Epiphany 3

Epiphany 3 (Mark 1:14-20)
“The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel.”

The time is fulfilled.

All things in this world and of this world have a beginning, a middle and an end. The birth of Jesus is the end of one phase of human history and the beginning of another. It is the end of the prophetic age. With the arrest and execution of John the Baptist the prophetic age ends. After John, there are no divinely appointed prophets.

With the death of the last of the prophets, human history moves into the Church Age. As Jesus calls people to follow him he begins to train the leadership for the Church.
The Church Age is also the Kingdom Age. The Kingdom of Heaven has come in to the world through the incarnation of the co-eternal Word of God, the Beloved. In Jesus, God the Father offers all people everywhere the gift of a new life and a new way of living. The Kingdom of Heaven is that new life and new way of living.

The church is the body of Christ, the continuation of the incarnation. As we each individually unite with Christ in baptism we receive the new life of Christ to become the body of Christ on earth in our specific culture and generation. Jesus wants the Church to continue the mission he initiated when he lived on earth in person.

The mission is our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation. It is the call to receive the gift of reunification with the Father through the Son. It is the call to enter a way of living characterized by personal transformation in thought, word and deed by the Holy Spirit.

The process of transformation is the new way of living Jesus offers. And the pattern in the process is repentance and faith.

In the process of transformation, Jesus shows us where we need to change. He shows us our particular sins. Those sins can be willful, ignorant and even inherited.
Willful sin is active rebellion against Divine Law. Divine Law is the impersonal aspect of God present in the world. Divine Law is revealed in the Bible. The Ten Commandments are Divine Law. During Lent we recite the Ten Commandments every Sunday to remind us of Divine Law.

All particular sins: lying, cheating, stealing, bullying, gossiping and all the others- are distortions of an original virtue. Lying is a distortion of Truth. God created us to tell the truth. The distortion of the virtue of truth into the vice of lying is a result of the original choice our species made to separate from God.
That separation killed a portion of our spirit and has left us all in a state of profound spiritual pain. It is the pain that distorts the virtues into vices. And it is the way of living from the place of separation that leads to our tendency to rebel against Divine Law.

The spiritual pain of separation is the defining power of the old life. The love of Jesus is the defining power of the new life God gives us.

The distortion of virtue into vice through particular sins is the way of living that proceeds from the old life. The transformation of vice back into its original virtue through repentance is the process of the new way of living.

The Holy Spirit convicts us of our complicity in a particular sin. Then, He invites us to repent, to say: “Yes, this behavior is contrary to God’s Law. I am sorry. I want to change”. Finally, he offers to transform the desire to sin into a desire to choose God’s standard of holiness. Then, the Holy Spirit actually transforms particular sins back into their original virtues.

Love is the foundation that infuses the new life into our souls. Faith is the substance that facilitates the choice to repent and transform.

Jesus calls all people everywhere to receive the gift of reunification with God the Father. The call to reunification is the invitation to salvation.

Once we make a real choice to receive the gift of salvation, reunification with God, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into our souls to help us unravel the many distortions of thought, word and deed that we call sins.

There is willful sin. There is also the sin of ignorance. Sometimes we just don’t realize how our actions and attitudes are so damaging to our souls and to other people. We say: well, that’s just the way I am and God accepts me just as I am.
Jesus comes to you as you are. He loves you as you are. He offers the gift of salvation to you as you are. And, he sends the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, to show you where you need to change in order to live the new life of divine love and compassion. He reminds that nothing of the old life can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Nothing of the old way of living can continue in the Kingdom of Heaven. The more we resist the active ministry of the Holy Spirit in the call to repentance and the power of transformation the less we will enjoy the new life Jesus gives us.

There is also inherited sin. This is the pattern of culture that forms the way we think and how we see the world. The Bible is very clear that all human culture is distorted by sin. From time to time the Holy Spirit will ask us to examine our cultural assumptions about God, life, other people and ourselves.

The time of the Kingdom of Heaven is now. It is not a future event we are preparing for. The Prophetic Age was the age of preparation. The current age is the Kingdom Age. In this age Jesus calls us to continue the reality of the Incarnation by receiving the gift of reunification with God in Him. We become who call created us to be and calls us to be as we yield our self will to Divine will through repentance and transformation.

The way forward in this Kingdom Age is by grace through faith. The Way forward for the Church as the Universal Body of Christ and for each of us as particular members of the universal Church is faith. Faith activates the power of the new life. The power of the new life is the real presence of infinite and eternal love in our souls. That real presence is Jesus.

Our Heavenly Father has fulfilled the time. Therefore receive the gift of a new life in Jesus. Make a real choice by faith to repent of your particular sins and allow the Holy Spirit to transform those sins back into their original virtues.