God is unquestionably the world’s greatest fisherman. And he’s not at all offended by the description, either, because that is what he called us to be. And the first thing a fisherman has to know is what bait the fish will bite on.
God got me good. Back in ‘83 I was Miss Corporate America, junior executive, company credit card, frequent flyer miles, size 10 power suits, the whole classic 9-yard success story. But you know what I wanted? I wanted a man. I wanted to fall in love and get married and have a family. It might have been the old biological clock ticking away, after all I was 36, but at any rate I was beginning to get a little frantic. Well, anyway, to make a long story - well, if not short, at least not the whole sermon - I met a man. And pretty soon he started talking about marriage, and I was very interested, and started dreaming and planning and all that romantic stuff. But there was a catch. Bob was a Christian. A real one, I mean, not just a member of the Sunday social club. And I knew that if we were going to have any kind of a life together, I would have to get squared away with God. Not “get straight with God,” as in confess my sins, I was a pretty good person, after all, but basically figure out just how badly I wanted God to be a part of my life. Because Bob had told me (over pizza one night) that Jesus had said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” [Jn 14:6] And that was a pretty big step to take; it ran counter to everything I had been raised as a Unitarian to believe.
But when I went home and started thinking about it, I realized that I really wanted to know God, and if the only way to God was through Jesus, I wanted Jesus as well.
Within two weeks Bob had decided he wasn’t ready for a permanent relationship, put his business on the market, and moved to California. I was ANGRY. But not with Bob. With God.
I spent the next few months sitting up in bed at night shouting at God: “It isn’t FAIR!” I protested. “I took the bait, I bit the hook, you got me, the least you could do is let me keep the bait!” I really was absolutely furious. Well, eventually I cooled down enough to realize that instead of yelling at God all the time I could start listening instead. So I started going to church (the one Bob had been a member of) and within three weeks I had received Christ and had started on my way to where you see me now, up here in the pulpit presuming to instruct you in the ways and purposes of God.
But if I had known at the beginning... If that were the reward God had dangled in front of my nose... somehow I don’t think that it would have worked. Somehow I think that if God had laid it out in front of me and said, “Forget husband and children and successful career, I’m going to give you a 50% pay cut and the gift of celibacy,” I would have said “Not today, thank you.”
I needed to have my consciousness raised first, so to speak.
God starts where you’re at. But don’t expect him to leave you there.
Remember the crowd who followed Jesus across the lake after he fed the multitudes? They wanted to make him king because he had impressed them with his power. But when he didn’t fall in line with their agenda, they shrugged and went away. They nibbled, but they didn’t bite. They knew what a king was supposed to be like; since Jesus didn’t fit, they didn’t want him.
The disciples, on the other hand, had taken the bait. They were on the hook. They didn’t have much more clue than the crowds did of what the Messiah actually was going to have to do, but they knew one thing. They knew Jesus was IT, they knew Jesus was THE ONE, they knew Jesus was THEIRS, even if they didn’t really understand where he was going.
There are three separate stories in today’s text. Each by itself has a half dozen sermons in it. But today I’m taking them as a set, a sequence of teachings that lay out for us what the life of discipleship looks like.
The first step is attachment. The second step is understanding. And the third step is imitation.
Attachment. Understanding. Imitation.
Feeling, thinking, and doing.
All of these are necessary for discipleship. They don’t come in the same order for each one of us, as a matter of fact most of us tend to keep going round and round, first concentrating on one angle, then switching to another. But attachment is - even if not always the first - always the most important, because attachment keeps us holding on to Jesus even when we don’t understand, even when we’re tired, or scared. And attachment is another word for love. It is an attitude of recognition, response, and commitment.
And Jesus went on with his disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he charged them to tell no one about him.
The light had finally dawned. The disciples had figured it out at last. They followed Jesus in the first place because there was something special about him, to be sure; but what exactly was it? There must have been as many reasons as there were followers. Some followed him because he called them, because he saw them and spoke to them and wanted them. Some came because they wanted to know more about God, and Jesus was a holy man, one who taught with authority. Some came because he had healed them, either physically or spiritually. They all had hopes and expectations; some even had particular personal agendas. Remember the way they argued over who would get positions of power in the kingdom? But at the beginning, they weren’t sure exactly who he was. They just knew that this was where they wanted to be, this was who they wanted to be with. Their commitment was to Jesus first, and because of that, even when their expectations were shaken, their love for him remained. When it comes to God, the personal is primary.
And that is why, I think, that Jesus told them not to tell anyone who he was. Because if they went around proclaiming that the Messiah had arrived, then people would expect him to do and be for them all that they had imagined a Messiah would do and be. The Judeans dreamed of an independent and powerful kingdom, of ruling over the Romans and the Greeks, of seeing the nations who had conquered and oppressed them, laughed at their traditions and scorned their gods, brought to their knees. They were filled with visions from Isaiah, from Zechariah, from Joel, of “threshing floors filled with grain, the vats overflowing with wine and oil,” [Joel 2:24] from Amos, of “mountains dripping with sweet wine,” [Amos 9:14] of the temple rebuilt to outshine the glory of Solomon’s day, lined with cedar and ivory, gold and silver, and the treasury filled with the riches of nations. That’s what a Messiah does, you know.
A good friend of mine, a very highly educated Jewish woman, asked me once how I could possibly believe that Jesus was the Messiah, since he didn’t do what the Messiah was supposed to do, namely, restore the kingdom of Israel. I tried to explain that the Israel Jesus restored was a different sort of kingdom, a kingdom of the heart, but she wasn’t convinced.
So if the Messiah’s presence were too widely advertised, when Jesus didn’t give the crowd what they wanted, they would turn and tear him to pieces. And of course that is what the mob did, eventually, and he knew that was what they would do, but it wasn’t the time yet.
The disciples weren’t ready. They loved him, they stuck with him even with the confusion about the strange things he said sometimes, and his delay in starting to do real Messiah-type political liberation stuff, but they didn’t know enough to stand firm when the storm came. And even with all Jesus’ teaching, when the time came they still didn’t get it. But their love for Jesus, and for each other, kept them together even when everything else had fallen apart.
The disciples had gotten a good start. They were in elementary school. They taken the bait, they had become attached. But they didn’t know what it meant.
And then Jesus started on the next step, getting his followers to understand what it really meant, to be the Messiah. This is a real turning point in the Gospel of Mark; up until now, they’d been traveling around Galilee, listening to Jesus teach, watching him heal, going out on their own and trying it for themselves. But now they’re starting a new step on the journey. They’re headed toward Jerusalem. And it was time for the disciples to move on to more advanced material. Jesus told them what his mission was, he explained what he meant, then rephrased it, and then he explained it all over again. And they still didn’t get it. It might have been easier if the disciples had never heard of the Messiah; then they wouldn’t have had so many false hopes to discard. But of course if it hadn’t been for the promise of the Messiah, the nation wouldn’t have held the hope in their hearts that had kept Judea going all these years, and that had drawn them to Jesus in the first place.
God baited the hook with a real promise of real liberation. The people just didn’t know what real liberation meant, because they didn’t know what the real problem was. They didn’t know that the real enemy wasn’t Rome, but far closer to home. We don’t much like to hear what the old comic strip Pogo once said, “we have met the enemy, and it is us.”
"And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, 'Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.'”
Now here we’re in a very different position from the disciples. We know what happened to Jesus. We know that he was betrayed, abandoned, and brutally killed. We know that he did this voluntarily. We understand, finally, that it was God’s rule in the hearts of his people that Jesus came to restore, not an earthly kingdom. But the culture we live in is unalterably opposed to the message conveyed by Christ’s mission of suffering and death, and is fighting it with every tool in its power.
A few years ago a public school in Sydney, Australia, banned an Easter Passion Play because, they said, it didn’t meet government anti-violence guidelines. The school curriculum includes vivid accounts of the bloodshed which occurred during the early European settlement, but was not willing to allow the portrayal of an equally historical event because - although they did not say so - of its religious significance. The message of Christ’s suffering and death is a message about human nature. It is an unequivocal, unmistakable statement of our need for a salvation which comes from beyond ourselves. It is a stumbling block for all who think they can earn salvation by being good. It is an even bigger offense to those who do not believe they need salvation at all.
But we who are already Christians can kind of coast through this part of the curriculum; we’ve got the understanding part down, right? Sure, we can learn more details and quote more verses but we know the basics. And besides, Jesus’ suffering was a long time ago and we know that by God’s power he rose from the dead so that we too can know God as Father and so it is really not a sad story after all but a joyful one and even though we repent during Lent and mourn on Good Friday we know that the resurrection is coming and it’s not really sad. We don’t have to go through what the disciples went through in order to understand.
Or do we?
There were two things Peter and John and the rest had to understand, not just one. They had to learn that not only did the Messiah have to give up his life, but they themselves did too. And that is where we struggle. An awful lot of people stay stuck right here in their Christian development. They’re attached to Jesus, they’ve mastered the basics, they keep the Commandments, at least the simple ones like avoiding false witness, theft, adultery, and murder. And they think that because they’re being good, God should reward them with a good life, and if things don’t turn out the way they want, that God is unfair or has broken his side of the bargain. Jesus promised his followers an abundant life, after all, and we all know what an abundant life should consist of, right? Just like the first century Judeans knew what the Messiah should do.
What does an abundant life mean for you?
Does it mean a successful career?
Does it mean family and children?
Does it mean good health, good wages, good friends, a good name?
Do you ever catch yourself thinking that you deserve these things, that you have a right to all of these things?
Our society is obsessed with rights. I heard a story the other day about a single woman minister - thankfully, not in our denomination - who chose to have a baby by artificial insemination because “she had a right to a baby.” Seems to me that her need for a baby would have been better met by adopting an unwanted child; after all there’s no shortage. Which illustrates another principle, that most of our needs can be met when we forget about our rights and start meeting other people’s needs. But that’s not a popular view. An abundant life for most people means “more for me”, rather than “more to give.” Some people even justify sexual sins - all kinds, including adultery - on the grounds that God desires his children to be fulfilled, to know abundance.
What is it to know abundance, to be fulfilled?
"And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, 'If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?'"
Jesus isn’t asking for us to give up things, although often giving up things is necessary for spiritual growth. What Jesus is asking us to give up is far more difficult. We have to give up our right to self-rule. It’s an imaginary right anyway; we’re all slaves of one thing or another; far better to be a servant of God, who after all has our interests at heart. But I digress.
Jesus is asking us to let him decide how and when he will bless our lives, and not insist that he deliver a scheduled benefit package. He is asking us to trust him, to follow him, to imitate him, even when being like Christ means being misunderstood, cursed, spat upon, run out of town, betrayed, hurt, slandered, you name it.
Jesus is asking us to love him enough to stick with him even when we don’t understand why, even when we are tired or scared, even when life with him isn’t what we thought it would be. He is telling us that the discipleship course that we began with love, and continued with understanding, must now be completed with imitation. Understanding alone is not enough. You must - I must - we must - all follow. Because it is only through following Jesus - even to the death of our selves - that we come to share in his resurrection.
C. S. Lewis says that “all natural affections can be preparatory imitations of spiritual love, training spiritual muscles which his grace may later put to a higher service, as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.”
The Great Fisherman does use bait and switch tactics in his dealings with us. But whatever God used for bait in our spiritual infancy will be replaced by something better, more real, more lasting, more fulfilling. Paul said, “When I was a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” Do we complain that we’ve moved up from strained peas to pizza? Do we complain about trading in our roller skates for sports cars? Are you still focused on toys? Are you protesting that the sprinkler has been turned off, and it’s hot, and you’re uncomfortable? Do you worry that God’s forgotten you? If you turn around you will see Jesus waiting, even calling for you, to join him at the deep end of the pool.
