January 27, 2002
Third Sunday After Epiphany
CHRISTIAN GOSPEL: A Fledging Ministry Begins ~ Matthew 4:12-23
I mention from time to time that I really enjoy snowstorms. Not just the sight of the snow coming down, but also what the snow does to our schedule. So the snow interferes with the normal course of things and gives us an opportunity to do something else and usually something more restful or something we have been putting off and wanting to do but never quite finding the opportunity to do it. So I thought about that snow and thought about these fishermen that Jesus called. Now it may be that they were ready to drop everything just because they were wanting a change of pace. So it was like a snow storm or hail storm and they said, “Good we don’t have to do this for awhile. Let’s go listen to this guy.” Maybe they were thinking about Jonah and his experience and afraid that if they didn’t pay attention when Jesus said come and follow me that one of their fish was going to be a great big one who was going to come up there and swallow them up and take them back down again. But Jonah heard the voice of God speaking. For all they knew, this was not the voice of God but was a man standing on the shore saying, “Come along and follow me.”
The scriptures really don’t say much at all about why they responded to Jesus. Have you ever spent much time thinking about that? The story is so familiar to us “and I will make you fishers of men” from Sunday School class that a lot of times we just listen to the story and nod knowingly. But why would people stop in the middle of their work and follow a stranger? Leave it all behind? Maybe they knew him before. Maybe there were parts of the story that Matthew didn’t write down. Maybe they had been making plans along the way and Jesus finally said, “You know what we’ve talking about over wine, down at the inn? Well now’s the time. Come on guys we’re going to start now.” Maybe Matthew didn’t mention it because he knew we would all understand. We all know what its like to be human, we all know what its like to have a deep longing for something in our lives. In fact, if we don’t see it in ourselves, we see it in other people all the time. We see addictions or compulsions. We see people depending on food for comfort or turning to alcohol or cigarettes. We find people who are obsessed with collecting something so that they can get all of whatever it is and have perfection, a complete collection.
When Jesus talks to people about that in different parts of the Scripture, he talks about it as being a hunger or a thirst. Somehow, we all have this need that has to be filled. We find different ways to fill that need. So we understand that these fishermen had a need. In Jesus, they saw the fulfillment of that need. So they left it all behind to follow this man who offered to fill the void. One of the things that’s important to note is that these were not important leaders in the community. These were everyday workers. There probably wasn’t anything more common than a fisherman. The people of that time didn’t have much meat in their diet. A lot of the protein came from the fish out of the Sea of Galilee. Historians write that there probably 330 boats out on the Sea of Galilee at any given time gathering up the fish for people’s daily meals. So when Jesus went out and called fishermen to come be his followers, his disciples, he was calling commoners, not seminary trained folks, not people who had been nurtured especially for this role as disciple. He went and called everyday people and said, “Come and follow me.”
Now even recognizing the longings that we have in our own life, how willing would we be to follow somebody? Somebody down at the gazebo at Moss Bay. Or somebody over at Starbucks up in Juanita. If we walked in and they said, “Put everything aside, come and follow me,” I don’t know how many of us would actually be willing to do that. There must have been this yearning, and Jesus’ voice spoke to that deep longing. In order to follow him they had to leave everything behind. They had to leave their net behind, their way of life, their fishing, their livelihood, their families. Just turned their backs and walked away. It’s a scary thing to think about changing, because no matter how bad we think our lives to be at any given point, they are our lives. They are familiar to us and we’ve developed our own way of adapting, our own way of making peace, of compensating. So we find ways to deal with our emptiness and we deny it or we fill it with one of those other obsessions or compulsions. Even though we long to be complete, to be whole, we’re still reluctant to make any changes that might be required for that to happen.
There’s a story that all of you know. A story about the town that was full of rats. Remember, they were trying to deal with the problems until they finally signed a contract with the piper to come in and clean out the rats. He did that to perfection. When he came back to get his money, they balk, “Well we don’t have any problems anymore. We don’t need you.” Remember his response? He piped once again and he piped the children out of town. One of the children’s authors I enjoy, Shel Silverstein, wrote a follow-up piece called, The One Who Stayed.
You should have heard the old men cry,
You should have heard the biddies
When that sad stranger raised his flute
And piped away the kiddies.
Katy, Tommy, Meg and Bob
Followed, skipping gaily,
Red-haired Ruth, my brother Rob,
And little crippled Bailey,
John and Nils and Cousin Clare,
Dancin’, spinnin’ turnin’
‘Cross the hills to who knows where-
They never came returnin’
‘Cross the hills to who know where
The piper pranced, a leadin’
Each child in Hamlin Town but me,
And I stayed home unheedin’.
My papa says that I was blest
For if that music found me,
I’d be witch-cast like all the rest.
This town grows old around me.
I cannot say I did not hear
That sound so haunting hollow-
I heard, I heard, I heard it clear...
I was afraid to follow.
How often do we catch a glimpse of something we’re yearning for, for something that is going to make us whole? And we say, “All I have to do is make a few changes. All I have to do is discipline myself a little.” And yet we’re afraid to make those changes, afraid to follow and so the vision of that perfection fades from us waiting to be awakened some time in the future again.
There’s a woman by the name of Jeanine Roth who writes about dieting. Many of us have dealt with dieting from one time or another. She has written a number of books including one titled, When Food is Love. She talks about the ways people use food to comfort themselves, to be a distraction from dealing with the other issues of our lives. She says that as long as we deal only with the problem of food and how much we eat or what we eat or when we eat, that we will never be able to solve the problem of what the void is in our life. She tells stories about people who have lost weight after discipline for six months or one year. They lost all of the weight that they wanted to lose and then were terror stricken to learn that their lives were not any better than when they were blaming their weight. She said that in order to come to terms with those longings in our lives we need to be able to identify them, we need to deal with them honestly and not cover up with something else. Changes have to be made. Any of you who have been on a diet know that for a period of time you can be disciplined and lose weight. But if you go right back to your patterns of living that you had before, your weight will go right back on again.
In any of our problems of life we have to be honest in identifying what it is that we are struggling with or are afraid of. In addition to that we need to be able to make changes in our lives so that something can be different. We can’t have what we are yearning for and also have the comfort of our life just the way it is now. For our lives to be better, for our families to be better, for our community to be better we always have to make changes. Leave some things behind in order to take up the new things. It’s difficult for all of us because even if our lives are not perfect now and we complain about this or that, they are our lives and we know them and we know how they work. We even know how to complain about them. So we have our patterns set. We have automatic responses to things that upset us and things that distract us from dealing with anything else. How many times have people said, “I would live my life different except for the kids or except for my husband or except for my wife.” Then occasionally you have the opportunity and find out that your spouse leaves or your kids leave home and you still don’t make the changes that you always claimed that you wanted to make. We have this comfort level with our problems as they are. When Jesus calls, when God calls us in our life there are changes that need to be made. We need to leave our nets behind in order to follow that call to discipleship. Make no mistake about it in order to be a follower of Jesus you have to leave something behind. You have to do something. You can’t just say, “I believe in Jesus” and then go on living your life the way you’ve always lived it. If you believe that God loves you in your life, if you believe that Jesus shows you how to live your life, then it has to be evidenced in what you do, in how you live and how you treat other people. The call comes to all of us and the choice is ours.
May God’s spirit be with us. Amen.