The time is fulfilled (Mark 1)

     "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe the good news." Mark, chapter 1, verse 15.
     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
     Since the readings for today are short, unusually so, I will keep my remarks short. The theme of all three readings is the same: time, that is, the present time, or, as the apostle Paul says, time that is grown short. The immediacy of the present time, the urgency even, is very clear to the writers of our texts., and they call us to action, to choice, right now.
     In today's Gospel, Jesus proclaims the good news of God, that the kingdom of God has come near, and he calls all to repent, that is, to change their minds, and to believe his good news. And the Gospel tell us who were among the first to hear him and to respond to his message: Simon, Andrew, James, and John. "And immediately they followed him," the Gospel says. Immediately. No hesitation, no doubt, no questions, no anxiety, but an immediate recognition that something, someone very important and special, unique even, was before them, to whom the only response was trust, confidence, a willingness to follow him to they knew not where. Mark gives us no hint of any hesitation on the part of the first disciples. Of course, there likely was more conversation among them than our text suggests, but the mere fact that Mark does not record it is itself part of his message. Mark concentrates on the main point: the importance of the present moment, and the opportunity that it presents, to respond without hesitation to the message which Jesus is bringing, a message which includes Jesus himself. The directness of his message, and the directness of the response of the disciples, are more clues to the real nature of that message: that the kingdom is here, that the kingdom is now, and that we always have, in every present moment, an opportunity to respond to it with the eagerness that the first disciples showed.
     What is the nature of the response to the message? He called them, and they followed him. To respond to the good news of the kingdom is to follow Jesus. Keep in mind what this means in the context of our story. The disciples did not know where they were going or what they would be doing. Jesus didn't say anything about that, except that they would be doing a new kind of fishing. No more explanation of the meaning of the kingdom than that. The openness to possibility is what is important here -- the disciples would follow Jesus into a new reality, which they couldn't have imagined or expected.
     The apostle Paul, in today's reading from his first letter to the Corinthians, gives us a different take on the urgency of the message, and the immediacy of our response to it. "The appointed time has grown short...the present form of the world is passing away." Paul is thinking of a deadline for the present order of things, and he expects our awareness of this to lead to a reversal of all the conventional roles and behaviors that fill our days. Here Paul catches Jesus's meaning exactly, in his expectation of his hearers' willingness to drop everything that they were used to, to be open to a new reality, whose appearance is imminent.
     To sum up, this is how we can understand today's readings: the time of the fulfilment, of the arrival of the kingdom, is always now. Our Lord's invitation to follow him, without hesitation, is always before us. The opportunity to repent, to change our minds and lives and believe, is always now. And when we do, when we accept the invitation to follow, to believe, he will lead us into a new reality, where we will not necessarily know where we are going, but we do know that it will be unlike what we know, and then the time will be fulfilled, and the kingdom of God will be near. "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe the good news."
     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.