A Fishy Story...or Two
©
by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers,
January 23, 2000; 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B)
Jonah
3:1–5, 10 (OT, p. 960); Mark
1:14–20 (NT, p. 35)
Two
fish stories—that’s what our lectionary has given us for today.
And
not just fish stories, but fishy stories,
ones
that strike us as highly implausible and unlikely.
I
mean, really! A prophet who runs
away from God,
who’s
swallowed up by a big fish and lives
to tell about it?
A
city of foreigners that listens to a prophet of Israel’s God
more
attentively than Israel itself had ever done,
that
immediately dons sackcloth + ashes and repents—
every
last person, and animal, among them?
And
what about that story of four grownup adults
who
on the spur of the moment leave
their
equipment, their jobs, + their families
to
follow someone they’ve never before seen
nor
heard nor probably even heard of,
someone
whose first words to them
are
not “Good morning” nor even
“Hi,
I’m Jesus.What’s your name?”
but
the commanding summons,
“Follow
me, and I’ll make
you
fish for people!”? Two
fishy
fish stories indeed!
Now,
I’ve never heard a fish story without thinking about my father.
My
father loved to fish in quiet fresh water lakes,
but
he was, by some measures, a complete failure as a fisherman.
He
hardly ever caught anything,
although
that’s a story he never told!
And
despite having tried in every way
and
on every occasion he could, he never succeeded
in
passing on to either of his two children, to either
my
brother or me, his great love of baiting the
hook
and sitting for hours waiting for a strike.
Perhaps
the worms were too wiggly,
or
the minnows, too smelly or slimy.
Perhaps
the snags in the line were too
many
or the tugs on the line, too few.
But
it just didn’t happen—
our
catching the fishing bug.
Yet
in another way my father was a complete success as a fisherman.
For,
you see, without having seemed to work at it very hard at all,
he
succeeded in passing on to both of us, my brother and me,
his
great love for Jesus’s kind of fishing, fishing for people,
in
a different sort of water from quiet lakes, namely
in
the proverbial “storm-tossed ocean” called a city.
For
both my brother and I wound up becoming,
like
our father, followers of Jesus
with
a strong sense of call to Christian vocation.
Fishing
for people—it’s to this vocation that God is calling us all.
And
it’s precisely this message about God’s calling of persons
that’s
the truth communicated to us by these two fish stories,
the
truth that makes them much more than just fish stories,
the
truth that makes these stories “scripture,”
that
makes them God’s eternal word for humankind.
The
message conveyed in our lesson from Jonah
and
in our lesson from Mark is one and the same message,
the
truth that God is calling us to a vocation of reaching out
to
others in love, to a life of sharing with others
both
the good news of God’s grace and forgiveness
and
the good deeds of God’s justice and righteousness.
Today
is the day our congregation is holding its annual meeting,
the
day we convene to recall and reflect on the ministries
of
proclamation and justice we’ve conducted over the past year
and
to choose our lay leaders for ministry over the next year.
So
it is wondrously appropriate for this particular Sunday in our
congregation’s
life that today’s lectionary passages ask each of us
to
reflect on our call from God to Christian vocation.
One
of the great figures in American Presbyterian history was
the
19th century pastor + later seminary
president Lyman Beecher.
Lyman
was, for one thing, the father of some amazing children:
the
pioneering educator of women Catherine Esther Beecher,
the
writer and humanitarian Harriet Beecher Stowe,
+
the famous Brooklyn preacher Henry Ward Beecher.
And
Lyman was, for another thing, renowned
for
his liberal theological views, which,
like
those of us here at Rutgers, frequently put him in conflict
with
conservative groups in our denomination.
A
person once asked Lyman how it was
that
so many who had previously not been Christians
chose
to join the congregation of which he was the pastor.
Lyman
replied: “I preach on Sunday,
and
I have 400 members who preach every day.”
These
400 members were, of course, preaching
through
the quality of their everyday lives,
preaching
in their homes, in their workplaces,
in
the exercises of their civic responsibility—
in
what they said and how they said it,
in
what they did and how they did it,
sharing
the love and justice of God with others,
and
happy to say, “I do it because of Christ.”
A
question was once posed in my hearing:
“Would
you want your medical tests and blood samples
to
be analyzed by a Christian or by a scientist?”
Now,
if the question were just left standing there in that form,
I
would of course reply, “By a scientist,” for
being
a Christian is no substitute for professional competence.
But
then, I wouldn’t want to let the question just stand in that form.
I’d
want to change the question to something like this:
“Would you prefer your medical tests and blood samples
to
be analyzed by a competent scientist who is Christian
or
by a competent scientist who is not religious?”
To
that question I would answer swiftly + confidently:
“By
the competent scientist who is Christian.”
Now,
that answer of mine would arise not from some kind of
parochial
preference for Christians,
but
from my understanding that Christians are called
to
add to their competence certain additional qualities,
above
and beyond competence,
qualities
like a caring concern for persons’ well-being
and
a commitment to truth-telling.
Let
me tell you some contemporary stories of Christian vocation,
stories
that are, as a matter of fact, not at all fishy,
stories
that really happened
to
people whom my wife and I really know.
Story
number one:
A
new teacher arrived for her first day of teaching 5th grade
at
a public school.
The
experienced teachers counseled her not to smile
at
the children until at least Thanksgiving Vacation
because
the children would take advantage of a teacher
who
wasn’t perceived to be a stern disciplinarian.
But
this particular 5th grade teacher
just
couldn’t keep from smiling!
As
she described it to me,
“Smiling
was just in my nature as a Christian,
and
besides I love kids and care so very much about them.”
A
few weeks into the term one of the boys in her class,
Edmund,
found a chance to speak with her in
private.
He
asked, “Teacher, why do you smile so much?”
She
replied, “Because I like you so much,
Edmund,
and because I’m so happy here!”
The
teacher concluded her story to me by saying:
“You know
I’ll
never forget the look that came over Edmund’s face.
It
was a look of total astonishment
at
having heard something that struck him
as
a revelation of fresh human possibilities.”
Story
number 2:
A
Christian woman whom I know well recently told me
that
in the space of just two week’s time she had had to endure
not
just one or two, but three curse-filled tongue-lashings
that
accused her of all kinds of things—
both
relevant and irrelevant—
and
that called down upon her hellfire + damnation
for
doing her job the way she was doing it.
In
each case, this fine woman listened attentively,
really
hanging in there with her accuser throughout the diatribe,
+
in each case, she offered as her closing line this invitation:
“We
need to talk more about this on a better day.”
In
her statement she was saying to the other person:
“I’ve
heard you, and our relationship is still intact.”
In
all three instances just a short time after the horrible encounter,
the
woman received an apology that was profoundly sincere.
In
reflecting on this thrice-repeated phenomenon,
the
woman said to me: “You know,
I’m called
to
be a Christian even when I’m being cursed at.
As
a Christian, I’m called upon to assume that even
very
angry encounters are not without grace.”
Story
number 3:
A
man my wife knows well lost his job about four years ago
because
his Christian commitment to truth-telling moved him
to
blow the whistle on an embezzlement scheme going on
in
the office where he worked, in the headquarters not of
a
corporation but of a major Christian denomination,
one,
I hasten to add, that is not our own!
That
was four years ago, and the man is still unemployed,
but
he remains confident that what he did
he was called
by
God to do as part of his Christian vocation.
His
wife has been able to find work,
and
he has made some money from consulting.
Their
combined income is not nearly so large
as
his alone used to be,
but
they have scaled back their lifestyle
and
experienced genuine happiness
and
contentment in who they are
and
what they do.
Story
number four:
The
last man I described had to wrestle with his Christian
vocation
in
the face of grave moral failure in the headquarters
of
a different Christian denomination.
Let
me tell you now about two men whom I met for the first time
last
Thursday night, two men who have had to wrestle
with
God’s calling to Christian vocation in the face of grave
moral
failure among the people of our own denomination.
As
almost all of you know,
one
of the great theological struggles taking place within
our
own denomination, and many others as well, is the issue
of
whether God’s call to Christian vocation extends
to
homosexual persons as well as to heterosexual.
This
issue came into sharp focus last Thursday night at a
panel
discussion organized by Presbyterian Welcome, a group
of
Presbyterians of whom our congregation is a part, a group
that
works for the full inclusion in Presbyterian
congregations
of all persons, whatever their sexual
orientation,
and the full recognition of all calls
by
God to Christian vocation.
Two
gay Christians on the panel shared parts of their personal
stories
about God’s calling of them to Christian vocation.
One
was Wayne Osborne, an elder of the First Presbyterian
Church
of Stamford, CT. Wayne is by profession
a
financial advisor and by avocation a musician.
The
other was Graham van Keuren, a candidate for
professional
ministry under care of the Presbytery of
West
Jersey, which is really in South Jersey.
Both
men spoke quite poignantly + persuasively about having
been
called by God to their particular tasks of ministry, and
it
was Graham van Keuren who put their shared dilemma
most
starkly + memorably when he lamented with irony:
“I
want so much to be able to talk with other
Presbyterians
about my deep sense of having been
called
by God to Christian vocation, about the
talents
+ gifts God has given me for ministry.
Yet
because I’m a gay man, all that most
Presbyterians
want to talk with me about is sex,
about
a sex life even as hypothetical as mine!”
To
each and every one of us here this morning—regardless of our
race,
gender, social class, employment, or sexual orientation—
Jesus
extends this commanding invitation:
“Follow
me, and I will make you fishers of people.
For
I am calling you
to
a vocation of reaching out to others in love,
to
a life of sharing with others
the
good news of God’s grace and forgiveness
and
the good deeds of God’s justice
and
righteousness.”
And
that’s no fishy story!
Let
us pray:
O God, show us how to be 100 people preaching Your good news everyday,
preaching it through the quality of our lives in our homes, in our workplaces,
in
our exercises of civic responsibility.
In what we say and how we say it, in what we do and how we do it,
may
we prove able to share Your love and justice with others.
Through Jesus the Christ, the one who has called us to an elevated quality of living,
we pray. Amen.
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