Embrace This Kairos Moment

Author: Pastor Mike Gutzler (for sermon on 1/24/21)

Mark 1:14-20.

Just a couple verses, but a great depth of content in today’s reading.

We must start with the word time. In English we use the word for time to mean several aspects of time. In the original Greek of the New Testament, there are two different words. The first word for time is “Chronos” as in chronological time. This is the word used for linear time, like today, tomorrow, next month, or next year. Think of the days and weeks on a calendar, moving in one direction.  

The other word used for time is “Kairos.” The word Kairos is reserved for very special moments in time. In Jesus’ agrarian culture, a regular use of the word Kairos would refer to the moment of harvest. The very point in time when something is happening or has to happen. In the moment we are called to act or we miss the opportunity or special occasion.  If Jesus’ contemporaries missed the Kairos of harvest, it could have been catastrophic for the family or village.

For Jesus, John’s arrest is one of those special moments. It marks the time to start public ministry and make the Gospel known to the world.

We are very familiar with Kairos moments, even though we may not have a word to articulate them. In the life of a family, Kairos moments include weddings, the arrival of a new baby, and the death of loved ones. You know you are in a Kairos moment because life ultimately will not be the same after the moment is over.

The current pandemic is an extended Kairos. The pandemic has changed our lives, and it is an opportunity to pause and consider the implications on our lives as well as our faithful response.

This brings us back to our story in the Gospel today of Jesus calling the first disciples. The four disciples mentioned each have their own moment when Jesus invites them into a life of discipleship.

Fishermen did the hard work of pulling fish from their comfortable environments into a whole new world of existence – not always for the best end (at least form the fish’s perspective). To them, go and “fish for people” would suggest these new disciples (and us too) have the job of helping facilitate the radical chance encounter with Jesus and the effect the Gospel will be on others’ lives.

The Argentinian New Testament scholar Osvaldo Vena puts it this way:

I would like to suggest then that the purpose of Jesus’ call to discipleship is not to take people out of a hostile world, promising them a better life in God’s heavenly kingdom. Instead, his purpose is to change the world in such a way that it will cease to be the hostile place it is, so that God’s reign can be established on earth. Doing this will require that we make a preferential option for the poor, the dispossessed, the excluded, and those who because of gender, sexual orientation, race, or class have been rendered invisible in our society. It will also require that we will courageously denounce the evils of our western culture and its arrogant project of globalization. In short, it will require that we change the romantic view of discipleship that we have inherited for one that, by addressing the socio-political realities of our world, may do more justice to Jesus’ original intent.

Right now, more than ever, is a Kairos moment and an opportunity for us to consider how we are being called to respond to a world in need. Jesus has changed our world, and the world has changed around us. The “romantic view” of our old comfortable world is no longer a reality. We are freed by Christ to respond with grace and love to a world in need.