Fishing and Fighting: Leave Your Safety Nets
“We all have one thing in common,” says Brene Brown, “we’re sick of feeling afraid. We’re tired of the national conversation centering on “What we should fear” and “Who we should blame.”
She points out a spiritual problem; fear is everywhere. With every change of the TV channel, every click of a mouse, every swipe of a smartphone, or scroll of an iPad something or someone tells us to be afraid.
But fear is nothing new, the disciples even dealt with it in the Gospel lesson; Jesus asked something of them that would terrify any of us!
Imagine the scene; the fishermen are sweaty; they are exhausted, they fished all night, their hands are red and calloused. All they want is to go home and rest. Then Jesus strolls along the beach toward their boats and says, "If you follow me, I'll make you fishers of men."
There were likely hundreds of fishermen there that morning. It makes me wonder, what if dozens heard the call but only four followed?
What if only four men in the reading overcame their fear of the unknown and left their nets to follow him? This morning I’m going to preach about Leaving Safety Nets. The first thing I want us to notice is that:
Jesus called the disciples away from their familiar comforts.
They were comfortable with life as Galilean fishermen, but he called them away from the safety of their fishing nets. He called them to a life of discipleship.
Let me stop here and say, it would take an extraordinary person to convince me to walk away from my livelihood to follow him around while he taught classes biblical interpretation.
Yet, somehow, these disciples overcame the reliance on normality and stability. When they followed Jesus, they were on a high wire without a safety net (a fishing net) to catch them. They only had one option, trust.
I’m curious, have you ever had a safety net date? Don’t raise your hands! It looks something like this: a girl and her boyfriend are fighting… and she doesn’t know if it will last. But senior prom is right around the corner. What does she do? She asks one of her little brother’s annoying friends. Then if she goes with the kid, it's, "…aww, that's so precious, she's such an amazing person, little Timmy would have never had a date to prom…" But the truth is she’s terrified, and she needs little Timmy as a safety net. Timmy, he’s like Flo Rida, he’s just there for the cake.
That leads to a natural question: What’s our safety net? Is it a mindset? An attitude? A need for control? An addiction? Unprocessed anger that we repress and ignore? Shame from never feeling good enough?
Jesus says to Peter, Andrew, and us, “I can’t put a different net in your hand (a different vocation, a different mindset, a different attitude, a different worldview) until you let go of the net you’re holding right now.
Jesus called them away from the familiar; then, he gave them a job: Fish for people.
Each Gospel records an event where Jesus called these disciples. Luke's version is enlightening. In Luke, Jesus says, "Do.not.be.afraid! From now on, you'll fish for people.” There’s the job.
Let’s hold that idea about the job Jesus gave them and shift our attention to the epistle lesson. It’s a picture of what happens when people don’t do the job that Jesus gave them.
There’s a group of people—they actually came to church today—who refused to do their job and thus lost sight of their vocation. Who are they? Paul brought them to church in his letter. They were the people of the Corinthian Church.
That parish had a problem—they had lots of problems—but Paul wrote an entire letter, 16 chapters, to confront one problem, the problem, in Corinth. He says, “There are divisions among you.” The Corinthians argued more than they agreed.
They argued over spiritual gifts. They argued over the resurrection of Jesus. They divided themselves into groups based on who they perceived as the greatest apostle. Instead of facing themselves, they blamed Paul, Apollos, and Peter for their issues. … if in doubt, blame the bishops!
Paul’s letter is a plea for them to let go of their safety nets of distinctions and do the job Jesus called them to do.
That helped me realize that we, too, can quickly get lost in our own preferences and fight instead of fish. It sounds like this, “We don’t want anything to change.”
I do. I want the downward trend in church attendance to change. I want the lack of babies at our baptismal fonts to change. I want confirmation numbers to change. Last month we over-drafted to pay our bills, I want that to change. I want to hear children’s voices, and I want us to be joyous and laugh. I want us to show love, compassion, and social mercy – a refuge of light and hope!
That starts when I ask myself, “Rian, will you let go of a familiar preference to pick up a different net?”
Conclusion:
I read a fascinating story a few months about the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Tradition says the church sits over the supposed tomb of Jesus. A few years ago, a fight broke out among the monks in charge of the church.
They have a history of relational conundrums. In 1752 the Ottoman Sultan couldn’t handle their fighting anymore, so he instituted a law that each of the six Christian groups (the Latins, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Copts, and the Ethiopians) would own a section of the church.
Hold on to your hat, the plot thickens. I learned that the Coptic and Ethiopian monks have argued over the rooftop of the church for centuries. Now, my sisters and my brothers, hear me when I say that nothing represents Jesus like a good argument over a church rooftop.
You can't make this stuff up… So, a few years ago, the tension finally bubbled over when a Coptic monk moved his chair into the shade. Oh, but it was slightly over the "line," according to the Ethiopian monks. This was an insult and an abomination. So the Ethiopians responded to the Coptic aggression with a confrontation.
It started with words, then pushes, then shoves, then punches, and then an old-school wrestling match broke out in the church of the holy sepulcher. In the pandemonium, the monks were swinging chairs like Hulk Hogan and screaming like Rick Flair. They cussed, they cried, they fought, they yelled, and the bystanders couldn’t stop them. Finally, the police showed up and shut down their shindig.
Eleven monks went to the hospital, some had broken bones, and one was rushed one to the ER unconscious. They were unconscious of their calling.
Then Jesus appeared in the center of the church of the Holy Sepulture and said, “Let go of your fear, leave your safety nets, and fish instead of fight.”
Amen.
