“Drop Everything Discipleship”

Mark 1:14-20; Jonah 3:1-5, 10

January 22, 2006

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

It’s the age old question; it’s a classic one. It is asked of everyone from the four or five year old to the teenager just finishing up his high school years, to the freshman finishing up his first year of college. Sometimes it is even asked of the graduate, usually by her father with the college bills still looming large, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” The answer, of course, depends on how old the child happens to be.

The four or five year old may be like Annie Grace. When we ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she dutifully answers, “I am going to be a princess.” And she may be. For sure she will always be my little princess. I don’t want to tell her just yet, but being a princess doesn’t always pay the bills and marrying a prince means that you kiss a lot of frogs. I will let her find these things out for herself. Until then I will let her be a princess. I will also cheer for her to be a doctor to take care of me in my older years. You know this. We tell children that they can be anything that they want to be when they grow up if they work hard enough at it. Part of us hopes that. Part of us believes that. And sometimes they can.

When you ask the college freshman or the graduate the classic question, they may tell you that they are still hoping that they won’t have to grow up. Susie’s brother Sam, is as different from her as he can be. Susie knew that she was going to be a teacher from an early age. Sam’s just now found his place in the world. Susie plays it safe. Sam still takes risks, though fewer now that he’s married. In the summers between school years, Sam took off for adventures. One summer he went to Alaska in hopes of finding a job in the fishing industry. He did not find one. When he didn’t, he found a job washing buses that came out of Denali, a national park there in Alaska. The next summer he went back, but this time he met ocean cruise ships and gave vacationers mountain bike tours of the park. When he graduated, he moved to Breckenridge, Colorado. In the winters he drove a bus full of skiers to different ski lifts. In the summer he drove a concrete truck. Talking about it, he said that he just lived to pay the rent. Sam decided what he wanted to do, went back to school, and now has settled in, it seems.

Somehow the conversation of deciding what to do when growing up came up in the church office the other afternoon. Our own Margaret Srygley said, “I’m fifty-two years old and I’m just now figuring out what I want to do when I grow up.”

I spoke with a mother who has two children in our child care program. We were talking about other things, but she said to me, “All I ever wanted to do when I grew up was to be happy and not to hurt anyone. It’s what I still want. I had hopes and dreams, of course, but that’s what I wanted more than anything else; it’s always been important to me.” What do you want to do? Who do you want to be when you grow up?

I have often wondered what the four fishermen in our scripture lesson for this morning wanted to do, who they wanted to be when they grew up. I don’t know for sure how many generations of Zebedees fished the waters of the sea of Galilee, but I am sure that it was several. In that time and in that country and in that culture, you were a part of the family business, whatever the family business was. What you did wasn’t just passed down a generation or two. Most likely it was passed down for centuries.

One of my favorite movies is It’s a Wonderful Life. In part the movie tells the story of George Bailey, a son, who wanted more than anything else to get away from the family’s building and loan business. He wanted to see the world. And yet when his father died, he found himself back in the family business.

Ah, yes, the family business and it’s lure. The four fishermen in our story for this morning were in that business when a carpenter turned prophet from Nazareth came by. He called out first to Simon and Andrew, then to James and John. He told them to drop their nets and to follow him. They did just that. We hear one of the gospel writers tell about the call of the disciples every January. The story seems incredible to me. Here are four men who drop everything. They do not know what the future will be. They are following someone that they have never seen before. They have no idea what they are signing on for. They are asked to leave their professional lives, sure, but they are also being asked to leave their families. In their day, family solidarity was a huge things. It should be the same today. So dropping their nets and following Jesus was a major thing!

I don’t know if he meant to do this or not, but the way that Mark tells the story sends

echoes back to parts of the Old Testament. You will remember that God called someone else out of the familiar to a new place and a different life. This someone was Abraham. God said to him, “Leave your country and your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you.”

Now look at Mark’s telling of the calling of the disciples. Most people hear this lesson and immediately start to wonder, “Could I do that? If Jesus were to come by where I work. If Jesus were to come to the house tonight, could I drop it all and go with him?” The story makes us wonder if we have what it takes to be disciple. If a clear call, and notice I said a clear call, came, could we get up out of the recliner or our place on the couch? Could we walk out of the house without saying anything to anyone? Could we leave without taking the car keys? Could we leave the grocery cart full of essential things and not so essential things at Kroger if Jesus were to come in there and say, “Come on, let’s go?” Could we do that? Well, more or less, that is what the four fishermen in our lesson for this morning did. Someone that they had never seen before, someone that they had never heard of before, came by and they followed.

Two of the four seem to have a little more to lose than the other two. Simon and Andrew apparently didn’t have a boat. If they did, Mark didn’t mention it. Maybe they sorted their fish from the shallows of the sea, there on the shore. James and John had a boat and a little more to walk away from. Mark mentions their father and hired men. Both sets of boys, though, dropped familiar things for Jesus. And it just seems strange to me that all four of them, Simon, Andrew, James and John all went. Not one of them or two of them, but all four of them. You might wonder what it was like, working with dear old dad. I love my dad, but I’m just not sure I could work with him. Maybe James or perhaps it was John, who argued with their dad about the long hours or the latest technology in finding the fish. But this isn’t a story of a son struggling to find his place in the business. This is a story about following.

I will be the first to admit this. We give these guys a lot of credit. We hail them as heros. We say things like, “Look at the strength that they had. Notice their courage. Look at their faith. They gave everything up. They sacrificed a lot!” The problem is that they didn’t have any of those things. According to Mark, there wasn’t any big decision that they made. Jesus called. They followed. They did not know him. They were not waiting for him or someone like him. They may or may not have been in the synagogue Sabbath day after Sabbath day. There was no troubled soul. There were not nights of prayer with the question on the heart, “What do you want me to do, Jesus?” There also don’t seem to be any looks back. These four dropped their nets and without saying anything at all (if they do, Mark doesn’t mention it), they follow Jesus. If they decided something great, we are not told of it. As one preacher put it, “It was more like something happened to them, something that seemed almost beyond their control.”

What is going on here? Look at this Jesus. Notice what he can do. I think that this is a story about the power of God that is so great that he can walk up to four fishermen and create faith where there was no faith, making disciples where there were none the moment before. I have always thought that this is a story about us and how we ought to drop everything and follow Jesus. If we cannot do that, then there is comfort in the other story from scripture this morning, the call of Jonah to go to Nineveh. You will remember that he high tailed it the other way. I went to seminary with people who told of their high tailing days. But now I know. This is not a story about us as much as it is about God and God’s ability to make us people who want to follow. God has created us in such a way that it is hard for us to take our eyes off of Him. Jesus interests me more than anything that I know. He knows deep hungers and fills them. He realizes our thirst and gives us living water; he quenches our thirst.

Now I am sure that in the moment of their following, the disciples’ decision cost them something. I shutter to think what old man Zebedee did when he got home. I wonder what he told James and John’s mother. I wonder if he changed his will. The four gave us a lot in that moment, but I don’t think that their minds were on what they were leaving behind. I think that their minds were fixed on what they were reaching out to find. The times were changing. Mark lets us know that. Mark tells us that John was arrested. He lets us know that Jesus’ time had arrived. Do you remember his words? He writes, “Jesus came from Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

Let’s turn this towards home. Let’s talk about our own discipleship. I am not an expert on this, but I know that following Jesus does not always mean dropping everything and following Him. It meant that for the four fishermen. It means that for some who answer some kind of call to the ministry. Because we are all different, our following Jesus will be different. For some of us, following Jesus will mean staying at home and doing something with our families. There are many of us whose families desperately need us to be near them. I am not letting you off the hook, but following Jesus may mean letting the hired hands take care of the fishing business while we turn toward something that we are sure has God’s hand in it. Following Jesus may mean casting out the same net, but in different waters. Following Jesus may mean staying in the fishing business, but doing something different with the profits that we make. Following Jesus may not mean doing more; it may mean doing less, so that at the end of the day, there will be time for us to notice how the sun sets on the water and how strong our influence is on the child who is waiting for us to come home at a decent hour.

It just seems to me that the ways that we follow Jesus are endless these days. Possibilities are everywhere! Jesus wants us to follow him. God has created us to be leaders, yes, but first followers. The time is fulfilled, says Jesus. The kingdom has come near. This same Jesus wants to know if we’re ready to be a part of it.

(Special thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor for several ideas in this sermon).