In a few moments I am going to read you an absolutely fantastic story from the Gospel of Mark. Mark is thought to be the oldest of the Gospels and it is, as you know, the shortest one. The Gospel writer was not one to mince words and there is an immediacy and urgency found in the writing. Here we are, just in the first chapter of the Gospel and there are no wonderful baby stories about Jesus in the manger with the magi, shepherds, and angels. Mark hits the ground running with Jesus’ baptism, a sentence about Jesus going into the wilderness, and then by verse 14, Jesus begins his public ministry and calling together his disciples. Listen to Mark 1:14-20 where Jesus calls his first disciples and asks them to follow him.
(Read Mark 1:14-20.)
14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news[a] of God,[b] 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;[c] repent, and believe in the good news.”[d]
16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
THE TIME IS FULFILLED!!!!! Jesus calls his disciples right then and there. There is a prophetic urgency to what Jesus is doing. He knows that John the Baptist has been arrested and probably knows that he will soon be beheaded. Jesus also knows his time is coming as well. He screams: ‘Repent and believe’. This is a call to action. Time is at hand, time is fulfilled, and whatever you call it….the Kingdom of God…..the realm of God….the kin-dom of God…. well, it is at hand!
The Gospel lesson says Jesus walked around proclaiming his message until he passed the Sea of Galilee and saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, and then again two more brothers Zebedee’s sons James and John and he calls them to follow him. And they do. Simon and Andrew leave their very precious nets behind. This is huge. Perhaps they were filled with fish? And be leaving their precious nets, they were leaving the instruments which allowed them their profession. They left their computers…. they left their phones…..They went with Jesus. I’m passing around a photo of a painting by Duccio in the 13th century who painted the scene and included such urgency in the brother’s response that they leave with their nets still in the water filled with fish. Certainly Zebedee’s sons acted with that type of immediacy as Mark says they left with their father still on the boat. They couldn’t even say good bye, help the old man off the boat and go home and share farewells with their mother and sisters. AND, these men are not asked by Jesus to join a group or to add one more meeting to their already busy schedules, or to volunteer for one more thing on their day off. They are asked to change their whole lives!!!! Seriously…… we need to realize how totally incredible their response to Jesus’ calling was. And the reality is that when we become a person of faith, when we accept God’s ethic of love as ours, we do become different people….. and that is scary!
Jesus tells them that they are to be fishers of people.
And Jesus calls us to be fishers of people as well.
And here is where the conflict inside us begins to develop. You know; the…. ‘What-exactly-does-this-mean-and-do-we-have-what-it takes-to-do-it,-and-if-we-do,-do-we-really-want-to-do-it’ conflict.
It also brings out the ‘but-they-are-so-much-better-than-I-am’ conflict as well where we feel like we are the lesser disciples of God. Remember being told as a child ‘why can’t you be more like your brother or sister’, or ‘your brother never did anything like that when he was your age’, or ‘your baby cousin can manage to sit through the church service, and you can’t’. We know…. we are not these fishermen.
But we here believe in God’s love. And that changes everything. I loved the editor of Presbyterian Outlook Magazine, Jill Duffield’s exegesis on this passage. She reminds us that we are only on chapter 1. Just as all love relationships start out with a fervency and faithfulness that is so strong, things quickly begin to waiver. Things always start out with such passion and then, like passionate love, things begin to wane. Yes, our four disciples start as examples of faith in action whose immediate response to Jesus’ call to ministry intimidates us, but soon these same men become people that we are embarrassed to admit resemble our own faith practices. We need to remember that later in the Gospel Jesus will ask them why they have such little faith. They will not understand Jesus’ message and will try and send away the children and hungry. Those same sons of Zebedee will request a reward for their efforts when they ask Jesus to sit at his right and his left in his glory. And finally, we know that three of these four first disciples will fall asleep in Jesus’ hour of need.
Jill Duffield says, ‘We can admire the immediacy and total come-to-Jesus moment of the four in this text but we should realize that the story of their faith is like ours. We all have a faith story of: obedience and recalcitrance; praise and complaint; faithfulness and apostasy; service and selfishness; awake and asleep; hospitable and withholding; saint and sinner; and human, yet called by God.’
Truly the good news is that because of God’s steadfast love, we can be bold in our faith and drop the net and follow where God calls us. And we will do it imperfectly. But we can trust that when we fail, which we will as we are human, God will not abandon us but will work with us in the missions to which we are called. AND, we are called to be Jesus’ disciples.
I spent this past Wednesday afternoon at the Presbytery office. One meeting was to secure a loan for some work on our building that needs to be done and the other was for my monthly meeting with our Executive Presbyter as we plan for the Leadership Council meeting this month. When I arrived a little early, Daris Bultena who is our Executive Presbyter, and I talked a bit about the assigned lectionary text for Sunday and its message to us today. He asked me how things were going in the church. I said, numerically we were doing OK as we took in more members than we lost last year, our stewardship drive was a success in that the number of members who pledged was up as were their pledges to the church, and our budget for this year was not taking as much out of our savings as last year. He congratulated us and asked me to say in a sentence what our mission was. I explained that this is an interesting question and one which our session was now working. He asked me what I FELT it was. I said that although we were proud of all our missions and our involvement in the community whether it be through the Child Care Center, our declaring ourselves a Sanctuary Church, an Earth Care Congregation, our missions to the Francis Tucker Elementary School, the Food pantry, our pride in having the YES Institute in our church, or the many other programs we involve ourselves in ministry to the community that wasn’t our mission. But, I felt that they were the response to the mission God is calling us to do. I believe all our wonderful missions are actually bi-products of our true mission. We love and are proud of our missions but I don’t see us as a whole group dropping our fishing nets and giving our lives for them.
But, I truly believe that EACH member of Riviera Church would put themselves on the line to spread the word that there are no exceptions to God’s love. Our DNA is inclusivity for all, not some. We are a church whose fundamental belief is and always has been that God loves all people. All people, and God wants us to model and live out that love. That to me is the mission of this church. I feel that people come here for that reason and that is the message that we should be telling the world. In all we do, from Josephine showering love on our children in the nursery, to our bold statements of the inclusivity of God’s love, our mission is that all who walk in our doors, or are affected by our ministries know true acceptance and the abundance God’s love. That, to me is our mission.
And Jesus calls us to be fishers of people. The message here is that Jesus calls us to spread his good news. We are to tell our friends, our associates that do not have the same church base to come to Riviera Church and know that you are loved. In a world where you are judged and defined by what you earn, what you look like, what your background is, what your gender, sexuality, or sexual identity is; we offer acceptance, care, and love. In a growing culture in our society of isolationism and blaming the victims, we offer an ethic and ethos of justice and a willingness to fight for equality. And as fishers of people, most importantly, we are called not to hide who we are under a bushel, but to tell people in every aspect of our being who we are and what the mission of our church is.
We were given a mission grant to begin a youth group. I am now looking for a person with enthusiasm and a love for middle and upper school age children who will serve as the leader of a Sunday school class and a monthly fellowship/mission activity. I believe that this age group needs to know and experience the unconditional love of God in their lives. I believe that God is calling us to this as an extension of the mission he has given us as Christ’s disciples. I so look forward to this ministry as we continue to witness to God’s love to our world.
Amen.