Elbows Deep in Fish Guts

Sermon 1-21-18, Mark 1: 14-20

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our risen lord and savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Credentials. It starts from the moments that we are born –is my baby making her milestones on time? Are we using the right reading plan? Is he in the most academically rigorous pre-school program?

Credentials. Whether or not our resumes are transcribed on paper, in our consciousness, or on social media, our credentials are always with us. what schools we've attended. upward mobility in our employment. How many friends we have on Facebook. How big of a raise we got last year.

Credentials. And we are always checking each OTHER’S against our own.  HER youngest son is a star athlete and just got accepted to Princeton. She spent three years in Indonesia feeding starving orphans. HE was a Julliard grad.

Credentials. We love them, we hate them, we build them, we strive for them, we compare them, we try to ignore them. But we cannot seem to escape them, whether we lived back in Jesus time, or now.

Unfortunately, in the church world… this kind of thinking gets jacked up to eleven. We can focus too much on the “credentials” of other congregations and too easily feel down on ourselves, comparing our small group of faithful to other church’s jumbo-tron screen, fancy lighting arrangements, flush children’s programming, slick advertisements…

NOT WHAT JESUS HAD IN MIND, FOLKS

…Which, if you recall, is exactly the opposite of where the Christian movement started. As we heard from the Gospel of Mark today, Jesus began the work of God’s Kingdom by collecting a small, scrappy band of bench-warmers to help him usher in the Kingdom of God. 

Imagine Jesus, walking along the beach. Now, this was not any old ordinary, relaxing stroll in the surf, taking, enjoying the scenery. This would have been more like a wharf then a beach: instead of people having fun in the sun, it was full of smelly fish and smellier people. But, undeterred, Jesus walked along, fresh with a blessing from his baptism, fresh with a mission from his time in the wilderness. Jesus was ready to do his own kind of fishing, to start his movement of bringing the love and justice of God’s kingdom into the world.

Who to choose for this brand-new faith movement? Perhaps the smartest theologians of the time from the biggest houses of worship. In addition, those with good communication skills would be a wise choice. Great orators and preachers would be a great asset, as would great historians, famous and powerful people with lots of influence, and also people with deep pockets to be financial supporters. People with good credentials. THAT’S who Jesus needs. Right?

But… that isn’t exactly who Jesus ended up choosing. Simon, Andrew, James, and John were certainly not theologians, great communicators, knowledgeable, powerful, wealthy, or even literate. After all, where did Jesus find them?... At the wharf, slogging through a day’s work at the family business, elbows deep in fish guts. In the middle of a shift at a minimum-wage, blue-collar job with no benefits, no pension, and no options. From a dump of a backwater part of the Roman Empire, where no one wanted to be from.

By artist He Qi

And yet, Jesus called THEM. Here was somebody who thought they were good enough, someone who thought that they were WORTHY to be his students. I imagine in that moment that their hearts jumped for joy. And then, a moment later as they dropped their nets to follow, their hearts might have dropped to their stomachs in utter terror. What would be next for them? They had no idea that during the next three years they will misunderstand, try to correct, question, and finally abandon the very person who called them. But Jesus called them anyway.

If it were not for these ordinary, flawed, credential-less people, WE would not be here, in 2018, at Family of God, listening to Mark tell the story of Jesus to us now. WE are here because THEY DID fish for people…. Who fished for people… who fished for people… who eventually caught US. … so that we may be CALLED by Jesus to follow him too, and fish for people ourselves.

For Jesus, it doesn't matter what school we attended or how much money we make or what our children amount to. We don’t have to fill out an application showing how many committees we've served, how many years we've faithfully taught Sunday school, been in youth group, or sang in the choir, though these are all worthwhile things. To be called by Jesus, to follow him as his disciple, you only need one thing on your resume: being a child of God. Which, by the way, if you haven’t noticed, you already are, by virtue of your baptism.

Perhaps your heart too has done that little dance in both joy and terror at the same time to hear the news that you are loved by God and called to follow. Yes, you. Whether you are young like Samuel, stubborn like Jonah, eloquent like Paul, thoughtful like Mary, brave like Moses and Miriam, faithful like Mary Magdalene, eager like Peter, curious like Philip, or a bit slow on the up-take like the rest of the disciples…Whether we are old, young, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, A-list or B-team …. From one of the richest countries in the world… or from a place that people in power insult and belittle, … Jesus has a place for you here…  among his students.

And he has called you for a reason…. to learn from him how to fish for people. And lesson number one, so far, which we learned from these four disciples in their very first minutes on the job, is this – everyone has a place. No extra credentials required.

The second lesson that Jesus teaches his followers is to be ready at a moment’s notice. You just never know when and where Jesus is going to show up. This can happen in the middle of your shift at your 9 to 5 job, elbow deep in fish guts, as it were. For some of us, the fish guts might be more like being knee deep in school students in classrooms, or insurance jargon on computers, or two-by-fours on a construction site. Where ever we find ourselves out in the world, that’s exactly where Jesus can show up.

The third lesson is that we don’t get good at “fishing for people” all at once. A more accurate translation of what Jesus says here is actually “I will make you BECOME fishers for people.” We aren’t instantly good at it. It’s still hard, especially at first, and we of course can’t get good at it unless we PRACTICE. This doesn’t mean get out the boat and the fishing tackle, obviously. But are there skills, interests, talents, relationships, and passions that we already possess that we can use, to share our faith and help connect people to the Kingdom of God?

Lesson four is to learn from Jesus’s example, as we follow in his footsteps.  What comes to mind for me when I think if following in someone’s footsteps is a sign that hung on the door to the barn on my parent’s farm. It was supposedly a quote from an old farmer, who said, “Don’t follow in my footsteps… I think I stepped in something!” You can pretty easily guess what this old farmer must have been talking about!

If we are truly to follow Jesus though, I think that we must walk exactly were Jesus walked, even it takes us to places and to people we perhaps would rather not go, and step into thing we would rather not step in. Jesus walked with people who were on the margins… people who were neck deep in dealing with the muck of the world… forging relationships with people of all kinds from all kinds of places…. Treating all people with dignity and respect. 

This will probably mean getting a little messy, stepping into places that might leave a mark on us, slogging through some muck with people, entering into the mess of what it means to be human with one another. After all, this is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus stepped into the mess of being human, to be with us, whether we are wading knee deep through our muck or are elbow deep in fish guts. 

So, hold on tight, because this adventure might get a little bumpy and messy at times, like it did for the disciples…. And you just never know what’s going to happen – you might bet wax on your pants! But God has called us to these ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown, But God gives us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that the outstretched hand of Jesus will be ready to catch us if we stumble.

I don’t know of any better prayer to pray at this time than one of my personal favorites, called the servants prayer. It has been a great source of comfort to me as God has lead me through this journey. Let us pray.

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.