1st Week of Ordinary Time, Monday – 11th January 2021 — Gospel: Mark 1:14-20
Promising Commands
The first action of Jesus’ ministry is the calling of four fishermen. The essential direction of Jesus’ activity is to convince people to follow his system of thought and action. This is described in two scenes. The first scene features (1,16-18) Jesus interacting with Simon and Andrew that creates special dynamics for the call to discipleship. In contrast, the calling of James and John is given in the narrational comment alone (1,19-20). The second scene contains no direct speech by Jesus, but his call to discipleship is implicit like the first encounter. The first scene features Jesus commanding the disciples (‘come after me’), promising to make them into something they are not (‘I will make you become fishers of men’), and requesting a response from the two men he encounters (‘and immediately they left their nets and followed him’). Therefore Jesus’ invitation to follow him includes: command, promise and response.
In one sense, the language and structure of Jesus’ encounters are similar to Yahweh’s encounter with Abram (Gen 12,1-4). The Abram story begins with an encounter between Yahweh and Abram much like Jesus’ encounter with Simon and Andrew. Both the call of Abram and the call of Simon and Andrew contain a promise that the people ‘will be made into something different from what they are now.’ In both instances people respond immediately to the call. As Yahweh commands Abram to leave his present circumstances so that he can make him into something he now is not, so Jesus commands Simon and Andrew to come away from their present work and he will make them into something they now are not. In both instances, the men respond obediently to the command and promise. In Abram’s story, Yahweh is the one who makes promises and attains responses to commands. In contrast, in the Gospel the person from Galilee is the one who issues commands and promises that call forth responses from people. Thus in Markan narrative, Jesus’ function is made equivalent to the function of Yahweh himself.
