A Good Day for Fishing

My sermon from today, preaching on Mark 1:14-20 where Jesus calls his first disciples who drop their fishing nets immediately to follow him. He then tells them that they will "fish for people."

-This passage from the Gospel of Mark is one where Jesus calls his first disciples, 2 sets of brothers known as Peter (Simon) and Andrew, and James and John. We notice that this occurs early in Jesus’ ministry, soon after he is baptized. We are told that John the Baptist is arrested by the authorities for his outspoken beliefs about the Messiah and the coming kingdom of God. And remember that John the Baptist preached about God’s judgment and to repent, to make paths straight for the coming of the Messiah. So this passage opens with Jesus proclaiming the good news of God and that the time John has predicted has come- Jesus is the fulfillment of John’s word and the kingdom has come near with the coming of Jesus.
-The first thing Jesus does within his ministry is that he takes a huge risk! We just read that John the Baptist who baptized Jesus has been arrested and is later killed, and now we see Jesus beginning his ministry by calling people to be his followers. John was arrested for very similar reasons, so here we see Jesus putting himself at risk right away by doing this. I should mention that the Gospel of Mark is famous for talking about the drama of discipleship- in fact, this gospel is the most famous one for portraying the disciples as “not getting it” most of the time. They are imperfect, they lose their faith on occasion, they doubt, and they act confused, but at the same time, they are willing to risk all to follow Jesus, to obey him, and to take risks themselves.
-So imagine this- you are on a boat, doing your job in the family business as a fisherman or woman, catching fish, making a living. The sea is calm, the air is perfect, the wind is refreshing- just another beautiful day for fishing. And all the sudden you see a mysterious man on the shore who calls to you, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people!” You can’t explain it, but something tells you to stop what you are doing and follow this man whom you have never seen before in your life, but you know there is something special about him, something drawing you to him like a magnet, and you know your life will never be the same. In the back of your mind you worry what the future holds or what your family will say, or how you will provide for your family, but somehow you know things will work out, so you just follow and trust. You just believe.
-It’s hard for us to imagine such a thing happening to us today, right? We all have, bills, people to provide for, and jobs to keep. Well, so did these guys. We are not told the details of this story, just that they dropped their nets “immediately” to follow Jesus. They took a risk- they took a risk that they would lose their job, that they would ruin their well-earned reputations, that they would dishonor their families, that they would be shunned by society- all to follow a man they knew nothing about at the time.
-Although they risk their jobs as fishermen, Jesus seems to given them another job, and that is to “fish for people.” What on earth does that mean? Well, even though Jesus is the Messiah and could probably handle most anything on his own, he chooses to give mere humans a share in his mission and ministry on earth. He chooses to give us humans a share in helping others turn back to God and away from sin and wrongdoing. He chooses to make imperfect humans his disciples. Pretty cool, huh? Of course, “fishing for people” includes sharing this great news with others and hoping it spreads like wild fire- that Jesus Christ has come to fulfill God’s promises and usher in the kingdom of God- and guess what? We all have a role in this mission!
-But all of this comes with a cost of course. To be a disciple of Christ usually means that we have to give something up, to make some kind of sacrifice in our own life. When I felt the calling in my life to become a pastor, I knew that I was going to sacrifice a lot of things. My dad always teased me that I would grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer, to live a somewhat comfortable life financially, etc. Instead I ended up spending 3 years in seminary after college and answering the call to ministry because my love of God and my desire to serve in the church was too strong to ignore. If you really stop and think about it, you probably have had a time in your life where you found it difficult to be a disciple of Christ- someone saw you in a different way, or someone expected you to act a certain way, or you had to stand up for your beliefs among non-believers. It can be hard at times. Sometimes our beliefs cause a disruption in our lives or they can call us in a different direction than where we started. So what can we learn from these hasty disciples? We can learn that when Jesus calls us, we should do all we can to answer without much hesitation. We can strive to trust and to be willing to make changes within our own lives, sometimes taking risks.
-In the 1860s and 1870s, there was a community of people with leprosy quarantined on the Hawaiian island of Molokai by the American government. A Catholic priest named Father Damien took a risk and became a missionary there. He ministered to these people by living among them, running medical centers, and building churches. There is actually a film out now about him, and there is a great scene where a young boy with leprosy asks him to be an altar boy, promising that he will not touch anything on the table. Father Damien recalls a fellow priest who had told him before he left on his mission not to touch anyone. And instead of following this advice, Father Damien shakes the little boy’s hand as a promise that he could be the altar boy for the church service and sealing their relationship in Christ. In Father Damien we find an extreme example of dropping our nets to follow Jesus in our own way. (I showed a clip from "Horton Hears a Who" during the Prayz! Service here.)
-The beauty of this calling is that none of us are perfect. We all falter, we all doubt, we sometimes do not want to hear God calling us or we refuse to act. We can be stubborn- but Jesus still asks that we give what we can for his sake, and we are still called from our daily tasks in life to follow him. Jesus gives us each a role in his mission, and even though we are not perfect, even though we can become so focused on what we are doing that we forget to seek what God wants, Jesus still calls us. As we talked about earlier, these disciples were no pictures of perfection either. They even desert Jesus at his death, but we are shown that grace prevails over everything and all is forgiven because we choose to say yes to Christ.
-We also find that following Christ and answering the call comes with many rewards. We find that Jesus provides for us as he does for those in the Bible by multiplying loaves and fishes, by becoming the light in our lives, and by spiritually nourishing us. In Luke’s version of this story, Jesus joins Peter in his boat after Peter is not having any luck catching fish, and Jesus tells him to throw his net again, and this time he catches so many fish that the nets begin to break, showing Peter that through God, anything is possible. Jesus makes something small into something big- and that’s only one of many gifts.
-So what will you give up in order to make room for Christ in your life? Especially as Lent is quickly approaching, what will you do in order to focus more on your walk of discipleship? Who will you catch in your net as a result of a sacrifice you choose to make? What will you gain from this sacrifice?
-Many of you know about facebook or are on facebook, but I have been on facebook since my college days, and I will admit that I am obsessed with it. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is a website where anyone can get a profile complete with pictures, facts about themselves, and they can find and add friends from all over the world to connect with. This site also provides community groups, advertisements, and fan pages, anything you can think of. Anyone can easily spend hours on facebook. I know I spend WAY too much time on it- looking at pictures, catching up with old friends, finding out who is doing what, and checking out everything that is going on in the world through one website- facebook is probably one of the biggest thing on the internet right now, hands down. I’ve thought about giving up facebook for Lent and spending the time that I do spend on it doing something else, like spending time in prayer or finding another way to connect to God or people face to face instead of online- this would be a huge sacrifice for me because I love facebook so much, but I know I should love God more.
-So how do we fish for people and throw our nets wide? We have to share the good news of Christ with others- part of being a Christian is to share Christ and how He has transformed our lives. We can do this through our behavior, our actions, our words, and our love. We cannot be afraid to spread our nets wide and invite others to come along for the ride. When I was in seminary, I thought “evangelism” was the scariest word. I always called to mind the TV preachers or those people who knock on your door during dinner, trying to give you some “information” about “being saved.” But I realize now that evangelism is so much more- it’s about doing what you can and giving what you can through your faith in Jesus Christ and reflecting that light and love that he alone can offer, and you don’t have to be a TV preacher to do that!
-I think that the key word is love- love for God and love for others. At President Obama’s inauguration this past week, poet Elizabeth Alexander recited her poem. Near the end of the poem were these words:
Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond all marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp- praise song for walking forward in that light.
-As Jesus asks us to drop our nets and follow him, as he asks us to “fish for people,” we are being called to walk forward into that light, knowing that we might not always be on that lighted path, that we may be asked to give something up, to give of ourselves, to take a risk. Knowing that we may feel disrupted. Whether we are born Christians, raised in a Christian home, whether we discover the Christian faith later in life, whether we are still searching for answers, we know that this life is not an easy one- we are called to do the work of Christ in the world-to touch a life, to change the course of the world, to usher in the Kingdom of God. So are we ready to take on this challenge? Are we ready to drop our nets and say, “Yes, Lord, I will follow”? Is this a good day for fishing? Amen.