January 25, 2009

Following Jesus Brings New Purpose to Life
Mark 1:14-20/Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Epiphany 3 – January 25, 2009
Annual Meeting

Before I begin this morning, I'd like to ask you all to bend back a little bit, and look up. Go ahead,
look up at the roof that covers us. What do you see? What does it look like to you?

I did that one day, just kind of laid back on a pew & looked up for a while & thought about that ceiling, which was designed, as so many churches over the centuries have been, to look like the inside of a boat, an upside-down boat, but a boat nonetheless. It's why we call the part of the church where the pews are the nave – nave, Navy, boats – you get it? The cover of our bulletin today got me thinking about that - the church as a boat, and why the church uses that image so often, and of these stories we have today, both from the gospel and from the Old Testament about certain men and boats, and the way that God called them, and the ways that they responded.

All of these men, Jonah and then centuries later 2 sets of brothers, Andrew & Simon (better known as Peter) & James & John, receive a call. Unexpectedly, in the middle of their busy lives, while they were hard at work & minding their own business, a call comes. For Jonah, it was the word of God that came to him, not once, but twice, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, & proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” For the 4 disciples that Mark's gospel tells us about, the call came directly from Jesus who came to them, who sought them out and said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Two different calls to do two different things, but what strikes me about both of these stories, what they seem to have in common, is that when the call comes, it's hard. Answering God's call is difficult, because answering God's call on your life always seems to mean leaving things behind. For the disciples, following Jesus means leaving behind their work, their source of income. Simon & Andrew just drop their nets there in the water & come. It means leaving behind their families – James & John left their father Zebedee behind in the boat with just the hired men. It means leaving behind safety and security – they didn't know what they were getting into, but you can bet that everybody around knew that John had just been arrested, & here comes Jesus with a similar message, asking them to join up. For the disciples, answering God's call meant leaving all of these things behind, to follow a stranger just because he said, “Follow me.”

And then we have Jonah, who also got a call from God. It was a call to travel many miles, straight into the heart of enemy territory to carry God's word of judgment, God's warning that Nineveh was about to be destroyed! Oh, Jonah heard God's call the first time, but he knew that obeying the call would mean leaving behind not only his comfort and his safety as he traveled and as he entered into this hostile place with this fearsome message, but it would also mean leaving behind his old prejudices, his old preconceived notions of just who God loved, who God was looking out for. Jonah didn't want to give those evil Nineveh-ites a chance to repent, because he knew God would forgive them if they did, and he didn't want that! He wanted them to get what was coming to them, after all their nation had done to Israel. And so, Jonah went the other way. He went in the complete opposite direction, climbing on board a boat that would take him about as far away from Nineveh as he could get. But you know the story, how God caused a great storm, and Jonah was tossed overboard, and God saved him by sending a great fish to swallow him (not our 1st choice of salvation methods, but salvation nonetheless!), where he stayed for 3 days until the fish spit him out on shore, and the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time – right where we came in this morning. And so Jonah finally answers the call – but even then, he is reluctant and resentful.

Two different calls, two very different responses. One group goes “immediately”, dropping their nets, waving good-bye to their families – they don't hesitate, they just follow. The other resists, and evades, and finally responds, but goes off dragging his feet.

It seems to me that when God calls us to follow, we have a choice between these two different responses. We can obey quickly, dropping everything & leaving our safe, secure boat behind, or we can run the other direction, looking for the first boat out of town, trying to run from God, unwilling to go where God has called us to go.

As we sit here this morning, in the safety of our little upside-down boat, I wonder what we will do when we hear God's call. Not just as individuals, but as a congregation. Because when Jesus calls his disciples, it is never a call to be comfortable – it is always a call to change. It is a call to leave our nets and our boats behind so that we can follow him. It is a call to trust him, even though we don't know what will happen next. But that's hard for us to do! No one likes change; no one wants to step out into the unknown.

Yet I feel God is calling us to take that step, to follow into the future, to explore new opportunities, to try new things as we seek to reach out to our community with the good news of God's love. If the church isn't doing that, it risks becoming just a social club, instead of a place where disciples are gathered and formed and sent into the world!

And I know that some of those changes will be uncomfortable. Even trying a new musical setting to our liturgy makes us squirm a bit. But if we don't take a risk, if we don't get out of the boat & follow, oh the joy we will miss. Because even though Jesus' call always means leaving some things behind, Jesus never leaves us with nothing. He always brings something new in its place! We see that with the disciples – he called them to leave their jobs as fishermen behind, but he gives their lives a new focus, a new purpose. Come, follow me, he says, & I'll take your old skills and put them to new use! You'll still be fishing, but now you'll be fishing for people!

That's the amazing thing. When Jesus calls us, as challenging as it may be at times, that call is also an invitation to be part of what God is doing in the world! God has a vision for the future of all of creation, a dream for what the world will one day be, when in Christ everything will be made new, when grieving will be no more and peace will reign. It's the day that all creation is longing for, the day we hope and pray for and look forward to, when God's will will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We pray for that every time we pray the Lord's Prayer. And God is inviting us to be a part of making that happen. As individuals and as a congregation, God wants us to use our gifts and skills in new ways, to be part of bringing God's kingdom near now, in our everyday lives, just as those first disciples did.

But we do have a choice: to respond joyfully or to resist the call. The reality is, to borrow from the book Living Lutheran: “God is gonna do what God is gonna do. The only question is, are we gonna be part of it or not?” I say we drop our nets, get out of this boat and follow, and see where God will lead us next! Amen.