Today’s first reading revolves around an Old Testament deity. He sends Jonah round and round the city of Nineveh announcing the bad news, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,” The revolutions of old always turn round and round on dominators who make threats of death and destruction. Today’s Gospel reading revolves around Jesus going round and round the region of Galilee announcing the Good News. He is starting a new revolution; a new turning. It turns round and round on free people living together in peace, “Now is the time of fulfillment. The Community of God is at hand. Turn your mind around and believe in the Good News.”
Turning our mind around from being ruled and toward living free concerns authority. Our authority thus turns away from ruler’s control structures and towards people’s cooperatives that transform them. We turn from voting toward participatory decision making, from border walls to human rights bridges, from corporate media to net neutrality. We turn our hearts around from accepting inflicted suffering and toward sharing compassion. Our energy thus turns away from capitalism’s slave system that extracts people’s blood, sweat, and tears and toward free people sharing their gifts. We turn from tax cuts for wealthy people to living conditions for average people, from looting people’s pockets for Wall Street to supporting people’s needs on Main Street, from subsidizing agribusiness CAFOs to incentivizing backyard gardens. We turn our practices around from death and toward life. Our practices thus turn away from Militarism and its endless violence and toward artistry and its eternal creativity. We turn from military spending for death to healthy spending for life, from Dept. of Defense pollution to cooperatives on climate change, from for-plunder corporate prisons to fully profitable community centers.
Be the revolution; not incessantly turning in ever dizzying cycles of reformation and counter-reformation but one single “Turn your self around” revolution.
Prayer: Spirit, we are strengthened for the revolution
Question: What is the revolution toward which I need to turn?
January 21, 2018 Gospel Mark 1:14-20 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time