“Be Careful Which Chosen One You Follow—Your Life Depends on It.”

Epiphany 3           Mark 1:14-20            How do you know the Chosen One? How do you know which leader to follow? Jesus of Nazareth is not the first person in scripture to be a chosen leader. God chose Samuel to be a prophet. God chose Saul to be king. Then God apparently thought better of that decision, and chose David instead. At one point in Israel’s history, God chose a Persian king, Cyrus—a foreigner—to lead God’s people.Then John the Baptist strides out of the desert, calling people to repent, turn around and walk a new way. Be baptized. Live differently than the ones who think they are chosen, the ones who live in the centers of power. Yet John is clear that he is not THE one. No. He points to Jesus. Scripture never tells us just when Jesus understands that he is God’s Chosen One. God’s Anointed One. God’s Messiah. I have wondered about this for years. Was it when he was twelve years old, arguing with the teachers and elders in the Temple—so lost in his passion for God, he forgot to go home with his parents? Was it at the Jordan River, in that moment when the Spirit ascended on him like a dove and he heard God say “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”? Was it during those forty days and nights after his baptism, while he was out in the desert being tempted? We do not know the answer to that. We know that Jesus asks people “Who do people say I am?” “Who do you say I am?”However, in the beginning, he takes up John’s work. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Just how sure Jesus is of his own identity in these early days of ministry, we do not know. My own sense of this question is that as Jesus lived more fully into his calling, and that calling was affirmed in many different ways—either by people supporting him, or opposing him so strongly—he knew.Identifying someone as the Chosen One can be tricky, of course. Early in the Harry Potter series, Harry has no clue who he is, really. He knows he is James and Lily Potter’s son. He knows they were killed in some mysterious way. Yet when Mr. Dursley takes the Dursley family to a remote island in one final attempt to get away from the increasing barrage of all the invitation letters to Hogwarts the giant Hagrid arrives. In the middle of a horrible storm, Hagrid breaks down the door of the cabin, and calmly lights a fire with his umbrella. Hagrid offers Harry a birthday cake for his eleventh birthday, then tells Harry exactly who he, Harry Potter, is. He is a wizard, like his parents. Harry had no clue, because the abusive Dursleys never wanted him to be special. Yet Harry was special. Somehow, as a baby, he had miraculously survived a murderous attack by Lord Voldemort—an attack that had killed both of his parents. When word spread about this, the wizarding world knew he was special. They hoped he was the Chosen One—the one destined to destroy Lord Voldemort.            In The Order of the Phoenix, Professor Sybill Trelawney utters the Prophecy that few know: “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark him as equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies ...”[1]However, we eventually learn that both Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom were born around the same time. Who is the Chosen One? In several books and movies, Harry is referred to as “the Chosen One”—sometimes in a positive way, sometimes not. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rufus Scrimgeour replaces Cornelius Fudge as the Minister of Magic. When he visits Harry at the Weasley home, he slyly refers to this title. He is trying to uncover information about Professor Dumbledore, and to recruit Harry to the Dark Lord’s side. “People believe you are ‘the Chosen One,’ you see,” said Scrimgeour. “They think you quite the hero—which, of course, you are, Harry, chosen or not! How many times have you faced He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named now? Well, anyway,” he pressed on, without waiting for a reply, “the point is, you are symbol of hope for many, Harry.”It bears noting, here, that when someone gets such a title as “the Chosen One,” that may or may not be true. For example, people think Harry is, but it never seems to occur to them that Neville is also a potential leader. It is only when Neville destroys the penultimate Horcruz—Nagini, the snake—does he finally live into who he really is—a leader of epic proportions. But is Neville the Chosen One, or is Harry? Harry Potter fans can argue about this ad nauseum.Sometimes a great leader is obvious. Sometimes, it takes a lot of moments of failure, scorn, challenge, then determination and courage before someone steps forward with a sword held high and cuts off the head of a giant snake. You may well see a symbol of hope, yet you may or may not recognize it.A symbol of hope. Surely Jesus of Nazareth becomes this for so many people. When Jesus emerges from forty days and nights in the desert, you would think a symbol of hope, the Chosen One, the Anointed One, the Messiah, would take his message of good news to the centers of power. No. He does not. Jesus appears in Galilee—an area that is totally outside of the mainstream of politics, economics and religious centers. For example, Herod, who was a Jewish ruler who kowtowed to the Romans, built an impressive building over the patriarchs’ tombs in Hebron. He built the cities of Caesarea Maritima and Sebaste to honor Augustus Caesar. His son rebuilt Sepphoris, a city just three miles from Nazareth. Herod built Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee to honor Tiberius Caesar.[2]Yet we have no biblical record that Jesus ever entered any of these places. Not once. Instead, Jesus takes God’s good news outside the centers of power. He comes to the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. The people who mean nothing to the centers of power. Yet these people who mean nothing are the ones who recognize integrity, truth, and love when they encounter it, and they encounter these in Jesus.Obviously some people who recognize Jesus as God’s chosen person are Simon, Andrew, James, and John. I have always wondered just what there was in Jesus that was so compelling, so radically different, that people would leave their families and their family businesses to follow this man from Nazareth.            Think about that for a minute. Jesus shows up at the edge of the Sea of Galilee. He sees Simon and Andrew casting their nets and he commands, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Follow me. The Greek literally means, “behind me!” as in “Get behind me!” Not a question. Not an invitation. A command. A radical one that will change their lives.One has to wonder what the men were thinking as they stepped off their fishing boats to follow behind Jesus. They had no clue where he was headed. They had no clue what he would teach them. They had no clue about what would happen when they all did enter—and confront—the center of religious and political power in Jerusalem. Yet they seemed to understand one thing: their lives were about to change. They seemed to know that  “to follow Jesus means that things cannot stay the way they are.”[3]We human beings may resist change on many levels. Yet the truth is that unless something dies, nothing new can be born. There’s no room for something new and creative if the old ways harden and stay, just because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”Jesus did not come just to talk about the reign of God. He came to bring it to reality in himself. He also came to teach you and me how to bring God’s kingdom to reality, in real time, in real ways, in our everyday lives. That means we must be being willing to be transformed into new people. That is scary. No doubt about it. In J.K. Rowling’s books, many of her characters were transformed over time. Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny. Even an adult Molly Weasley grew into greater fullness of herself as a leader by the end, with enough courage to destroy the evil character of Bellatrix LaStrange.Yet I would argue that in contrast to Jesus and his followers, Harry was less a Chosen One, than part of a community that drew together with a common cause of defeating the Dark Lord to triumph over evil. It was not just one Chosen One. It was a community of people who realized that they were stronger together than they were on their own. They combined their various gifts to fight evil. They learned from leaders, then they led others. Yet like Rowling’s characters, Jesus’ disciples are open to change, open to taking new paths, open to new ways of being. They are willing to let God’s kingdom begin its real work in them, using their gifts, their broken places, their courage, their loyalty.In Mark’s gospel, we get to see that “becoming a faithful Christian disciple takes both a moment and a lifetime.”[4] We can have an “aha” moment, a moment of awareness that God loves us, a moment when we decide yes, we want that kind of love and life. Then it takes us a lifetime of learning. We repent. We believe. We follow. Then we fish and teach others how to fish.Every week, we pray the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Do we really mean that? Because if we truly want that prayer to be realized right here and now, then you and I have work to do.           Look up from your boat—whatever that looks like. See Jesus. Recognize him as the true Chosen One. Have the courage to step off the boat and get behind Jesus. And the next step? We learn from Jesus, then we lead others ourselves. We invite people in, then we move over and out of radical hospitality, we make room for others. We then help make them disciples who follow Jesus. We show them the ropes. We teach them what we’ve learned from Jesus about how to fish for people. How to show and tell the good news of God’s love and justice in our world today.Yes, we learn from Jesus how to be disciples. Then we show others the way. So choose the one you follow. Choose well, my friends. Your life may depend on that choice. And the lives of others may depend on your choice. Amen.© The Rev. Dr. Sheila N. McJilton[1] J.K. Rowling, The Order of the Phoenix, [2] Leslie J. Hoppe, “Exegetical Perspective” for Mark 1:14-20 in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, (Louisville & London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 287.[3] Gary W. Charles in “Homiletical Perspective” on Mark 1:14-15 in Feasting on the Gospels, Mark, Cynthia A. Jarvis & E. Elizabeth Johnson, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 23.[4] Ibid., Feasting on the Word, 288.