| ""I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
"I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.…"
Although it was not the Simon, Andrew, James, or John of our Second Lesson who penned these verses, surely the mood of this poem, a mood sounded for us by a much later John, John Masefield, in his ballad "Sea Fever"-surely the mood of this poem captures what must have been the deep, deep attachment that these four men felt to their vocation, their vocation of fishing the waters of the Sea of Galilee. "I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.…" And centuries earlier than even these Galilean fisher folk, the Jonah of large-fish fame is said to have experienced a wild call, a clear call-one that came not from the running tide, but from the God of Israel, a call that, as narrated in our First Lesson, causes Jonah to go down to the sea alright, but for the purpose of escaping his call, not embracing it. You see, God issues to Jonah the wild and clear call to travel overland to the east some six hundred miles, into enemy territory, to the court of the Assyrian king, the Saddam Hussein of his day, in order to warn Assyria of God's impending judgment, a warning that will, in effect, offer that nation one last chance to repent. But Jonah will have none of it-none of such a wild call as that, none of offering Nineveh, the enemy, "a way out." So instead of heading eastward, he flees westward, taking ship for Spain, hoping to hide from God amidst "the flung spray and the blown spume" and the "grey mist on the sea's face." But God pursues Jonah's ship across the sea, along that way of the gull and way of the whale, "where the wind's like a whetted knife," and God sends a raging storm, such that Jonah is at last hurled into the churning sea, where God has him swallowed by a large fish and three days later vomited onto a beach. And then, for the second time, God gives Jonah that same wild, clear call: "Get up, and go to Nineveh." And by golly, this time he does get up and go, and, wouldn't you know it, something totally transformative happens. According to our story, the bad guys of Assyria respond more positively to this most pathetic of all the prophets-more positively than the good guys of Israel have ever responded to any of God's truly great prophets. Everyone in Nineveh, king and commoner alike, puts on the sackcloth and ashes of repentance, puts them not only on themselves but on their livestock as well-cows and donkeys, goats and sheep, all decked out in sackcloth and ashes! And at this sight, God has a change of mind and cancels Nineveh's punishment. Yes, God's wild, clear call to Jonah results in the transformation of a nation. Thus, we learn that God's call can make all things new. Even despicable Nineveh can change. Now, let's move forward in time to those good Galilean fisher folk of Jesus's day, to Simon, Andrew, James, and John-to those men of the sea who know first-hand "the wheel's kick and the wind's song," "the white sail's shaking" and the "grey dawn breaking." It comes to them at the very outset of Jesus's ministry-that wild, clear call from him to abandon their beloved vocation in order to take up quite a different one. When Jesus approaches the Sea of Galilee, he has just recently been baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist and tempted in the wilderness by Satan. Jesus is now returning to his native Galilean countryside to begin proclaiming the Good News that through him God's reign is coming near to humankind. As Jesus walks the beautiful shoreline of Galilee, he spies two families of fisher folk off in the distance, plying their trade in the waters. Jesus calls to them, first to the brothers Simon and Andrew casting their nets, and then to the brothers James and John mending their nets. And the words he calls out are really quite astonishing.For he does not open with, "Good morning," nor even "Hi, I'm Jesus! What're your names?" No, he addresses them abruptly with really quite "a wild call," a call to a new vocation, a call clearly quite different from the one they've been hearing from "the running tide." Jesus issues to them this commanding summons, "Follow me, and I'll make you fish for people!" Well, amazingly the brothers' response to Jesus is positive and immediate. Jesus has called them to leave behind their beloved old life and to move into a totally new life; and they do so instantly, in the process abandoning not only all the tools of their trade but even their families, so drawn are they by the power of God's Spirit that is emanating from this person on shore. Now the brothers' call to fish for people is not easily understood by us. We usually take this episode to mean that the four were asked to go about happily reeling in persons, reeling them in to faith in Christ, joyfully engaging in the evangelization of souls for eternal salvation. But as the various Old Testament images of fishing make clear, the coming of a fisher is, from a fish's point of view, something pretty ominous. (cf. Jer. 16:16; Ezek. 29:4; Amos 4:2; Hab. 1:14-15) For in ordinary fishing, what follows is the fish's death. Yet, as we can see clearly in the story of Jonah and the Ninevites, the ultimate goal of "fishing for people" is not destruction, but is rather transformation. Jonah, who had himself been "fished" by God not for destruction but for transformation-Jonah at last brought himself to speak for God, and, as a result, the Ninevites' whole way of life in this world, in this here-and-now, was changed. Indeed, in each Old Testament "fishing" text, the goal of the "fisher" is to effect a dramatic change in the identity of the "fished." And certainly that is what also happens in today's Second Lesson, in the lives of the four disciples whom Jesus here "fishes." First, they are themselves transformed. And then, they are commissioned to go forth and transform others. (See Brian K. Blount in Preaching Mark in Two Voices, Westminster John Knox, 2002, p. 24) Jesus summons Simon and Andrew and James and John to join him in the struggle both in their community and in the wider world, to join him in the struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege; the struggle to break down the existing boundaries and social barriers; the struggle to usher in the reign of God's way of seeing and doing things. Jesus summons Simon and Andrew and James and John to be like him and to do like him and to call others to be like him and do like him. So what is it to be like Jesus and to do like Jesus? Well, we will discover in the course of this church year, as we encounter its series of lectionary readings from the Gospel of Mark, that this gospel portrays Jesus: as one who touches and holds those whom the community and world consider to be impure and out of bounds, like lepers; as one who associates with, and even parties with, tax collectors who cheat and other sinners who steal; as one who lets a woman whom other religious leaders consider a prostitute stroke him and anoint him, at a party, in the house of a leper; and as one who feels free to break the age-old laws of sabbath observance whenever they somehow stand in conflict with human well-being. (See Blount, ibid, p. 33) The transformed religious, spiritual, social, and political community and world that Jesus is calling us disciples to help him create are to be absolutely topsy-turvy versions of the community and world that currently exist for us. So Jesus's call is indeed a wild one. For it is a call to help him create the kind of wild community and world in which people have stopped thinking on the one hand of "the way things have always been done" and stopped thinking on the other hand of "the way things ought to be done." It is a call to help Jesus create the kind of community and world in which they have started thinking instead of all the new ways that we people can help each other. (See Blount, ibid.) We are called to help create the kind of wild community and world where people care more about touching and embracing those whom colleagues reject than about preserving "one's reputation," where people care more about helping those who've made mistakes to change than about punishing them or keeping them isolated. (Blount, ibid.) We are called to help create the kind of wild community and world where people willingly and willfully break those laws or habits or customs that separate or segregate people from each other, that prevent groups from coming together in harmony, those laws or habits or customs that send people into unjust wars, that allow the powerful and wealthy to have more opportunities in life than the weak and poor. (Blount, ibid.) We are called to help create the kind of wild community and world where people live and act as ones who have been visibly transformed, visibly changed, by the healing, reconciling power of the Spirit of God offered to us, as to Jesus, in baptism. But let's admit it. A wild call to help turn our community and world upside down is not what we'd prefer to receive-especially in church, where we tend to want everything predictably "just so"! We like the power that God and God's reign represent, but we'd prefer that that power were domesticated, rather than running wild! (See Blount, ibid, p. 34) But a domesticated call is not the kind that Jesus issued to Simon, Andrew, James, and John, and it's not the kind that Jesus is issuing to us. Ours is a call from the Christ of God, ours is a call that is wild and clear, ours is the call to "fish for people," which is to say, ours is the call to transform our community and world. Today our congregation is holding its annual meeting. Today we convene to recall and reflect on the ministries of worship and justice that we've been conducting over the past year, and to choose our lay leaders for the ministries of the next year, and to chart our basic course for the time immediately ahead. So this is a wonderfully appropriate day for our lectionary passages to be asking each and every one of us to reflect on our call from God, on our call to join with Christ in transforming our community and world. An anonymous follower of Christ was once overheard praying: "Dear God, look at everything that's wrong with our community and with our world. Why are they filled with so much conflict, distress, and suffering? Why don't You send help?" And God replied: "I have sent help. First, I sent Christ, and now Christ has called you." Amen |
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