We're Just Leaving

We’re Just Leaving

 

Luke 5:1-11

Jesus calls the disciples to fish for people 

5:1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,

5:2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.

5:3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

5:4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."

5:5 Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."

5:6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst.

5:7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

5:8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus's knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

5:9 For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken,

5:10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."

5:11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

 

This is a wonderful Bible story, and one that has a humorous reprise. In this telling, Peter, James and John are the fishermen Jesus calls to be his disciples. At first, they are plying their trade, and aren’t catching anything. Jesus gets himself invited into Peter’s boat, and has him row it near enough the shore that the gathering crowd could hear his teaching. When he finishes the lesson, he tells Peter to row out to the deeper water and let down his nets. Peter is skeptical, in that he and his buds have been fishing all night, fruitlessly. But he does what Jesus says, gets such a haul of fish he is concerned the nets will burst. They get so many fish into the boats that they begin to swamp. The “miracle of fish” causes Peter to bare his soul before Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t condemn him, instead issuing him a calling to join him in “catching people.” Later, after the chaos surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the fishermen disciples decide to go back to what they knew best, so they put out in their boats, once again. Of course, they caught nothing, until “some guy” on the beach starts yelling at them to “throw your nets on the other side of the boat,” which surely sounded like some dumb “bass master” who had no idea. Still, having experienced one miracle of the sea, they did what the stranger suggested. Again, the nets were blooming with fish. John—“the disciple whom Jesus loved”—brilliantly observed, “It is the Lord.” This “call story” of the fishermen/disciples ends with the phrase, “…they left everything and followed [Jesus],” which may be a fairytale ending like, “And they all lived happily ever after.” Have YOU ever tried leaving “everything” to do anything?

 

Years ago, I knew two young pastors who were serving an unusual new church called Hot Metal Bridge in Pittsburgh. Their sermons were dramas based on scripture which they wrote and acted out. Quite clever, actually, and extremely well done, given that they both were drama majors in college. One of my favorites they “acted out” at one of our Annual Conference sessions in Grove City, and it was based on this “fishers of men” call story. In their skit, they play fishermen—the brothers Peter and Andrew, as I recall—and their struggle with “leaving everything” to follow Jesus. While they were moved by Jesus, his words, and his “fishing miracles,” but in the skit, they debated what it would mean to “leave everything,” and both of them held tightly on to a fishing net, as they weighed with words how hard it would be to leave their tried and true profession to join an unusual “spirit man” who promised they would be “catching people,” whatever that meant. In the pastors’ skit, after a long dialogue about this challenging dilemma, they finally drop the net onto the floor and leave the stage in silence. What an impressive image. Made me think about the “nets” I dropped to head off to seminary. In my own telling, I report that my wife and I—two small-town people who loved the small town—left our cozy little home in Rock Grove for a third-floor apartment in East Liberty, with our two small children, ages 2 and four-weeks, to learn how to “fish for people.” Not only was it not easy to do, but I confess to thinking, from time to time, about that little wood house in a town where you never even had to lock your doors, and wonder what life would have been like there. Maybe this is why I chuckle at the fishermen/disciples who, in the confusing aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection, go fishing again. The temptation is always there, I guess.

 

What about you? Do you have a “call story” wherein you were beckoned by God, career, or a need within your family to leave a secure, beloved place in life to pursue a new dream? Your story may be something huge from your past when you “took leave” to chart a new course in your life, or it may be from yesterday, when some nudge took you to a new place to do something novel. I happen to believe that these “nudges” or prompts to leave something behind and move in a new direction or to THINK in a different way about something, are among the most meaningful things God does in our lives. As one who tends to espouse “Process Theology,” I believe God is always trying to lure us toward new experiences/ministries/horizons (pick your favorite word here), and it is in this “call forward” we see the most meaningful “call language” being employed. Gone are the days when to be “called” of God meant that you were off to seminary to train to be a pulpit pastor, or sent to a faraway land as a missionary. God’s call has never been limited to these traditional fields of ministerial endeavor, but WE have tended to discount the myriad other “calls,” or unfortunately, to ignore them. One of the things I’ve tried to emphasize in my many years as a pastor—especially among the youth I was privileged to work with—was that God calls EVERYONE to a “calling” in life, be that as a teacher, a doctor, an accountant, a librarian, or as a “homemaker.” Ministry, while an important pursuit in the religious career life, is but one of the alternatives. People of faith should never put themselves or their life’s calling down, if they believe they are doing what God called them to do, regardless. On the other hand, neither should any of us stop listening for a fresh or a refreshed call to enhance what we do, or do something else God may call us to do. If we believe in the Holy Spirit of God as working in our lives and in the world today, then we dishonor God if we: discount our activities or career when we believe we are using our best gifts with them; shut our ears and hearts to new opportunities God may be nudging us toward; or believe that what we are currently about is ALL that we ever need be about. If we believe God is a co-creating God of compassion, progress, and novelty, then God may never be finished with us. As a retired pastor now back serving a church, and as one who never closes my ears to the next “nudge,” I can attest to the power of the call! And I’m seventy years of age! I DO believe my best, even my most creative years may be yet to come! How about you?

 

And today’s scripture again begs the question, what must you leave behind to pursue the divine nudge? As an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, which operates an itinerant ministry (meaning they move us pastors around from church to church, as some bishop sees fit), I can say that God’s next call literally meant leaving! We left new friends with whom we had become quite comfortable. Our kids left friends and schools behind. Sometimes we left a spacious parsonage for a “crackerbox,” or a locale rife with shopping plazas and restaurants for a more remote venue that required a car to go for a good coffee or a roll. But new opportunities always beckoned. We left with warm, rich memories of where we had been, and ready—sometimes reluctantly—to make new ones with a whole new group of folk. Some “leaving” involves sacrifice, doesn’t it? I will never forget the response my two children had to leaving a large, North Hills school district (Shaler) to move into the third smallest district in the State of PA (Cornell, in Coraopolis). They could have panicked, but instead they thrived, making the choice to make the most of a new situation. I am convinced that it was in this willful, yet reluctant transition, they learned the most valuable lesson of their education. The later adjustment to university—often a crisis time for many—was easy-peasy for Shelah and Evan. 

 

Peter, Andrew, James and John left a very successful fishing business to become “fishers of people,” in the words of Jesus. They must have thought that quite crazy, “fishers of people.” Using a net to fish made sense; using words and deeds to lure people to ascribe to a faith? Yeah, crazy. Fish you ate; people required much more attention to their needs, a vital religious community in which to commiserate, fellowship, and worship, and new ways to discover and use their spiritual gifts. It was a tall order for an organization that did not yet exist. Today, with a cultural shift happening around “going to church,” when less and less folk are being reared with a weekly trip to worship as a standard practice, and where Sunday School is often relegated to a single class filled with people over 70, carving out a place in the church for people to serve has been made harder. Maybe this is why the Holy Spirit is working to place the Christian witness in our everyday affairs and in innovative new “mission fields” like Volunteers in Mission teams or Summer youth work camps? Still, to engage in these, one must leave something behind to free up the time. 

 

Often, what we must “leave” is an outdated attitude or an archaic view of reality, in order to pursue God’s creative novelty. I’m sure we’ve all heard it said that the final epitaph on the tombstone of the church will be: “We’ve never done it that way before!” And we’ve probably also heard that uttered in a church board meeting, too. We all have “comfort levels” or “happy places” we like to hold on to like gold bullion, but my experience is that God rarely considers our comfort levels when nudging us to newness. God’s not a bully, though, and we almost always have the option of saying “no,” or at least, “not yet” to something. And a willingness to leave behind our complacency might even prompt us to proactively volunteer for stuff! I was always grateful for persons who said “yes” to a call from myself or a member of our lay leadership committee asking them to serve. It was thrilling to have a person come to ME, saying, “Pastor, I’d like to do thus-and so…” I found it much harder to deal with those who volunteered for little, always said “no” to the nudge from nominations, or just criticized those who were the helpers and the doers. They were much harder to love. 

 

It's always hard to leave things and people we love, or surroundings in which we are comfortable. But rarely do great stories come from the “Norman Rockwell” paintings such as these. No, testimonies and transformational narratives emanate from the uncomfortable new things we take on when nudged to do so, or from the sudden change of venue God or life or both may cause for us. Can you find it in your heart to embrace such novelty? And what are you willing to leave to do so? Jesus talked about “putting our hand to the plow and not looking back” as a metaphor for this kind of thing. I’ve never actually used a plow, but I’m guessing that if you keep looking back to see where you’ve been, your rows get crooked. Many of our churches are hurting and dying because of crooked rows, I’m thinking. When our children were little, rather than criticize them for “not doing something right,” or saying, “Here, let me show you how to do that,” we learned to encourage them by simply saying, “Try another way,” when they were struggling with an effort. It’s time for us to say to the church, “Try another way,” without judgment on the “old ways” or condemning them for their comfortable “stuckness,” I suppose. 

 

“Stuckness,” by the way, is the “sin” of the Process Theology model I follow. Stuckness is putting down an anchor where God sees a rest period on the journey. The opposite of the sin of stuckness in the Process model? Yep—“novelty,” and the “call forward.” Or as I like to say, “the nudge.” 

 

This story invites us to examine two important questions about our faith and our calling(s) in life: what are we LEAVING, and what are we CATCHING. What we’re catching may be a sermon for another day. Thinking about what we’re leaving may be a very important question for you today, though. Are you open to God’s novelty, which may mean leaving something “beloved” behind? Or are you succumbing to stuckness, holding on white-knuckled to a talisman that has become an anchor to a fading past?

 

“Leaving everything to follow Jesus” surely means different things to different people. For some of us, it meant a whole change of careers. For others, it means allying with a whole new group of people. For ALL of us, following Jesus means actually opening our hearts, minds, and journeys to follow JESUS, and not just baptizing our comfort or complacency. Rarely does God call us to do things that are WAY out of our comfort zones or that aren’t matched up with our best gifts, but almost always, God’s “nudge” means leaving something behind so we have hands free to pick up something else. Peter, Andrew, James and John knew this full well when they finally dropped those nets. Watch for the “nudge,” Beloved. Amen.