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SERMON - January 22, 2012

Rev. Kevin E. Johnston

"Is That All There Is To It?"

Mark 1:14-20

This is a story from Mark's account of Jesus’ life:

After John the baptizer was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: "Time's up! God's reign is here! Change your life and believe the Message."

Passing along the beach of Lake Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew net-fishing. Fishing was their regular work. Jesus said to them, "Come with me. I'll make a new kind of fisher out of you. I'll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass." They didn't ask questions. They dropped their nets and followed.

A dozen yards or so down the beach, he saw the brothers James and John, Zebedee's sons. They were in the boat, mending their fishnets. Right off, he made the same offer. Immediately, they left their father Zebedee, the boat, and the hired hands, and followed.

Let us hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

May it be so.

 

The Message

Our story today is Mark’s version of how Jesus’ ministry began. Mark’s figure is a man of action and authority, presented in a straightforward, vigorous way. This Jesus does not pull any punches in not only inviting people to follow in God’s way, but challenging them as well. And I say “challenges” in its fullest expression and understanding. From what we read as this treatise unfolds, we begin to see and understand, along with Jesus’ entourage, him and his way of being Divine’s image, or child in the world.

Now supposedly – at least in this account – the four “didn’t ask questions. They dropped their nets and followed.” But I have difficulty believing that they just up and toddled off behind. The Bible stories sometimes – too-often, perhaps – skip over details that we might think ought to be included in them. And I have to wonder if those who put them together were trying to show that there existed a simple naiveté about the folk within the tales. It’s like they were mere puppets who did not – perhaps could not – think for themselves, and their lives just fell into place the way the letters of the alphabet do – A, then B, then C, etc. But then, these are characters that were not-so-very-different from us, whose lives were literally turned upside-down when they encountered the Holy in whatever form or way that One appeared out-of-nowhere and spoke to them. So I have a hard time believing that these four fishers “didn’t ask questions…dropped their nets and followed.

We had some conversation around this at our Wednesday Bible study session, wondering if perhaps the four were teenagers. It doesn’t take much to get people in that age group to leave what mom and dad have for them to do work-wise and follow off with someone perhaps more exciting. Maybe they were young men who really did not want to take over the family business, and this was a way out for them. Perhaps they had to talk things over with the family before deciding to go. Had they been a bit older than teenagers, they may have families of their own. What sort of impact would their sudden and long-term absence have on their wives and children? And even though the storyteller notes, “they didn’t ask questions”, they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. Perhaps the sense of immediacy was nothing at all like we might imagine it. Perhaps the picture painted for us wasn’t really like that at all – at least on the surface, anyway.

Notice this Jesus’ first words to them? “Time’s up! God’s reign is here! Change your life and believe the message!” During my reading in preparing for this week, I came upon what I thought is an interesting translation, or interpretation of “the Kingdom of God”. Instead of “kingdom” – which has the connotation for many of an authoritarian rule – what about employing the word “culture”, or “community”?

I checked out the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, and found culture to be
"the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education … the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations … the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; … the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time … the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization…focused on the bottom line… the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic.”¹

Community is
“a unified body of individuals: … people with common interests living in a particular area; … an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location … a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society … a group linked by a common policy … a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests … a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society.” ²

Puts a whole, new spin on things, doesn’t it? It’s almost as if God’s kingdom, culture, or community isn’t necessarily one we find on a whim. It’s like we have to do some work in order to see and acquire and attain it. “Change your life…Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisher out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women, ...” the invitation and challenge came.

Apparently, according to this Jesus, this new world, this “reality” that may not be where we are right now, is at-hand, within reach, just-around-the-corner, and in order to “get there”, a response to His “come with me”, is required. It’s about leaving behind the “normal” , regular everyday structures of life we have known – relocating and shifting from one set of manners, taste, development, civilization, and refinement – and becoming a “new creation” as our faith names it.

We know who they are – the ones who think they can dictate that everyone ought to be following their example, their lead. If they feel threatened and challenged and “in danger” – or what is perceived to be so – they strike out at the most vulnerable, unlikely and usually unable to protect themselves – the poor; minorities; cultures and religions that aren’t like “us”; the socially, mentally, and economically challenged; children; people who somehow don’t fit into their definition of “normal” and are not part and parcel of the status quo. It’s not just right wing, “privileged” political and religious leaders either. I have a feeling that many of us have relatives, friends, and neighbours who also follow this world-view. And, sad to say, there are many religious communities of many faith traditions in the same boat. Perhaps you and I are also part of that collection.

Those first followers – according to “the story” anyway – left their “normal” lives of routine, ordinariness, habitual customary ways of carving out some sort of existence in order to follow Jesus. Theirs was a settled life of fisher and boat owner, with responsibility to and for family, day-to-day expenses, relative security, and routine. Jesus’ life certainly was not anything like that. He was a wanderer, with no place to call home, “nowhere to lay his head”, as Matthew’s community has him say. He likely had no real income once he began His ministry, likely relying on others to feed and perhaps shelter him. It was as if he had no earthly responsibilities whatsoever. When Luke tells of Him sending the disciples out to carry out what He began, Jesus says, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money – not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there.”³

And he didn’t follow “protocol”. He spent time with and hung out with folks who did not quite “measure up” – lepers, Samaritans, women, children, tax collectors, societally deemed prostitutes, the mentally challenged, and so-called demon possessed. And when he did associate with the religious-right, it was at times they chose so they could be incognito – in the night. Even then, we really have no idea what happened to Nicodemus after he sought Jesus out to find “truth”. He broke all kinds of purity and morality laws – even coming to the defense of a woman caught in adultery. It seems to me that it takes two to tango, so why did the man – who isn’t even mentioned in the story – seem to have “gotten away with it”? When touched by a woman who had been haemorrhaging for twelve years, Jesus didn’t shoo her away and condemn her. He told her, plain and simple, that her faith had made her well, and she was made whole. He touched and hugged lepers, and the blind, and the dead, and the lame. He was taken down a peg or two by a Samaritan woman, who, unfortunately for her had a double whammy against her, when her daughter was tormented. And after she challenged Him, Jesus realized and owned up to the “error of His ways”, restoring the girl to wholeness. He spoke to these and other people, and treated them, as persons, not statistics or as “those people” who ought to be left to fend for themselves and be further victimized.

"Time's up! God's reign is here! Change your life!… Come with me. I'll make a new kind of fisher out of you. I'll show you how to catch men and women…" Mark’s Jesus said to the fishers.

I cannot imagine these fishers had any idea what they were getting themselves into – what they were really asked and invited to do. Had they any inkling , I wonder if they’d really gone along – especially once they discovered just where the journey was taking them? But maybe they were in too deep by then, and felt they had no way out. Nevertheless, after the political and religious right killed Jesus, this small band of followers did indeed carry on what he had started. We know this, because we are here today. If they hadn’t done so, who knows where we would be now – both literally and metaphorically.

I also wonder – had these four considered that they were the fishers. Jesus, from what tradition tells us, was most likely a carpenter. I can’t imagine what a carpenter would have to teach fishers about fishing, can you? It would be like me inviting you to learn about farming from me. Even though I was raised on a farm, even I would not think you to be gullible enough to fall for that offer. In fact, I’d try to talk you out of it if you did. But “Come with me, and I will teach you to catch people”, Jesus said. And they followed.

Rex Hunt, an Australian “progressive 'grass roots' theologian, religious naturalist, liturgist, and social ecologist”⁴ notes that:
what we have in this particular story…is more the hand of… storyteller Mark or a particular community, rather than a record of one of the actual deeds of Jesus. … Mark seems to have a collection of stories and sayings and theological reflections, some probably written fragments, but most retold and remembered from oral telling, and is weaving all of them together, adapting and weaving them…with a particular purpose in mind: so the small community can honour Jesus in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, … we can hear a link between “Jesus’ ministry and John’s preceding one”, and [we might] hear and understand, remember and be empowered as people of the Way.
In the traditional teachings of the church, following Jesus or ‘discipling’ has also been associated with the evangelical missionary endeavour of ‘saving souls’. Certainly that is how many preachers have understood the metaphor… spoken exclusively it would seem to Simon and Andrew: ‘make you fishers of men’ or the more inclusive, ‘...people’. But this metaphor is not only very tired and outdated, it is also…a misrepresentation of Jesus’ life and teachings.⁵

Scholar Ched Myers, in his comments on this story, offers an important and different interpretation, which suggests phrases like ‘fishers of men’ and ‘hooking of fish’ are (Hebrew prophets) euphemisms for judgement upon the rich.

Myers says…: “Taking this mandate for his own, Jesus is inviting common folk to join him in his struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege”. … : ...following Jesus requires not just assent of the heart, but a fundamental reordering of socio-economic relationships.  The first step in dismantling the dominant social order is to overturn the ‘world’ of the disciple... This is not a call ‘out’ of the world, but into an alternative social practice” ⁶

Not a call ‘out’ of the world, but into an alternative social practice. Those words … suggest…that being a disciple in the 21st century requires us to engage in both social analysis as well as theological reflection. And in so doing, to be reminded that the biblical and extra-biblical stories we hear and study and speculate about, are not just earthly stories with heavenly meanings, but earthy stories with heavy meanings!⁷

Is that all there is to it – to just “get up and go” and blindly follow along? I don’t think so. If we take our Baptism seriously, and really are Jesus’ followers and disciple – the church then perhaps it’s more than playing “follow the leader” and going home to find something else to do if the game leads us out of our “comfort zone” and we may not like where we’re being led to do who-knows-what, to say things we’d never dream or imagine saying.

Sometimes I find the Church has other ideas as to who we are called to be, as to what we are. I’ve found over the years that we have allowed people to “sign on the dotted line” and be over and done with it. And we’ve become a joke. People join all sorts of clubs and organizations that require them to do more than just show up once or twice a year, or even a couple of times in their lifetime. And we have no problem giving one-hundred-and-ten-percent to social clubs, lodges, our kids’ teams, and other associations we sign up for. Maybe because it’s easier to do so – we perhaps see the benefits right now, we also have an easier time “fitting in”.

Maybe we have to find another way to not only teach, but more importantly to show and demonstrate to others what “come with me” is all about. And sometimes, I’m not so sure that even I want to totally and completely “follow through” with that. It’s too hard. It’s tough. It’s not “in touch” – at least not in the way the world’s culture says or thinks it is. And besides, there are all sorts of other people, groups, and organizations “doing it”. So why should I, or we?

Then again, maybe it’s an ongoing investment – not unlike any other relationship commitment we might have with our partners, our friends, our employers and co-workers. Yet, at the same time, it is very much unlike any other relationship we have. It’s a culture. It’s a way-of-life. And it’s not just the four fishers who were called – invited – challenged to “come with me.” It’s us – it’s me and you. It’s not namby-pamby, nor something we follow blindly. It’s the most difficult, yet life-enriching, growing, and meaningful invitation we will ever get. And besides, who knows who might be in church next week, next month, next year, or in the decades to come, just because we today commit ourselves and take seriously the invitation to "Come with me. I'll make a new kind of fisher out of you. I'll show you how to catch people…."

Is that all there is to it? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s up to all of us to figure out the answer to that one.

And may it be so.