“A Moment and a Lifetime”

3^rd Sunday after Epiphany

Duane M. Harris

January 22, 2012

Text: Mark 1:14-20

Title: “A Moment and a Lifetime”

          Rev. Doug Mercier was the dean of the bishop’s cabinet some years ago.  He spoke on the conference floor beginning with a story.  The setting was a saloon in a dusty town in the old west.  The place packed with people when suddenly someone ran through the swinging double half-doors and yelled, “Everybody!  Take cover!  Big John’s coming to town!”  Everybody scattered.  Men jumped on their horses kicking up clouds of dust as they rode to the hills.   Some ran to their houses, locked themselves in.  The saloon empty in matter of seconds.

            Just as the dust settled on the street, a big man pushed open the saloon doors.  The rattle of his spurs sounded with every heavy step on the thick wood floor.  Grizzled and mean looking, he walked up to the bar and said, “Bar tender!  Pour me some whiskey!”   A man reached up from behind the bar, put a glass on the bar, and poured the whiskey, still on his knees.  The big man took hold of the glass and slugged it down.  One swallow.  The bar tender asked him, “W-w-w-w-would you like another?”  The man said, “Are you kidding?  Didn’t you hear?  No time for that.  Big John’s coming to town!”

            Doug went on to say:  “Sometimes that’s how people think about their district superintendent.”

            Sometimes when I hear Jesus calling disciples, I think of Doug’s story.   Let me explain.  Jesus is walking along the pebble-covered beach of the lake.  The water is clear blue.  Beautiful.  Cold.  Wind blows to the west off the Golan Heights, cliff-like land formations on the east side of the lake.  Fisherman all along the shore.  Taking care of their equipment and the night’s catch.  He calls them:  “Follow me and I’ll make you fish for people.”  First Peter and Andrew:  two brothers who may have been less well-off than James and John because Mark doesn’t say anything about them having boats.  Just shore fisherman, throwing circular nets weighted down by stones.  As they sink the net captures the fish on the way to the bottom. 

            Then James and John, also brothers, who leave their father and hired men, which suggests they are part of a thriving family business.  Immediately, they leave it all to follow Jesus. 

            Is that what it means to be a follower of Jesus?  Leaving everything without a struggle?  Without making sure families were cared for?  Without Peter checking with his wife?   James and John not having or taking time to make sure the family business is covered?  Follow immediately?  And what does it mean to fish for people anyway?  For some, it might make Jesus sound like Big John.  What if Jesus asked that of me?  Leave everything:  my family, my business, my work without any consideration?

        Maybe I’ve got it wrong, but there I times I wonder if we’re so afraid God will ask us to give something up that we can’t part with, or so unsure about what God asks of us–that God is far too demanding with expectations so high we’ll never meet them–that we resist or ignore questions like:

            What is God calling me to do?

            What does it mean in my life to be called by and to follow Jesus?

            When I was pondering whether or not I was sensing an authentic call from God to enter the ordained ministry, one of the sticking points–one of my fears–had to do with what I would have to give up in order to be a pastor.  When I confessed to my own pastor that I was struggling with this problem, he convinced me that God didn’t want me to be someone I could not be.  God wanted, he said, the person God created me to be.  God wanted the real me, not me pretending or trying to pretend to be the image of a pastor I thought should be.  Jesus, after all, didn’t ask the first disciples to stop being fishermen, just be a different kind of fishermen.  The requirement to follow wasn’t that they instantaneously be transformed into someone they couldn’t or didn’t want to be.  Jesus wanted them as they were for who they were.  He didn’t ask them to change who they were before they followed him.  He simply asked them to follow.   He invited them to trust him with their lives.   My gracious pastor, my friend, freed me that day.  He freed me to respond with an affirming, “yes”, to the call to ordained ministry.

            Every baptized person is, after all, called to follow Jesus.  Every person.  Not that long ago the General Conference of the UMC clarified who ministers are.  Do you know?  Every baptized person is a minister.  That’s what our Book of Discipline says.  If you are baptized, you have either said “yes” to Christ or someone has said “yes” for you and raised you in the faith to the best of their ability.  Saying “yes” to Jesus means saying “yes” to God and that initial “yes” means a change for a lifetime.  It’s more than a moment of salvation but rather a new identity as people who become fishers of people.

            A man stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world.  “Dear God,” he cried out, “look at all the suffering and distress in the world.  Why don’t you send help?”

            God responded:  “I did send help. I sent you.”

            You remember Jonah?  God wanted him to go to Nineveh and proclaim the Word of the Lord calling the Ninevites to repent.  But Jonah wasn’t interested.  Unlike the disciples and like all those saloon goers upon hearing of Big John coming, he cleared out of town and headed for Tarshish on a ship.  But God wasn’t easily dissuaded, didn’t give up on Jonah, and somehow—you know the story—Jonah became convinced that he needed to do what God has asked him to do.

            And Moses?  He wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when God called him to go to Pharaoh.  Remember?

10 But Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ 11Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.’ 13But he said, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else.’   (Exodus 4)

You know the rest of the story.

            What about Jeremiah, the great prophet?  He, too, resisted God’s call.  Remember?

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,

5 ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’

6Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ 7But the Lord said to me,

‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”;

for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

and you shall speak whatever I command you.

8 Do not be afraid of them,

for I am with you to deliver you,

says the Lord.’

                        (Jeremiah 1)

            Whenever God calls someone to service and there is resistance, there is always, always the promise:  “I am with you.”  And then it’s a matter of trusting God in that moment of decision that will shape a lifetime.  Becoming a faithful disciple is about a moment AND a lifetime.

            In the Gospel according to Mark, that first decision to follow Jesus needs to be reaffirmed and sometimes corrected over and over again.  At Caesarea Philippi Peter confesses his faith in Jesus as the Christ, but he doesn’t have faith that Jesus is the suffering Messiah.  That will take a lifetime for him to understand.  (8:27-33).  When Peter is on the mountain and Jesus is transfigured, Peter recognizes how good it is to be with Jesus as he offers to build some shelters for them all to stay there, but he forgets that the primary task is to follow Jesus—that will take a lifetime.  When Jesus is taken from the Garden of Gethsemane and Peter follows from behind, concealed in the crowd, warming his hands by the fire, a moment of fear threatens to unravel years of friendship and faithfulness.  At the very end when Jesus is hanging on the cross, Andrew, Peter, James and John–who all immediately left their nets in that initial moment of being called by Jesus–are nowhere to be found.  Even then, God doesn’t give up on them.  Being a faithful disciple is about a moment AND a lifetime.  Sometimes the moments are nothing to be proud of.  Disciples fail and fall, but those moments are not the final word.  Jesus goes before them—and us– for a lifetime, an eternity.

            Every baptized person is called by the shore-walking, Jesus:  “Come, follow me.”  A momentary decision is called for:  will you follow him or not?  Will you choose his way of being in the world knowing that God is already here as he said God was?  When the answer is “yes”, it will change your life, maybe not every moment but it will change your life.

            An observer asked the great preacher, Lyman Beecher, how it was that he had so many converts.  Dr. Beecher answered, “I preach on Sunday and I have 400 members who preach every day, and that is the way with the blessing of God, that we are doing so well.”  (William R. Key, “The ‘What Is’ and ‘How to” of Evangelism.”)

            D.T. Niles, the great Asian Christian theologian defined evangelism as        “One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

            When I think of Jesus call of the disciples and Niles’ definition of evangelism, the face of Bob Hogan comes to mind.  Bob is a gruff old gent.  Irish.  A marine.  Semper Fi.  He was a member of the St. Luke’s congregation.  Served on the “Welcomers”, a group of people whose responsibility it was to follow up on visitors.  Their job was to keep track of who visited on Sunday.  They were then to get the names and addresses off the registration pads every week, go to the homes on Sunday afternoon, knock on the door and thank them for coming to worship, give them a small packet of information about the church.  Nothing long.  Nothing dramatic.  Less than 10 minutes.  If you asked him if he saw himself as an evangelist, he’d adamantly refuse the label.  But I heard him speak up in a group once.  He said, “You know, I remember when the Bruck’s visited the church one Sunday.  I was the one to visit them.  Now, they’re here with their kids almost every Sunday.  They’re involved in the life of the church.  It feels really good to be a part of that.”

            I wonder how many of you are here because someone invited you?  Or how many are here because you visited here and someone made you feel welcome and wanted?  The kind of fishing Jesus calls us to is not an impossible task.  I believe we are called, in the words of one writer, to “…catch folks up in God’s grace, love, and salvation”.  (APA, p. 21)  There’s nothing frightening about that, telling people where to find bread, inviting people to become part of a Christian community.  Jesus’ call echoes through the ages: 

“Come.  Follow me, and I’ll make you fish for people.”

How is God calling you to fulfill that call?  What is God asking of you right now?