You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
An
old-timer with a fishing rod in his hand sat on the riverbank, obviously
awaiting a nibble, though the fishing season had not officially opened yet. A
uniformed officer stood behind him quietly for several minutes. When the old-timer finally realized he was not
alone under the trees that shaded him from a delightfully warm afternoon sun, he
turned around and inquired, "You the game warden?"
"Yup,"
the uniformed officer responded in a single word.
Unruffled,
the old man began to move the fishing pole slowly from side to side. Finally,
he lifted the line out of the water. Pointing to a minnow wriggling on the end
of the line, he said, "Just teaching him how to swim."
Anyone
who has baited a hook or cast a line most likely has a fish story – the one
that got away or the enormous 300 pound one, which was caught single-handed,
immense filets still in the freezer back home.
However,
one of the best fish stories ever is right here in the Bible, and a version of
it is the tale we just finished reading from the Gospel of Mark. It is the story of Jesus when he bypassed
the affluent, ignored the famous, and gathered the core of his community –
essential to his ministry because we all know that you cannot do ministry
alone; it is not the stuff of isolation - which is part of the reason we have
churches – I mean, to actually do ministry.
So
there was Jesus, gathering the core of his community on the docks by the shore
of the Sea of Galilee, a lake really about 12 miles long and 8 miles across at
its widest point. Jesus did not set his sights on a community of
thousands. He figured twelve was doable,
and he settled on four as a start (something we might want to keep in mind as a
small church striving to have a big heart).
Jesus
wandered down to the shore in the pre-dawn hours because fishing was a
nighttime activity. It was no small
potatoes for the local economy either. A
night’s catch would be sold, salted, and could be shipped all over the Roman
world. Graveyard shifts, sore muscles, and
tired bodies at the break of day: they were all part of an occupation that was passed
on down through the generations from father to son.
Growing
up, from the shore, Simon and Andrew and James and John had probably watched
the silhouettes of their granddads casting nets into the sunset. In fact, the boys had probably mended their
first nets under the watchful eye of their fathers. Long ago, they had seen their future laid out
before them.
And
it was certainly not an easy future to behold.
As seminary professor and occasional writer for the “Huffington Post”
reminds us, “Jesus' four new disciples lived in a tough world. Jewish
aspirations for freedom confronted the grim reality of Roman imperial
exploitation. Families lost their land. Children scattered in search of work
and opportunity, often finding themselves enslaved by poverty. Traditional
family and village structures crumbled under enormous cultural and economic
stress. A very few people amassed incredible levels of wealth in Jesus' day
while countless others found themselves destitute. Those realities impinge upon
Simon and Andrew while they fish; James and John sense them as they repair
their nets.”
It
was into that scenario that Jesus walked on the day he got serious about jumpstarting
his ministry. He was, of course, a passionate
follower of the recently imprisoned John the Baptizer.
In fact, Jesus continued to preach John’s
message: The Kingdom of God is at hand! God is about to break into this crazy old
world of ours! Repent and believe! You better stand up and take notice – and
turn your life around.
However,
Jesus was not preaching down there on the docks as the fingers of dawn slowly
punctured the fading nighttime darkness in the Eastern skies, turning the
horizon every shade of rosy red possible.
Odd for a preacher perhaps, but Jesus really had very little to say -
first to Simon and Andrew and then to James and John: “Come with me, and I will teach you to fish
for people.” That was it! Follow me, and
I will turn you into something you are not.
Walk with me, and I will transform your life.” Done!
And
Simon and Andrew dropped their nets with an immediacy that to this day is hard
to fathom. And the two brothers, James
and John, left their old man Zebedee sitting on a hard wooden seat in the family
boat with only the hired help now to mend the nets and carry on the fishing tradition. “Gotta go. We’re gonna follow this guy in the
robe, we’ve only known him for 5½ minutes, but gotta go.” (Craig Langston)
There
was no – well, how long will we be gone?
What should we bring with us?
Will it be hard work? Do we need
special training? Will there be enough
food? The four of them just upped and
left with in the blink of an eye.
When
you think about it – Jesus being so passionate about the ministry ahead of him
and clearly wanting to do the very best job possible – the whole situation that
the author of the Gospel of Mark describes is a bit on the ludicrous side - or
at least highly ironic. I mean, the four
fisher dudes were hardly cut out for a life of deep spirituality, thinking the
great thought, or even listening to the great thought. They were illiterate, parochial and
provincial, and had probably never contemplated much beyond tonight’s catch and
whether it would bring in enough shekels to feed the little woman and the
passel of kids at home.
As
Lutheran pastor Marcus Felde aptly notes, “They were
not special. It is almost as though Jesus thought anyone would do. Simon
and Andrew could have been brothers who operated a bakery, and Jesus might have
said, “Follow me and I will teach you to bake bread for the life of the world.”
They could have been shepherds, and he might have said, “Do I
have a flock for you!” Or carpenters, and he could have used the obvious
analogy of building a house. As it
happens, they were fisher(men). They spent their days at the
grubbiest occupation in town. (But) Jesus
looked at them and said, “You’ll do.”
No aptitude test. No background check…. Ability with a sword
was not required, nor was facility with the Greek language. They were ordinary
people. ‘Some guys.’ These four men were not the apple of Galilee’s eye.”
And, as time went on, they proved again and again that they
were seldom great at what they did. They
misconstrued and misunderstood. They
shooed away some of Jesus’ best sermon illustrations because they erroneously
figured that children should not be allowed to hear about important things like
what the kingdom of God was really like.
One betrayed him. Another denied
him. And they all ended up abandoning
him when he most needed their support.
But he looked initially at the four fishermen and eventually at
all twelve of them (just like he looks at us), and he said “You’ll do. All I am asking is that you will follow
me. I am not asking you to be a perfect
Christian. I’m not asking you to embrace
this or that philosophy or set of beliefs or doctrines.”
Much as we might hope, however, Jesus also does not say,
“Follow me – and I will make you more spiritual and less sinful.”
He does not say, “Follow me –
and I will make you more disciplined, more honest, and a pillar of your
community.”
No – he says, “Follow me – and I will make you fish for
people.” And he is not talking about strategizing
with you to get more bodies into the pews on Sunday mornings. That, he would surely say, should be the
least of your worries.
He says “Follow me, and I will make you into something you are
not. Follow me, and I will give you the
tools to transform your life so you can transform the lives of those around
you. That is what I mean by fishing for
people.”
Follow me, and I will show you that compassion and forgiveness
and non-violence can change the way this crazy world of ours works. Follow me, and I will show you
that not just feeding the hungry but eliminating hunger altogether will make
for a better, more just, and equitable life for everyone. Follow me, and I will show you that a life of
generosity is when what you give away comes first, not last after cable TV and
Dunkin’ Donuts lattes have been taken care of for the month. Follow me, and I will show you what the
Kingdom of God could be like here on earth.
Follow me, let your life be transformed, and you can be part of its
unveiling.”
Put in those terms, this “follow me” stuff, this “call”
business sounds awfully grandiose, too deep and profound, so beyond us, in many
ways, so not us. What we pledge to give
away coming before Dunkin’ Donuts lattes and cable TV? Yikes – I don‘t know about that?!
So let’s be honest here and call a spade a spade. When you
come right down to it: we’re not much! Most of us are not that generous, not
that forgiving, and not even that compassionate. However (and let’s continue to be honest and
call a spade a spade), if we give it any thought at all, then surely we realize
that we are really all that Jesus has to work with. So - maybe we owe it to him – and to God –
and to the world – to give it our all.
I mean, we have to be enough – even though we are
really not good at leaving behind our nets, our boats, our fathers, and most
particularly our lives. Though we are quite
accomplished at accumulating, we are not that adept at giving away. Though we are quite proficient at clinging,
we are not so hot at letting go. And the
invitation to follow is most assuredly an invitation to not cling and to not accumulate,
but rather to let go and leave behind.
What is more, we are not really particularly skillful at
heading out without a map either – or a sense of direction – or even a
destination. And Jesus does not offer us
any of those things either.
We are always called to an uncertain future. Where we will end up, we really have no
idea. Maybe that is why the Gospel
writer insisted on emphasizing the immediacy of Simon and Andrew and James and
John’s decision. Maybe the Gospel writer
intuitively understood that if we think about this call business too much, most
of us are bound to chicken out. So the
Gospel writer advises that we just go – even if it all seems unexpected –and
maybe even undeserved.
And the reason that we just go is because being called is a
central affirmation of our Bible, a concept that lies at its very core. Back in the near beginning, Abraham was
called to create a new people and nation.
Moses was called to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and to the verge of
the Promised Land. And all the prophets
– God called them too: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and even Jonah who resisted his call
as long as he possibly could. And don’t
forget David – erstwhile shepherd boy turned king – and, of course, Mary –
called to be a too young unwed mother.
Carl Sagan, who was not a religious person,….spent the latter
part of his life in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence; that is,
looking for other beings out there who may be calling to us.
Someone asked him, “What if we
never get any messages?” Sagan supposedly said, “It’s a possibility, but it’s a
depressing thought to me that there might be no one in the universe trying to
call us.”
But there is someone calling us. There is someone extending us an invitation
to be something we are not, to be transformed, to transform others – just like
he called Simon and Andrew and James and John one early morning on the docks of
Sea of Galilee.
One of my very favorite novels is A River Runs Through It
by Norman MacLean. He begins his
story this way: “In our family, there
was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
We lived at the junction of great trout
rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly
fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's
disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did,
that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and
that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
Jesus has called us – extended us an invitation – to be fly
fishermen, maybe even to be a dry-fly fisherman. We may not know the first thing about tying
flies or keeping our balance in an icy cold stream in waders or casting a fly
rod with the precision of a metronome and the grace of a dancer.
We may not know the first thing
about how to be more generous, how to be more compassionate, how to really care
for the poor.
But it did not seem to matter on the shore of the Sea of
Galilee so long ago – and so I cannot imagine that it matters much now. What
only mattered when the invitation to follow was offered to Simon and Andrew and
James and John was that they did not pussyfoot around, try to cut a better
deal, negotiate the terms, or count their shekels, wondering just how much of
their livelihood they might actually have to share. With an immediacy that was as beautiful as it
was deeply trusting, they simply followed.
May we do likewise.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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