. When now finally they decide and at once they leave everything to follow him, this does not mean that the surrender was not painful. All had to leave the security of a home to become homeless, with all the insecurity that brings. Simon had and a wife. Perhaps the other three young men also had plans regarding marriage. All had to leave their trade and source of income to follow one who was poor. People who did not know or believe in the identity of Jesus would talk and criticize. They had to let go.
Even Jesus himself had to let go. We have heard from the beginnings of the Letter to the Hebrews his identity. He is the perfect copy of God the Father. Through him all that exists was created, and he holds ever tying in being. Yet he reduced himself to the state of a human being: weak, insignificant even among the great ones, vulnerable. He who is God now needed to associate with others to carry out his work of redemption.
Yet all this “letting go” is to embrace something incomparably greater. Jesus invites his first hearers to repent and believe the good news. This is the good news of freedom from the captivity of sin. It is the good news of learning to love, of letting go of what is seemingly good to embrace what is good. It is the good news of salvation. The apostles are called from being fishermen to fishers of men. Even today being a fisherman is not a very highly esteemed career. He now calls them to become apostles, assistants of the incarnate God, co-founders of the Church. Jesus left his glory as God only for a brief period of 33 years out of the whole of eternity, only to take it on again with the victory over sin and death. Now he has taken his place again at the right hand of God the Father.
All of us are called to let go of something every day; of our sinfulness, of even good things to embrace better ones. We pray for the grace to recognize the things that God wants to let go of, and to have the courage to embrace the higher good that God offers.
