Matthew 4:12-23 "Risky Business"

         “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.”  Beautiful, but…

         That is not my writing.  That is how Norman McLean begins one of my favorite novels, A River Runs Through It.  However, I always thought it was such a wonderful way to begin a sermon about Jesus calling his first disciples by the lakeshore in Galilee.  You see, in A River Runs Through It, fishing was in the blood of that family.  It touched the essence of who they were.  And so it was for Zebedee and his sons, James and John, in first century Palestine.  Fishing had run in their family veins for generations.

         On this particular day, however, Zebedee just stood on the old wooden dock, his arms raised in question.  He looked at the half-mended nets and shook his head.  His two sons had flown the coop. Gone!   And the day laborers he had hired were no help here. They could not be trusted to ensure that the nets were fish-worthy.  Zebedee was….well, he was in a pickle.

         His small, family-based fishing cooperative that managed to bring in enough money to allow them to be a whit above the poverty line had just fallen apart. It had been dismantled in a single encounter. You see, James and John had come under the thrall of the self-declared rabbi who had wandered into Capernaum. 

         Zebedee had noticed him talking to his boys this very dawn.  The young upstart’s reputation preceded him, of course.  Or, at least, rumor had it that Jesus had left his father’s carpentry business the same way James and John were leaving the fishnets.  Just walked out one day, leaving the old man high and dry. 

         And now, Zebedee had to tell his wife – and that was one conversation he was not looking forward to.

         “Honey, they wandered off with Jesus.”

         “Who did?”

         “James and John.”

         “James and John?  Our James and John?  With Jesus?  That hippie carpenter’s son who has been hanging around recently? 

         “Yup.  He’s the one.”

         “You mean, they just left their work?  Well, they’ll have a lot of catching up to do when they get back later today.”

         “Honey, I don’t think they’re coming back later today.”

         “Well, when they come back tomorrow then.  They’ll be sorry.  I made their favorite hummus spread for dinner tonight too.”

         “I don’t think they’re coming back tomorrow either.  I think they may be gone a while.”

         “A while?  Like a week?”

         “Longer, maybe.”

         “Longer than a week?  But that hummus spread will go bad if we don’t eat it right away.”

         Oh, the wife will be mad – and she will blame him.  Zebedee was pretty sure of that.  He could hear it now:  He had been too hard on the boys when they were younger.  He had not been hard enough.

         Whatever was that Jesus up to anyway? Zebedee wondered.   Clearly he saw himself as the successor to John the Baptizer, preaching the identical message of repentance.  But at least John had operated on his own, solo. 

The prophet might have been wild and crazy, but the fact of the matter was that he did not pull innocent hard-working young men into some sort of cult-like ministry. 

         Jesus, on the other hand, was looking for followers, wheedling unsuspecting sons into making risky split second decisions, ones that destroyed families and businesses.  That Jesus was bad for the local economy.    

         And it looks like he envisions himself as a real rabbi too -seeking his own circle of neophytes.  Did he not know that he was way out-of-bounds on that one?  After all, becoming a true disciple in the ancient Jewish rabbinic tradition was a long and arduous path. 

         It all began when a young boy was only four or five.  Under the tutelage of the local rabbi, he would study  - and memorize - the Torah – the first five books of Holy Scripture - until he mastered them around age 10.  That was when the weeding out began. 

         Those who were cut would either learn the family business or pick up the skills of a decent trade in the community.  Only the best stayed on in the synagogue, digging into the whys and wherefores of interpreting Scripture and continuing to memorize their Hebrew Scriptures – 39 books in all. 

         Another big cut came when a boy reached the age of 14 or 15.  Only the very best of the best would be encouraged to continue studying and would need to search for their own rabbi-mentor – maybe in a distant town or even in Jerusalem.  The ones left behind would become carpenters and fishermen – just like their fathers and grandfathers before them. 

         Jesus was no trained rabbi, nor was James and John among the best of the best.  Jesus’ idea of training apparently was simply to beckon, “Follow me” – and then add some mumbo-jumbo about fishing for people – leaving the meaning of that up to whatever a couple of foolhardy boys might imagine.  Unlike the synagogue rabbis, it seemed to make no difference to Jesus who they were or where they were on their life’s journey.  “Follow me.”  And that was that.

         You know, when we read this passage, we almost always first focus on the demand – “Follow me.”  Without a doubt, it is pretty straightforward – with not a lot of wiggle room.  It is not like Jesus is saying:  “I wonder if you would consider the possibility of tagging along if you have the time, and it's not too inconvenient.  “

         That uncompromising demand would be enough in this day and age of mainstream secularism to make us stop in our tracks, but then, when we read the response of the two fisher boys, well, it is surprising that anyone is still sitting here in these hard wooden pews. We are told that they followed Jesus “immediately”, “at once”.  James and John not only dropped their nets, leaving their father holding the bag when it came to sustaining the family income.  They also did not even kiss their mother goodbye or take the time to pack a picnic lunch.  Instead, they made a split second decision to be all in with the itinerant rabbi. 

         Is that what we were supposed to have done?  We who profess to be followers and disciples of Jesus?  We who sense that, in some mysterious way, we have been called too – though, to what, we are not entirely certain?  Were we supposed to have made some sort of split second decision to be all in with the itinerant rabbi too?        

         Maybe we kind of get the “follow” piece and the responsibility that goes along with it.  But the “immediately”, the “at once” bit?  Surely that makes us ponder if we ought to be calling ourselves Christian at all.

I mean, how many of us were so confident that we dropped everything and declared ourselves all in, as James and John so clearly did?  I suspect that sounds a bit risky to many of us!

         Well, let me offer two points that can help us us feel more confident choosing to be here each Sunday, more confident in using the descriptor Christian, more confident in affirming our call and in embracing the inherent risk that goes along with it. 

         First, remember that Jesus chose ordinary people.  In other words, here in our faith community at least, you do not have to have it altogether to have a place among us. You do not have to have all the answers.  We are all trying to figure out what this call business actually means – but not alone, rather in community. 

         As Lutheran pastor Amy Kumm-Hanson wrote, “what we do know is that the disciples were not plucked out of some seminary or discipleship training school. There was not a job interview or a competency exam.  Jesus came to them right in the middle of what they were doing.  Jesus called ordinary people right in the middle of their ordinary lives to do extraordinary things.  

        

         They were not called based on their stellar qualifications.  And as the Gospel of Matthew moves along, we hear that the disciples are just human.  They repeatedly fail to notice that Jesus is the Messiah.  They just cannot seem to get their heads around the fact that he is a different kind of King and isn’t going to take down their enemies in some show of force.  They fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus asks them several times to stay awake.  Simon Peter, one of the first disciples called by Jesus as we hear today, will go on to deny Jesus three times.  Another disciple, Judas, will actually betray Jesus.” 

         You see, we are called not to right behaviors all the time.  After all, we are human.  Instead, we are called to be in relationship with Jesus and, in doing so, to be in relationship with all the world’s people. 

         Second, around here, we do not buy into the idea that we are called once to make a split second decision – and that’s that.  Instead, we believe that Jesus calls us over and over again, every day of our lives. 

        

         Each time we are faced with a moral choice and ask ourselves the question – “What would Jesus do?” we are called.  Every time we have an opportunity to peacefully and powerfully side with the poor and the marginalized, we are called.  Whenever we hear that little voice in our head that tells us that someone – someone - needs to speak out for justice, we are called. 

         Risky?  You bet, but that is part of the reason why we affirm and act upon this call in community.  You see, each one of you has chosen this church to be the group of like-minded people in whose company you will take the risk to answer your call and support others as they answer their calls.  Each one of you has chosen this church family as the anchor where you will take the risk to be molded by one another through the Holy Spirit, molded and shaped into agents of possibility.  Each one of you has chosen this congregation as the one with whom you will take the risk to walk Jesus’ path of justice and peace. Each one of you has chosen this church to rejoice in the fact that God has given you not only a name – Beloved – but also a special purpose for good in this world.

         It did not matter to Jesus where James and John had been and where they were on their life’s journey.  Jesus took a risk on them.  Jesus takes a risk on us too– as individuals but also as a church.  

         As one blogger wrote, “For reasons known only to heaven, God is constantly taking risks on all kinds of people — people who fish for a living, people who are too young to have jobs, people who have retired. Every day God …takes risks on people like you and me.  But one thing is certain.  One thing the Bible makes clear about the call of Christ is that the One who calls us is the same One who gives us the strength, the resources, to follow.” 

         “The One who calls us is the same One who gives us the strength, the resources, to follow.” I do hope you will remember that as we move soon into our Annual Meeting, there to celebrate where we have been and, more importantly, where we are going and how in heaven’s name we will get there.  It is risky, and a lot of it is still in the dark, but I hope you will answer that call – and stick around for the meeting because we are all in this together – like James and John – no matter who we are or where we are on our life’s journey.