Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1:14-15

A great injustice had occurred. John was arrested for telling the truth. He confronted the king with the truth and now he was paying a high price for it. John was well-loved among the common people. He helped them see that God was close to them. His arrest must have paralysed them, exacerbating their sense of hopelessness. Strangely, for Jesus, this was the perfect time to establish the Kingdom of God. Perhaps, they might have heard these words and imagined that He was planning to organize an army to overthrow the king. Instead, He chose fishermen and other unlikely characters to be fishers of men. No politicians, nor kings, nor nobles were included in the list. Those who look to these people for change must have been disappointed. His Kingdom was going to be different, one producing genuine change. The kings and rulers of this world don’t have the capacity to forge any authentic transformation in this world, mainly because they do not deal with reality. They live far away from the concrete reality of everyday people unlike fishermen, tax collectors and basically Jesus’ motley crew of disciples. Jesus needed His disciples to be people who are engaged in reality before they can become instruments of the good news.

Very little has changed for us for the past few months. Maybe the situation is worse. It almost makes it hard to write about anything. We continue to be limited in our interactions. It has been almost a year since I went anywhere beyond my neighborhood. We try to see the children and teens as much as possible. They are still within walking distance from our apartment. Technically, they are in my neighborhood. I do my grocery shopping within thirty minutes walk. The trip to store is always easier that the return home with the heavy bags. We haven’t seen the inside of any restaurant for a whole year and maybe this year is not going to be any different. We used to go for long walks on the weekend and during the weekdays, we liked to visit our local libraries and even participate in communal events. There was always music in the streets. Sometimes we would complain about it. Now all this seems like a distant memory and we miss it. It has been a year without music.

Our social interactions have been greatly reduced. We haven’t seen our friends for ages but now we interact more with the maintenance staff in our building. We always take a moment to chat with them. It is strange to discover about their families and interests. We have transitioned from being cordial to a genuine friendship. They connect us to the world beside the children and teens. Outside our apartment building, a group of homeless adults have made a permanent abode on the curbside. Mary has struck up a friendship with a homeless man who has made a makeshift thrift store in the streets to which no ones really goes. However, he has an interesting display of treasures he found discarded. Mary has contributed some items to his collection. The grocery store clerks who used to be in a perpetual bad humor before the pandemic ask about Mary whenever I go alone to the grocery store. The drug store cashier who is usually clueless about customer service now knows exactly the kind of soap Mary likes. She reassured her that they will get in some new stock. We are beginning to be somebody in this limited sphere where we have been restricted for almost a year. If anything, last year was a reminder that the reality of our lives is limited within a small geographic area. Everything we need is within thirty to forty minutes walking distance. This is our reality. Things that happen in this small area make a big difference in our lives.

A month ago, a man was shot and killed on our street near our apartment building. He was a snatch thief. Unfortunately, this is quite common where we live. According to the police report, he tried to steal the phone of an off duty policewoman. There were three shots and this man was gone forever. We will never forget this incident. It was 11 o’clock on a Wednesday night when we heard the gun shots; a man was killed over a cell phone. It reminded us about certain truths about our reality. The next day the newspaper stated that he was shot but in the hospital. However, we witnessed the whole incident. The paramedics came and put him in a bodybag. We don’t need to news to tell us about what we saw. They were miles away when it happened. The reporters came hours after the fact. They never saw the body. They did not hear the gun shots. They don’t live here. For us, this is our reality. This is the space where our human bodies occupy. God gave us a body and it is limited because we can only handle limited things. We occupy a small space in this tremendous and immense universe. We are only allocated a tiny space in this great picture but it has everything that we need to experience life. Technology tends to give us the illusion that we can be everywhere and know everything. The news media inundates my mind with information about politicians and criminals who live thousands of miles away from our reality. I am not saying that they don’t have any influence on life. I am saying that right outside my apartment door, there are real people whose life or death makes a difference to me. Even the death of an anonymous thief makes a big difference in our lives. He lived in his life in anonymity and he died without his name being mentioned anywhere. No one shed a tear for this man. Maybe some might think that he deserved it. We think about him still. I want to write about him. He died on my street. He deserves to be remembered.

The pandemic brought reality back to me. I wished it was done in a different manner. Sad to say, we humans learn to value our reality only when disaster strikes.

John the Baptist was arrested. Many loved him, but most likely few listened to his message. Now he was taken away from them. A politician of their time took John away from them. Today, we still look to these people for solutions, even though throughout history kings and politicians take more than they give. We need to heed the first message that Jesus preached; “Repent and believe in the good news.”

Unfortunately, the idea of repentance has always been drastically reduced by the church and common preachers to sins of the flesh. Repentance is a change of mindset. Sin, in the Bible, means missing the mark, or rather, looking at the wrong target. The world always tells us where to look for answer. Unfortunately, many times the church allies itself with these voices. However, Jesus shows in the gospel that He chooses specific kind of people to be purveyors of the good news. There are some special characteristics of these people whom He choses. They are people who are rooted in their reality. They don’t imagine that some person or system is going to solve their problems. They embrace their reality as difficult as it seems and then move forward. Our homeless youth are like that and I am sure you might know others like that in your limited geographic reality. It could be the grocery clerk that never smiles. It could be grumpy receptionist at the clinic. People who have resigned to their reality and perhaps they don’t see any way out of it. Jesus might just choose these people to reveal to us the good news. We will never know unless we stop listening to the illusion promoted by agents of this world and start embracing what is before us.

This year we are not going to wait for someone thousands of miles away to solve anything. They don’t care if we exist or not. All we need is within walking distance and I am assured that Jesus has placed His instruments of grace and hope within our limit.