Mark 1:14-20
Beyond hearing Jesus - the epiphany of seeing Jesus

Not too long ago we celebrated the coming of Jesus into this world as our Savior and Redeemer. Our celebration of Christmas is over now, and we have this brief period between Epiphany Sunday and Ash Wednesday when we ponder upon what it means to have an epiphany in our own lives. Apart from understanding it as a divine manifestation, epiphany is also defined as a sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence. Many years ago, as I sat in one of my regular Sunday school classes, the teacher that day decided to write some random letters of the alphabet and some straight lines on the board and asked us all what we could make out of it. All we saw were some random letters and some sticks. As we sat there trying to make words of the letters, the teacher put together the random letters and the sticks and slowly but surely the face of a man with a hat emerged from the way the teacher put those letters and sticks together. There was nothing spectacular about the attention-catching trick of our teacher. Yet, all of a sudden it dawned on me that I was not just a random person on earth, but that God Himself had put me together and without a doubt I knew in that moment that my life belongs to God. I believe that we need an epiphany every now and then to re-orient our lives back to God.

I love walking along the seashore, there is something so soothing and carefree about the wide-open waters. And the beauty and sound of the seas also remind me of a God who we think we know well but is invariably much more deep and profound than we can ever hope to understand.  It is only in small epiphanies that we can hope to catch a glimpse of our God whose love and plans for our lives stretch way beyond our confined imaginations. Jesus came proclaiming the good news of God, saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” These are words which to me sound so fragmented that they bring more confusion than clarity. What is this time that Jesus is talking about? Where is this kingdom that is near? Why should we repent before we believe in the good news? It is no wonder that 2000 years later we are still trying to decipher the true and complete meaning of all that Jesus was talking about.  Even in those days, it is no wonder that Jesus had thousands seeking him out to listen to his words to find out more about the glorious proclamation he was making. Often it is in our thirst for detailed explanations, in our desire to unravel and control the mystery of God that we become short sighted and miss the epiphany that God brings into our midst. We can get so caught up in the small details of our lives that we fail to see the larger and more enduring picture of our God whose presence is inescapable in our lives.

Simon and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John, were all lowly fishermen, people who did not have the luxury of deciphering profound philosophical and theological concepts. It is truly amazing to me that these hardworking people who know their families depend on their fishing for their very survival just drop everything to follow this stranger who comes walking along the shore. But that is precisely the point; the essence of an epiphany has the power to change the course of your life completely. Jesus walks into the lives of these fishermen and all he said to them was “follow me.” Simon, Andrew, James and John heard Jesus calling them, but they also saw something way beyond the words they heard. They saw in Jesus that the time of fulfilled prophesy had come, in Jesus they saw the very Kingdom of God he was proclaiming, and as Jesus stood in front of them they knew that He is the good news.

It is very fashionable nowadays to glean Jesus’ teachings and completely leave him out of the picture. But if we truly want to be his disciples, there is only one course to take, which is, to follow him. And to follow him is not the same as listening to him, following involves a movement, a change of direction from where we were going to where he is leading, and a certain recklessness in abandoning what we know and what we feel secure in. It says, “They left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.” Our story could have taken on a different turn in showing just how irresponsible and foolish these young men were in leaving behind a relatively secure life with a regular income, but that is not our story. Our story is about the epiphany that these four young men had when they met Jesus. An epiphany that led them to see miracles, the breaking down of age old prejudices, the embrace of the unloved and the rejected, the healing of broken lives, and the feeding of the hunger and the thirsty. Above all they saw the transformation of suffering and death into the glorious victory of resurrection and joy in the life of Jesus. Their epiphany was truly about seeing God and being transformed by that experience. There is nothing ordinary and simple about Jesus’ very lean words of “follow me.”  The depth of these mundane words can be grasped only with an epiphany and that epiphany cannot be experienced without fixing our gaze deliberately and completely on Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life. It is in Him that we can behold the face and the presence of God amongst us. Amen.