The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
January 27, 2008
The 3^rd Sunday after the Epiphany
Scripture Readings:

Epistle – 1 Corinthians 1: 10-18¹

¹⁰Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. ¹¹For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. ¹²What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” ¹³Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? ¹⁴I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. ¹⁶(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) ¹⁷For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Gospel – Matthew 4: 12-23²

¹²Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

¹⁵“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan,

Galilee of the Gentiles—¹⁶the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,

and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

¹⁷From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

¹⁸As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁹And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” ²⁰Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²²Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

²³Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

“What’s Not to Do?”

I remember hearing about a young mother of five small children who had a coffee mug on which was the picture of a somewhat bedraggled-looking woman; all around the mug are statements like “Mom! I need my jeans washed!” “Mom! I’m hungry!” “Mom, come tuck me in!” “Mom…!” “Mom…!” “Mom…!” Her special caption, however, reads, “Who says that motherhood isn’t a calling?”

I thought of that mug again as I re-read the Gospel story of the calling of those first disciples. Frankly, I think that it leaves out a whole lot of the details. I mean, I find it hard to believe that these four guys just dropped everything and took off after Jesus. One day they’re contented fishermen casting their nets into the Sea of Galilee; the very next day they’re all roving followers of some charismatic itinerant rabbi. We’re asked to believe that they simply left behind their friends and their families, their boats and their businesses, all of their relatives and responsibilities, and for what? In an age when we all recognize the difficulties of single-parent households it’s odd that we should romanticize Simon, Andrew, James and John leaving theirs. How could they do such a thing? What do you suppose their business partners or creditors might have said on hearing that these men had skipped town to follow some "prophet" from the obscure village of Nazareth?

So much of scripture doesn’t have the "Paul Harvey-perspective" – "the rest of the story" – so we have no idea how this affected the families and friends of these men. The Bible has other stories, too, of men and women being called away from "normal" lives to follow what certainly looks like a foolhardy path. There’s Abraham, called by God to leave his comfortable existence and travel to a new country and a new life. At least when he hears and responds to God’s call, though, he takes along his brother Lot and his son, his wife Sara, and "all the possessions that they had gathered," and only then sets out for the land of Canaan.³ At least there was a measure of some sense mixed in with this seventy-year-old’s recklessness – a sense conveyed in a wonderful old Arabic proverb: "Trust in God, but tie up your camel!"

It’s not just the recklessness of the disciples that I find intriguing, but Jesus’ as well. Traditionally, in the Ancient Near East, before a teacher or rabbi lets any neophytes in on his "knowledge" or "spiritual disciplines" there’s always a time of apprenticeship during which the teacher can test this new convert, a process in which the would-be disciple needs to demonstrate at least some capacity to endure the demanding discipline, obedience and service that will be asked of him. This process of teacher/disciple bonding is based on the principle of quid pro quo – the greater the attunement to the teacher, the deeper the revelation that’s granted to the disciple. You might say that it’s "enlightenment through entitlement!"

So what did Jesus see in these four fishermen? Did he see a kind of courage that would enable them to handle the very real dangers, trials and suffering that they’d encounter? We don’t know. Jesus simply tells them, in effect, "I need you" – and they follow him. Notice (unlike the fundamentalist), he doesn't ask them to believe anything in particular before he'll ask them to join him. He doesn’t ask them to appear before the Board of Ordained Ministry for evaluation of their theology and fitness for service. They're not required to take a catechism or confirmation class, to adhere to any doctrine or dogma, in fact he doesn't ask them to display any kind of aptitude at all, or to convince him that they're worthy of being entrusted with this responsibility. They’re just fishermen. They’re asked and they follow. Who among us would show such trust? In their decision Jesus' direction simply became their direction.

What did they get in return? Commitment like this can go a long way toward healing the hurt and divisions that infect our lives. The disciples came to discover (and so will we who come after them) that following Jesus meant following the deepest longings of their heart – that just by joining him on the journey they would find shalom: wholeness, health, harmony, well-being, self-actualization and, yes, a kind of peace. Commitment like that has gone, and will continue to go, a long way toward healing the deep divisions that afflict the human community. I can’t help but believe that this kind of hope is the absolute antithesis of the kinds of fear and hatred of the "other" that we’ve seen so graphically illustrated in the events of the last several years and that continues in circles of religious zealotry and ethnocentric passions, now, all over the world.

If we answer the call to discipleship, though, where will it lead us? Ask yourself this morning: "What decisions and partings will it demand from me if I respond?" To answer that question we all are going to have to go back to Jesus, to a study of his life and teachings – something we've all been invited to do in our upcoming Lenten study of his parables.⁴ God knows where we’ll be asked to go or what kind of a world we'll be asked to reimagine. But I do know that it can be a way filled with boundless joy and healing for us all because that’s what it means to be a disciple of this Jesus, the Christ.

It reminds me of a wonderful series of conversations that I heard that points this out. It happened, now, many years ago when Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell on PBS television. Moyers asked Campbell, "Did you ever have this sense when you are following your bliss, as I have at moments, of being helped by hidden hands?" Campbell responded,

All the time. It is miraculous. I even have the superstition that has grown on me as a result of the invisible hands coming all the time – namely, that if you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet [others who] open the doors to you. I

say…don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be…. Wherever you are…you are enjoying that refreshment, that eternal life within you, all the time.⁵

That’s what following Jesus should feel like. Following him has nothing at all to do with walking single file behind the person in front of you. It simply means "following your bliss," your joy, your deepest longing – or as a very wise person advised me, "Find your passion, Doug, and then pursue it." With the help of God I hope that's just what I have been doing.

What's not to do? One way of understanding that question, of course, is realizing that there really is so much to do. And yet another way of understanding it is that with all of the claims that are being made on our lives – for our time, for our money, for our loyalty – knowing which ones not to give in to, brings us one step closer to where we belong: the kingdom of heaven, which is much, much closer than we realize.

Unfortunately, all too often, "the church" is what's happened when those of us who've been called to fish for people cast our nets no farther than the local mud puddle: concerns centered only on our own petty obsessions and with "playing church" but that have very little effect on the world for which Jesus lived and died as the Christ.

If we as the Church can’t get along with each other, and at least live in some semblance of unity, the rest of the world has every right to doubt that we mean what we say. The world has a right to ask how the church is "one," how it is "holy." The world has a right to ask how the Church is the "body of Christ" and what the "good news" of the gospel really is. The world’s people have a right to ask – and it’s our responsibility to give them an answer.

When it comes to the living out of our lives, then, the question of what to let go of and what to respond to is really a matter of sorting out our priorities. In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul would agree with the fishermen who became the first four to be called to discipleship: our number one priority should be given simply to following Jesus. We’ve got to be willing to let go of everything else in our lives when the time comes. It’s okay to hold onto those things in our lives that we consider precious, but to carry them as if they were time-bombs set with warning signals. It’s okay to hold onto what we have, to appreciate the pleasure that it may give us, but we also ought to be ready to throw it all away and take cover the moment that any of it comes between us and our faithful following of that rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus.

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