January 25, 2015
Immediately and the Fish
- Mark 1:14-20
- Dr. Teri Thomas
(Audio by Ruth Moore, Sermon by Teri Thomas)
You just came home
from work, school, picking up the kids, errands, book group
taking off your coat
thinking about getting a few things knocked out on the computer before dinner
wondering if you have any tea for your scratchy throat
then
with no warning
a stranger appears at your door
The Kingdom is here - he announces.
Follow me- he suggests
or does he invite?
or is it a demand?
The Kingdom is here- follow me, he says
then he turns and begins to walk away.
What do you do?
Really?
What would you do?
Me?
I look at my calendar immediately.
What is on my schedule?
How much time do I have?
Then I would look around and begin a list of what needs to be taken care of
who will feed the dog?
The laundry needs to be moved to the dryer
I only get so much time off, is this worth using a vacation day for?
My initial response would be to come up with all the reason not to go.
How about you?
What would you do?
Do you ask for more information?
Who are you? Where are we going?
Do you have a business plan?
Do you have a mission statement?
What happens to my family? My business?
Why me?
Are you one of those?
Or do you simply grab your phone and head out the door
no job description
no interview
no listing of pros and cons.
You hear an invitation and off you go.
In the Gospel of Mark everything tends to happen at high speed.
But this story is truly rapid response.
Jesus says Follow me
and immediately
right away
at this very moment
they left their nets and followed
they left their father
they left their workers
they left life as they knew it
and they followed.
The story confronts us with the reality that God has a habit of showing up unexpectedly in the oddest places and inviting us to see, listen, turn, follow- no questions asked.
Epiphanies, especially of the divine nature, demand an immediate response.
There’s no invitation for contemplation or reflection
but instantaneous commitment and risk.
It is almost as if the disciples had no choice.
Their response was out of their control.
If the heavens are ripped apart, well then, get ready for a wild ride.
This can be simultaneously freeing and terrifying.
Freeing to respond in the moment. Terrified of what beyond the moment will unfold.
God just happens. There you are -- and what will you do?
There’s not much time.
Can you just go with it, and see what happens?
What would make you drop everything and follow like that?
Fear might do it.
If someone yelled come quick- it is your child, or grandchild, or spouse.
Or if someone shouted “fire” or earthquake or danger
Fear might move us.
Would you follow for love?
Or to escape your current circumstances?
or to relieve boredom?
What would motivate you to leave the familiar for the unknown?
To drop your nets, climb out of the boat and follow?
I am very grateful for the reading this morning from the Old Testament.
I am much more like Jonah than I am like the disciples.
You know the story?
God appears to Jonah and tells him to go to Nineveh.
Tell those folks to shape up and get saved.
Jonah was not too happy with God’s plan.
In the first place, the Ninevites were foreigners and thus off his beat.
In the second place, far from wanting to see them get saved,
nothing would have pleased Jonah more than to see them get what he thought they had coming to them.
So instead of following God’s direction,
Jonah went to the dock and bought a ticket to sail to Tarshish.
That would be the opposite direction from Ninevah.
Well, a storm comes up
and the ship is threatened and the crew frightened.
Jonah offers to be thrown over to calm the storm and it works.
The storm calms and Jonah is swallowed by a big fish.
Shortly after swallowing the prophet,
the fish suffered a severe attack of acid reflux,
and it's not hard to see why.
Jonah had a disposition that was enough to curdle milk.
the fish couldn't stomach him for long,
and Jonah, with a little more prodding from God, did what he'd been told.
He hated every minute of it,
and when the Ninevites succumbed to his eloquence and promised to shape up,
he sat down under a leafy castor oil plant
he pouted and complained.
Jonah did not respond with the immediacy and commitment of the fishermen.
But the interesting thing about Jonah
is that he shows us how God can be persistent and interact with us in unexpected ways.
He also shows us how God’s purpose can be accomplished
with just a minimum of faithfulness on our part.
And how we feel about it,
doesn’t matter as much as what we do.
Jonah was a grump, but he did what God asked.
And it worked, even though it took him a while
even though his heart was not in it
even though he was complaining every step of the way,
God’s will was accomplished.
So sometimes we respond to God’s call like the disciples,
with a dramatic, transformative experience.
And sometimes we respond like Jonah
through a gradual unfolding of events and experiences.
Sometimes we go and fish for people like the disciples.
Sometimes we become food for fish like Jonah.
But in either case
the strongest thing holding us back is our desire to be in control.
We go to elaborate lengths to gain and assert control
over our lives, families, work and finances.
Much of this control is an illusion we conjure to keep from seeing and admitting the truth—
that even with all of our diligence,
financial markets may crash,
disease may enter our lives,
people may behave badly and relationships may be damaged.
It’s hard to live with these uncertainties,
so we pretend we’ve got it all under control.
This can make it difficult to respond to Jesus’ call,
because in order to say yes we have to follow a leader who stands the world on its head.
He brings us face-to-face with our humanness
and challenges us to stake our lives on his promises
instead of our plans.
Following Jesus is life-giving and transformational—
but we don’t get to draw the map
or have our questions answered before we start walking.
We have to listen to the call and take the first step.
Immediately.
Jesus says- repent- believe- follow- and fish.
fishing is not a task, it is an identity
not a verb- I will make you fish for people
but a noun
I will make you a fisher of people
it is not a new hobby
it is a new way of life
What does it mean to be a fisher of people?
patient and persistent
able to go with the flow- the weather, the waves, the equipment
they don’t always cooperate- but you keep on fishing.
If you are going to fish, you need to get used to disappointment.
In Jesus day you did not fish alone, this was not a solo pastime
this was a group venture, it was net fishing and it took a crew to throw the net and if there was a good catch, it took many hands to haul it in.
Jesus called the disciples to be fishers of people.
It can be downright uncomfortable.
Jesus stands on shore giving an invitation that makes real promises with real demands.
The one thing that makes it possible for us to follow
is that we know he will walk the entire way with us,
leading the way right into the kingdom.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Resources:
Working Preacher, The Immediately of Epiphany, Karoline Lewis, January 18, 2015.
Weekly Sermon Illustrations: Jonah, Submitted by Frederick Buechner on Mon, 2015-01-19
Christian Century: LIVING BY THE WORD, “A demanding leader, “ Jan 13, 2009 by Cynthia Anderson.