If
you wander into a store like Cricket’s Corner down the street here in Raymond,
you can usually find those painted, rustic wooden signs with thin metal wire
for hanging them in a deliberately lopsided manner. The signs read “Gone Fishing,” and they are
made for mounting on or near the front door of your home on the lake.
The
image these signs convey, of course, is that you have nothing better to do with
your time than to sit in a small boat on the water, soaking up the sun’s rays,
maybe sipping a beer. Your fishing line
is dropped over the side of your boat, and you are occasionally watching for
the red and white plastic bobber attached to the line to bob. If you are feeling particularly energetic,
you might cast a few times, hoping, of course, that you will not get snagged on
a hidden branch or log, which would mean actually having to move the boat to
get unsnagged. “Gone fishing” is
synonymous with “On Vacation.”
Not
so with Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee in our Gospel story for the
morning. These men were no
vacationers. They were working
fishermen. But do not get me wrong and conjure up in
your imagination hardy muscled men with tight white t-shirts and excellent tans
doing, as the author of the blog “Magdalene’s Musing” wrote, “good honest labor in the bosom of their
families.” It was not like that in the
ancient world.
Fishing
was big money on the Sea of Galilee – and fishermen like the ones we meet in
this narrative were small potatoes, no more than little cogs in a big
industrial machine. “These men did not work for themselves. They were
employees, either of the royal family or wealthy landlords. They were paid
either with cash or with fish after they turned over their catch to their
employers. And before they could even drop a net into the sea of Galilee,
fishermen paid a tax in order to be permitted to fish—a tax on their catch of
as much as 40%.” (Magdalene’s
Musing).
People
who did not own boats had to rent them at outlandish costs. Those who did own a boat had to pay an
endless series of fees and surcharges before they could even cast a net. In the end, their back- breaking labor only
served to make the wealthiest – like King Herod himself – even wealthier. The rich got rich as the poor got poorer.
It
was in that milieu that Jesus found himself when he left Nazareth after John
the Baptist’s arrest and came to Capernaum.
It was in that milieu that Jesus chose his first followers. He did not seek out the aristocrats or the
philosophers, the wealthy or the ruling class.
He chose the least of these.
He
initially chose four coarse, probably ill-mannered, certainly illiterate
fishermen. In addition, as social
justice advocate Jerry Goebels wrote, “They were Galileans -- disdained by Rome
and Israel alike -- they were the first to pick up arms and the last to lay
them down; they were thought of as traitors, terrorists, and
troublemakers. On their soil, the greatest victories and defeats of
ancient Israel had been fought.”
Galilean
fishermen: what a way to start a
ministry. It is almost as if Jesus was
intentionally putting himself at odds with the Roman system of domination and
oppression.
Jesus
did not do the safe thing. He did not do
the comfortable thing. He did not stay
in familiar territory where he might not rock the boat quite so much – no pun
intended. He went to Galilee, with its
history as a breeding ground for significant conflict,
and he chose a bunch of impoverished and
oppressed blue collar laborers to usher in and model with him a different way
to live, a way that reflected God’s dream of justice and God’s passion for the
least of these in the world.
But
Jesus did not just call four fishermen – or 12 disciples for that matter. His call is a timeless one, and the sound of
his voice has echoed through the centuries until it has found our ears. You see, Jesus calls us too.
The
Messiah takes the initiative here, which is different from many religions. As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens notes, “ There are a lot of stories from all the great religions
about teachers who attract disciples. But have you noticed that in most of
those traditions the disciples seek out the teacher, and sometimes they have to
beg the teacher to allow them to be a student? In most traditions, the initiative
is all with the student. But in this story Christ takes the initiative. He goes
to Peter and Andrew, James and John, and he calls them” – just as, centuries
later, he calls (or chooses) us.
Oh, you may think that you were the one who did the choosing. After all, of any place you could have been
on this Sunday morning, you chose to be here in church. However, sometime – maybe recently, maybe
way back in the mists of time – a voice whispered in your ear: “Come.
Follow me.”
You
may not even have heard the voice. It
might have been more like a nudge. It
might have seemed like you were deciding that your children needed a church
experience. Or it might have felt like
you were just looking for something more in your life. Or it might have been that you got up one day
and felt as if you needed to give more, reach out more, into the
community. Or it might even have been a
habit – coming to church and all – but one day it meant something more that you
cannot even really put your finger on.
But
however it was for you, trust me, there was that voice - “Come. Follow me” – and you did – and so here you
are – following Jesus. Whether you knew
it or not, as you learned about those uncouth fishermen that he chose as
followers and about all the dregs, from tax collectors to prostitutes, that he
wined and dined with, you decided that you could hang around with those types
of people too.
That
is, if you took this notion of following the Jesus of the Gospels seriously –
and how seriously we take this business of Jesus calling us to discipleship is
something each one of us needs to reflect upon often. What I mean is better illustrated in an
excerpt from a piece of writing I found this week about this passage in
Matthew. Unfortunately, I do not know the
author but strongly suspect that he was from the South.
“As a child I loved the hymn, “Follow, follow, I will follow
Jesus.” Like Mary’s little lamb, anywhere that Jesus went, I was sure to
follow. One day it dawned on me that my Jesus never went anywhere except to
church and back home again. He insisted that we go to church at least three
times a week, especially on Sunday night no matter how badly we wanted to stay
home and watch Bonanza.
Our Jesus was white, really angry about Civil Rights, supported
the KKK, believed in guns, was opposed to seminary education, but loved dinner
on the ground, all day singing, and protracted meetings. He read only the King
James Version of the Holy Bible, and insisted every word, comma, and period,
including the chapter and verse numbers were literal. He didn’t like Catholics
(even though there wasn’t a single Catholic in our entire community). He didn’t
care for Germans or Japanese (because of WWII). He was a big believer in hell
and was always on the lookout for any one smoking, drinking, or dancing. Unlike the Methodists, who had
Coke and cookies at their Vacation Bible School, my stern Baptist Jesus
believed in Nabisco saltine crackers and Kool-Aid.
Only later did I realize that most of us follow some image
of Jesus we have concocted in our minds. It’s as if there is a Build-A-Jesus
store in the mall and we get to make our own Jesus. I had no idea that I was
living out the philosopher Fuerbach’s claim that religion is the projection of
mankind’s hopes written large. And I also didn’t realize how superficial it
was. A self-made Jesus turns out to be a sorry building project.”
The
question for each one of us then has got to be this: What Jesus do you follow? Is it the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels – or
a Jesus that you have created to meet your needs?
Do
you come to church so you can be a better servant of Jesus during the week? Or do you
come mainly because you like the music or the preaching or the fellowship; or
out of a sense of duty or habit or because it makes you feel better?
Does the Jesus
you follow challenge you to discover a real sense of mission in your life and
demand that you become involved in ways that reach out and touch the lives of
others?
Or does the Jesus you follow figure that sitting in the pew
on Sunday is all it takes because good enough is good enough?
I do not know
what Jesus you follow in the depths of your hearts, but the fact of the matter,
my friends, is that the God we worship does make a claim on our lives –
unsettling, disturbing, and disruptive, as it is likely to be. As people of faith, we have confessed that
Jesus is the love of God in human form and that his ministry is to carry God’s
love to those in need. That is the Jesus
of the Gospels, and that is the Jesus we need to be following.
We are
important to Jesus’ ministry. As
Episcopal priest, Roy Almquist noted, “Jesus did not work in isolation … he
brought samples … his followers, his disciples … those who were the first
Church, the first assembly of believers. And they were samples because they
demonstrated what can happen when people are open to the possibility of God’s
transforming love taking hold in their lives.”
Jesus
called Peter, Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee to enter into a new kind of
relationship with him. By leaving their
homes and families and the security of being a little cog in the Galilean
industrial fishing machine, they threw their lot in with this itinerant,
rabble-rousing rabbi. In doing so, they also entered
into new relationships with each other and with everyone they would encounter
in their years together and beyond. Oh,
how their lives changed – not made easier, but certainly transformed and
overflowing with new possibilities!
Similarly, Jesus
has called us to be samples of what God’s love is like in a world where “me
first” and “more is better” are the norms.
When we truly answer Jesus’ call, we, like the disciples, become agents
of change. We become ambassadors of
transformation. We become emissaries of new possibilities. We become ordinary people right in the middle of our ordinary lives answering a
call to do extraordinary things.
And
it is no easier for us than it was for the disciples either. As Methodist pastor Mark Ralls speculates, “When Christ calls,
he beckons us beyond the point of familiarity, asking us to risk doing
something we don’t know how to do, to become someone we’re not yet sure we know
how to be. It’s not just that we are taking a risk on Christ. Each and every
time he calls, he is taking a risk on us”
And
so, as a congregation, Jesus calls us to be a source of light in a cynical,
dark, and downtrodden world. That is one
reason why it is so important that you choose to be here on Sunday
morning. You might not like the music in a
given week, and you may be struck by how boring the sermon is, but your
participation says to everyone you know that you come here that you believe
there is more good to God and to this life than there is bad – and that is a
really powerful message in this day and age.
As
a congregation, Jesus calls us also to be a beacon of hope and encouragement in
what, for many people, is a pretty hopeless and discouraging time. With so many people being job and food
insecure and not having enough to make ends meet, it is so critical that you actively
participate in and support the mission and outreach ministries of this church –
from Heifer Project to local emergency fuel assistance.
As a congregation, Jesus calls us, as
Lutheran pastor David Lose suggests, “to
be in
genuine and real relationships with the people around us, and to be in those
relationships the way Jesus was and is in relationship with his disciples and
with us: bearing each other's burdens, caring for each other and especially the
vulnerable, holding onto each other through thick and thin, always with the
hope and promise of God’s abundant grace.”
And if it seems
too much? If we feel maxed out, like we
will sink beneath the murky waters if we take on one more thing, then remember
that this call business is not intended to fill us to the point of
sinking. Rather, it is intended to fill
us to overflowing. Christ’s call is not about what we can accomplish, but what
God can accomplish in us and through us.
“Gone fishing.” It is not an easy task and certainly not a
vacation. However, it is what we (the
church) and you (the church) are all about.
By Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)
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