TWO

THE CALL

Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

(Mark 1:14–15)

The first time we hear Jesus’s voice in Mark’s Gospel, he says, “Repent and believe the good news!” The word repent here means “to reverse course,” or “to turn away from something.” In the Bible it refers specifically to turning away from the things that Jesus hates to the things he loves. Euangelion in Greek, which is translated as “good news” or “gospel,” combines angelos, the word for one announcing news, and the prefix eu-, which means “joyful.” Gospel means “news that brings joy.” This word had currency when Mark used it, but it wasn’t religious currency. It meant history-making, life-shaping news, as opposed to just daily news.

For example, there is an ancient Roman inscription from about the same time as Jesus and Mark. It starts: “The beginning of the gospel of Caesar Augustus.” It’s the story of the birth and coronation of the Roman emperor. A gospel was news of some event that changed things in a meaningful way. It could be an ascension to the throne, or it could be a victory. When Greece was invaded by Persia and the Greeks won the great battles of Marathon and Solnus, they sent heralds (or evangelists) who proclaimed the good news to the cities: “We have fought for you, we have won, and now you’re no longer slaves; you’re free.” A gospel is an announcement of something that has happened in history, something that’s been done for you that changes your status forever.

Right there you can see the difference between Christianity and all other religions, including no religion. The essence of other religions is advice; Christianity is essentially news. Other religions say, “This is what you have to do in order to connect to God forever; this is how you have to live in order to earn your way to God.” But the gospel says, “This is what has been done in history. This is how Jesus lived and died to earn the way to God for you.” Christianity is completely different. It’s joyful news.

How do you feel when you’re given good advice on how to live? Someone says, “Here’s the love you ought to have, or the integrity you ought to have,” and maybe they illustrate high moral standards by telling a story of some great hero. But when you hear it, how does it make you feel? Inspired, sure. But do you feel the way the listeners who heard those heralds felt when the victory was announced? Do you feel your burdens have fallen off? Do you feel as if something great has been done for you and you’re not a slave anymore? Of course you don’t. It weighs you down: This is how I have to live. It’s not a gospel. The gospel is that God connects to you not on the basis of what you’ve done (or haven’t done) but on the basis of what Jesus has done, in history, for you. And that makes it absolutely different from every other religion or philosophy.

Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” What is the good news of the kingdom of God? In the book of Genesis chapters 1–2, we see that we were created to live in a world in which all relationships were whole—psychologically and socially perfect—because God was the King. But Genesis chapter 3 tells the next part of our story: that we have each chosen to be our own king. We have gone the way of self-centeredness. And self-centeredness destroys relationships. There’s nothing that makes you more miserable (or less interesting) than self-absorption: How am I feeling, how am I doing, how are people treating me, am I proving myself, am I succeeding, am I failing, am I being treated justly? Self-absorption leaves us static; there’s nothing more disintegrating. Why do we have wars? Class struggle? Family breakdown? Why are our relationships constantly exploding? It’s the darkness of self-centeredness. When we decide to be our own center, our own king, everything falls apart: physically, socially, spiritually, and psychologically. We have left the dance. But we all long to be brought back in. This longing is embedded in the legends of many cultures, and though the stories are all different they all have a similar theme: A true king will come back, slay the dragon, kiss us and wake us out of our sleep of death, rescue us from imprisonment in the tower, lead us back into the dance. A true king will come back to put everything right and renew the entire world. The good news of the kingdom of God is this: Jesus is that true King.

I am reminded of a line from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: “The hands of the king are healing hands, and thus shall the rightful king be known.”14 As a child blossoms under the authority of a wise and good parent, as a team flourishes under the direction of a skillful, brilliant coach, so when you come under the healing of the royal hands, under the kingship of Jesus, everything in your life will begin to heal. And when he comes back, everything sad will come untrue. His return will usher in the end of fear, suffering, and death.

Here again Christianity is different from other religions. Some religions say that this material world is going to end, that righteous or enlightened people will be rescued out of it and enter a kind of ethereal spiritual paradise. Other religions say that this material world is an illusion. Or perhaps you believe the earth will eventually burn up with the death of the sun and everything here will disintegrate as if it had never been. But the good news of the kingdom of God is that the material world God created is going to be renewed so that it lasts forever. When that happens you’ll say, like Jewel the Unicorn at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, “I’ve come home at last! This is my real country. . . . This is the land I’ve been looking for all my life.”15

Following the King

As soon as Jesus begins to speak about the kingdom of God publicly, he selects twelve men to be his disciples—his core group of friends and followers. Mark records the first of these encounters:

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

(Mark 1:16–20)

Jesus immediately calls people to follow him. This is unique in Jewish tradition. Pupils chose rabbis; rabbis did not choose pupils. Those who wished to learn sought out a rabbi to say, “I want to study with you.” But Mark is showing us that Jesus has a different type of authority than a regular rabbi’s. You can’t have a relationship with Jesus unless he calls you.

When Jesus says to Simon and Andrew, “Come, follow me,” at once they leave their vocation as fishermen and follow him. When he calls James and John, they leave behind their father and friends, right there in the boat. We know from reading the rest of the Gospels that these men did fish again, and they did continue to relate to their parents. But what Jesus is saying is still disruptive. In traditional cultures you get your identity from your family. And so when Jesus says, “I want priority over your family,” that’s drastic. In our individualistic culture, on the other hand, saying good-bye to our parents isn’t a big deal, but for Jesus to say, “I want priority over your career”—that’s drastic. Jesus is saying, “Knowing me, loving me, resembling me, serving me must become the supreme passion of your life. Everything else comes second.”

In many of our minds, such words cast the shadow of fanaticism. People in our culture are afraid of fanaticism—and for good reason, really. In this world considerable violence is being carried out by highly religious people. Even setting aside such extremism, almost everybody knows someone, personally or by reputation, who is very religious and who is also condemning, self-righteous, or even abusive. Most people today see religion as a spectrum of belief. On one end are people who say they’re religious but don’t really believe or live the tenets of their religion. On the other end you’ve got the fanatics, people who are too religious, who over-believe and over-live their faith. What’s the solution to fanaticism? Many would say, “Well, why can’t we be in the middle? Moderation in all things. Not too zealous, and not too uncommitted. Being right in the middle would be just right.”

So is that the way Christianity works? Does Jesus say “Moderation in all things”? In Luke’s Gospel, he says to a large crowd, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Sound moderate? Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me.” He doesn’t say to the crowd, “Look, most of you can be moderate, but I do need a few good men and women who really want to go all the way with this discipleship.” He says “anyone.” There’s no double standard. “If anyone wants to have anything to do with me, you have to hate your father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, and even your own life, or you cannot be my disciple.” That’s what it means to follow Jesus.

Why does he talk about hating? In a number of other places Jesus says that you’re not even allowed to hate your enemies. So what is he saying regarding one’s father and mother? Jesus is not calling us to hate actively; he’s calling us to hate comparatively. He says, “I want you to follow me so fully, so intensely, so enduringly that all other attachments in your life look like hate by comparison.” If you say, “I’ll obey you, Jesus, if my career thrives, if my health is good, if my family is together,” then the thing that’s on the other side of that if is your real master, your real goal. But Jesus will not be a means to an end; he will not be used. If he calls you to follow him, he must be the goal.

Does that sound like fanaticism? Not if you understand the difference between religion and the gospel. Remember what religion is: advice on how you must live to earn your way to God. Your job is to follow that advice to the best of your ability. If you follow it but don’t get carried away, then you have moderation. But if you feel like you’re following it faithfully and completely, you’ll believe you have a connection with God because of your right living and right belief, and you’ll feel superior to people who have wrong living and wrong belief. That’s a slippery slope: If you feel superior to them, you stay away from them. That makes it easier to exclude them, then to hate them, and ultimately to oppress them. And there are some Christians like that—not because they’ve gone too far and been too committed to Jesus, but because they haven’t gone far enough. They aren’t as fanatically humble and sensitive, or as fanatically understanding and generous as Jesus was. Why not? They’re still treating Christianity as advice instead of good news.

The gospel isn’t advice: It’s the good news that you don’t need to earn your way to God; Jesus has already done it for you. And it’s a gift that you receive by sheer grace—through God’s thoroughly unmerited favor. If you seize that gift and keep holding on to it, then Jesus’s call won’t draw you into fanaticism or moderation. You will be passionate to make Jesus your absolute goal and priority, to orbit around him; yet when you meet somebody with a different set of priorities, a different faith, you won’t assume that they’re inferior to you. You’ll actually seek to serve them rather than oppress them. Why? Because the gospel is not about choosing to follow advice, it’s about being called to follow a King. Not just someone with the power and authority to tell you what needs to be done—but someone with the power and authority to do what needs to be done, and then to offer it to you as good news.

Where do we see that kind of authority? Jesus’s baptism has already been attended by supernatural signs that announce his divine authority. Then we see Simon, Andrew, James, and John follow Jesus without delay—so his call itself has authority. Mark continues to build on this theme:

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

(Mark 1:21–22)

Mark uses the term authority for the first time; the word literally means “out of the original stuff.” It comes from the same root as the word author. Mark means that Jesus taught about life with original rather than derived authority. He didn’t just clarify something that they already knew, or simply interpret the Scriptures in the way the teachers of the law did. His listeners sensed somehow that he was explaining the story of their lives as the author, and it left them dumbfounded. Mark then takes the theme of authority to the next level:

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

(Mark 1:29–31)

The healing shows that Jesus is concerned with and king over the physical world—not just the spiritual. It is not simply a claim of authority (which we have in the calling of the disciples and the authoritative teaching) but is also a clear proof and exercise of Jesus’s authority. He shows he has real power over sickness—just a touch of his hand and the fever is cured. And this happens over and over. Three lines later Mark records that Jesus cured whole crowds of people. A few days after that his touch cured a man with leprosy. By the middle of chapter 2 everyone is amazed, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” The deaf hear, the blind see, and the lame walk. There are, in fact, thirty healings recorded in the Gospels, all showing us that Jesus has authority over sickness. And over the first few chapters of his Gospel, Mark goes on to stack up layer upon layer of evidence to show that Jesus’s authority extends to every realm of life.

Come, follow me. Jesus is saying, “Follow me because I’m the King you’ve been looking for. Follow me because I have authority over everything, yet I have humbled myself for you. Because I died on the cross for you when you didn’t have the right beliefs or the right behavior. Because I have brought you news, not advice. Because I’m your true love, your true life—follow me.”

Following the Thread

About 150 years ago George MacDonald wrote a children’s book called The Princess and the Goblin. Irene, the protagonist, is eight years old. She has found an attic room in her house, and every so often her fairy grandmother appears there. When Irene goes to look for her she’s often not there, so one day her grandmother gives her a ring with a thread tied to it, leading to a little ball of thread. She explains that she’ll keep the ball.

“But I can’t see it,” says Irene.

“No. The thread is too fine for you to see it. You can only feel it.” With this reassurance, Irene tests the thread.

“Now, listen,” says the grandmother, “if ever you find yourself in any danger . . . you must take off your ring and put it under the pillow of your bed. Then you must lay your forefinger . . . upon the thread, and follow the thread wherever it leads you.”

“Oh, how delightful! It will lead me to you, Grandmother, I know!”

“Yes,” said the grandmother, “but, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not doubt the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too.” A few days later Irene is in bed, and goblins get into the house. She hears them snarling out in the hallway, but she has the presence of mind to take off her ring and put it under the pillow. And she begins to feel the thread, knowing that it’s going to take her to her grandmother and to safety. But to her dismay, it takes her outside, and she realizes that it’s taking her right toward the cave of the goblins.

Inside the cave, the thread leads her up to a great heap of stones, a dead end. “The thought struck her, that at least she could follow the thread backwards, and thus get out. . . . But the instant she tried to feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch.” The grandmother’s thread only worked forward, but forward it led into a heap of stones. Irene “burst into a wailing cry,” but after crying she realizes that the only way to follow the thread is to tear down the wall of stones. She begins tearing it down, stone by stone. Though her fingers are soon bleeding, she pulls and pulls.

Suddenly she hears a voice. It’s her friend Curdie, who has been trapped in the goblins’ cave! Curdie is astounded and asks, “Why, however did you come here?”

Irene replies that her grandmother sent her, “and I think I’ve found out why.”

After Irene has followed the thread and removed enough rocks to create an opening, Curdie starts to climb up out of the cave—but Irene keeps going deeper into the cave. Curdie objects: “Where are you going there? That’s not the way out. That’s where I couldn’t get out.”

“I know that,” says Irene. “But this is the way my thread goes, and I must follow it.”16 And indeed the thread proves trustworthy, because her grandmother is trustworthy.

When Jesus told the disciples, “We’re on the way, follow me,” they had no idea where he was going. They thought he was going to go from strength to strength to strength. They had no idea.

Imagine sitting down with a seven-year-old and saying to her, “I’d like you to write me an essay on what you think it’s like to fall in love and be married.” When you read the essay, you will say it isn’t very close to the reality. A seven-year-old can’t imagine what love and marriage will be like. When you start to follow Jesus, you’re at least that far away. You have no idea how far you’ll have to go.

Jesus says, “Follow me. I’m going to take you on a journey, and I don’t want you to turn to the left or to the right. I want you to put me first; I want you to keep trusting me; to stick with me, not turn back, not give up, turn to me in all the disappointments and injustices that will happen to you. I’m going to take you places that will make you say, ‘Why in the world are you taking me there?’ Even then, I want you to trust me.”

The path Jesus takes you on may look like it’s taking you to one dead end after another. Nevertheless, the thread does not work in reverse. If you just obey Jesus and follow it forward, it will do its work.

MacDonald, author of The Princess and the Goblin, put it like this in another story: “The one secret of life and development, is not to devise and plan . . . but to do every moment’s duty aright . . . and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first.”17 And in yet another: “You will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”18 That is, you will be dead so long as you refuse to die to yourself. Follow the thread. You say, “That sounds pretty hard,” and you’re right. How can we possibly follow the thread? It’s simple but profound. Jesus himself does absolutely everything he’s calling us to do. When he called James and John to leave their father in the boat, he had already left his Father’s throne. “He left his Father’s throne above, so free, so infinite his grace.”19 And later he’s going to be ripped from his Father’s presence, on the cross. It’s going to look as if your thread is taking you into dead ends, places where you’ll get bloody, where the only way to follow the thread looks like it could crush you. But don’t try to go backward. Don’t turn to the left; don’t turn to the right. Jesus Christ’s kingship will not crush you. He was crushed for you. He followed his thread to the cross so you can follow yours into his arms.