2022-02-07
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text
Scripture: LUKE 5:1-11
A minister named Rebecca Anderson, who’s a former stand-up comic, has written what she calls “The Gospel in One Minute.” In it, she seeks to succinctly sum up the good news about Jesus. Now I need to say before you hear it that it goes by really fast. So your focused attention will be well rewarded. In fact, I’m wondering if one of you might time this, just to see how close to a minute we get. In this summation, you will hear echoes of passages we have spent time with in recent weeks, as well as today’s story and next week’s scripture passage.
Do we have a timer? OK, then this is how it goes: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ: Mary, Joseph, donkey, stable—there wasn’t a donkey. Angels, shepherds, Magi. Fled to Egypt. Grew up back in Nazareth. Baptized in the Jordan by John. Tempted by Satan. He preached in his home synagogue, ‘The Spirit of God’s on me to preach the good news.’ It didn’t go well. He got a bunch of unpaid interns that used to be [fishers]. He exorcised demons. He healed people, forgave people their sins, told stories. Talked to people he wasn’t supposed to. He walked around a ton on land and also on water. He calmed storms and raised the dead. He gave people good wine and fish and bread. He summarized the law and prophets in like two seconds. He preached the Sermon on the Mount or maybe a Plain: ‘You get a blessing, and you get a blessing, and you get a blessing. Turn the other cheek, love your enemies, don’t worry about anything, little birds.’ Jesus went to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday ever. He went to the Temple and flipped over the tables. He worried the Romans. He got mad at a fig tree. He hosted Passover. He broke bread, shared wine. He said, ‘This is my body, this is my blood. Remember.’ He was arrested, he was executed. On the third day, his tomb was empty, and ever since he’s been showing up all over the place. There are many other things he did, and if they were all written down, the world itself couldn’t contain it” (https://vimeo.com/672847349). How’d we do on time?
So there it is: the gospel, the good news, in a nutshell. And in it, we have that great line about Jesus getting “a bunch of unpaid interns who used to be fishers,” our story for today (Luke 5:1-11). What a wonderful image, Simon and his compatriots as “unpaid interns” in the service of Jesus. In a sense, of course, that’s exactly what they are. Untrained and largely unprepared, they suddenly up and leave their former lives and embark on a mysterious journey with this person they’ve only just met.
I confess that every time I hear this story, I shudder a little bit. Maybe you won’t be surprised, and maybe you shudder a little, too. And here’s the reason: when I hear that line at the end about these neophyte disciples “leaving everything to follow Jesus” (5:11), I always gulp a little, and I wonder if I am really able or even willing to do that. It sounds so extreme, so frankly impossible to actually do. Who in the world would leave everything to follow Jesus? Everything: home, town, job, hobbies, family—everything. Who do you know, who have you ever heard of in your whole life, who actually did that—left everything to follow Jesus?
So my first reaction is: sorry, Jesus, ain’t gonna happen. I love my job, my home, my town, my hobbies, my family. If following you means dropping the rest of my life, I’m going to choose the life I have. It matters that much to me. I’m that attached to it. Because I take my faith seriously, I’m also going to agonize about it. I’m going to be steeped in guilt. But the choice seems clear to me. I’m going to maintain my present commitments, commitments that fill me and nourish me. Case closed.
I can’t help wondering, though, if that first negative reaction of mine has missed something crucial. When we’re told that Simon and the others “leave everything,” what is the story really telling us? The specifics are spelled out, of course: they leave their boats and their livelihoods, and they walk away from this massive catch of fish that is just left to rot there on the shore. And off they go with Jesus.
Here’s where I get hung up, though. When they leave everything in the way that they do, that can’t possibly be a model for all of us. If all of us did what they do, nobody would be doing any of the work that daily life depends on. We wouldn’t have anyone to grow or harvest our food. We wouldn’t have anyone to build our houses or produce our cars or cut our hair or prepare our taxes. Nobody would manufacture our computers or TVs or sofas or clothes. If everyone left everything to follow Jesus, we’d all be deprived of the everyday basics of life. Life would, in many ways, stop.
All of which prompts us to revisit a subject we likely need to attend to regularly in our listening to biblical stories. This is the reminder we may need to hear again and again: this story, and so many biblical stories, are not to be taken literally. Let me say it again, because the issue plagues Christian faith for so many people. The stories of faith are just that: stories. They’re holy poetry, drama, art. That doesn’t mean that the frame of the biblical story arc didn’t happen. It did. There were people living in ancient Israel who had a sense of God’s presence and who were looking for a savior. Along came Jesus, God’s peculiar and magnificent gift, who was the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams. All that really happened. It’s fact. It’s a testimony to the presence of God in quotidian, everyday, life.
And one of the things the Jewish people do is tell stories. They’ve told these stories for thousands of years. And when Jesus comes along, they tell stories about Jesus. And they repeat stories that Jesus tells. And all these stories testify to the utter inscrutability and magnificence of the One for whom there are really no words. How do you tell stories about One for whom there are no parallels? You do it with metaphor and image and hyperbole. You do it with over-the-top language that screams to the listener: PAY ATTENTION! THIS MATTERS! DON’T FORGET IT!
We note this today because it’s an issue I encounter over and over again in my ministry. We—and I include myself in this—fall so easily into the trap of thinking that biblical language is factual language, like a history book or a news feed. It isn’t. It couldn’t have been. An easy way to see this is to reflect on any of countless biblical stories. How could Noah have gathered pairs of every animal on earth without traveling the whole globe to find them (Genesis 5-9)? How could Joshua have stopped the sun in the sky when the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, and when, if the earth stopped its rotation, everything on the earth would topple and be destroyed (Joshua 10:12-13)? What’s the point of calling God “my shepherd” when you and I aren’t sheep and God doesn’t walk around with a shepherd’s crook to keep us in line (Psalm 23:1)? We could spend days going over a million similar scenarios. So to ask a question about how God could have created the world in six days, or what the biological mechanism was that led to Mary’s pregnancy, or how the loaves and fishes could have multiplied the way they did is entirely beside the point. The simple point is this: when we start thinking a biblical story is telling us some precise factual details, we’re doing a disservice to the text. That’s not how it was meant to be read. A literal reading totally obfuscates the presence and wonder of God. So when we read the Bible literally, we end up avoiding the deeper truth, we distract ourselves with superficial issues, and we end up forgoing an encounter with the sublime God at the heart of all that is.
So as we return to our story for today, we are nudged not to dwell on the literal meaning of those first disciples “leaving everything.” Instead, we’re invited to look for where God may be showing up in the biblical story, and then, just as crucially, in the story of our own daily lives.
I suspect what Jesus is inviting us to in these bracing words is to confront all the ways in which we attach ourselves to objects and feelings and people and dynamics that are ultimately not worthy of our devotion. You know the things we become fixated upon, the things that keep us from living a life that’s centered and whole. Maybe the 85-inch screen for the Super Bowl becomes paramount; or our pining for the next drink orders our day; or we try ceaselessly to control things we can’t control or to manage other people’s lives that are not ours to manage; or a relentless focus on private, personal fulfillment crowds out nearly all sense of outreach and justice-making and care for others. When those things happen, then we have fixated on lesser things, we’ve become imbalanced, we’ve lost a grounding and worthwhile center.
When the biblical story tells us about disciples leaving everything, it’s reminding us that there’s only one appropriate object of devotion, that life is at its fullest when we return to the only center worthy of our commitment, that fullness of life is a reflection of our trusting in the God we know in Jesus Christ, the God who comes to us and shares our common lot, the God who showers us with adoration and refuses ever to give up on us. Simon knows how far off-center he has been. It’s why he falls at Jesus’ knees and says ‘Get away from me. I’m a sinner!’ He knows what’s needed in order for his life to be recalibrated. Leave everything and come back to God, says the story. Leave everything and make the God of wholeness and joy your core. Leave everything and find again the only mission that will transform you and the world. That’s the sort of leaving to which we’re invited.
There’s one more thing, though. To focus almost entirely on our need to leave behind these sham objects of devotion is to neglect the most crucial dimension of all. The heart of today’s story isn’t really the disciples leaving everything. The heart of the story, remember, is the absurdly huge catch of fish that totally catches Simon and the others off-guard. They have been doing everything they can to catch the fish they need. They’ve been up all night searching, and they “haven’t caught even a minnow” (5:5, The Message). Not a single fish to show for all their efforts. In their exhaustion and frustration, though, Jesus tells them to get back in their boats and go back out on the water. When they do, the nets will hardly contain the staggeringly massive amount of fish their nets catch.
And we can get caught up on how Jesus knew where the fish were, or what those nets were like, or how the fishers could get those fish into the boat at all. I suppose inquiring minds may want to know. But if we spend the bulk of our time on those questions, we miss the essence of it all.
And the essence is this: when you and I have exhausted all our own resources, when we’ve reached the end of our rope, when we have carefully planned how things should go, and we’ve gotten into our figurative boats to do the necessary work, and we still come up empty-handed, then it’s time to lean on the only One who can get us through the worst snares, the most disruptive and destructive chapters of life, the failures and disappointments that can so easily overtake us. It’s as we trust in grace that light shines. It’s as we dance with the One that brung us that the music shimmers. It’s as we let go and let God that all is well.
Because the deep truth of it all is that you and I are the recipients of the gift of those fish. It can be so easy to complain about what’s not going right that we fail to see the overwhelming beauty and wonder of the simple and radiant lives we’ve been given. We miss the stunning beauty of the snow on the trees and the cardinal’s red against it. We fail to notice the call that comes to us from an old friend. We don’t take in the wondrous privilege it is to walk this startlingly gorgeous earth for these few brief years we have. All our boats have been filled with so many fish that, if we live with a kind of attentive gratitude, we are freed to leave behind all the superficial baubles that try to seduce us, and to rest instead in the arms of the gorgeous wholeness at the center of life. We leave everything because we have been given the largest catch of fish imaginable, and we leave the rest behind because it’s the Giver of those blessings who’s central.
Remember the end of “The Gospel in One Minute”? “On the third day, his tomb was empty, and ever since he’s been showing up all over the place. There are many other things he did, and if they were all written down, the world itself couldn’t contain it.” This is the Christ at the center of our lives. This is the Christ who shows up all over the place, the Christ who showers us with metaphorical fish, the Christ who serves us this sustaining meal of bread and the fruit of the vine. May we leave everything that gets in the way, and follow Christ.